Maid of the Mist

The front right tire blew on his Bentley Speed Six in the dead of night somewhere in the black nothingness of 90 West towards Niagara Falls. He had been driving for what seemed like forever since fleeing the City. In fact, he fell asleep twice and had to pull over not wanting to wrap his car, or himself, around a tree.

The stock market crash a day earlier wiped him out, and his fiancé left him, but Maximilian Baudelaire was not giving up on life that easy, or so he told himself. He still had his youth. His looks. His car. His fancy name. A trunk of clean suits. But now he had a flat tire in the middle of what seemed like nowhere, with forever behind him and nowhere ahead. And out there in the dark, it felt as though he was about to be swallowed by the universe.

The weather was nice and he always wanted to see Niagara Falls. The leaves turn colors upstate that are more vibrant than in the City. The foliage attracts throngs of tourists. He grew up in Indiana, but spent the last dozen years in the City, graduating from Columbia and amassing a financial fortune in rubber that was gone in the blink of an eye. And so too was his fiancé, Hazel, who insisted she was interested not in money but in true love, and Max weeping over his lost financial empire was just too much for her faint heart to bear.

The last Max heard of Hazel was that she took a train back to Boston to marry a man in the oyster business because, as she said, the ocean ain't ever running out of oysters, and Oyster Bill, as he was known, loved her deeper than the ocean from which he purloins his fortune. He allegedly named his boat after her years ago when she jilted him to move the the City with aspirations of becoming a famous actress—aspirations that bore not even the slightest blossom of fruit. But she was already an actress of critical acclaim in the reality drama of life and broke many hearts with her sterling performances which were subject of gossip in all the gin joints and blind pigs from Manhattan to Harlem.

It made no difference to Hazel Jane Pershing, related somehow or other to the great General John J. Pershing, that oysters might forever be plentiful, but a man selling them can only profit if their is demand for them, and money enough to buy them, otherwise one might as well deal in seashells, or count his fortune in all the granules of beach sand he can stuff in his pockets.

But the simple economic reality was lost before it reached her gin-soaked brain in a stew of many other more important things like social parties, fashion, and who was with who and at what worth or cost. She lived her life half in fashion and gossip magazines and half in frivolous dinner engagements with people of equal shallowness but who were much less attractive and much more rich. They tolerated her because she was pleasant to look at—like a toy poodle—forgiving her for the occasional accident that comes with the breed.

It was the loss of Hazel's beauty that impaled Max's heart, not the loss of a love that did not exist but for in the fancy of his own wild delusions. He unwittingly became a collector, fighting against other men for wealth and commodoties—and Hazel was a rare and precious beauty lost to a competitor.

While she pretended to not be concerned with money, saying she would not leave Max despite the plunge of his rubber fortune, she said she simply could not stay due to his deplorable attitude over the matter, sulking about the way that he did like a child deprived of a toy. His melancholy was the cause of their ruin, she declared to all hungry ears. And as disagreeable as it was, it gave her indigestion.

"I would sell my pearls and all my finer things and live in a shanty in Central Park with you, my love, if only you didn't exude such a ghastly misery," Hazel commented the day before her willful disappearance with Oyster Bill.

So, in vain, Max adopted his present attitude, which he exhibited looking at the busted tire. His bright blue eyes were like wicked blue flames and his smile was one of a child's delirious and delightful grin, gazing at a parade of circus poodles in tulle tutus dancing on their back legs to pipe-organ music rather than at a busted tire.

It was not one of genuineness, of course, and he looked half-crazed, but no amount of misfortune could make him curse or frown for those expressions no longer existed within him. What was anger became a bastardized version of joy. What was sorrow became an artificial form of delight. He just stood there and looked at the shredded rubber with that abnormal grin and mad gaze and pretended as though it was pleasing in some way. The repulsive sight of anything twisted in his mind into something contrary. It was as though his tire was an apple pie. It is as though, to save Hazel, that he reprogrammed his brain and somehow eradicated every adverse response to any negative stimuli.

This, of course, failed to save Hazel for she fled with the first opportunity despite all of Max's beaming and goofy newfound grinning because she was never interested in being with a poor man and would not live in Central Park or any sort of shanty for anyone. She would say that it would devalue herself. She could never be as common as a park pigeon.

If one was to interrogate her upon the conflicting nature of her statements, she might say something to the effect that she was merely trying to cheer Max up. Or, they weren't yet married, and she was carrying no child, so she was leaving for the sake of future occupants of her womb who deserve a life of hope and prosperity. She found no hope in decency and didn't understand at all the prosperity of morality, nor the wealth of goodness.

She wasn't worth a plugged nickel, but her beauty was of unimaginable worth in the eyes of lustful men and jealous women. Her attractiveness, like any product, would diminish over time so she, in this entrepreneurial world of ours, must sell it for all its worth while she was in demand. But she needed the excuse so not to admit that her love and affection could be bought and sold like the very stocks and bonds that broke Max and upended their life. She was not sincere in any sort of way and so it was Oyster Bill and Boston for her, and Niagara Falls and a flat tire for Max.

What a coincedence, he thought. That the last bit of rubber he owned on four tires had blown and was shredded alongside of the road like roadkill and he hadn't a spare. He jacked the car up for no reason as though a spare might coalesce from the ether of the moon's glow—which was the only mercy of the past 48 hours that he knew. But no tire appeared. And so, reprogrammed as he was, he smiled at the tire and sung songs of it, as though Hazel might hear him in all his joy all the way from Boston and come back to him, pleased by his good attitude in the face of such daunting tribulation.

Instead of Hazel, about an hour later Max got two headlights from a work truck which pulled over, and inside was a young man who offered him a ride.

"What are you going to do with that fancy automobile, mister? You want me to have it towed for you?" The driver asked as Max climbed into the truck that was hauling barrels of booze. It was a bootleg truck, Max knew. Partly from the shotgun stuffed between the seats, and partly from the smell.

"Leave it. Sell it. I don't know. It hardly matters now, though," Max laughed. It was a maniacal sort of laugh contrary to the whole of his being, and the driver looked him over thinking he had just picked up a loon.

"It's a fine automobile, mister," the driver remarked looking over the gleam of the green steel.

"Well, it happens to be for sale."

"More than I got," the driver balked.

"Nonsense! Why, haven't you heard?" Max cried, mad as a hatter. "The entire world is upside down right now. Everything is devalued! Pork bellies! Oil! Steel! Rubber! Women! Even luxurious British sports automobiles. Now is the time to buy, my friend!"

The driver laughed. His youth evident to Max in the light off the dashboard. There was a naivety about him. A softness. He was chosen to drive the booze truck for a reason. Never in his whole life would he have a chance to own a car like that. And both he and Max knew it.

"What's your name?" Max asked.

"Christopher. Or—Chris."

"Well, Chris. How much do you have to offer me for my Bentley Speed Six. Barely 800 miles on it. Just had it delivered to me round about Independence Day. It's a pocket sale, sir. So the price is whatever is in your pocket."

Chris kept a hand on his wheel and dug into his pocket, playing along.

"I have five bucks. But when I drop this load, I will have seven more." The truck rattled as they drove. The empty barrels sang a song.

"What do you got back there," Max asked.

"Was birdseed," Chris grinned.

"There are a lot of happy birds somewhere," Max replied.

Chris kept glancing over at Max's face which was lit up with a grin as though he were mad, or drunk, or both. Chris was a doughboy—15 in the war—barely 27 now. He had a wife and two daughters at home. He made deliveries for a living. Running booze from Niagara Falls to the City and back again. There were four twenties in the visor for any cop that pulled him over and the shotgun for the cop who didn't take them. There was a small house somewhere between and a job as a mechanic in a filling station that didn't pay enough to feed everyone in the house.

Max was a doughboy as well. Ten years older. And the two doughboys, who never thought they would make it back home once upon a time in a field of poppies and mud strewn with barbwire and the carcasses of horses and men, shared an improbable cigarette and a joke in the cab of a bootlegger's truck.

Chris envied Max's handlebar mustache. And Max twirled the ends with his thumb and index finger. It looked like it was made from a horse's tail. After a while of trading war stories and a brief interlude of silence, Max spoke again of the car when Chris thought the joke was over.

"It so happens this is a doughboy pocket special," he grinned. "My 1929 Bentley Speed Six back there in the darkness of that lonely road I want never again to travel is on sale today only for five bucks—the content of your pocket."

Chris looked at Max. Then he glanced at the dark road, squinted and looked back at him again. As though he didn't believe his passenger existed. The trips were exhausting. Especially, the empty trips back to the border when the barrels rattled hypnotically in the bed of the truck. When it sounded like the War all over again. The clamor of canteens on a march somewhere in the night. The groan of an engine. The clip-clop of horse hooves.

Chris grinned at Max who was gazing at him with his hand extended to shake on their deal, smiling in return. This smile was sincere as was the deal. It was not one of those contradictory Hazel specials. It was one of selflessness and goodwill that was a result of Max being stripped raw of all that was built up with age and experience. In a way, the tragedy of everything reset him to his most basic and truest self. He was skinned of his pettiness and ambition, and all that remained was depression and goodness.

Chris shook and gave Max the five bucks and Max gave Chris the keys which he buried in his pants pocket. They stopped for sandwiches and coffee at an all night diner a little closer to Niagara. Max paid since Chris didn't have the money after their deal. And they sat and talked for hours about the War and the car and bootlegging and Chris's wife and his two daughters. Max was vague on what happened and didn't mention the crash or losing everything. Nor was Hazel recollected from the trash heap of current events, though she sunbathed naked in his mind still, trespassing flagrantly. When Chris asked if he had a girl, Max smiled and said no. He never had time for it.

"No time for girls?"

"No time for anything. But that's what I'm going to Niagara for, old sport. I want to cash in my chips. I want to get a room and see those falls and live for a while. Start all over. Get some fresh air. Maybe for a few days, or just for a few hours. I'll know when I am because I knew when I wasn't—living that is. All that time in the City I was chasing money. That ain't no way to live. I miss those cornfields in Indiana. Being a boy. Fireflies in jars and lazy summer days. Playing ball with my friends. Fishing in the creek. I want to find that again. It's like it went somewhere and it's—well, it's hiding from me. It all went to hell when I went to War with someone I didn't even know and came back as someone I didn't know and spent these past 10 years living as a stranger to myself."

"How do you think you'll find that at Niagara?" Chris asked trying to follow. There isn't anything more difficult than following another man's dreams or understanding what's inside his head. Even when they tell you. Especially when that man is as mad as a hatter.

"I don't know."

Chris dropped Max off at the Hotel Niagara and wished him luck. The men shook hands in the early morning hours and Chris stepped out of the truck to share a last cigarette with his new friend despite being in a hurry to get where he needed to be. It was a reluctant sort of goodbye. Real friends come along so rarely, and despite the little time they spent together, they were indeed friends both men would say. But their natural end came when there were no more drags left on their cigarettes and Chris and the truck of empty booze barrels puttered off into a dawn that was the color of a bruise.

Max sighed, flicked the cigarette away, and snuffed the butt out with the toe of his shoe. Then he walked away from the hotel with hopes to find a more intimate place to stay, unimpressed by the enormous brick behemoth that it was. He dreaded the thought of uniform rooms, the concierge, and a dreadful bellhop or two.

He found a diner and asked for a coffee and directions, and the waitress told him of a place a few streets away. He thanked her and headed there and rapped on the white screen door that wasn't latched. He was maybe a little early for a weekday, he thought. The house had a beautifully landscaped yard cluttered with shrubbery and rosebushes that still bloomed late in the season and was bordered by a white picket fence. A plump lady answered, unbothered by the early hour. She asked him if he was from the water department in an accusatory way. 

"No, ma'am," he smiled. "I'm here to inquire about a room."

"Well, go on and inquire then," she exclaimed, looking him over. Her eyes were judicious and as large as pickled eggs.

Max paid for a room for four nights. He almost immediately went to bed and slept for hours. And when he woke up it was 6pm and his host, Mrs. Ophelia Abercrombie, widowed in the spring of 1925, she made known, knocked on his door wearing a witch's mask and told him it was time for dinner and that it would be rude not to come, so to get up. She also snapped that she would not tolerate any drunkenness or loafers at her establishment because it was a respectable place and it would tarnish her late husband's legacy.

Her husband, Oscar, was a hardworking-man, she assured no one. No one was who she talked to most hours of the day. But she went on and on and each boarder only caught snippets of what she said often to their amusement. She was a fine, brusque sort of woman who seemed to look forward to only two things—meeting her husband in the afterlife—and pruning her rosebushes to perfection.

"What is with the mask?" Max inquired, still waking up. His hostess stood in the doorway having let herself in with a skeleton key.

"Wll, it's Halloween, young man!" Then she excused herself, and said something to no one in the hallway.

Max washed up and changed his clothes. There was a bottle of cologne on the vanity with a note that read, "Oscar's favorite." She must have slipped it in when she came in last for it wasn't there when he checked in and went to sleep. He felt obliged to spray some on. The immediate scent of it was rather bold, but the aroma became pleasing and agreeable as it faded. He regarded himself for a long minute in the mirror before the shrill voice of Mrs. Abercrombie rang out to disturb his somber introspection.

"Dinner!"

Ophelia Abercombie had a voice that could wake the dead. Thus, her husband, Max decided, must be deaf.

All four other boarders were at the table and all were relatively delightful in Max's quick estimation. Three lovely women and one man, the last of which who seemed lost in the world. He was rather plump and he eyed the food with more interest than he eyed the women, all of whom were single either by death or chance. It was so that one might doubt the man's most intimate desires, his ambitions, everything masculine about him. Perhaps, though, the man lost it all as Max lost it all and women were simply not appealing as they were not appealing to Max in that way that they were once so delectable. He once had an immoral appetite for women that seemed insatiable.

But unlike his corpulent board brother who scooped hearty portions upon his plate much to their hostess's delight, food was not appealing to Max, though he ate so not to be rude to Mrs. A, as he learned they called her. Chicken and dumplings, potatoes, beans, and lemon bunt cake drizzled with a cranberry glaze. What a burden it is to eat when depressed—with no appetite. It is what it must be like for someone to make love when not in love—with no desire. Or to drink when not thirsty. To sleep when not tired. Such burdens are saddled upon all of us from time to time, and we must all muddle through or once and for all face that bleak alternative that is shrouded in both darkness and fear, but that which awaits us all—mortality being our one common flaw.

Each of the three ladies were attractive in their own way and new to Niagara Falls. One was young, a college student, Ms. Ava Simmons. Another, Ms. Dorothy Harbinger, was a teacher and widow. Her husband she spoke of at dinner had passed in the War more than 11 years prior, and though she was barely 29, she bore the years heavy upon her face. illucidated without flattery by the electric candles of the chandelier. The third was the sort that seemed melancholic, either by nature or by some unnatural occurrence—an unfaithful lover or some unspecified crime committed against her grave enough to burden the psyche and to inspire her to run away—Ms. Camilla Cobb. She had black hair and striking blue eyes and the palest of milkish-white skin.

In his doldrums, Max played amateur psychologist as he had at Hazel's absurd dinner parties where he was eager to be rid of the situation. He was not particularly eager to be rid of his present company, however, for each carried a genuineness that those before did not. Any one of the ladies would have been fine to take to bed, he thought, mustering the seed of such desire in a flickering thought. They would have been fine to marry. To court for a while, even just as a companion to stave off loneliness as some men do. But Max could not spark passion enough to consider the possibilities, and every pretty face he saw was a dead end.

The falls came up in conversation. They seemed to hum through the open windows of the dining room and rattle the china, though they were too far away to actually hear clearly. But in Niagara, they are ever-present and that faint swoosh or loud roar could be heard from any place in town. Close enough, and it sounded as though the whole world was swallowing. Far enough, it sounded like only a faint whisper. The heart of everything and the entire conversation at the boarding house dinner centered around whether each of the five guests had yet saw the falls, or hadn't they.

It was a curious destination for the two bachelors and three bachelorettes. For a widowed teacher, and a student. For Mr. Walter Willoughby, the portly fellow who was an engineer of some sort transferred for work from Poughkeepsie. For all those that Mrs. A took in at her quaint and humble abode. Who knew which of them was telling the truth. It certainly wasn't Max who said that he came up early and was waiting for his fiancé to join him, though he couldn't bear to say her name. Who added that he was a stock broker who had fortuitously cashed out before the crash, making a few of the others think he might have been involved in something unscrupulous. Max said he owned a cabin in Ontario and that was his destination with his fiancé, who was in truth somewhere swallowing raw oysters with Oyster Bill.

It was a strange fact that Mrs. A in all of her properness and etiquette, after clearing the dinner plates with the help of her youngest border Ava, brought in a tray of drinks for she enjoyed bourbon and whiskey but "never alone," which she repeated like it was a Ten Commandment. Never alone, as though it was embroidered on a throw pillow, or stitched and hung above the fireplace in a fine mahogany frame. Never alone—which burned brightly in Max's mind like it was on a marquee.

And Walter, the portly engineer with no obvious interest in women, declined the potation and retired for the night, but the rest of them indulged and drank two old fashioneds a piece with their hostess in the parlor where Max and the strangest of the boarders, Camilla Cobb, enjoyed a cigarette, the smoke of which mingled between them like the ghost of a broken heart they shared. Or perhaps, the ghost of Mr. Oscar Abercrombie, who was conjured by the beautiful words his loving widow had spoken of him, often to no one.

Camilla seemed to favor Max, but didn't say too much with her lips. Her eyes, however, poured over and upon him. Though she wasn't at all reserved at heart, she acted with restraint with concern of how she might be perceived in mixed company. She didn't inquire as to his life for she felt the emptiness inside of him because it was in herself and she didn't feel much like explaining her own unexpected exodus from the City. So the two set together and bonded in silence and smoke, content for a little while as the ice melted in their drinks. But their brief love affair ended when the silence was broken by a sudden and unexpected rapping at the door that couldn't have come at a worse time for their affair.

Mrs. A said she would get it and announced it to be some ghouls and goblins as it was trick or treat night, the 31st of October, 1929. There was a burning jack-o-lantern on the porch which Max had overlooked in the delirium of his arrival.

"Ghastly," Dorothy laughed at the trick or treaters who were in costume going door to door. "They're little monsters."

"Horse feathers! I have just the treat for those little dickens. I made popcorn balls and wrapped them in wax paper. Help me fetch them, Ava," Mrs. A asked of her youngest border who treated like the daughter she never had.

The ruckus woke Max from his reverie and he excused himself and left. Camilla sighed the slightest of sighs, emphatic in both disappointment and concern. Outside, hordes of little ghouls, ghosts, witches, and wizards lined the sidewalks like ants, and Max hailed a cab in the twilight to the falls like any other tourist might only absent a lover.

It was unseasonably warm for late October, yet there was a fall chill in the air as the night settled. He lit a cigarette in the backseat and the cabbie's eyeballs appeared in the mirror as though they were floating there. The cabbie asked Max if he is from the city and Max smiled and nodded as though to say he was not up for the conversation and the casual inquiry stopped for the cabbie knew when to talk and when not.

He delivered Max to the falls and that whisper grew to a loud swoosh as Max stepped out onto the walkway that led to an observation area which was the closest place you could get to see the falls. The cabbie nodded as Max paid the fare and he told him to enjoy the view.

"If you need a ride back, I can wait, or come back in an hour," the cabbie added eager to be useful. "It's a slow night."

"That will not be necessary," Max replied. "Thank you, sir."

The cabbie sensed the sullen tone of Max's voice and thought it odd for a tourist coming to see the falls to be so glum. It was also odd to him that Max was alone and didn't once smile the entire way over as most of his fares would in their excitement. He was as lifeless as a corpse. The cabbie stopped in town to speak to a cop he knew well and to tell him all about his latest fare.

"You're an old worrywart, Charlie," the cop replied. "He is probably just a another tourist that wants to be left alone. Or maybe he's meeting someone over there. Did you ask him?"

"No. He didn't want to talk. But Burt, you remember that lady I took over there years ago. The one whose fiancé left her."

"How could I forget her. She was the prettiest woman I ever saw. I've never seen a young woman with white hair until I saw her."

"Well, I picked him up from the same boarding house—Mrs. Abercrombie's over on Walnut."

"Alright, Charlie. Alright. I'll ride over there and have myself a look."

The night became darker and what was left seemed to be swallowed by the moon, which was fuller and brighter than it was the night before. There were only a few other tourists about, mostly strolling lovers, presumably newlyweds, but this was the start of the offseason. Max looked like an amputee amongst them. Between couples who were whistling and laughing, he crossed the black iron rail which served as a boundary from what was safe and unsafe, and which set about twenty or so feet back from the rock face. Signs posted read—do not cross the rail—prohibited zone—keep out.

The loud flushing of millions of gallons of water made Max think of when he was a boy. When his mother gave him a bath and the plug was pulled and the soapy water swirled and roared like a cyclone down the drain. He was always afraid of being swallowed up in the drain and remembered crying for his mother who would safely lift him out of the bath and laugh while comforting him. He could still feel the warmth of her hands in his cold armpits.

But now he wanted back in the bath and into the warm water that would prune his toes. He wanted to go down the drain because it was better than the alternative in his mind. Better than living with nothing in what he determined was a mad and hopeless world that was full of cruelty and misfortune.

Rather than slitting his wrist with a razorblade and dying in the City he came to loathe and to be buried in some overcrowded cemetery—rather than shooting himself in the head with a revolver and being left in a room until someone found him—rather than jumping off the ledge of a skyscraper to an indifferent street below—this is what he was determined to do. This is what he wanted and how he wanted to do it because death is a personal thing. It is not a thing one typically gets to choose, when and how, that is. The when and how typically chooses us. But Max was taking control and choosing it.

He stepped closer to the edge and a cool inviting mist blew up into his face. The earth below, the leaves and twigs, crackled beneath his feet as he stepped to the edge few people have ever tread before him. He was about to shift his momentum and jump when he saw her standing only a few feet down from him behind the safety of the black iron rail. She was dressed in a white dress that flowed in the breeze and she brushed her hair back with her hand and watched him. He could feel that she was watching him.

Max wanted to jump, but he felt it was in poor taste to do so in front of a witness—particularly a lady. Politesse hadn't abandoned him as hope had. He took a quick step back at the sight of her and slipped down to a seated position on some loose dirt and leaves. This was, he resolved, something that should be done without witness so not to make a collateral victim of some unsuspecting excursionist. It is not on a postcard for a reason, though many people have died this way. What a ridiculous postcard that would be, he thought. A man jumping with the inscription—So long forever from Niagara Falls!

"What are you doing out there, mister?" the lady asked as she drew closer. "Searching for a better view?"

Max was flummoxed. He certainly didn't expect her to speak. Unsure of what to say or how to explain himself, he quickly thought it over. Being questioned about it caused him to think of how to explain it. But there was no way to explain it. No rational way because suicide is a completely irrational thing. So he sat there and scooted back to a safe distance from the edge and waved, saying only that he was "on a picnic."

The lady smiled. Her white hair flowing in the breeze. So long as she was there, he would not throw himself to his death. His life hung by the thread of her interest. He waited for her to walk away, but she made it apparent that she had no interest in leaving the scene. In fact, she climbed across the rail, carefully walked to him, and sat down beside him.

"Peculiar place for a picnic," she said. "And no basket? I know it might be rude of me to invite myself, but, well, here I am. This is a rather nice view."

"It is a different sort of picnic," Max explained.

"Food for thought?" she asked.

"Thought for food, rather." He had forgotten that he was sometimes clever. That he enjoyed making such witticisms, and he did so to Hazel, but she seldom noticed and almost never appreciated them. She was dressed in a stunning white gown, but he didn't mention it. And despite her snow-white hair, she looked to be in the prime of her youth.  He got the indescribable feeling that she was, in a way, much like him.

"Where are you from?" she asked.

"West Egg."

"Ah! The City."

"Yes, the City. The City that devours everything, even your soul. Then exhales you and everything else in billows of choking-black smoke."

"My name is Victoria. Victoria Vaughn. And I share that sentiment. I was from East Egg."

"Was from?" Max interjected, looking up at his uninvited guest.

"I prefer to say it that way. Though to seperate myself from my past. I am from, if you'd rather. But it is past to me. And there it belongs like dried pressed flowers from other days in a memento drawer. I was born. I grew up. I was an actress. And then—nothing else."

"Nothing? And—under what name?" Max exclaimed. "I am an avid fan of the theater. Were you a stage actress or film?"

"Stage. And under my own name. But I quit the theater when I was left at the altar by an unfaithful lover who left me for another woman. A woman—really that is an exaggeration. She was not yet a woman. A girl of only fourteen succeptible to the charms of an older man. So, I came here. And, well, here is where I remain."

"What do you do here?" Max asked.

"Would you mind so much that we scooted back closer to the rail? I don't want to be arrested. I am not that much of a thrill-seeker."

Max smiled. It must have been the first time he smiled in days. Maybe in weeks. Even before the crash, he wasn't happy. He just didn't know he wasn't happy, yet, and it took the catastrophic event of losing everything to figure that out. But the pair moved back to the rail, per her request  and Max kept saying, "Victoria Vaughn. Victoria Vaughn," over and over, as though he could summon the memory of her if he repeated her name enough times.

"It sounds so familiar," he complained.

"Well, don't strain yourself," she smiled. "Perhaps, soon it will come to you. Or perhaps, not."

"And what do you do now?"

"This. You can say that I am a permanent tourist. I live here."

"Here?" Max asked.

"Yes, at the falls. I live amongst the vapor and the mist encouraging handsome men on picnics of thought to step back away from the ledge should I ever encounter such a strange sight."

"Well, that seems like a noble occupation. So you are a tour guide? Or a psychiatrist?" Max asked.

"A little of both, I suppose. But more like a friend someone never truly had. A friend in this life goes a long way. This is a wonderful world, Maximilian Baudelaire. Don't let the bad apples fool you. Despite the no good dirty scoundrels, those that hate or do other nefarious deeds, the miscreants, those that lie and cheat, there is far more good than there is anything else. Far more love and peace than there is hate and chaos. We sometimes have difficulty in seeing it, but it is there."

Max was mesmerized by Victoria. He could hardly speak. He didn't want to speak. He only wanted to listen for she seemed to come into him through her words and the tone of her voice.

"Think of this, when you were in the War it was your faith that got you through. Or so I am to assume. You wore a cross around your neck—a rosary. Why did you not lean on Him when the market crashed. When she left you. When you thought you lost it all. You cannot lose what you didn't have. She wasn't love and money isn't happiness. You had no money in Indiana, but you had a wealth of happiness. He is always there. You must never forget as once I forgot. But now I must go on my way as you must go on yours. Goodbye, Maximilian. It was surely my pleasure in meeting you."

Victoria gave Max a long kiss on the cheek that was much more than a kiss. The kiss delivered through him a euphoric feeling he hadn't had since youth, if ever at all. And he stood there, stunned by it. It was like the sting of a jellyfish he read about in some magazine as a boy which festered in him a fear of the ocean. In truth, he was contrary to a man who had been stung by a jellyfish. He had been kissed by the lips of an angel and somehow he knew.

Victoria walked away with Max standing on the proper side of the rail. On the living side of that great question. She looked back and smiled. He called for her to return, but in vain. He was quite sure that he was in love with her, though he knew she wouldn't come back and that she neeedn't. It wasn't that sort of love that needs anything. Or that is selfish. It is the sort that comes and goes, yet remains. That doesn't require control or occupation. That enriches the soul, inspires, awakens, and stirs the imagination.

Max wasn't quite sure where she had to go, but he knew she must, not because she left him with a manner of great urgency, but because she left him with a sincere and solemn finality that could be mistaken for nothing less. And as she walked, gracefully up a path towards where she had come, she seemed to fade and dissipate into the lights of the town that was swallowed by the glow of the moon that seemed eager to devour the world.

What she injected into him in such a quick and brief interaction could not be explained or replicated. He might have blamed it on the old fashioneds he drank if he had drank more than just two. Or maybe he might have blamed it on his grief. But when he looked again, she was gone, and in her place came the flashlight of Burt the policeman as a favor to Charlie the concerned cabbie.

Burt was a Paul Bunyan-of-a-man and cast a shadow over anyone he spoke to. He asked Max if he was the man who had taken a cab from Mrs. Abercrombie's boarding house on Walnut. Max said yes in no mood to be deceivious. He was in the euphoric glow still of his recent encounter. The cop slung his arm around Max's inferior shoulders and smiled, saying that he was glad that he was okay, and especially glad to prove that he was right and that Charlie was an old worrywart, after all.

Burt gave Max a ride back to the boarding house and as they drove they talked about the night and the market crash two days earlier. Burt mentioned he lost his savings, but added that they didn't add up to much. He said he had all that mattered at home, so his fling with the market meant very little to him.

"Hard times ahead," the cop prophesied. "But hard times come and hard times go. And hard times make strong men and strong men make good times. It is the easy times that you ought to worry about. If you ask me, we will all be alright, son. Those of us with faith, we will all come out clean as a whistle despite the loss of our ermine and pearls."

As they pulled up to the house, Max was eager to ask the cop—a man who would presumably know—where Victoria Vaughn lived. He admitted that he had intended to throw himself off the ledge into the falls in a moment of weakness. But then he met Ms. Vaughn, his heroine, who changed his mind.

"Ms. Vaughn?" Burt asked in utter disbelief. "As in Victoria Vaughn? Victoria Vaughn saved you?"

"That's her! Do you know her? I feel I ought to buy her flowers or something. In gratitude, of course. She was an actress in the City, she said, but it is funny that I don't recall her."

"You can't recall her because it's been twenty years ago, son, since she was last on stage," Burt replied.

"But that's impossible. I just saw her. And she—wasn't a day over twenty one or twenty two herself."

"She was twenty one when she stopped aging. When she performed her swan song and threw herself over the falls," the cop recalled. "The cabbie that drove you to the falls drove her, as well, all those years ago. From the same boarding house even. That's why he called me. It didn't sit right with him. He thought you were going to do the same thing."

There was a chill in the air. A definite and spine-tingling chill. But it wasn't the chill that made Burt's teeth rattle and Max listen intently as though he were a kid by a campfire. His savior, his heroine as it turns out, was a ghost.

Burt went on. "The Maid of the Mist, they call her. They say she talks to people who go to the falls to commit suicide. People have seen her, seen her in white, glowing like the moonlight, but only the afflicted have spoken to her. Lord knows how many she saved. Lord only knows."

With that, Burt pulled away and Max went back inside shaken but in good spirits. He kissed Mrs. A on the cheek, hoping the kiss would imbue in her what Victoria's kiss did for him. The dear widow blushed and then Max found Camilla sitting where he had left her, her face licked by the shadows of flames from the fireplace as she sipped a drink in a tufted chair in an inglenook, lovelier now than she was before. He was just in time for another drink and she smiled warmly to greet him, happy he had returned.

They made love in his bed, half-drunk, and Max asked Camilla to marry him the next morning at breakfast. Mrs. Abercrombie insisted that she host the wedding and they were wed two weeks later. Of all surprises, Chris the bootlegger and his wife came to the wedding, having read the announcement in the newspaper. Chris returned Max's Bentley Speed Six as a wedding present, which he boasted only cost him five dollars.