The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 81
And the deeper he got into the story, the more he began to imagine his own life as part of an epic story. It was the thing he felt the count got right, the comings and goings of all of these characters, in and out of each other’s lives, as if Tolstoy were able to re-create the breadth of life as well as its depth.
Sometimes, late at night, the count’s words swirled around with Rye’s own thoughts, and descriptions of characters became descriptions of Rye and his brother, as if some tramp Tolstoy had created them (Prince Andrey possessed in the highest degree just that combination of qualities in which Pierre was deficient . . . ), and it was in one of these swirling late-night thoughts (At moments of starting off and beginning a different life, persons given to deliberating on their actions are usually apt to be in a serious frame of mind) that Rye came to the conclusion that, instead of merely waiting for Gig to come back, he had to do something.
That Sunday, he had dinner with Dominic and Gemma and their two shy daughters. After talking about Jules, and remembering the stories he always told, Mrs. Tursi had asked about Rye’s family.
Rye explained that they were all gone except his brother, whom he’d tramped around with the last two years but who had recently lit out on his own.
“And no idea where he might have gone?” Mrs. Tursi asked.
“No,” Rye said.
But then he realized he did have one idea.
And the next day, after work, he took the streetcar downtown and walked to the Comique Theater.
Rye stood beneath the dark marquee: HELD OVER—THIRD FABULOUS MONTH—URSULA THE GREAT.
The show ran Tuesday through Saturday nights, meaning Monday was her day off. The theater doors were closed and locked, but Rye walked around to the side door, which was propped open with a garbage can. The big security guard was nowhere to be found, but when Rye looked inside, a janitor was in the dark hallway, emptying smaller trash cans into the big one.
“I’m looking for Ursula the Great,” Rye said.
“No show on Monday,” the janitor said without looking up.
“I was wondering if you know where she’s staying?”
“I know it ain’t this broom closet.”
“It’s just . . . I think my brother might be with her.”
The janitor looked back. He was sixty or so, bald with drooping brown eyes. “Oh yeah, I saw him. Few weeks back. Looked like a big drunk you.” He straightened up. “Tall raggedy bum, pissed as a fish in gin. Our doorman was about to kill him when Ursula came and took him back to her dressing room, I think to sober him up.”
“Do you know where they might have gone after that?”
“Maybe she fed him to the cougar?”
“Please,” Rye said. “I need to find him.”
The janitor looked him up and down. He chewed on his cheek and sighed. “She stays over the Savoy.”
It was only a couple of blocks away, a nice hotel above the Inland Bar. Rye asked at the front desk for Ursula the Great. The clerk didn’t even pretend to look in his book. “Nobody under that name.”
“I don’t know her real name,” Rye said.
“You’re looking for Ursula?”
Rye turned. The woman in front of him was older than Ursula, maybe fifty, dressed in a black coat over a red dress and a yellow and red scarf tied around her head, a shock of gray hair visible in the front.
“I’m Edith,” the woman said. “I was just bringing Ursula some soup.”
“Could you tell her Ryan Dolan is here?”
She smiled. “Of course.”
A few minutes later, the woman returned with Ursula the Great, in a long mustard-colored coat and a fine feathered-and-bowed hat, dressed in the dead of winter as if she had just come back from a picnic. She reached out and took his hand. “Ryan. How are you?”
“I’m fine. I’ve been looking for Gig.”
“I haven’t seen him in . . .” Ursula looked at Edith.
“Three weeks?” Edith suggested.
“Yes, thank you, Ursula.” And with that, Ursula turned back to Rye. “He came to see me one night. He was quite . . .”
Edith helped again. “Skimished.”
“Yes. I put him up at my hotel for a couple of nights.”
Rye was confused, not least by Ursula calling this other woman Ursula. “Your hotel?”
“The old Bailey Hotel. Edith here manages it for me.”
Rye remembered the Bailey as one of the worst flops in town, a five-dollar-a-month SRO and a row of whore cribs on the second floor.
“Gig stayed there a couple of nights, maybe three?” She looked back at Edith, who nodded. “But I haven’t seen him since then, Ryan.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“He just said he wanted to get back out on the road.”
“Without me.”
Ursula looked at Edith again and then back to Rye. “He doesn’t want to ruin the life you’ve made for yourself. He’s proud of you.”
Rye scoffed.
“Ryan,” she said, “your brother has always felt a great deal of responsibility for you. It was difficult having to take care of you after your parents died.”
“Take care of me?” Rye’s face flushed. “He ran off! I pulled him out of bars and cleaned him up. I take care of him!”
“I’m sorry, Ryan,” Ursula said calmly. “And you’re right. You do take care of him. Imagine for a moment how much worse that is for him.”
Rye’s chin fell to his chest. She was right. He didn’t want to go back out on the skid. And he knew Gig couldn’t stay away from it. Rye wondered if loving another person was a trap—that eventually you had to either lose them or lose yourself.
He cleared his throat and looked up. There was nothing else to say. “Thanks.”
He turned to leave, and was a few steps down the hall when Ursula called after him.
He turned back. She looked pained. This wasn’t the Ursula who had squeezed his arm and taken him to see