The Haunting Ballad Read Online Free Page B

felt the need to mock. “Gee, I don’t know that I’d go that far.”
    â€œPerfervid! It means ardent, of course. Hot in the blood.” He groaned. “Dear God, sir, sometimes I think that you and the English language aren’t even on speaking terms.”
    â€œListen, no one says things like ‘perfervid.’ At least no one who hasn’t read War and Peace a dozen times.”
    â€œThree times,” Mr. O’Nelligan informed me. “I’ve only read War and Peace thrice.”
    â€œOnly three times? My, what a lazy scholar you are.”
    â€œScholarship is in the eye of the beholder.”
    â€œThen I must have a nasty case of conjunctivitis.”
    My companion sighed pleasantly. “Ah, Lee Plunkett, you have more wit than one might give you credit for.”
    I took this as a compliment and let it go at that. Mr. O’Nelligan now opened the thick volume that he’d brought along and read aloud. “‘Call me Ishmael.’”
    â€œShouldn’t I call you O’Ishmael?”
    â€œMore wit, I see. Be truthful, is this not arguably the most memorable first line in all of literature?”
    â€œMust be, since I actually know it. Moby-Dick , right? Hey, wait a minute, didn’t you just read that last fall?”
    â€œI did, but coming off Hemingway’s sea tale has inspired me to ship aboard the Pequod yet again—for the fourth time, I might add.”
    â€œTrading a marlin for a whale … that’s some hefty upgrading.”
    â€œAlthough still within the nautical realm,” Mr. O’Nelligan observed. “For, after all, aren’t Hemingway’s Old Man and Melville’s Captain Ahab both obsessed mariners in pursuit of an elusive leviathan?”
    â€œI was just about to say exactly that.”
    My comrade smiled and buried himself in his book for the next hour and a half.
    As we arrived in Greenwich Village, Mr. O’Nelligan traded literature for history, giving me a brief lecture on the area. In 1822, he explained, a yellow fever epidemic in lower Manhattan drove thousands of New Yorkers north to Greenwich, a village of underpopulated pasturelands. Prior to that, it had been the realm of wealthy landowners who craved a bit of country living. The yellow fever changed all that, and before long the place became a bustling sprawl of grocery stores, coffeehouses, tailor shops, restaurants, banks, and bars. As early as the nineteenth century, Greenwich Village had gained a reputation for its artists, radicals, nonconformists, and generally memorable characters.
    Turning onto West 12th, my friend indicated the oblong granite cobblestones that paved the street. “Belgian blocks. They made their way to America as ship ballast and became the very carpet of the Village. And speaking of ships, down just a ways stands the pier where, some forty-five years ago, the survivors of the ill-fated Titanic were put ashore.”
    â€œAm I going to be tested on all this?” I asked.
    â€œNo, Lee. Knowledge is its own reward.”
    I spent a silly amount of time finding a parking space, but once I’d docked Baby Blue, we easily located the old Manhattan apartment building where Lorraine Cobble had lived. It was squeezed in between two brownstones, and its lower story (her cousin had told me on the phone) had been a carriage house a century before. The front door was surrounded by black iron in the form of a hanging lantern, a low gate, and a pair of framing columns. As I’d been told to expect, the door was left unlocked, due to the buzzer system having been on the fritz for over a month. We climbed four flights of narrow stairs to our destination. I’d barely gotten a knock in before the door flew open and Sally Joan swept us into the apartment.
    â€œOh, thank you so much for coming, Mr. Plunkett! I’m so grateful.” She looked it. Now that I could fully take her in, I saw a young woman in