Jimmy returns to Atlantic City with Richard in tow. Takes place during and directly after "Belle Femme."
Perhaps she didn't need to throw the silk dress she wore to her lunch engagement down with such furor, or kick the heels into the corner with such energy. Still, it was the only thing she could think of to relieve...well, Clara didn't actually have a word for the feeling she was trying to exorcise, and Clara was a person with a lot of words. Wrapping a kimono over her slip, she sat on her bed and decided between taking a bath now and writing into the night, or writing now and seeing where the evening led. Maybe she'd call Angela and offer dinner, and spend time with people capable of making conversation, like about to be three-year-old Tommy. It would be a nice change from the mummified tablemates who made up her luncheon.
Perhaps she didn't need to throw the silk dress she wore to her lunch engagement down with such furor, or kick the heels into the corner with such energy. Still, it was the only thing she could think of to relieve...well, Clara didn't actually have a word for the feeling she was trying to exorcise, and Clara was a person with a lot of words. Wrapping a kimono over her slip, she sat on her bed and decided between taking a bath now and writing into the night, or writing now and seeing where the evening led. Maybe she'd call Angela and offer dinner, and spend time with people capable of making conversation, like about to be three-year-old Tommy. It would be a nice change from the mummified tablemates who made up her luncheon.
She heard footsteps in the hallway. The left leg landed heavier with each step. She smiled and flung her door open.
"Jimmy! It's so good to see you!" He spun her around like they were still twelve, but the grimace on his face from the exertion the action required from his leg reminded her they were no longer children.
"Oh, no assault or insults this time?" He said with a half-grin as he set her back down.
She studied him for a moment. The suit was new and different for sure, but that wasn't it. Jimmy had changed in some real way, and it was almost a dramatic a change as the one she saw the day he came to Bryn Mawr to tell her he had enlisted or the day he came home from Europe.
"You look different. Tell me about Chicago?"
"What's to say? I did well."
A slight shiver went down her spine as she thought about what could be hiding in that succinct answer. The visit to the Four Deuces served as a window into a world she felt was encroaching on her own. She looked at the door that led to her father's part of the suite. He was dirty, she knew, but she firmly believed every politician was. She'd met a lot and never met one she didn't think was corrupt or on the take. Her father was just better at it than most. But now, Jimmy, and her father... it was different. It was a new decade and a new game, and she wasn't sure any of them were well suited to the play.
"I'm starving, though. The dining car was out of order." Jimmy continued.
"Why didn't you tell us you were coming home? I would have ordered food!"
He looked at her strangely. "Clara, I swear, I sent a telegram." Jimmy lit a cigarette, took a drag, and passed it to her.
She frowned but took the cigarette. "That's odd. You know that Angela got the money you'd been sending, right? Before I even made it back from Chicago, she received an envelope."
"No, I didn't know," he answered.
Clara looked up at him as she drew another puff. That meant he hadn't been home yet.
"I'm sorry you missed out on seeing Chicago with Richard and me," Jimmy said.
"And I as well. Instead, I got to share my compartment on the train with the world's most empty-headed woman. That's a story I'll tell you later." She looked at the cigarette with great interest for a moment. "How is Mr. Harrow?"
"Sitting on the Boardwalk, waiting for me to finish meeting with Nucky." He regarded her thoughtfully. "Did he have the mask off when you walked into my room?"
Clara nodded. "It looks so raw and painful. Is it hard for him speak? He's so deliberate with his words."
"I think so; he doesn't really say. I don't think many people see him without the mask, though. But I also think most people don't look at him at all, but you did." Now he regarded his childhood friend seriously. It was true what he said that evening in his room. Clara was many things to most-charming, tactful, clever. Rarely was she openly friendly. He wondered why they both had such similar reactions to Richard Harrow. For him, it was because Richard's war wounds looked how his felt on the inside.
Suddenly, he pictured Clara as she was when they were eight, and he wondered if maybe she felt the same after all.
"James, Mr. Thompson is ready," Eddie called from the hall.
"I'll talk with you soon," he said.
Clara's thoughts returned to Richard. She had seen that the left side of his mouth was missing, and the throat scar. She'd bet the mask had to come off to eat, that he wouldn't want to do it in public, and anyway, Jimmy said that the dining car had been out of service. Meaning he was hungry, and she was a girl with a room service department at her disposable.
"Eddie, could you do me a favor?" she asked, sticking her head into the other hall. "Please ask the kitchen to rush a picnic-easy to eat things, nothing on the bone. Soft bread. And I'll need utensils and some bottles of cola." She thought through it all again. "Oh, and straws. I need straws. I'll pick it up at the front desk."
Her hands bypassed her fancier summer outfits and landed on a favorite, a simple floral dress she'd had since college. Perfect. She was lacing her espadrilles when Eddie lets her know her picnic was waiting at the front desk.
Carting the box and two glass bottles out of the hotel, she scanned the nearby benches. She saw him immediately and walked up behind the bench.
"Fancy meeting you here," she said from behind him.
Richard stared out into the sea. His mask was hot on his face, he was hungry, and being in a new place with so many people made his skin crawl. He saw a pretty young woman holding a picnic box in the corner of his sight, but he didn't connect her with him until she walked in front of him.
"Mmm. Miss Thompson."
"Clara, please. I'm so glad you came from Chicago with Jimmy!" She smiled and actually looked happy to find him sitting on her Boardwalk. He looked down at his hands, twisting around each other of their own accord, and saw her leg brush against his case with the sniper mask as she sat down. He winced at the incongruity of her floral skirt and bare leg against the souvenir of war.
"Jimmy said the dining car was out of order, so I brought you a picnic," she continued like he was participating in the conversation. He looked at her again, startled. It was kind, but he couldn't eat in front of all these people. He couldn't eat in front of her, with her immaculate floral dress and shiny hair.
"It's all packed up so you can take it with you," she went on, pretending she hadn't seen the look of panic. "But I'm thirsty, and I haven't even been on a train from Chicago. So I thought you might be as well?" She handed him a glass bottle before opening the top of the picnic box and pulling out straws. She frowned as she looked deeper into the basket.
"They forgot to put in a bottle opener. I'll go get one from the front desk."
"No. Mmm. Here," Richard pulled a knife from his waistband and swiftly removed the tops. Clara stared straight into the ocean as he turned to drink his. "Mmm. Thank you."
She turned to smile. "I was just thinking this will be the most enjoyable thing I get to do all day."
"What do you. Erm. Do?"
"I do nothing, and yet it requires me to change clothes three times a day and spend all my time with people I don't actually like."
Later that evening, Jimmy checked out Richard's new room with him. Close to the Boardwalk, close to his flat with Ange. Perfect. "Not bad, Rich. Atlantic City is going to be good for us," Jimmy spotted the hamper, which could only hold a picnic from the hotel. "What's that?"
"Clara, she. Mmm. Brought me lunch."
Jimmy laughed. "Oh, Jesus, I can't wait to see what she thought to pack for you."
Richard pulled out a pigeon pie, soft bread, Saratoga chips, grapes, cheese, gingerbread, and a jar of pate. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with some of those things. Jimmy laughed again.
"Clara and I shared a crib, and she's like a sister. If she likes you, she'll do anything for you. I'd do anything for her. But people call her the princess in the tower, and that's what she is. She's spent her life on the eighth floor of the Ritz, with Nucky passing money out like fairy dust, and a whole hotel staff ready to do her bidding. It makes her a little, uh, impractical about some things. If she ever tells you, she'll bring lunch be prepared for caviar or for fried chicken and the fact she doesn't really see the difference between them."
Richard thought about Jimmy's words as he ate pate sandwiches. But later that night, once he was unpacked, he pulled out his book, scissors, and glue. He went past some of his layouts and found one he started in Chicago. Already pasted on the page was "Clara Thompson" cut out from her article, and the names of the books she recommended. Underneath, he glued the hotel logo from the paper napkin he found in the box and wrote "Clara's Picnic" underneath.
Richard had worked for Mr. Thompson for a couple of weeks, but so far, it solely consisted of following Jimmy around, waiting for him, and meeting more people than he could keep straight.
Jimmy had been closeted with Mr. Thompson for hours that night. Sometimes that wasn't so bad because Clara drifted out of her room and talked to him, and even if he couldn't always answer her, he liked the way she spoke to him like she had been sitting in her fancy hotel suite just hoping he would come by. She would tell him about playing with Jimmy's son, or the book she was reading, or the article she was writing. Sometimes she even had a new record and would put it on the gramophone in the next room and turn it up so he could hear it, but no one would think he was listening to music when he should be working. She did that mostly on the nights he didn't answer her.
He heard the front door to the suite open and a man's voice. It was followed by the click of high heeled shoes. The sound never stopped but kept coming closer. Richard had chosen a chair in the shadows so that no one would be able to see him (but also because if Clara had been home she would have been able to sit in the drawing-room and talk to him without people in the hallway seeing her). He saw a handsome, tall blonde man about his age in a dinner jacket walking in front of Clara. Clara was wearing a green dress even he could see must be very expensive, and she didn't look like Jimmy's friend. She looked like someone who was going to marry the man in the dinner jacket and never even realize people like Richard existed in her world.
He stared at Clara's face. Since the day she invaded Jimmy's room and declared them friends, he had seen her anxious, happy, angry, calm, teasing, excited, and laughing. Never had he seen her like this. Sometimes he couldn't keep up when Clara talks, so he just watched her face (sometimes he couldn't look at her face, or he could only look when she didn't look back). It changed with every thought. That night, there was no expression on her face. It seemed, he thought, like she was wearing a mask of her face. It was as blank as his own mask. As the man continued to talk, Clara sometimes nodded but never actually responded. She just stared blankly ahead.
"And who have we here?" The blond man finally said as they approached the hallway where Richard sat. He stood, twisting his cap in his hands. Clara saw him and smiled slightly.
"Mr. Richard Harrow, he works with my father. Richard, this is Darcy Blaine."
The man stared at Clara and twisted her hand into his. "I'm Clara's fiance."
"Your father, mm, is in his office. With Jimmy." Richard told Clara, not looking up at Blaine.
Clara could see Richard's vocal click and the cheek pull was worse. She wondered if it was from being tired or from stress.
"Well, then Clara, are you off to bed?" Blaine asked.
Clara stared at him. "Excuse me?"
He looked pointedly at Richard, and then back at Clara, taking her arm in his hand. "I need to get going, so don't you think you should go to bed?"
Clara's cheeks flamed. "I think I'm capable of deciding for myself, Darcy," she said, pulling her arm back.
"Let's not do this here," he said and started propelling her towards the door to the hallway that led to Clara's bedroom.
Richard stood up, ready to intervene, but Clara shook her head at him. Her fiance shut the door behind them. Richard heard their voices through the door, and was reasonably sure Clara was crying.
He realized that soon that man would be able to walk into any room with Clara he wished and shut the door behind them. Richard's long since accepted that no woman is ever going to want to walk into a room with him and shut the door, but it felt wrong that someone who could do that with Clara made her unhappy.
When Darcy finally left, and Clara came out of her room, Richard's eyes went to the red marks on her upper arm. He also noticed her eyes were rimmed with red.
He could use his M1917 Enfield, Richard decided. The man would never know what hit him. Or perhaps he deserved to know, and so the Colt 1903 would be the better choice. Clara sat next to Richard for a bit but didn't talk, and he decided the Colt is the right answer.
The next night he was asleep in his bed when a car honked outside his window. Jimmy. He dressed as quickly as possible, put on his mask, grabbed his kit, and went outside.
"A fucking d'Alessio tried to kill Nucky on the Boardwalk. Freaking Eddie saved him, but an innocent woman took the bullet. This means war, and this means Clara, Nuck's new lady, and her kids all need protection. When we get to the hotel, you're on Clara."
Richard drew his gun outside her room and entered quickly. Clara lay on her side, a book still in her hand and her bedside lamp on. He checked the bedroom, bathroom, and balcony but no one else was there. He holstered his gun.
"Mmm." He was a little uncertain about how to wake her. "Mmm, wake up," he tried again, and she stirred so he tried once more, "It's me. Mmm. Richard Harrow."
Clara sat up, rubbing her eyes, which made the right strap of her pajama top fall off her shoulder, and he tried not to look as she pushed it back up.
She leaned down to grab her kimono, wrapping it around her as she stared up at Richard. "I know who you are, silly. What's wrong? I doubt you woke me up for a chat."
"You need. To see your father."
Jimmy was impressed by how cooly Clara dealt with Harrow waking her up, and then finding out her father had been shot at. She barely changed her facial expression.
"In the morning, pack your things. It will be easier if you are with Margaret and her children. Fewer bodyguards needed, and it will be safer for you away from the Boardwalk," Nucky instructed.
Clara started to argue. "I barely know Margaret; she doesn't want me moving in! What could happen to me here at the hotel?"
"No arguments, Clara. Tomorrow morning Mr. Harrow will drive you over, and there he can guard all of you."
"Fine," Clara said. "I'm going to get some more sleep." Nucky nodded at Harrow to follow her.
"You know," Nucky said to Jimmy, "it worries me when she agrees so easily to a plan that isn't hers."
