Young Writers Society

A/N: This is a historical fiction/sci-fi/crime novel set in a 1919 Manhattan bar that attracts people literally lost in time. Please disregard any historical inaccuracies, as I'm only in the beginning stages of research. I hope you enjoy this little project of mine. Thank you!

1

NOVEMBER 1919

Fire was in the sky when he woke and flared through the trees when he rolled out of bed. The room was dimly lit a blue like Curaçao liqueur, and draped around his shoulders vestiges of midnight cold. Through the uneven slats of his shutters wafted in an Irish drinking song, crude and free; farther off an automobile muttered drowsily. Gold crept up his walls and melted into champagne.

Manhattan at dawn was an entire city holding its breath. Elias rose earlier than duty compelled—it was a habit out of hundreds he had acquired in France. There was something magnetic about witnessing these early hours, like uncovering a well-kept secret. There were sounds and sights that lingered only fleetingly before they were buried by the urban roar of full morning: clicking gears in the paperboy’s bicycle as it whistled down the sidewalk, steel-blooded skyscrapers bathed in dark whiskey and smoldering around the edges, the faraway clink, clink, clink of metal cutting into the earth. Sounds and sights unspoken and unheard.

Elias changed into a clean dress shirt, button-up vest, and long dark pants, shivering at the frigid touch of the fabric. He filled a basin with water saved from the sink downstairs. The water numbed his eyelids and tasted metallic in his mouth, but it was clear and that was better than he could hope for. He raked wet fingers through his short-cropped hair to straighten it, before slipping on his shoes and stepping out the door.

Winter sunk its teeth into the back of his neck as Elias descended the narrow stairs leading from his apartment. At the bottom was a heavy wooden door, coated a diluted green over seven layers and thirty-nine years of old paint. Crowding around it were plywood crates stacked to the low ceiling. He fit a skeleton key into the rusted lock and the door creaked open.

Cherries and tonic, mingled with a dash of cinnamon. Stale cigarette smoke. The aromas hung in the air like a forgotten aftertaste. Elias crossed the darkened room by memory and rolled up the shades covering the front windows. Early morning light washed across the tabletops and girders, richer than vodka but paler than white wine. At the back, a row of glasses glinted dully above a long and polished countertop. He leaned against the bar and lit a cigarette, watching the shadows of linden branches move along the walls.

Returning from France in April, five months after the war had ended, Elias had found on the edge of Greenwich Village a bakery that closed after its Italian owner sailed back home. In France he had met a wine connoisseur who claimed connections to the best obscure distilleries and breweries around Europe. So Elias used most of his service compensation to buy the bakery, and the connoisseur, a Frenchman from a respectable family that had lost the cream of its fortune owing to unfavorable circumstances, proved true enough to his word. The smell of cinnamon had never really left the place.

The first customer stumbled in an hour later, a man in his 30’s who dressed invariably in the same cheap suit but likely owned a hundred different ties. Like the other rare customers of the early hours, he was a late-shift worker, and a regular. Elias fixed him a lager beer and bowl of pistachios and the man retreated wordlessly to a shadowed corner. In ten minutes he was asleep.

Mornings in the Juice Club were slow, sometimes empty. It was an uncommonly clear day for November, so that the blizzard last week seemed half a dream. Aside from one drunk who rambled tirelessly about his licentious wife, the few early patrons nursed their drinks in mute isolation. Elias dragged the minutes by with smoke and a little whiskey in a teacup.

At around 10 A.M., a woman walked into the club. She had a neat, brisk gait and held herself stiffly, but kept her chin lowered, as if running perpetually from some heinous crime. Her dark hair and ruby lipstick, like the rest of her, were immaculate, and she was too well dressed for her environment. The men in the establishment leered at her as she entered.

The woman approached the bar and set her jewel-studded bag on the counter. “Hello, Elias.”

“Amy?” Elias blinked at her in surprise. “It’s been a while.”

“I’ve been busy,” she said, with a cautious smile. Everything about her was cautious and measured. America “Amy” Sinclair was a former child stage actress, the wife of a wealthy banker, and by unexpected chance one of Elias’s closest friends. They had met during the early years of the war, when she was still unmarried and worked as a secretary at the same ammunitions factory where Elias was a machine operator. She married at 23—during his deployment in France—but continued to visit him discreetly at his club.

Amy unbuttoned her coat methodically, removed it from her shoulders one sleeve at a time, and draped it symmetrically over the back of a stool. She loosened each finger of her silk gloves separately, every tug its own ritual, before sliding them off and laying them next to her purse. Smoothing out her ivory dress, she sat gingerly with her pale hands clasped in her lap.

Elias offered her an open pack of Camels. “Smoke?”

“No, thank you.” Amy rubbed her hands together. “Coffee would be nice, though.”

He made her a cup of steaming black coffee, the way she preferred. “So what’s been keeping you these past few months?” he asked, setting it down in front of her.

Amy brought the cup to her lips and took a delicate sip. “Wesley’s making plans. He wants to move to a bigger house in the countryside. To get some fresh air, he says.” She put a hand on her stomach, which he hadn’t noticed was protruding slightly. “For the baby.”

Elias rested his elbows on the counter and grinned. “How long?”

“Three months.” Amy’s cheeks glowed. He could tell she was happy. “I hope it’ll be a girl, but Wesley wants a son to inherit his new business. He’s dabbling in real estate, you see.” She paused, then continued hesitantly, “How is...the search going?”

The monstrous thing that lived in Elias’s gut twisted, as it always did when Mikolaj came to haunt him. “I think I’ve finally found something.” He opened a drawer under the sink and removed a black leather journal from beneath a sheaf of crinkled papers bound with twine. The edges of the leather were faded with wear and the spine was beginning to crack. Written in narrow, slanted handwriting on the inside of the front cover were the initials, M.N. He flipped to the last filled page and flattened the journal on the table. “Mikolaj wrote this entry four days before he...left,” Elias said. “He’s into scriptwriting, right? Near the end here he mentions thinking back to one of his early drafts, Inferno on West Side. I didn’t realize it the first time, but he actually called it Inferno on East Side.” Elias stared at the thin black scrawl. “It could be nothing. I might be reading too much into this. I don’t know. I don’t know.” He picked up a cigarette stub from the ashtray, lit it shakily, and took a long drag.

“You will find him,” Amy said gently. “I've met Mikolaj. He's a smart boy. He can look out for himself.”

“Eleven months, Amy.” Elias shook his head and laughed wryly. “Lord knows what he's been screwing in this whole time. The world's a nutty place, he should've learned that by now.”

Amy slid the journal closer to herself and turned to the previous page. “What was Inferno on East Side about?” she asked, touching the paper lightly with her fingertips.

“I don't remember. It was a long time ago.” Elias looked out one of the windows. The backs of the linden trunks were bruised blue with shade. “Do you think he’s still...?”

“Yes.” There was something about the conviction in her tone that compelled him to look at her. Amy had a soft face, with soft eyes and a softer mouth, as if crafted from oil paint. It was neither a kind nor cold face, but a timid one, that wrinkles and secrets disappeared into. But in this moment her slender brows were strained and the folds of her eyelids had deepened, so that her brown eyes had taken on a new intensity to them. In this moment, she laid bare some raw and true part of herself that Elias had never seen before.

Then Amy lowered her eyes and the timid contours of her face returned. “I think you’re doing the right thing, Elias,” she said.

“I really hope so.” Elias pinched out his cigarette and returned it to the ashtray. “So you won’t be around much, then, with the baby ‘n all.”

“No, I’ll be around. Wesley’s been up to his neck in work, which means a lot of time alone with this little fellow.” Amy patted her stomach and smiled. “I can already tell it’s going to be a fighter. You know, if it’s a boy, I figure I’ll name him after—”

A familiar creak sounded from behind Elias and the green door opened slowly. From the doorway a man peered out, before stepping tentatively into the room. He was tall, looked to be in his mid-20s, and was dressed in very strange, obsolete clothing that appeared to be some kind of uniform. He had an easy demeanor, and stood surveying the club with faint satisfaction.

Elias turned around at the interruption and took a startled step back. “Dmitri, what the hell—”

The man focused his gaze on Amy, who had trailed off with a puzzled expression, and smiled broadly. He approached her, moving past a stunned Elias, and bowed with one foot in front of the other. “You must be Elias’s lovely wife,” he said in roughly accented English, taking her hand and kissing it lightly. “I am Prince Dmitri Antonevich Vasilyev of Russia. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Amy laughed uncertainly, still looking puzzled. “Oh no, you’re mistaken. Elias and I are just friends. My name is Amy.” She shot Elias a glance with the unspoken words, What in the world?

Dmitri straightened and clasped his hands behind his back. “Ah! I see. Friends. That’s interesting. Very interesting, indeed.” Now he also looked confused.

“So, Elias.” Amy’s voice had climbed in pitch. “You never told me about a...colleague.”

Elias was giving Dmitri a stony look. “I told you not to come downstairs before it was time.”

“My apologies,” said Dmitri, sounding annoyingly sincere, “but in my defense, the spatial capacity of your quarters is rather limited. I must confess I succumbed to a certain monotony.”

“You were bored,” Elias scoffed. “My apologies that the spatial capacity wasn’t to your liking, but in my defense, I wasn’t expecting your grand arrival from 18th-century Russia, Your Highness.”

Dmitri appeared miffed. “I wasn’t expecting it, either. Probably much less than you.”

“Elias,” Amy cut in. “Please explain to me what’s going on.”

There was a silence, as Elias and Dmitri shared a look. Dmitri merely shrugged and seated himself on the stool Elias kept behind the bar.

Elias said, “It’s a long story.”