My 1890s New York Detectives, Claudius Rosenhain & Josephine Farley
āSomeoneāor somethingāis killing young women in the slums of Manhattan, and no one cares. You and I, a Jewish man and a black woman, sit next to each other, and the whole world revolts. Nothing is ever fair, Claudius.ā
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...That awkward moment when you discover a quantum singularity (which has been gobbling people up across the nation) sitting beneath your uni campus, and you don't know what to do with this information.
āĖā”ā°āā¤That story where a 1920s fop takes in a mad scientist from the 2020sāĖā”
For the accidental time traveller: when you get displacedāagainst your will, no lessāto "elsewhen", make sure you befriend the kindest soul you can locate. Bonus points if he's the gentry.
Also, try to avoid mentions of prophecy, predestination, fate, or the niggling, persistent whisper that you might be something akin to Adam and EveāEnki and Ninmah, or Rangi and Papaācome again.
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"A hundred years ago, a young man held my dorm room. A languages student, I think. With a penchant for expensive cologne, Cole Porter, and luxury cigarettes."
"How would you know?"
"I hear him sometimes. And the tobacco gets in my hair."
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Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Qualityā Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
āDo you think the Rolling Stones could be convinced to come perform at my funeral? Iām sure they owe my dad a favour.ā
āNot likely. Maria Callas might, though, if you tell her how big a fan you are.ā
One day, Iād like to publish a graphic novel. Itād be a huge undertaking, but itās a dream of mine. In the meantime, Iāll post partially conceived stories and fragmented plot ideas to my blog.
With that said, the accompanying short story for this post sits below the tab for those who fancy something bittersweet to read.
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Until Itās Time for You to Go
December 1973. A single phone call brought him back into her life. It was a name she hadnāt heard in years: Ronald Spence. A childhood friend. A name thatād been conflated with promise and potential. The child prodigy, primed to be groomed for Britainās halls of power. She thought she might hear his name again one day in humdrum political campaign adverts on the radio or telly.
This wasnāt what she expected.
Drug charges. Repeat offender. Caught cultivating and smoking cannabis. Habitual heroin user. Low life. Drifter. Deadbeat. Junkie. He needed someone to pay his bail.
They called her during rehearsal for Spartacus. Some solicitorās aid in London. Said they had a client whoād given her name. She had to shunt her second on so she could make the trip. At half-past one in the morning, she came with the Ā£4,000 bail.
There was no āLong time no see,ā or āThanks for coming up, Harlow,ā when she arrived. He just gave her a long look and settled on: āNothing is more terrifying than your own potential, Harlow.ā As though he knew precisely what she was thinking: what have you done to yourself, and why?
All profundity, though, was thrown aside when he followed up with, āYouāre a bottle blonde now, I see.ā
She raised a brow. āAnd youāre a heroin addict now, I hear.ā
He laughed. Rich and melodic.
She paid his bail. His doctor, wearing the look of a funeral home director on the clock, took her aside and put Ronaldās medical records in her hand. She didnāt get a chance to read through themāsomewhere between the courthouse and hers, they disappeared. Likely down Ronaldās pants, never to be seen again.
But she took him home. Her home. He had no place of residence, nowhere to go. His family wanted nothing to do with him. His father, a high-flying lawyer who once defended the Rolling Stones on drug charges, now claimed he had no son. His mother destroyed herself with drink to cope with her sonās addictions. Yet for a time, sheād been desperate to keep her only child (and his habit) afloat. Sold every nice thing she owned. It all came to a head when she went to pawn her jewellery. Because someone else had beaten her to it.
Her wedding ring was all that was left. Everything else was shot up into the veins of her twenty-year-old son.
His parents disowned him. His uncle and aunts, too, when word got around. Cousins. Grandparents. Everyone. āI am officially persona non grata, Harlow,ā he told her on the train home. He said it as if warning her that she ought to reconsider the charity of taking him ināshe, too, might be branded an outcast for daring to even look at him, let alone put a roof over his head.
She ignored it. āWell, if youāre without friends, even, where have you been living?ā
āOh, I didnāt say I was without friends. No, me and Big Daddy Milton, weāre a team. We fly real high.ā He said it as though he were on stage in Shakespeare, not sitting beside her on the last train for Wandsworth.Ā
āDare I ask?ā
He laughedāa quiet puff of air through his large nose. There was a distinct lack of mirth to it. āPoor Milton. They threw the whole book at him. Got a year in prison. And thatās with probation.ā He sat back then, lounging against the train seat and unspooling his thin and ragged body with a sigh. For a few moments, he simply watched the ceiling, likely staring through it and back into his memories. The movement of the train gently rocked him. āIt shouldāve been me; he never smoked the stuff.ā
She asked after the subject of his guiltāthis āBig Daddy Miltonā characterāand received a rundown of Ronaldās life for the past four years.
Ronald Spence had been arrested while hiding in a cannabis patch in Oxford. The property belonged to āBig Daddy Miltonā, some hotshot barrister. For two years, Ronald lived with him. Before that, heād lived in a squat in East London. There, heād befriended two women, the eighteen-year-old Jessica Bobin, and the twenty-eight-year-old divorcee and mother of four, Patricia Nodge. Tired of the squat, theyād set their sights on better horizons and motored off for York. They got halfway there before the car gave out. For half the night, they sat on the roadside before someone thought to pull over.
Milton Dobson was a barrister from Oxford. Forty. A bachelor. Had some weakness about the shoulders. Hair the colour of ash. Had no idea how to fix a car. But heād pulled over.
Abandoning their wreck, heād taken them back to his home in Oxford. It was a quaint, tired cottage, the kind of place that felt ill at ease without a small family occupying it. Dobson let them stay for a week. Then a month. Then a year.
During the week, he resided in London to practice law. But on weekends, heād stay on at the cottage. Patricia kept house for him. Jessica read every beauty and gossip magazine this side of England, and Ronald tended the garden and kept his heroin habit.
āYou make a strange group of friendsāthe heroin addict, the mother of four, the sprite, and the burnt-out lawyer,ā Bella commented.
āAll lame ducks, the lot of us. Unlike you, Harlow. First soloist for the Royal Ballet.ā He raised his brows expectantly, breathing out a lungful of cigarette smoke.
āIām surprised you know.ā
He was quiet for a breath. Before he dropped his cigarette on the train floor and crushed it underfoot. āI went and saw Onegin two seasons ago.ā Oh. āAlmost didnāt recognise you.ā The way he looked at her then. The way men look at women sometimes. The intensity behind it; the sexual undercurrent.
She turned away, curbing the urge to roll her eyes. āDid you enjoy it?ā she asked.
āGreatly.ā
āWhy didnāt youāwait. The flowers: were they you?ā
After one particular late-night performance, backstage, sheād found a small bouquet of flowers awaiting her on her dressing table. There was no note attached, no name given. Just a posy of red carnations.
Here and now, Ronald smirked. āDid you enjoy it?ā He turned her question back on her.
āYou caused a minor stirāitās not every performance that one of the grunts receives mystery flowers. Usually, all the praise, flowers and chocolates go to our principal. Bets were running on who my secret admirer was.ā
āWas I an option?ā
āYes.ā
Ronald was quietāstunned at being caught red-handed, most likely.
She could have told him that half the company were wagering on her wannabe-fancy-man being some fat, elderly French millionaire, or a serial stalker (who collected the skin of ballerinas). But her own quiet bet had apparently paid off. āRed carnations gave you away, Ronnie. Anyone else would have plumped for roses.ā
āYou used to like carnations.ā
āStill do.ā
Quiet. Nothing but the gentle click-clack of the train tracks.
āAre you still on heroin?ā she broached the tension, eager to ask the other question that was burning on her mind (and change the subject).
He took the question in stride. āNo.ā
āHow about cannabis?ā
āNever on Saturdays, never on Sundays.ā
She raised a brow. Ronnie didnāt respond, except for a quiet, enigmatic smirk. An inside joke she wasnāt privy to, obviously.
That first night, that was all he cared to tell her of himself. She didnāt pry any further. What heād shared already was enough to keep her mind turning over for hoursādays, even. Long gone was the golden child and star pupil once set on a path thatād funnel him directly into Whitehall; that boy whoād bullied her into being his best friend. Instead, here sat a strung-out recovering junkie who could have passed as an off-brand Mick Jagger. It was a lot to process.
He settled into her home, as well as her life. Found a corner of her days and nights to wedge himself into. It unnerved her initially how easily he did it; how easily he stitched himself into her habits, rhythms, and wonts, and made himself indispensable to her.
He tended the garden, kept her house, and cooked for her. He spoke to and befriended her neighbours (Old Margaret, the widow over her back wall, handed him giftsāof the kind couples looking to start married life received). He fixed the rusted radiator. Fixed the broken banister. Wanted to restore her late fatherās old 1930s roadster.
But most of all, he loved the garden. Sheād never seen such a passionate love affair. He spent hours salvaging what he could, turning the overgrown Amazonian jungle into the Kew Gardens. She bought him a new set of gardening toolsāher motherās were rusted beyond salvation.
It wasnāt all smooth sailing, though. Despite the congenial air, sometimes the tension bubbled to the surface. Sometimes, she lost her temper.
It was something to be expected, perhaps. Because sometimes she forgot the circumstances that brought Ronald Spence back into her life.
The problem was he was so well spoken. Upright. Confident. He may not have gotten past his first day at Cambridge, but he gave off the air of a Cambridge Man. That good breeding that he came from was so ingrained in him. He spoke with the plummy accent of his forebears and could comfortably settle himself into a robust debate about the finer points of Thomas Aquinas or Foucault. One evening, rather than pull out her records and shuffle the couch back to dance, he had her sit centre of the couch so he could recite the Odyssey to her in Ancient Greek. Then Virgilās Aeneid in Latin.
It set her teeth on edge.
At school, theyād been two peas in a pod. Theyād met in drama club, or the āLedgedites Societyā, as their little troop of thespians preferred to be called. She made a mean Don Quixote at twelve. He did an uncanny Richard the Third when armed with a pillow-turned-hump beneath his shirt.
But, beyond the theatrics of the stage, she was quiet and studious. He maintained his brash loudness on and off stage, always vibrant and so full of life.
And brilliant.
Ronnie Spence accomplished everything with the apparent effortlessness of a god. Sheād always been second to him. At Ledgewick, sheād been relegated to his shadow despite her own intellectual promise and potential. Heād been tapped on the shoulder in the womb to one day become prime minister. He came from the right family, the right social milieu, had the right name and gender, and was prone to thinking the right thoughts. He had everything.
After sheād left for the Royal Ballet School, he continued on at Ledgewick College, their star pupil shining bright. Even before graduating, he secured Cambridgeās most prestigious scholarship.
He was introduced to heroin on his first day at university. He didnāt make it six months before forfeiting his scholarship.
ā¦But heād once been brilliant.
And thatās what made her irate. Such potential and promise, wasted. He was the possessor of many a gift. And look how heād squandered it. God, how royally heād fucked himself.
She never said it to him outright. But when she yelled at him over trivial things, he was clever enough to suss out why she was really yelling at him. āLike I told you in the nick, Harlow. Thereās nothing more terrifying than facing your own potential. Overcoming the beast that is your own promiseā¦ā He looked at her then, quiet and serious. āOnly one of us made it, Harlow,ā he whispered.
She intended to help him get his life back on track. He was twenty-four. Brainier than the average prep school science teacher (even after the hammering of drugs and alcohol for four long years). A good-time Charlie who genuinely liked people (or, at least, was very good at pretending he did). He wasnāt without time or options. Sheād help him.
She suggested he find a job. There were jobs going down at the docks. She could also ask around with the mothers at the ballet school she ran, see if their husbands caught wind of any work going somewhere. Grocers and corner shops were always looking for someone. Maybe some nursery or the local council were looking for gardeners.
āIāll try the docks,ā he told her, laughing. He watched her, and she couldnāt puzzle out the look on his face.
They went on like this for a while, pretending he had a future. She hadnāt an inkling that something was offānot until Ronnie disappeared for a day and a night. At the time, sheād thought heād done a bunk, that heād grown tired of domesticity and run off back to a life of drugs, sex and rockānāroll. Maybe itād been inevitable.
Then came the knock a little before midnight. Two young women stood on her doorstep with Ronnie propped up between them. He was near comatose, limp, and racked with chills. Sheād seen livelier corpses.
āHe said he wanted to come back here. No hospital,ā the older of the two women saidāa blonde who looked and sounded like sheād brook no nonsense.
The problem had to be drug-relatedāheād overdosed on dirty heroin, surely.
The women shared a look, and it became apparent that the truth was much worse. āRonnie aināt told you?ā the younger of the two said, a shapely redhead with a thick cockney accent.
āTold me what?ā
The blonde cleared her throat. āThis is awkward. No, girl. Heās come backā¦ācuz he wants to die here.ā
Cancer. Leukemia. Stage Three. Riddled through his bones. He had little more than a year left to live.
At the hospital, she learnt Ronald had been avoiding his weekly check-ups. She gave him a dressing down. For everything: for lying, for not telling her, for neglecting treatment, for not trusting her. Then she burst into tears.
His health had been deteriorating for weeks, and he couldnāt face it. It was easier to run away, he told herā¦until an episode took him to the brink of death, and he realised he didnāt fancy dying on the streets in a puddle of piss. Heād asked Jessica and Patricia to bring him back.
āIt was cruel. It was cruel not to tell me.ā
āIām sorry. But youāre all alone in that house. I didnāt want to give you false hope.ā
False hope? False hope for what?
She felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by his eyes. He saw too much of her. Knew she enjoyed the carnations and foxgloves he brought her from the garden. He knew she lay awake at night, tossing and turning until she made herself seasick with worry over him. Knew how he liked his coffee and tea. She knew to put on Roberta Flack whenever the mood took him. Fixed the rip in his jeans. She bought him the Stonesā latest album on a whim. Bought him boot polish. Bought him booze. Bought him all his toiletries, new gardening tools, anything and everything he ever expressed a need for.
Thank God he never asked for smack or hash.
But Ronnie saw all of this. He saw right through her silly pretence of keeping distance. He knew that when she sought his company, his job was to keep her warm and laughing.
Sheād missed him. She missed the casual affection theyād enjoyed at school. And now that she had it backā¦
She managed to accurately diagnose the reason for him keeping his terminal prognosis under lock and key: so sheād treat him like a person, not a walking corpse. He enjoyed her yelling at him and being on his case to get his act together. Liked pretending he had a future. āSorry, Harlow. But, if itās any consolation, Iāll be out of your hair in six months.ā
āNo.ā
āSorry. No say in the matter, Iām afraid.ā
The tears were relentless. They came welling up, and she had to cover her mouth. Ronald took pity on her. āDonāt regret yelling at me, old thing. I got a kick out of it.ā
Finally, she sat beside him on his hospital bed. But what to say? She picked up his wig off the nightstand. āI knew this was fake. I just knew it.ā
āWhat gave it away?ā
āOther than the shaggy-goat chic? The sheer degree of volume youāve got. I have to lacquer my hair to get anything close.ā
He laughed. āYou sound jealous. Youāre welcome to try it on.ā
āThank you. But I wouldnāt want to give you girl cooties.ā
āWho said I donāt want girl cooties? Maybe I want my wig slathered in them.ā
She laughed, but popped the wig back on the nightstand. āI donāt know what you think you could accomplish with a wig full of girl cooties.ā
āOh, I can think of a few things.ā His voice dropped to smooth velvet, and she found she couldnāt look at him.
āā¦Least your libido hasnāt perished yet.ā
āI truly do pray thatās the last thing to go.ā
She shook her head. āYou are incorrigible.ā
She wanted him to stay on with her. It was either he came to hers, or he stayed on at the hospital for the few months he had left. She couldnāt abide by that. So she took him back home, where she could keep him company and comfortableā¦as he died.
God, he was only twenty-four. Same age as her. At twenty-four, you were supposed to be figuring out what to do for the rest of the long road ahead of youācareer, love, family, hobbies, and vocations. Not waiting to die. āHow strange life is sometimes, hmm?ā he whispered one night. āTo go from the yellow brick road to guaranteed success, to sleeping in a gutter awaiting Death.ā
āExcuse you. My house is not a gutter.ā
āNo. Nor is your bed.ā With a smile into her neck, he rolled on top. She sighed, settled back, and let him do as he pleased.
But his romantic overtures were interrupted by her fists bunching at his shoulders. āItās cruel,ā she whispered into the dark. He stopped mouthing at her skin. āItās not strange,ā she clarified, āitās cruel.ā
After a time, he resumed his business at her neck. āā¦Life often isnāt kind, Bella.ā Kiss. āIt feels no such obligation.ā Kiss. āUnlike you, my dear.ā
From beneath him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close. In less than a year, she wouldnāt be able to. And before this was no more, she would revel in it. In him. He always burnt so brightly, she couldnāt imagine him lying quiet and still beneath the earth.
some little art bits for my 1890s New York detectives series, Farley & Rosenhain
āI bade Miss Farley accompany me on my investigations for her mind. She unfailingly asks the right questions...And I could do with someone who isnāt inclined to trample over active crime scenes in size nines.ā