Hearts Page 5

  “Who’s out there?”

  Truvy called out in a manner she hoped sounded nonguilty. After all, she wasn’t doing anything. Not really. Hardly wrong at all aside from . . . “Miss Valentine.”

  “Oh, Miss Valentine. Who’s that with you? Is that a man?”

  “Jacob Brewster, Mrs. Plunkett.”

  “What are you doing talking to Miss Valentine?”

  From the half smile that lit on his mouth, Truvy feared she was doomed and would be up half the night explaining.

  Jake’s deep voice carried in the night. “We were discussing the birth of Christ and the manger.”

  Truvy opened her eyes, not realizing she’d squeezed them tightly closed.

  “Really?” Mrs. Plunkett stepped onto the veranda. “While I find that admirable, it’s not appropriate to be discussing the Bible at this hour. In the dark. At my gate. I have an upstanding reputation in this town and I won’t have it sullied, Miss Valentine.”

  Her heartbeat drummed. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Mrs. Plunkett.”

  “Well, then, come along inside. Mr. Plunkett is waiting to meet you.”

  Truvy couldn’t do anything but turn away from Jake, glance at the wise man from the corner of her eyes, and proceed up the steps. There was no time or opportunity to fix him. She had to leave him just as he was—moonlight beaming off his pale white torso and legs and that area of undefined . . . um, maleness.

  There was no plausible reason she could offer Mrs. Plunkett about the figure’s being disrobed; so she’d stick with the explanation she’d given Mr. Brewster. The figurine’s robe had fallen and she was merely adjusting it. But to voice that aloud . . . in front of Mr. Plunkett . . . it would be better to wait until morning, over breakfast, when it was just herself and Mrs. Plunkett after a good night’s rest. She’d clarify everything and there would be no fuss made.

  As she walked into the house, Truvy glanced at the street while Mrs. Plunkett closed the door. Jake Brewster still stood at the gate, staring at her. She had difficulty swallowing. The hairs at the nape of her neck prickled, and gooseflesh rose on her arms. Not twenty-four hours in Harmony and she’d ended up in his company twice: holding his beer and exposing her ankles to him.

  If she kept this up, she might as well tear up her ticket back to Boise. She was as good as terminated from her position.

  Chapter

  3

  J ake Brewster used to pose in the nude.

  In New York City, he sat for artists and sculptors. Being painted and assessed without a stitch on was a good way to make extra cash when he was developing his physique as a bodybuilder at the age of nineteen. Standing au naturel—as the teacher in the Art Students League called it—never bothered him. Even if it had, from the talent the artists showed, nothing of their work would become well known. Only a guy named Remington was any good. His art was to the point and unsentimental. After classes, the two of them would go sit in the local tavern and talk art—Jake’s definition being that of the body and Remington’s being that of canvas and pen. Jake and Remmy had formed a loose friendship, and since those days, they had stayed in touch.

  If Jake hadn’t run away from home, he never would have developed a talent as a boxer and, later on, the body of a muscleman. His problematic relationship with his father had always been on the edge—volatile, and sometimes violent, if his old man couldn’t hold down a job because of temper outbursts. Then J. W. Brewster would take out his frustrations on Jake. His mother left after he was born; to this day, Jake didn’t know why. His father didn’t want him, and it had wounded Jake to the quick when he’d been little. Each time his old man looked at him, he said he saw that bitch.

  Jake put up a shell of indifference over his pain as the years went by. He hung around with street pals, mostly Irish boys like himself—although there was no strict Catholic upbringing in the Brewster household. Times were hard and his home life grew worse to an unbearable degree when his father didn’t have a job more often than he had one.

  When he was fourteen, Jake went to a traveling boxing show in Queens. He was a tall boy—six feet. The heavyweights put on good theatrics, shoving each other around the ring. Jake had done that much on the streets in lower Brooklyn. The company manager offered a fifty-dollar prize for any man who would take on the winner of the match. To Jake, it was money in his hand. He wanted to fight. He lied about his age. Said he was eighteen. Because of his size, they believed him, and he was picked. He won in three rounds and was offered a place with the troupe of boxers, who went around the country taking on amateurs. He jumped on the opportunity. That night, he packed his belongings and said farewell to his father, who waved him off with the premonition he’d be back in Brooklyn within the month.

  He was wrong. It took three years, and when he returned, he’d gained a small amount of notoriety and some pocket money.

  In two years on the road, Jake developed an interest in lifting through one of the performers, Michael “The Irish Torpedo” McGovern. He was an old-time vaudeville strongman. He was heavyset and had a thick bull neck. He shaved his head and had a curling mustache that was always waxed into place.

  Torpedo told Jake that being bulked and muscular was good for boxing but that the true test of a man’s strength was what he could jerk in weight. Michael taught him the “tomb of Hercules” position—with his abdomen stretched up in an arc, arms back, legs front—a trick that the Irishman did in the boxing intermission. He had a sheet of lumber laid on his stomach and got somebody to walk a draft horse over him. He never once collapsed, a feat that had awed Jake.

  He gave up boxing to be a strongman because he didn’t have to have his face smacked anymore. Already, he’d had his ribs cracked, his nose broken at the bridge, and his eyelid cut from punches. The year Jake turned eighteen in truth, he and the Torpedo left the company, creating their own act filled with endurance exploits. Along with displays of pressing weight in one hand, Jake broke a chain from his biceps with a burst of muscle contraction and bent a piece of pipe into a U shape and then made it straight again. He learned how to take two complete playing card packs and, with a turn of his wrist, tear them in half.

  In 1893, while performing in New York City, he met Florenz Ziegfeld Sr. and his son. Torpedo had opted to retire that year, so Jake was left without a future engagement. He and Flo struck a partnership to produce an act for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

  The show, “Jake ‘The Bruiser’ Brewster—The Strongest Man on Earth,” was an instant success and ran the entire fair. Women flocked to the pavilion in the hopes of being introduced to him. After performances, he held private meetings where they could touch his muscles while he talked about them. Crowds of matinee girls sent him wreaths, perfume-scented love letters, and other objects of their affection.

  But after a successful run with Flo at the Trocadero in Chicago and traveling from New York to San Francisco in a string of shows, Jake had lost his hunger for professional bodybuilding.

  Today, he was still a big man with a rock-hard physique. But beneath the appearance of what was considered a marbled Greek ideal, he knew he wasn’t as physically fit as he’d once been. He drank too much, indulged in cigars, and no longer put all his effort into bodybuilding. Maintaining his symmetry, proportion, and detail had gone up in smoke, with nights of playing cards and entertaining women.

  Since retiring from competitions, he now gave advice rather than took it. He operated a business that allowed amateurs to exercise their bodies for strength and development.

  Bruiser’s Gymnasium was good-size, with hardwood floors and a row of windows that looked out onto an alleyway shared by other businesses. Each exercise station was marked with an Axminster rug beneath the equipment. Men could stand or lie on the carpets and work the weights that Jake kept racked on the west-facing wall. The gym provided the latest in equipment: striking bags—both single and double-ended—a rower, Indian clubs, dumbbells and barbells, kettle weights, and pulley exercisers.

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nbsp; He sat in his office, at his desk, with the heels of his feet propped up on the corner. Leaning his shoulders into the lumpy cushion of a rolling chair, he looked at the pictures in the latest issue of Sporting Life magazine.

  His schooling had been spotty; the lack of education impeded his ability to read the articles without a dictionary close by. When he’d been a kid, he’d never given a damn about reading, writing, and arithmetic. Older and wiser, he was angry with himself that he hadn’t paid attention.

  But when frustration grabbed him, he reminded himself he was Jake Brewster, the gentlemen’s friend, grand pooh-bah of the Barbell Club—the would-be contenders who frequented his gymnasium, kept his company for poker games, and laughed at his jokes. Not being highbrow didn’t cause him to lack good friends.

  A knock rapped on the closed door and Jake looked up from the issue of Sporting Life. “Hey, Milton.”

  “Hi, Bruiser.”

  Milton Burditt sported a double chin, and a gold watch chain stretched across an ample field of his silk vest. He always dressed in expensive clothes and smoked dollar cigars, and he trained at Bruiser’s three days a week.

  “I had a good workout today,” Milton said, drawing out a clipped cigar from the breast pocket of his coat. He took off the band, smelled the length of the cigar with a satisfied grin, then lit up. Puffing a chain of smoke rings, he looked at Jake, then at the cigar, and apologized. “Excuse me, Bruiser. Can I offer you one?”

  With a fluid motion, Jake lowered his feet to the floor and gripped the desk’s edge; he propped the soles of his scuffed gymnasium Oxfords on the rails of a worn in chair, then rolled himself forward. “I never turn down a Ybor.” He took the cigar, placed it between his lips, and used his thumb to flip open the spring hinge of a silver match safe. He’d won the pocket-size holder for being the victor of his first fight. An American eagle was engraved in the silver as well as the year: 1886.

  “I’m lifting one hundreds now,” Milton bragged through the smoke that began to cloud the tiny room. “Before you know it, I’ll be doing two-fifties. Not in barbells either—dumbbells. Or singles on the kettles. You watch, my friend, my name will live forever. Like the name of a cheese. You’ll see folks sitting down at a diner and ordering a ham-and-Milton on pumper-nickel. It’s going to happen.”

  Milton’s goal in life was to get massive enough to gain wide recognition. A rather ambitious plan for a squat man who tipped the scale at more than the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound weights he wanted to hoist. He had a cousin who was named Napoleon and it rankled him. Milton claimed the man looked more like a puff pastry than a relative.

  “You keep at it, Milt, and I’ll be thinking of you as cheese,” Jake said as he blew a succession of perfect smoke rings.

  “That’s right. I’m in this for the long haul, Bruiser. I want every bit of the glory. The oiling, psychological warfare, and posing. I’m”—he hooked his thumb at his bulging chest—“the next Mr. Physique.”

  Gig Debolski, wearing baggy gymnasium drawers and a sweat-spotted tunic, interrupted their conversation as he came up to the office doorway. He motioned his head toward the expanse of windows on the building that shared the alleyway with the gym. “Action over at the dance studio, Bruiser.”

  Jake arched his brows, tucking his hands behind his head. “Is that so?”

  “A couple a minutes ago. The curtains were moving like somebody was inside. Thought you’d like to know.”

  “Thanks, Gig.” Jake twirled the ash of his cigar against the side of a cut crystal tray on his desk. Beside it lay an assortment of cabinet cards of him holding a raised-fist stance in his boxing trunks; the novelties originally sold to the public for thirty-five cents apiece. When somebody wrote to him for an autographed keepsake, he sent them one.

  “I wonder if Mrs.Wolcott got things lined up.” Milton checked the time on his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the office. Let me know how things are, Bruiser.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  When Milton left, Jake stood and went out into the gymnasium.

  A machine that resembled a Liberty Bell one-armed bandit took up a spot on the wall just outside his open office door. The lever measured the force of strength a strongman used when it was pulled down. Out of habit, Jake gave the knobbed handle a go as he walked past. The internal mechanism rang out in a series of bells.

  As he walked, Jake nodded to a few of the fellows at the stations. At the end of the large room, an exit door led into the alleyway. He stopped beside it and looked out the window.

  All the curtains on the dancing studio were closed. Just as they’d been the past two months when Edwina had temporarily shut the place down owing to her condition. She’d put up a notice on the door that read she was looking for a substitute instructor, and as soon as she found one, Edwina Wolcott’s Dancing Academy would reopen.

  Jake had signed up every man competing for the Mr. Physique belt. Just because a gent had muscle, it didn’t mean he was prize-winning material by determination and brawn. Knowing how to waltz and ragtime to the basics was an asset to being agile in posing. A man serious with his training was open to new ideas, new ways of doing things.

  Hopefully, Edwina would hire somebody dowdy, a plain woman—a real crow in black skirts and a no-nonsense starched white blouse. He didn’t need his entrants distracted by long legs with a teasing show of pink petticoats.

  Sweet Judas. Where in the hell had that thought come from?

  Miss Valentine.

  Her name conjured hearts and romance. Expectation. Adoration. None of the things he wanted at this point in his life. And yet, after he’d seen her trim ankles, he’d been preoccupied with what her legs would look like. From her height, he knew they would go on forever. Too bad she hadn’t hiked her skirt higher when she’d walked over to the gate. He’d had to satisfy himself with a glimpse of her feet in leather shoes with tiny black buttons.

  He thought about flipping each button free of its slot and slowly slipping her feet out of the tight leather. Massaging her toes. Rolling down the thin black stockings to caress her bare feet and legs that would be long and willowy.

  He recalled the expression on her face when the snowball made contact with her behind. He knew exactly what she’d been up to. He’d watched her a good few minutes before nailing her. So—she was curious. A virgin would be.And she was definitely that.

  Get her out of your head, Brewster. You know plenty of women willing to show you their legs.

  He puffed on his cigar, looking into the slant of sunshine that made it in between the buildings. Icicles dripped from the roof of the studio, their ends wet as they melted in the early afternoon.

  One of the curtains covering the expansive series of windows flickered with movement. Somebody was inside. The brush of gathered fabric had him imagining other things. A lady’s skirt. Blue velvet. And an unconventional woman who carried athletic trophies with her in a suitcase.

  Then again, legs like hers would be made for sports.

  All kinds.

  A varlet.

  An unscrupulous scoundrel.

  Degenerate.

  Dirty-minded rascal.

  Truvy could barely concentrate on what Edwina was telling her about the dance studio. Her thoughts were on Mrs. Plunkett’s endless tirade uttered at the breakfast table that morning in regard to the disrobing of her wise man. As soon as Mrs. Plunkett had lifted the shade to her boudoir, she’d discovered the naked figurine in the white blanket of yard.

  It makes me sick to my stomach, that’s what it does. To think that in our little town, there is a rake on the loose. I’m going to the police to report the incident.

  The window of opportunity to explain had been lowered as soon as the roller shade had been lifted. Truvy couldn’t say anything about it now, not after Mrs. Plunkett had called her a vandal, a dirty degenerate to be reported to the police.

  “I haven’t been in here in weeks,” Edwina said, whisking dust from the curtains with the palm of her hand.r />
  With the closed curtains blocking the sunshine out, the interior wasn’t well lit. The room was very large, with neat planked floors, polished to perfection—but in need of sweeping and a fresh coat of wax. An oak cabinet housed shelves of recordings in brown paper sleeves, and on its top rested a Victrola with a wide-belled trumpet painted with wildflowers. Various pieces of framed sheet music hung on the walls. Scott Joplin. Eubie Blake. Richard Zimmerman. The music companies must have supplied them, as the elaborate frames were decorated with small gold engraved plates, such as: STARK & SON, SEDALIA, MO—1899.

  “This really is an enterprise, Edwina,” Truvy said, imagining what the studio would look like, brightly lit from the globe lamps suspended from the ceiling, and with the curtains thrown back. One of the walls was a block of mirrors, side by side, to make a continuous runner of reflection. She could envision the place filled with music, the shy responses from young ladies and exchanges of polite words from maturing young gentlemen as they learned their steps.

  “It’s not so much,” Edwina replied with her hands on her hips, “because I don’t have the finishing school anymore.” She gazed around the room; then a melancholy and contemplative look came into her eyes. “I had a difficult time making the decision, but as a teacher, I think you know that sometimes a class of students can’t be replaced. You know that you’ve done your best, taught all you can, and you’ve accomplished what you wanted.” She gingerly laid a hand over the extension of her stomach and slightly wrinkled her forehead. “I gave up my side of the building on Old Oak Road to Tom. Remember the one I told you he painted half red to my yellow half? Well, it’s all brown now. He expanded the store and built an office for himself and his partner.”

  “Shay Dufresne,” Truvy said. “You mentioned him in your letters. Does Tom still have his stuffed bear?”