[Banque de France, 1935]
Maurice Bellamy surreptitiously loosens his tie as his boss goes through a file. They are sitting at the most powerful desk in the entire office. His anxious eyes shift at the same speed as pages turn. The air is thick and stagnant, often adumbrating an imminent disaster. Once in a while, though, Jean Tannery would give Maurice a smile, and it erases any discomfort he might be feeling. However, when the file is set aside, Maurice quickly realizes it isn't the one he turned in just earlier — so why did the boss just make him sit through the whole thing?
His perpetual questions are about to be answered after the old man heaves a sigh and utters, "Bellamy, you're fired." His words hit thirty-two-year-old Maurice like a truck, or a train — anything that resonates with the world crumbling around him. He had spent over a decade working for the monocled bastard, and now he's being let go over a preposterous reason. "You can't do this to me," Maurice weakly utters. The man behind the desk merely sips his warm tea; already expecting an alcoholic rambling from Maurice. "Do you know how much I've given to this place?!" The table shakes seismically as the worker springs out of his seat.
"You're one of our biggest investors, of course I know, Bellamy. But the complaints regarding your inebriated behaviors at the office are piling up," says the President of the Bank, without the decency of setting his teacup aside. "Please, Jean... I just lost a daughter. Won't you sympathize with me?" Maurice intertwines his ten fingers together, begging without an ounce of shame — Delphine Bellamy did not perish for her father to use her death as an excuse for his wrongdoing. "We will consider rehiring you once you get your act together, Bellamy. And that's Mr. Tannery for you." The balding man turns a deaf ear to the unprofessional words of his former employee, he finally sets aside the teacup to apathetically light a cigarette.
Maurice falls back into the chair he's familiarized with over the years, head hanging low. "Tens of millions of francs I've given... could've gone to..." He murmurs inaudibly to himself. Eventually, Jean Tannery loses his patience and proceeds to threaten Maurice with security guards if he does not retreat — you see, he has set a meeting with the chairman of the newly established Securities and Exchange Commission. "I'm leaving, Mr. Tannery." Maurice stands on his feet with the kind of composure an average alcoholic wouldn't have. "But I will be back." Those final words evoke a harrowing feeling in the monopoly man's soul; he knows he's made the huge mistake of assuming Maurice Bellamy to be yellow like the rest of his minions. "You will not, Bellamy..." The petrified man springs out of his seat to face the suddenly high-functioning alcoholic, but no words are being exchanged between them. A smirk spreads across Maurice's face as he leans forward and plucks the cigarette out of Tannery's mouth. "Adieu," he says, exiting the office with stolen Gauloises between his lips.
Just as Maurice rushes down the hallway, being somewhat distracted by an object in his coat pocket, a man dismissively bumps into his shoulder. Maurice turns his head to shout, "Watch it!" And continues pacing. The other man, however, halts and goes after him. "Excuse me," he says with a hand on Maurice's shoulder. The Frenchman grits his teeth and balls his hand into a fist — ready for a fight that's undoubtedly about to happen when he turns. "Monsieur Bellamy, correct?" Instead of a grimace, it is a smile that awaits Maurice. "Yes... and you are?" He hesitantly shakes the stranger's lent hand. "You don't remember me? Joseph Kennedy, I invested in the Bourse through you." The excitement in the man's voice arouses suspicions in Maurice — it's either paranoia from alcohol or Joseph Kennedy has something up his sleeve. "Fancy seeing you here," Maurice wittily replies in a feigned British accent, knowing formality is no longer necessary.
After a chuckle, Kennedy responds, "Well, I am on my way to meet with your boss, Monsieur Tannery. Now, tell me... is he in a good or bad mood?" He even nudges Maurice on the ribs like a couple of old friends — which confuses Maurice furthermore. "How would I know? He's not my boss, after all." Maurice's cheerful tone starkly juxtaposed his answer, which warrants an expression of perplexity from the other man. "You resigned, Maurice? But why?" He presumptuously asks. "Why don't you ask him?" Maurice squints his eyes and smiles, creating a flippant look on his face. "Adieu!" He abruptly bids his farewell. Joseph Kennedy, the inaugural chairman of the SEC, is left open-mouthed in his spot — he's only able to leave his spot when Maurice is no longer in his sight. As he continues to walk the crowded hallway, his mind introduces a brilliant idea to expand his wealth and power through the unlucky Frenchman — yes, the one who was fired not only because he's a drunkard, but by dint of the SEC chairman's urging.
Maurice Bellamy parks his car slightly crooked, one of the many alcoholic skills he's acquired from the last couple of weeks. He lets go of his grip on the steering wheel and replaces it with a bottle in a brown paper bag. The man drowns his liver in malt liquor — he usually prefers wine, like any Frenchmen, but it's for the special occasion. "What a man you turned out to be, Maurice," he whispers to himself. Calamities brew in the stagnant air, and he is wise to it. With absent equilibrium, everything he's built over his lifetime — his sole bank account, house, car, and family — will be left in ruins, but the man finds the whole thing amusing. Just before Delphine passed, he received a large sum of money from a new investor, in lieu of using his cut on his daughter, he bought stocks from the Bourse, too. Now that he's threatened Jean Tannery, he can kiss them goodbye.
Maurice exits his car with a pink rectangular box in his arm, containing a seventeen-inch composition doll with a downy plush ensemble. He smiles with joy at the thought of Evelyn having something to hold and play with when he and Julia inevitably abandon her to hunt out pennies from anywhere they can find. This is the calm before the storm; the final moment of peace a man can have before he must work twice as hard, and when his child's innocence lost has yet to happen. Opening the door to his august mansion, the man is immediately greeted by two servants who will be let go in a week or so when he decides to move back to the old apartment he resided in before meeting his wife. He savors every little thing his eyes can see; the fresh cut flowers from the garden, the paintings of some kings or queens from different eras, and the gramophone that's playing new Billie Holiday — he savors the things he foresees will no longer be his.
But there is one thing, without a doubt, will forever be his. "Papa, you're home!" Five-year-old Evelyn, standing at forty inches, running in his direction with arms outstretched — the only thing that can bring his wilting flowers back to life. He gets down on one knee and pulls his daughter into a long embrace, the longest he'd ever given anyone. "This is for you," he mutters, handing the box to her. While Evelyn is joyously unboxing her gift, a gracile figure has been watching them from afar — the somber look on her face tells Maurice everything he needs to know. The explanation of what happened at the office is no longer needed; she already knows everything from listening to the graceless words Jean Tannery enunciated over the telephone.
[Cambridge, Mass., 1951]
Maurice Bellamy was not able to fathom his daughter's decision; he had curated a plan inside his mind before driving hours just to see her. That morning, Julia had made him a stack of French toasts, thus he was brimming with confidence — a good breakfast supposedly indicates a good day — assuming Evelyn would forgive and forget the unforgivable and unforgettable things they did; the backstabbing, the killing, and the alcohol. But they ran out of luck — the Gods stayed on the fence that time — because Evelyn knew every trick he was pulling, and she managed to dodge them like speeding bullets. That being so, Maurice couldn't find it in his heart to simply leave and bring back the bad news to his already weeping wife. Thus he drove and drove, and did some more of it until he caved into his old habits.
A young bartender glanced at the heavy door of his bar when an older man entered the premise; his slow walking and wandering eyes made it clear to the worker that he'd have his work cut out for him. "What can I get you?" He asked, eyes fixed on the green-eyed stranger. Maurice Bellamy was busy following a train of thoughts as he remained unresponsive on the wooden bar stool. "Sir?" The bartender asked again, getting impatient as other customers pulled faces. The quiet man fidgeted with some keys inside the pocket of his pants. "Do you know how to make the Boulevardier?" He asked quietly, as though his words weren't meant to be heard. "Boule, what?" The bartender's tone went up a pitch as one of his dark brows sloped.
Maurice sucked air through his gritted teeth and placed a cigarette between them. "Negroni's long-lost autumnal cousin," he remarked in complexity. A bon vivant named Zelda something had introduced the drink to him at a flapper party in Paris many roaring years ago. He knew her husband would never approve of a ménage à trois — not out of loyalty but out of pettiness — thus he stopped pursuing her, it was fairly easy considering she wanted him more than he wanted her. "You know how to make a Negroni, correct?" Maurice snatched a random matchbook on the counter to light his cancer stick. The bartender observed him uneasily but managed to respond with a nod. "Swap gin with bourbon, and you'll have a Boulevardier. Straight up, d'accord?" Maurice pocketed the matchbook as he gestured for the man to get back to work with a curt facial expression.
Conversations only grew louder and rougher in the background as the Frenchman awaited his drink. Begrudgingly, he walked towards the jukebox with a dime in hand to accompany the cigarette. As he mumbled to himself while going through records, a woman — an enigmatic one — entered the premise and ensconced next to Maurice's empty stool. "Ah, this is it..." he smiled, picking Nat King Cole's Mona Lisa to showcase his feelings. When he returned to his seat, he didn't think twice about the woman — he was too busy wondering when his drink was going to arrive. But after a few moments of silence, the woman struck up a conversation with him, "I have a feeling you shouldn't be drinking." Her deep ravishing voice caught Maurice's attention as though Poe's raven just flew over his head.
When his eyes were on her, he was astounded to see her appearance; she was bedizened in a tight-fitting, hand-sewn, canary-colored bodice above a dark gathered flowing skirt, and her hair very black and gleaming, emphasizing the long silver earrings which were her only adornment — the Dorelia look, per se. "I'm French, that's what I do. I drink, and I know things," Maurice coolly answered, his heartbeats loud and clear as the encounter enkindled something in him. The woman nodded, subtly smiling at the man's uptight response. "Like what?" She asked. Within a millisecond, Maurice's eyes completely widened, she'd caught him completely off guard. "Things like what?" She persisted even after noticing what she'd done because her curiosity needed to be quenched.
"Things that... Ayn Rand loves, I suppose." Maurice took another drag of his patriotic cigarette. "Capitalism?" The stranger's quip placed a smile on his face. "Objectivism, as she called it," he replied cynically. He was finally able to take his eyes off the woman and proceeded to watch the bartender fixing somebody's drink. "I don't read," the woman said, lifting her shoulders in a dismissive shrug. That quickly regained Maurice's attention; he eyed her head to toe in slow motion. "You look like you do," he concluded. The woman shook her head, "I despise books. They're either wildly utopian or dystopian." She then went for another sip of her cocktail. There was some hesitation, but Maurice nonetheless asked, "ever read Hemingway?" As he switched his drink from his right hand to the left to clear the space between them.
"Ugh, he's the worst of them all!" The woman exclaimed in disbelief, her overreaction garnered strange looks from other customers. "You'd think differently if you met him back in nineteen twenty-five. He was a tall, handsome, broad-shouldered, rosy-cheeked, square-jawed, soft-voiced young man. Now, he must be wiser than I am," said Maurice with a smirk manifesting on his face as he reminisced on the grand party of nineteen twenty-five — nostalgia ran its course through his head. "You've met the guy?" The woman leaned a little closer to Maurice; their shoulders touched in the comfortable silence. "In Paris," he simply answered, turning to his right when forgotten feminine warmth engulfed his side. "Ah... you've been a bourgeoisie for a while, then." The woman laid her elbow on the counter to prop her head in the man's direction.
"My wife is the bourgeoisie. I was just her date for the social functions," Maurice explained vaguely. There was a look of disappointment on his companion's face, it was as though she expected him to be on the shelf — as though his golden wedding ring wasn't constantly catching light and glistered brightly. "You know, I think Ernest deserves a Pulitzer. Even crazier, a Nobel Prize." As an intellectual, it was a must for Maurice to flaunt his knowledge to anyone who came across his path. However, the statement declared by him was to merely provoke a reaction. "Pfft, Ernest. He didn't save Jews from the Nazis, did he?" The woman responded with a humorous question, but unwittingly being exactly what Maurice hoped she'd say so he could further the conversation about himself and no one else. "In literature. Not peace— that man is anything but peace," Maurice added after letting a hearty laugh out of his system. He was still waiting for that Boulevardier so anxiously that he began to wish the bartender had forgotten.
"I've never even been outside of the States," said the woman, feeling small and bigly insignificant next to Maurice. Her aching feet emphasized the need for a new pair of shoes, but with only a couple of bobby pins and unused napkins in her pockets, she prayed the threadbare boots would last until she could steal another pair. "I'm sorry to hear that..." Maurice noted solemnly — a life with little to no traveling is a life wasted, he believed. "Here's your, uh, Boulevardi?" The bartender slid forward a lukewarm glass of cocktail out of nowhere. "Took you long enough, Mac..." the Frenchman stared the employee down, displaying feigned dissatisfaction with the service. But the other man simply apologized and attended to another customer. "There goes the American," he cuttingly added, with tension building up between him and the Boulevardier. "Stop stalling and drink up, Frenchie," the woman pushed her new friend into joining her undeclared drinking game.
After picking up the glass, only halfway, Maurice toyed with it by twirling its round edges on the scratched-up counter. "My family will never forgive me if I do," he murmured into the drink. "Aren't you the man of the house?" The condescending comment from the woman, especially with her amber eyes burning a hole in Maurice's temple, was beyond unhelpful. "I'm afraid of making the same mistake twice." Maurice decisively set the fingerprinted glass back into its original position. "And what could that be?" Although the nomad was patronizing in her speech, she was dying to know more — Maurice had become the most interesting person she knew from the bar. "I've ruined my life once before, and I'm afraid I might've done it again," muttered the weakened man, his face long and gaunt from anguish.
"Christ, Frenchman, how bad could it be? You're talking to a woman who's lost everything." The woman received a dismissive look from Maurice; he called her insulting names with that look alone. "That's the difference between you and me, mon amie, you lost everything, and thus have nothing to lose. While I lost everything and gained them again... only to lose them again. There is nothing more detrimental than making the same mistake," said Maurice, or whined, more or less. But the woman scoffed, "having learned nothing from the previous, that is entirely your fault. You can't do the same thing expecting a different outcome? That's insanity." She averted her gaze from Maurice, distancing herself from him physically, but felt a hell of a lot closer to him mentally. "My Evie disowned me— me, her own father!" Maurice laughed in a melodramatic flourish, nearly uncanny to the characters in Hitchcock's movies as they lost the last shred of sanity they had left.
"Ironic, no?" He pushed the cocktail glass away, need not the constant taunting from it. "Because you've hurt her," the woman spoke candidly. "Because I've hurt her..." Maurice followed up straight away in an affirmative tone. The drink in the woman's hand was nearly finished — unlike Maurice's — she called upon the bartender to order another gin and tonic. "It takes a lot for a daughter to disown her father. You must've done something horrible," she harshly remarked. To which Maurice nodded, saying, "inarguably so." He received a pitiful smile from his drinking buddy. "At least you acknowledge that. It's a start," she added, nudging him on the ribs with her elbow. "Come on, it's one drink." Pinching the brim of the glass, the woman brought it back into Maurice's hand. He fearfully gazed into the bloody cocktail, it was his abyss to stare into, no one else's. It called his name while impersonating Zelda Fitzgerald's Alabamian voice, and the enfants terribles laughed, the bon viveurs deride. If he could have multiple affairs with little to no regret, why would he let a drink gets in the way of life?
With little to no regret at the time, he wet his whistle. In no time, the mellow music playing in the background turned into the instrumental piece of Green Hill; le dernier cri of flapper parties — Maurice found himself in a familiar roaring ambiance. "See? It won't kill ya." The woman boldly ran her thumb along Maurice's lower lip to get a taste of art deco remnants. "Wow, that is roaringly delicious." She took her thumb out with a loud pop. Maurice grinned, rejuvenated by the alcohol and the flapper beside him. He listened to his body begging him to do The Charleston — at four in the afternoon — his left foot tapped against the floor endlessly. "Do you feel like dancing?" Asked the man, rather shamelessly, as he fought the urge to leave scratches and annihilate the floor. "Me? Dancing? No, thank you," the woman curtly answered, somewhat bemused by what was happening.
"Fine, then. Let's talk about you. Who are you?" Maurice tried to get her to spit out her name since he couldn't stand being unbeknownst to it. She took her time to chuckle at the question, then when she was ready, she explained, "I'm what people call a hobo, Mister." For unknown reasons, that put a damper over the man's spirit; he no longer needed a Boulevardier or the Charleston. "You're a hobo?" He asked — soft-voiced, like young Hemingway. The hobo slowly nodded, giving a gaze to Maurice that wished it wasn't the case. "I'm nomadic, to put it nicely," she added. "How did that happen?" Maurice took another bold sip of his drink. His fingers began to fidget with the watch on his wrist; he had always been fond of the protruding frame. "Why do you care?" The vagabond snarked, mistaking Maurice's curiosity for a rich man looking for amusement.
"You with your fifty-dollar suit and that..." she paused to look at his watch once more. "Vacheron Constantin around your wrist! Always having cigarettes to smoke..." she scrutinized the man from head to toe, there was a sense of loathing, but she would admit that his fashion sense was far superior to the men in the bar. Maurice opened his mouth, "Hey, I was merely—" "Let me guess, that blue Buick outside is yours?" The tramp gestured to the luxurious car outside with a thumb. Maurice didn't need to turn to know she was pointing exactly at his car. Instead, he jested, "what are you, a commie?" With a little smile to assure her he was kidding. When the woman wouldn't respond to his little joke, he reached for the distinctive pastel blue pack of cigarettes and lit one up.
"Look, I'm sorry. I was just curious," he explained with gray smoke surrounding him like a bad aura. "Here, I'm sorry I didn't offer." He took another stick out of the paperboard and handed it to her. The woman palmed it in a blink of an eye, tucking it somewhere safe inside her colorful bag. "You're not going to smoke it?" Maurice raised one of his groomed eyebrows (he loved to have them tidied on his own, he didn't trust any barber to do it, he took it upon himself to be more soigné than other men in his business). "No. I should wait until tonight when it gets cold. It'll keep me warm," the local Moll Flanders replied monotonously. She had her eyes on one of the many bracelets she was wearing; they produced metallic noises whenever she reached for her drink. Maurice blankly stared at his cigarette pack for a moment or two before decisively sliding it to the woman. "Take it. It's yours," he decisively said.
While her instinct nagged her into palming it, she refused to be rude, "are... are you sure?" She asked with her hand already hovering over the object, ready to palm it. "You underestimate just how much money I have," the man noted, not to gloat; it was in jest (he knew the boho woman was a prideful creature). But if you were to put Maurice in front of the Parisian mob in seventeen eighty-nine, he would be six feet under without a head — that would be an accurate representation of his wealth. With Maurice's humorous remark, the hobo pocketed the Gauloises conspicuously as one can be.
As the Frenchman lifted his hand to reorder his drink, a dainty hand tenderly gripped his thigh. "While you're at it... buy me a drink, will ya?" The woman's hand briefly wandered upward, inching closer to the loins of the tipsy man. He shifted his gaze, not knowing what to make of it — if it was two decades ago, he would've dragged her into the back alley and given her more than what she bargained for. "What's your hand doing on a married man?" He asked, sinisterly monotonous and monogamous. The woman retorted, "I'll have you know this hand of mine always gets me what I want." Taken aback by the unforeseen response, but it was never that serious. "Like free drinks from sexed-up men?" Maurice laughed at what he thought was a hilarious response.
Just when he thought the woman couldn't be more forlorn, she proved him wrong. "My hand knows many tricks," she coquettishly whispered, being far more seductive than other hobos Maurice had seen on the street. Somehow, it didn't do much to him; the alcohol had the opposite effect on his libido. He then gestured for the woman to lean closer so he could whisper something in her ear. When she obeyed, Maurice said, "Not more than a Parisian wench. And I knew many of them..." leaving her befuddled, but certainly amused. She immediately shoved him playfully like a true flapper, "Lothario..." the scandalous name escaped her mouth. Maurice's eyes darkened when she gave him a sultry look. "And I thought you didn't read..." he said, grinning like a madman once he found something likable, or tolerable, about the unnamed woman.
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PS: Ramadan kareem, folks! Alright, alright, I know how much time has passed, and I hear ya! I hear your voices singing Auld Lang Syne in my ears every night, so there you have it. Joking aside, I'm glad to be back (hopefully for a while) and I want to thank everyone who welcomed me back and had patiently wait for another chapter. Now, I know this one may have focused heavily on Maurice, but it's important to the storyline in the long run. In the next one, however, Evelyn will return to Hyannis Port (BOBBY!!!) so stay tuned for that. You folks are the best kind of readers, I appreciate every one of you. Thank you for reading, lovelies <3