Free Wilful Impropriety by Ekaterina Sedia Page B

Gettysburg.
Warlock
division. Claims he can turn a man inside-out by snapping his fingers and speaking a word entrusted to him by an old Yankee goomer-doctor.” Oesterlische lifted a conspiratorial eyebrow. “Also, he keeps a lead-shot sap in his back pocket.”
    They reached the coat room. Oesterlische tucked his kid gloves neatly into his black bowler and handed it over, along with a camel-hair overcoat and ebony cane with a head of chased silver. Nussbaum had nothing to leave. His threadbare appearance caused the attendants in their gartered sleeves to very pointedly refrain from shaking their heads and clucking their tongues.
    “Now, there’s a back door if you’re in a rush,” Oesterlische said. “Otherwise, why not tell me why you have a couple of Bowery b’hoys cracking their knuckles for a chance to rough you up? Over lunch, of course.”
    Nussbaum licked his lips and nodded quick acceptance. The gleam in his eye indicated that a free lunch was nothing less than a gift of the fates. Oesterlische, too, thanked the fates that Nussbaum had stumbled upon the scene. For listening to Nussbaum describe what was sure to be a fascinating panoply of calamity, disorder, and dismay would keep Oesterlische from spending his whole lunch brooding over his own problems—most specifically, the Wildish Disaster.
    It was pickled pig’s feet and chicken salad on the club menu that day—pretty uninspiring, so the young men called for a bucket of oysters and three shots of whiskey each. They lined the little glasses up in front of themselves, and stared at each other over them like a couple of pulp-novel gunslingers, eyes squinted steely-cold.
    “To your health, old friend,” Nussbaum said, assuming an air of congenial menace.
    “To yours, old pal,” Oesterlische countered, through gritted teeth.
    They grimaced at each other a moment longer, hands hovering near to the shot glasses without touching. Then, by some silent accord, they exploded into action. They threw the liquor back shot by shot, slamming the glasses down as they emptied them.
    Nussbaum slammed his last glass to the table a fraction of a second before Oesterlische did.
    “Hah!” he crowed, jabbing a triumphant finger skyward. Then, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Nussbaum reached into his coat and withdrew a long rolled piece of what looked to be thin leather. He swept the empty shot glasses to one side and smoothed out the scroll. It was vellum, brightly illuminated with delicate miniatures of gold-trimmed lovers in towers twined with red roses. It was covered with tightly cribbed writing and crusty brown splotches of what looked like old blood. In places it seemed to have been stabbed through with a broad, sharp knife.
    “Was this what those brutes were after?” Oesterlische lowered his voice in respect for the marvelous document.
    “Oh no, those were just a couple of fellows from down on Cherry Street that think I owe them some money,” Nussbaum snorted, apparently having already forgotten about them. “This . . .
this
is my golden fortune!”
    Oesterlische regarded his friend with fond, whiskey-soft indulgence. This was Astor Nussbaum in a nutshell. Born on the wrong side of the Astor sheets (the largely unwelcome result of a bittersweet mésalliance between John Jacob Astor’s insane firstborn son and an overly sympathetic German housemaid named Grunde Nussbaum), making his way in the world should have been a simple matter of properly leveraging the Astor family’s well-known aversion to scandal. But no, Astor Nussbaum was always looking for his golden fortune in the unlikeliest of places—perpetual motion machines, hot-air balloon messenger services, or crusty old pieces of goatskin.
    Oesterlische was about to ask how this particular crusty old piece of goatskin might be translated into a golden fortune, but at that moment the oysters arrived, a big silver bucket of plump briny Blue Points fresh from the cool waters off Staten Island. The