hand to my forehead, I peered into the murky, crowded depths of the shop, and then knocked on the glass.
Hobart and Blackwell. Ring the green bell.
A bell? There wasn’t a bell; the entrance to the shop was enclosed by an iron gate. I walked to the next doorway—number 12, a modest apartment building—and then back to number 8, a brownstone. There was a stoop, going up to the first floor, but this time, I saw something I hadn’t seen before: a narrow doorwell, tucked halfway between number 8 and number 10, half-hidden by a rack of old-fashioned tin garbage cans. Four or five steps led down to an anonymous-looking door about three feet below the level of the sidewalk. There was no label, no sign—but what caught my eye was a flash of kelly green: a flag of green electrical tape, pasted beneath a button in the wall.
I went down the stairs; I rang the bell and rang it, wincing at the hysterical buzz (which made me want to run away) and taking deep breaths for courage. Then—so suddenly I started back—the door opened, and I found myself gazing up at a large and unexpected person.
He was six foot four or six five, at least: haggard, noble-jawed, heavy, something about him suggesting the antique photos of Irish poets and pugilists that hung in the midtown pub where my father liked to drink. His hair was mostly gray, and needed cutting, and his skin an unhealthy white, with such deep purple shadows around his eyes that it was almost as if his nose had been broken. Over his clothes, a rich paisley robe with satin lapels fell almost to his ankles and flowed massively around him, like something a leading man might wear in a 1930s movie: worn, but still impressive.
I was so surprised that all my words left me. There was nothing impatient in his manner, quite the opposite. Blankly he looked at me, with dark-lidded eyes, waiting for me to speak.
“Excuse me—” I swallowed; my throat was dry. “I don’t want to bother you—”
He blinked, mildly, in the silence that followed, as if of course he understood this perfectly, would never dream of suggesting such a thing.
I fumbled in my pocket; I held out the ring to him, on my open palm. The man’s large, pallid face went slack. He looked at the ring, and then at me.
“Where did you get this?” he said.
“He gave it to me,” I said. “He told me to bring it here.”
He stood and looked at me, hard. For a moment, I thought he was going to tell me he didn’t know what I was talking about. Then, without a word, he stepped back and opened the door.
“I’m Hobie,” he said, when I hesitated. “Come in.”
Chapter 4.
Morphine Lollipop
i.
A WILDERNESS OF GILT, gleaming in the slant from the dust-furred windows: gilded cupids, gilded commodes and torchieres, and—undercutting the old-wood smell—the reek of turpentine, oil paint, and varnish. I followed him through the workshop along a path swept in the sawdust, past pegboard and tools, dismembered chairs and claw-foot tables sprawled with their legs in the air. Though a big man he was graceful, “a floater,” my mother would have called him, something effortless and gliding in the way he carried himself. With my eyes on the heels of his slippered feet, I followed him up some narrow stairs and into a dim room, richly carpeted, where black urns stood on pedestals and tasseled draperies were drawn against the sun.
At the silence, my heart went cold. Dead flowers stood rotting in the massive Chinese vases and a shut-up heaviness overweighed the room: the air almost too stale to breathe, the exact, suffocating feel of our apartment when Mrs. Barbour took me back to Sutton Place to get some things I needed. It was a stillness I knew; this was how a house closed in on itself when someone had died.
All at once I wished I hadn’t come. But the man—Hobie—seemed to sense my misgiving, because he turned quite suddenly. Though he wasn’t a young man he still had something of a boy’s face; his eyes, a childish blue, were clear and startled.
“What’s the matter?” he said, and then: “Are you all right?”
His concern embarrassed me. Uncomfortably I stood in the stagnant, antique-crowded gloom, not knowing what to say.
He didn’t seem to know what to say either; he opened his mouth; closed it; then shook his head as if to clear it. He seemed to be around