The Titanic Survivors Book Club by Timothy Schaffert

Author:Timothy Schaffert [Schaffert, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

 27

Zinnia invited Haze to the opera, but he had nothing to wear. So we set off to see the gambler, who’d boasted a time or two of his wardrobe closet. At our book club, he always seemed aloof, unconcerned, even a little callous, but his apartment showed another side of him.

“An impeccable suit does useful damage,” he said of his success at casinos. He walked us down his rows of coats and trousers that seemed to go on for a city block. He was still dressed for bed, in pink pajamas and a red robe patterned with golden cheetahs, but his hair looked freshly washed and set. “It unsteadies the nerves of your opponent. No matter how honest you are, you want them to think you’re crooked. If you look good, they think you’ve been bad, and they’ll make mistakes they wouldn’t otherwise.”

The swallowtail coat the gambler plucked from its hanger fit Haze perfectly, and he offered up a chapeau claque, an opera hat that collapsed with a tap. The gambler snapped it back into shape with a flick of the wrist. “You knock it flat then tuck it under your chair,” he explained.

On our walk back to my shop, Haze practiced popping the hat up and down.

“You’re going to wreck the springs,” I said.

Haze reached over to hold my chin. “Alas, poor Yorick,” he said. “You live in a world where everything’s about to break, don’t you? Your ships are sinking, your shop is flooding. Your top hat’s gone flat.”

“Haze, my ship did sink,” I said. “My shop did flood.”

“Well, yes,” he said. “In actuality. But I’m talking about your state of mind. You’re in your own head too much.”

“Whose head should I be in?” I asked.

He said nothing, but I knew the answer. I should be more like him. Whenever I walked with Haze, I became preoccupied by the glances of every woman and man we passed. I saw myself through the eyes of those who looked at him with awe and longing, and I stood up straighter in their sight, my walking stick mere decoration, not a crutch.

I asked him what opera was playing, mostly to put some creak in his armor. I knew he wouldn’t know. We stopped at a news kiosk to investigate.

“It’s a good thing I asked,” I said. “It’s La Traviata. What do you know about it?”

“I know slightly less than nothing,” he said, without a care in the world, fascinated with his hat again.

“The man that Zinnia is falling in love with would know it’s based on a novel,” I said.

Back at the shop, I showed him the gorgeous copy from my vault—a limited edition printed by Maison Quantin, a publishing house with a workshop of some of the city’s finest binder-gilders. The book’s title, La Dame aux camélias, was low on the spine, beneath three long-stemmed camellias in bloom, four in bud, mosaicked with spots of pink and green. There was no title on the cover, only a raspberry-colored swirl.

As the

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