+J.M.J.+
My Funny Valentine, or Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
Basically this is a somewhat quiet chapter, developing the St. Valentine's Day background as well as the relationship between Bridie and Maguire. In spite of himself, he's falling for her, though after all the trouble she's cost him, he'd be the first to deny that he is. You'll see what I mean.
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I.
III: You Make Me Smile With My Heart
At least the snow stopped in the night, so perhaps the intruder would finally leave. He scrupulously avoided being in the same room with Bridie, choosing to communicate with her from the hallway if they had to talk. But if he couldn't avoid it, he kept his eyes averted.
But then, as he was heading out, Bridie confronted him with a five-dollar bill in her hand.
"What's that?" he demanded, his eye on the bill but not on her.
"Room and board," she said. "Don't worry: I'll be out of here this afternoon, please God. I'm going to wire my great uncle for the money for my train fare."
"In that case…I'm sorry about last night. I wasn't thinking straight."
"I'll say this much: you used a pretty up-front way to drive out an unwanted guest," she said.
"You used a pretty up-front way to deter me—though I don't think that would work with every guy who tries that on you."
"I know. But I had this feeling you really didn't want to use that means."
"You a mind reader or something?" he asked.
"No, just good at reading people's behavior," she said.
"So, did you get rid of the nuisance?" Ruby asked. To his annoyance, she'd decorated the inside of the diner with red colored-paper hearts trimmed with white tissue-paper lace and red candles stuck into what decidedly looked like jelly glasses.
"I'm afraid not," Maguire admitted, over his first cup of coffee.
"Awww, so you do like her!" Ruby teased, wagging her finger at him mischievously.
"I hate to burst your bubble, but it's not that simple," he returned. "I tried to give her a taste of what every mother warns her maiden daughter about, should she ever linger in an unattached young man's apartment…and my God, she came on to me! Granted, it was her way of fighting fire with fire, but it scared the bejeebers out of me."
"That's odd. I've never heard of anyone doing that. She must be real desperate for a date. Well, tomorrow's the big day for it. You doing anything?"
"Besides playing keep away from the unwelcome guest? No." He gave her what he meant to be a seductive smile, but which he knew didn't quite cut it, what with his bad teeth. "Why, you got something in mind, Ruby? Won't Hank get concerned?"
She made a shooing gesture at him. "Oh get going with you!" she snipped.
"Can't, I ain't paid my bill yet," he retorted.
Another long morning of canvassing areas, pounding the pavement, checking alleyways and side streets for fitting subjects. Harmon Maxfield had several more human-interest shots: young businessmen browsing the jewelry store windows and the flower shops. He spotted a few older men, bank managers or company presidents, nipping into lingerie shops with their hats tilted over their foreheads and their coat collars flipped up around their faces. He indulged a chuckle at this, but he didn't dare waste the film, until he spotted one especially stout old gent who nearly bumped into the doorpost of one shop on his way in, so great were his pains to keep his face hidden that he blocked his own view. It was a little too gossipy a shot than Maguire preferred, but at this time of year, a cheek shot was not out of the question.
He lucked out and found a domestic disturbance in a back street. A woman had thrown a pan full of boiling potatoes at her husband. He got a shot of the police helping the injured man, a big galoot in overalls, into the back of a patrol car, his hand wrapped in a rag full of snow while five other officers tried to bundle the wife, a hefty dame in her fifties, into the back of a van. Good enough for the Herald: he wouldn't have to keep being Harmon Maxfield today.
Bridie was nowhere to be found his digs when he got back, but her typewriter still stood on the end of the table and he knew she wouldn't go anywhere without her typewriter. Well, in that case, maybe she had gone to get the money her great-uncle was supposed to wire to her.
But some time later, when he was finishing up in the dark room, he heard her knock at the door. He lifted the corner of the curtain and went to answer it.
Her shoulders looked a little drooped as she stepped into the room and her hat didn't sit at its usual jaunty angle.
"Hey, what happened?" he asked, helping her with her coat. He almost stopped himself, but he decided it was better to be a gentleman.
"Oh nothing much: my uncle John won't send me the cash, says I should be a little more independent," she said.
"That's too bad," he said. "D' you have anyone else who might help?"
"No. Well, there's my godfather, but he's got a wife and two sons to support, so I don't want to pest him for the cash."
"I'll pay it for you," he said. I'll have a commission check coming soon. I'll split it with you." Now what made him say that? He wondered.
She shook her head. "You've been too generous already. I've got a commission check of my own coming soon. I'll manage."
"Listen: something big's gonna break soon. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, I dunno. I can feel it in my bones. There'll be enough for you. It's the least I can do to make up for the full frontal assault last night."
"If I recall correctly, I was doing some of the assaulting myself."
"Not THAT much."
"Something big, you say? How big?"
"Can't tell: the crystal ball goes dark. But it's gonna be a hell of a shot. I mean, it's been too quiet after McGurn got plugged."
"What, "Machine Gun" McGurn, Capone's torpedo? Were you on that?" Her eyes had widened a little.
"Damn right I was. Got the jump on every other reporter in town—except the jerk who got his thumb in the way of the lens when he took the shots. The papers were fightin' like a bunch of sharks trying to get my shots."
"My, you do get around."
He shrugged modestly. "It's what pays the rent."
"But the tabloid shots, the lurid stuff…do you enjoy taking those?"
"I guess I could say yes: makes you feel more alive."
"I don't follow, though I should."
"It's really rather simple: you look at someone lying dead, shot to pieces, say, and you think, 'My God, that's gonna be me someday, lying dead'. Then you feel your own heart still beating and you realize your blood's still in your own veins where it belongs, and you think, 'Whew, well, that's not me yet'. So the contrast heightens yer own sense of being alive.
"Besides, people like a good jolt. Good for the circulation…get it?"
"What?" she asked, puzzled. Then realization dawned in her eyes. "Oh." She cuffed at his sleeve. "Only you would make a joke like that…It makes perfect sense. I guess that's how you can sleep at night after spending your days among all this gory stuff."
"Yeah, I hit on this theory not long after I started my apprenticeship in the craft."
"And I suppose it explains why people read that stuff."
"You're probably right. I guess you'll have to elaborate on your end of it in due time," he said. God, was she trying to get around him or was she being honest? he thought as he went back to check on his drying prints.
Or was she doing both?
It had started snowing again early that evening. He doubted there'd be anything worth his bother that evening, and he didn't want to risk starting rumors by taking Bridie out for dinner. She'd found some canned clam chowder in the back of the cabinet and started heating it on the gas ring. She cut a few slices from a loaf of bread she'd bought, but she got a shock when she went to toast it.
"Er, do you have a toaster?" she asked after rummaging in the cupboard.
"No, I just never got around to buying one," he admitted. "My sister got all over me for it when she came to visit at New Year's, especially when I showed her this trick." He slipped the slices of bread in between the sections of the radiator under the kitchen window. He expected her to be shocked, but she started laughing instead.
"Talk about necessity being the mother of invention," she said.
Over their chowder and toast, she told him about her family: her father who worked for old man Rooney, his uncle, as a shipper; her mother who had passed away a few years back; her two older sisters, one married, the other in the convent; her year in college, the first Rooney woman to go to college. She'd dropped out only because she'd gotten short on money, which was why she'd worked as a governess for the Campanini girls. Their father Anselmo, better known as 'Sam' to his associates had wanted only the best for his girls. His sister had barely learned to read and write, but his daughters would be ladies.
"But it didn't work for Angelica," she concluded, shaking her head sadly. She looked up at him across the table. "That must have been hard, to shoot the picture of her like that."
"Yeah, terrible," he agreed, his gaze already lowered. He hoped it bore a convincing enough look of dismay.
She reached across and patted his hand. "Well, you're still alive," she said.
He smiled thinly at this, remembering his own remark earlier.
While she washed the few dishes, he went down to Vernon's to pay the rent. Most landlords had the rent due on the first of the month, but Vernon wanted the rent money in on the thirteenth of the month, to balance any bad luck the day might bring.
It was getting late, not much point in staying up after he delivered his shots to their respective publishers, so he decided to turn in early.
The cold set in almost worse than it had the previous nights, cutting right through his coat as he scurried from his car to the house, up the stairs to the flat.
He found Bridie making up her couch for the night, her topcoat on over her clothes.
"Hey, don't sleep there, you'll catch your death of cold," he said before he realized what he'd said. "We'll both stay warmer if we share one bed. I promise I won't touch a hair of you."
"Aren't you afraid I might jump you in the night?" she asked, only half serious.
"Nah, I ain't afraid of nothin', least of all you," he said.
"Okay, you keep to your side, and I keep to mine. Deal?" she extended her hand to him.
He took it. "Deal." They shook on it.
To further prove the innocence of his intention, he took off only his shoes and his vest, but not until after he'd given the radiator the usual ten or twelve kicks.
"Uh, how about using a hammer?" Bridie suggested.
"Nah, it's more fun kicking it in the slats," Maguire said
"Talk about getting your kicks," she said, with a chuckle. He smiled at her pun, then reached up, using his wiry frame as a counterweight, and pulled down the Murphy bed. She eyed the bed curiously.
"Okay, I give up: why is the bed made up with the sheets tucked in at the top?" she asked.
"Not a simple answer," he said. "When I first moved here to Chicago after I worked for the paper in Detroit, my first shot was of a woman whose husband had murdered her by folding her up in a Murphy bed while she was asleep and leaving her there to suffocate. One of the very rare shots that has actually given me the willies. She might have lived if she was wedged in there feet downwards. So, ever after that I've made up the bed with the sheets tucked in at the top."
"Good thinking," she said.
He looked her in the eye, then dropped his gaze to the floor. "After you," he said, with a lift of one hand.
"Thank you," she said in a fruity voice.
He kept his eyes averted as she got in between the sheets, but he couldn't imagine why he did that. He waited until she had settled down, then he switched out the light. He groped his way back to the bed and crawled in beside her. She started moving about under the covers, as if trying to find a comfortable spot on the mattress.
"OW!" Bridie yelped.
"What?" Maguire asked, lying with his back to her.
"I just banged my elbow on something at the end of the mattress."
"It's a pry bar," he said, realizing he'd forgotten to take care of something.
"Now what's that doing there?" she asked, twitching around some more. If she kept moving around, she'd get the answer to her question. The springs on the hinges were old and stiff, so he usually unhooked them before he turned in, to prevent any mishaps.
He was just getting up to take care of this, when the springs suddenly jangled, tensing. He had just enough time to turn over on his face before the bed folded up on them.
"Are you happy now you know what the pry bar's for?" he asked, muffled. He groped for the pry bar, grabbed it, and slid the end of it between the edge of the closet casing and the edge of the mattress. He managed to lever the bed open wide enough for him to wedge his head and shoulders out. Using his weight as counterweight and crawling up to the top of the mattress, he pushed it open all the way. Bridie drew in a long breath and let it out.
"Whheeeewwwww! Fresh air," she sighed. Then in a mock moony voice, she added, "My hero." Even in the dark, he knew she looked up at him with a fake simpery look on her face.
"Not that I'm throwing you out or anything, but maybe it would be the best for us both if you kept to the couch," he said.
"You're probably right," she said. "Sorry about this."
"Don't worry about it: I've had this happen before."
"And that's why you were prepared for it," she said. He heard her get up and pad out into the front room. He breathed a sigh of relief of his own once she was gone, then he got down to unhook the springs like he should have done in the first place.
First getting clonked with a fruitcake, now this. Maybe Vernon was right about the thirteenth being bad luck even if it wasn't a Friday. Or maybe it was just this woman was bad luck.
To be continued…