Hearts of Smoke and Steam (4 page)

Nathaniel found himself swallowing hard as Jupiter looked up at them and lifted his right arm straight up into the air. His chest was pure white now, pulsing around the edges where it frayed off into lines of light. “Yes!”

The gun fired with a crack and a puff of steam. An instant later there was an explosion of light that filled the courtyard as a bolt of lightning shot up toward the sky from King Jupiter's outstretched hand.

This time Nathaniel hadn't closed his eyes quickly enough, and for a moment there was no color in the world, just a blinding contrast of pure white and the darkest black.

As the echo died off, it left behind a stunned silence as everyone blinked away the images that had been painted onto their eyes.

The quiet was broken by a rumbling sound that came up from King Jupiter's massive body. When it stopped, he dropped down to his knees as if someone had cut invisible strings holding his shoulders up. Slowly he brought his arms up over his head, and tipped forward onto the ground.

Nathaniel half rose from his chair, but the Industrialist had covered the distance before he could finish getting up. The rumbling started again, and, clearly concerned, Stanton knelt down in front of him as the sound grew louder. “Are you all right, sir?”

Jupiter lifted up his head to reveal a smile and the fact that the sound had been the beginnings of laughter. “Yes.
Quite
all right!”

Alexander rose up and took a step back, as if King Jupiter's good humor was some kind of infectious disease. “Good God, man, I thought I'd killed you!”

The gray man rose to his knees. “No,” he tried but failed to stifle his whoops. “I feel totally alive!” He exhaled heavily and wiped his brow.

Finally getting his humor under control, King Jupiter continued, “I had a theory that I might be able to channel the energy of a bullet from movement into electricity.”

“Wunderbar!
” said Grüsser with a clap.

“What are you talking about?” Alexander snapped.

“Amazing!” Nathaniel said. “You hit him at point-blank range with a bullet, and he didn't move an inch! All its power was transformed into lightning!”

King Jupiter held his hand out toward Alexander. “The boy seems convinced, but what do you say? Will you let me join?”

“I say,” Alexander sounded angry, and then he paused. Nathaniel knew just how stubborn he could be…

Stanton took a moment to look at his fellow Paragons. “I can see that I'd be outvoted, no matter what I thought.” He reached out and lifted the man's hand up into the air, “So I say, welcome King Jupiter, the newest member of the Society of Paragons!”

E
milio slouched down into the hard wooden seat, his thumbnail jammed between his front teeth. He was surrounded by dozens of people, but his gaze was fixed on a single spot on the linoleum floor in front of him where a piece of it had worn away.
“Perchè qui?”
he mumbled to himself.

The only outward expression of his frustration was the rhythmic tapping of his foot on the floor. The tip of his leather shoe struck the ground precisely once per second, releasing a sharp snap that could be heard above the vibrations of the grinding of the ferry's steam engines as they chugged along, driving the massive ship across the East River.

Emilio was still youthful in appearance, although some of his soft edges had been worn away over the last half decade of his life, leaving behind the hard edges of an older man. But age had done nothing to make him any less handsome. His features were classic in the European sense, but under his nose was a mustache that had been groomed upward into a modern pair of delicate curlicues that landed on either side of his rather generous nose. His eyes were tipped with heavy brows, clearly comfortable being knitted together in intense concentration as they were at this very moment, although the left one rose slightly higher, giving him an unintentional look of surprise. Not too far above them, Emilio's hair sat black and straight on his head, chopped and shaved on the sides, the front of it pomaded back to reveal his high forehead.

His suit was made from brown worsted wool, well tailored, with the dark red vest brightened up by a incongruously sky-blue silk kerchief that stuck straight up from his pocket on a tower of starch.

With every few beats of his foot, he garnered the attention of another of his fellow passengers. Occasionally one would glance up, his tapping breaking them out of their own trances. They grimaced at him with weary looks of annoyance and disapproval, some angry, but others looking almost grateful for anything unusual or interesting that might distract them from the dull journey.

Emilio was a fellow traveler, but unlike most of them, the trip to and from Brooklyn was not one that he made every day, six days a week. The journey was still novel for him, although he had chosen to give his attention to the floor, and not the skyline that usually entranced the less regular passengers.

If he was aware of the attention he was getting, then he chose to ignore it, squinting his eyes so that he could focus even more deeply on the tiles in front of him, noting to himself how the wood that had been revealed underneath the worn linoleum was splintering from the unseen forces that had driven so many feet to focus their steps on that single spot.

After another half minute he began to suck on his thumb, alternating the “tick” of his shoe with a “titch” as his tongue rubbed against the nail.

“Basta
, Emilio!” a female voice exclaimed, accompanied by a jab to his ribs. He jerked up and out from his reverie; the quick movement caused the large round sack at his side to fall over, landing with a clatter and a thunk on the floor.

Still dazed, Emilio turned to his sister. It seemed to take him a moment to recognize her, and then another to realize what it was that had just happened to him. When he had overcome the shock, he lifted up his hand and shook the back of his fist at her.
“Calma
, Viola!”

“Calma
to you as well,” she replied, slipping half into English, and spinning her hand back at him. “I've had more than enough of your brooding today,” she told him in Italian.

“I'm not brooding.” Emilio reached down for the bag. “I hope you didn't break anything.”

“Me?” the girl replied, curling her mouth into an outlandish sneer that could only hide half of her smile. “I only break hearts, Emilio.” Her lips, like the rest of her, were not so much large as luscious.

Taken one by one, every piece of Viola seemed like it shouldn't work: her nose was aquiline but oversized, her eyebrows black and rough, and her hair was a shining red. She was too round in some places, and too flat in others. But the way everything came together created something so uniquely exotic that she seemed to be able to make men all around her blush simply from the way everything moved when she walked. Viola Armando was beautiful because she was constantly revealing herself to be more than just the sum of her parts.

Even those few males who claimed that they were immune to her physical charms seemed unable to completely prove their lack of interest when she engaged them with her full attention. The only living man who could genuinely claim to find no lust in his heart for Viola's almost painfully quirky beauty was her brother, Emilio, and he proved it by jabbing the blade of his hand hard into her ribs.

Viola gasped, squealed, and then jumped to the side, managing to shove her bottom into the man next to her. The codger let out a surprised harrumph from somewhere underneath his thick white whiskers.

“Scuzi! Scuzi!”
she replied, and shifted herself back, using the momentum of her hips to nudge her brother just a bit.

Emilio shoved her back, sending her over into the old man's chair once more.

After letting out another grunt, the white-haired man turned to look at her, mouth open to unleash a tirade. But the moment he saw her, he stopped, clearly thunderstruck. “That's all right my dear,” he mumbled by way of a reply, but having already apologized, Viola's attention had returned to her brother, whom she was berating in her native tongue.

“What are you thinking about that you have to annoy everyone on this boat with your tapping?” She waited only a moment for a reply before poking his shoulder with two fingers. “Eh? Eh? Or do I have to ask?”

“Why did you even make me go out there to see them? There was a line out the door, and I told you that they'd never talk to me.”

“You said you wanted to be one of the Paragons. And they make money!”

“They
have
money!” He sighed. “There were dozens of men waiting there, and they didn't want some foreigner, they wanted a hero.”

“Foreigners can be heroes!”

Emilio shook his head. “Maybe if you're English or German…”

“Why are you always looking for the reasons why
not
, Emilio? You're smarter than any ten of those idiots that were standing in the room.”

“But I have no costume, just this.” He tapped the bag next to him, and it let out a muffled clank in response.

Viola sighed, then grabbed his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. “In America you can be anyone you want to be. You just have to show them that you're the smartest man in the world!”

“You say that because you're my sister.”

Viola tilted back her head and laughed, her curls falling back around her shoulders. As she glanced around the cabin, men's eyes darted back to their wives, or dived into their handkerchiefs and newspapers. “You know me better than that!”

Emilio smiled and rolled his eyes. “Perhaps I do.”

“Anyway,” she said, sliding her arm around his shoulders in a show of warmth that clearly made some of the people around them uncomfortable, “our money problems aren't as bad as you think, and if you did get that job, it would mean leaving me all alone in that junkyard all day.”

“Ha! I'm sure by the end of the week you'd have charmed ten of our neighbors into building a whole new house for you.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Viola replied, batting her eyelashes with a look of mock innocence. “And anyway, I'm thinking that it isn't only the Paragons that have you feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He tried to keep his tone light, but the darkness in his mind felt like the beginning of a storm that had already begun to pull in memories best left forgotten.

“It's been many years now, Emilio. If you could let yourself move on it wouldn't mean that you loved them any less.”

He turned away from her and stared out through the dirt-smeared windows behind him. Outside, New York was sliding by, the buildings clearly outlined in the yellow light of the late-afternoon sun. “I don't like the way this city looks.”

“We've come a long way from Tuscany, brother.”

“Too far, I think.”

“There's no going back now.”

“Not for me anyway.”

Viola frowned, then jumped up from her seat, spun around, and took his hand. “Come on, Emilio. Let's go look at the engines. You can tell me all about how poorly made they are.”

He stood up and grabbed the round sack by the two thick leather handles along the top. “Which only shows you never listen to me! Those engines are beautiful, it's the lack of maintenance! Americans always build amazing machines, then hand them over to inattentive barbarians who let them rot. It's a wonder anything in this country still runs at all.”

Now it was her turn to roll her eyes. “That's because Americans have better things to do than fall in love with hunks of metal.”

“America invents everything and cares for nothing!” he replied defensively, and fell back into his seat. “The world is doomed!”

“You're doomed to be an idiot.” She started to pull him up and off the chair. “What would fix
you
is a woman—someone pretty who can listen to your horrible whining so that your sister can get on with her life.”

“I'm protecting the world
from
you!” But Emilio had already relented, and he allowed himself to be dragged along behind his sister, a smile on his face. Going down to the engine room might not be such a bad idea after all.

On the other side of the cabin, his eyes landed on a sight that took his thoughts away from machines entirely.

Most people on the boat wouldn't have bothered to notice the young lady. She was wearing an unassuming shopkeeper's dress, and a simple black hat covered most of her hair, but Emilio could see that a few blonde ringlets had slipped free from underneath of it. To him they spoke of a mystery that he would love to solve.

The woman's head was turned downward, and she clearly trying to avoid the attention of anyone around her. Her desire to hide her face only made her more enticing.

His curiosity was rewarded when the blonde girl finally turned her head toward him, revealing a mouth fixed in a frown so sad, delicate, and truthful that it made him catch his breath.

Emilio slowed, and then stopped in his tracks, his arm quickly rising up to cover the distance between himself and his sister, who was still marching forward with his hand in hers.

There was something about the girl that seemed familiar…But if he'd met her before, he couldn't quite place when, where, or how.

Clutched against her chest was a battered brown suitcase. She held onto it in a way that made Emilio imagine that it must contain the most important thing in the world.

He could feel Viola's fingers tearing away from his as he stood and stared, his mouth slightly open. His eyes followed the blonde girl as she opened the far cabin door. She stopped for a moment, looking wistfully at something up above them, and then slipped up the stairs.

Once again he felt a jab in his side, but this time he didn't jump. “What's the matter with you?” Viola said to him with frustration in her voice. “Are you losing your mind?”

He turned to his sister and smiled. “I'm fine. Let's not go to the engines,” he said as he pulled on his coat. “I have a better idea! Follow me!”

They stepped outside, where the chill spring air was a shocking contrast to the humid warmth of the passenger cabin. “Where are we going?”

Emilio looked around, trying to see what it was that must have interested the girl. When he looked up and out in front of the ship, he saw it.
“Ponte di Brooklyn!”
he said, pointing up at the massive bridge standing a few hundred yards ahead.

“Since when do you care about bridges more than engines?” Viola asked with annoyance in her voice.

“Let's go,” he said, and began to scamper up the metal stairs.

“Idiot,” Viola muttered in English as she lifted up her dark velvet skirts and followed her brother.

When they reached the top deck, they found only a few rugged souls who had decided to brave exposure to the chill weather on their journey down the East River—foolhardy tourists, parents with over-curious children, a few old men taking an impromptu constitutional, an artist with sketchbook in hand, and the blonde-haired girl. None of them seemed to be happy with their choice.

Viola tracked her brother's gaze to the girl. “Now I know what it was that got you up here. It is nice to see you didn't leave your manhood back in Italy, but really, Emilio, she's far too skinny for you.”

He frowned. “Hush or she'll hear you!”

“Do you think that little thing speaks Italian?” she said with a laugh. “Girl! Look over here!” she said, raising her voice. “My brother has fallen in love with you!”

No one bothered to glance their way, and if anything the girl made a concerted effort to ignore them.

Emilio thought it must have been the bridge that she had come up to look at, but as they passed beneath the steel girders of the unfinished structure, the blonde girl's gaze moved around and faced behind the boat. Whatever she saw there had clearly shocked her. He saw the word
no
forming soundlessly on her lips, the same in either language. “Impossible,” was what she said out loud.