“Sit here,” Joseph said. “You’ll be more comfortable.”
Stuart started to argue, but Joseph held up his hand, refusing to hear a word, “You’re doing an old man a favor, Stuart.”
Beneath Stuart’s healthy tan, he looked tired and gaunt. There were dark circles under his blue eyes, and Joseph wondered how much he’d slept in the five days that had elapsed since Florence’s death.
“How’s Fannie?” Stuart asked.
“You know, I’d like to tell you. But, you see, I’m not a very good father. I don’t visit.”
“The hospital?”
Joseph shook his head as he righted the beach chair. “I haven’t been inside one since the war.”
“I don’t think that makes you a bad father.”
Joseph frowned. “I could do better.”
“Were you a medic? During the war?”
“An ambulance driver.”
“You and Hemingway?”
“I suppose,” said Joseph. “Except I was driving for the U.S. Army. And I’m not sure I made it look quite so glamorous.”
He had to get to it, ask Stuart for what he needed, or he’d be telling war stories all morning. “Look, Stuart, I need some help tracking down Bill Burgess. To cancel the swim.”
Stuart looked surprised, as if he had temporarily forgotten that Florence couldn’t be both dead and a champion swimmer at the same time. He nodded slowly.
“I don’t know where he lives, or if I can get the deposit back,” Joseph said. “Florence handled it all.”
“I have an address for him in Calais.”
“Would you mind writing him? I’m not sure I feel up to it.”
Stuart shook his head vigorously, the way people do, during a crisis, when they’re grateful to have been given a task, no matter how small.
“I’ll send a telegram. I can send one to the hotel, too. Just in case he’s already left for Cape Gris-Nez.”
“Thank you. Let me give you some money to cover the cost,” said Joseph, reaching for his billfold, but it was Stuart’s turn to hold up his hand.
“Please, no. This is the least I can do.”
Joseph studied Stuart, who studied his own fingernails, bitten to the quick. “It’s not your fault, you know?”
Stuart didn’t say a thing, just nodded his head like a marionette.
Joseph tried to put himself in Stuart’s place. What if he had lost Esther that first summer, when she was as much ephemera as she was an actual woman standing in front of him?
When Esther had checked into Chorney’s, accompanied by her parents, in the summer of 1904, Joseph’s command of the English language had been so poor that he had been afraid to talk to her. In lieu of words, he had offered her the best seat in the dining room, bestowed extra hard-boiled eggs on her at breakfast, and delivered her an unsolicited slice of Boston cream pie at dinner. Her parents had raised their eyebrows at his antics but had otherwise disregarded him, so sure were they that their nineteen-year-old daughter would not return the attentions of an Eastern European Jew so recently arrived from the old country. When he cleared their table one evening, and discovered the note Esther had left for him under her discarded napkin, he had thought his heart might stop beating in his chest.
My parents are going to the theater after dinner. If you can get away, would you care to go for a walk? I’ll be in the lobby at half-past eight.
Esther
Joseph had never bused the dining room so quickly. At half-past eight, when the room was still not empty and the last of the dishes were still not clean, he traded an extra shift with another busboy forthe chance to slip out early. Joseph stuffed his apron in an umbrella stand and rushed to the lobby, where he found Esther sitting on a small settee. She sat up straight and didn’t appear to have been watching for him, which gave the impression, at least to Joseph, that she had been confident he would come.
Joseph offered Esther his arm, and they made their way out of the hotel and down Virginia Avenue to the Boardwalk, which was crowded with rolling carts full of mostly happy couples and a few dour ones. Without discussing it, they walked south, in the opposite direction of Nixon’s Theater and Esther’s parents. The piers buzzed with activity, and revelers streamed in and out of the grand lobbies of the big oceanfront hotels. Lights were strung from one side of the Boardwalk to the other, and the effect was dazzling—like a blanket of stars had been hung for their benefit. At the Chelsea Hotel the crowds began to thin, and they stopped to admire the city’s bright lights, spread out behind them. “Don’t you just love Atlantic City?” Esther said.
