“I’ll think of a way. I bet he’s a horny old bastard.”
“So much the better. He’s probably never got it off a good-looking woman before in his life.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“The only thing is what to do about Tacha.”
“I’ll have to think on that,” Shelby said.
“Maybe he’d like both of us.”
“Honey, he don’t even have dreams like that anymore.”
Tacha Reyes looked up from her sewing machine as they came into the shop and Shelby dropped the bundle on the work table. The old man, who had been a tailor here for twenty-six years since murdering his wife, continued working. He sat hunched over with his legs crossed, sewing a button to a striped convict coat.
Norma didn’t say anything to them. She followed Shelby into the back room where the supplies and bolts of material were kept. The first few times they went back there together she said they were going to inventory the material or look over the thread supply or count buttons. Now she didn’t bother. They went into the room and closed the door.
Tacha sat quietly, not moving. She told herself she shouldn’t listen, but she always did. Sometimes she heard Norma, the faint sound of her laughing in there; she never heard Frank Shelby. He was always quiet.
Like the man who owned the café in St. David. He would come up behind her when she was working in the kitchen and almost before she heard him he would be touching her, putting his hands on her hips and bringing them up under her arms, pretending to be counting her ribs and asking how come she was so skinny, how come, huh, didn’t she like the cooking here? And when she twisted away from him—what was the matter, didn’t she like working here?
“How can he come in,” Tacha said, “do whatever he wants?”
The tailor glanced over at the stock-room door. He didn’t look at Tacha. “Norma isn’t complaining.”
“She’s as bad as he is.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“She does whatever he wants. But he’s a convict, like any of them.”
“I’ll agree he’s a convict,” the tailor said.
“You’re afraid to even talk about him.”
“I’ll agree to that too,” the tailor said.
“Some people can do whatever they want. Other people have to let them.” Tacha was silent again. What good was talking about it?
The owner of the café in St. David thought he could do whatever he wanted because he paid her seven dollars a week and said she didn’t have to stay if she didn’t want to. He would kiss her and she would have to close her eyes hard and hold her breath and feel his hand coming up over her breast. Her sister had said so what, he touches you a little. Where else are you going to make seven dollars a week? But I don’t want him to, Tacha had said. I don’t love him. And her sister had told her she was crazy. You don’t have to love a man even to marry him. This man was providing for her and she should look at it that way. He gave her something, she should give him something.
She gave him the blade of a butcher knife late one afternoon when no one was in the café and the cook had gone to the outhouse. She jabbed the knife into him because he was hurting her, forcing her back over the kitchen table, smothering her with his weight and not giving her a chance to speak, to tell him she wanted to quit. Her fingers touched the knife on the table and, in that little moment of panic, as his hand went under her skirt and up between her legs, she pushed the knife into his stomach. She would remember his funny, surprised expression and remember him pushing away from her again with his weight, and looking down at the knife handle, touching it gently with both hands then, standing still, as if afraid to move, and looking down at the knife. She remembered saying, “I didn’t mean to—” and thinking, Take it out, you can do whatever you want to me, I didn’t mean to do this.
“Some people lead,” the tailor said, “some follow.”
Tacha looked over at him, hunched over his sewing. “Why can Frank Shelby do whatever he wants?”
“Not everything, he can’t.”
“Why can he go in there with her?”
“Ask him when he’s through.”
“Do you know something?” Tacha said. “You never answer a question.”
“I’ve been here—” the tailor began, and stopped as the outside door opened.
Bob Fisher stepped inside. He closed the door quietly behind him, his gaze going to the stock room, then to Tacha and past her to the tailor.
“Where’s Norma at?”
Tacha waited. When she knew the tailor wasn’t going to answer she said, “Don’t you know where she is?”
Fisher’s dull expression returned to Tacha. “I ask a question, I don’t need a question back.”
“She’s in there,” Tacha said.
“I thought I saw a convict come in here.”
“He’s in there with her.”
“Doing what?”
“Doing it,” Tacha said. “What do you think?”
Bob Fisher took time to give her a look before he walked over to the stock room. Then he didn’t hesitate: he pushed the door and let it bang wide open and stood looking at them on the flat bolts of striped prison material they had spread on the floor, at the two of them lying close and pulling apart, at their upturned faces that were momentarily startled.
“You through?” Fisher said.
Shelby started to grin and shake his head. “I guess you caught us, boss.”
Tacha could see Norma’s skirt pulled up and her bare thighs. She saw Shelby, behind Fisher, getting to his feet. He was buttoning the top of his pants now. Norma was sitting up, slowly buttoning her blouse, then touching her hair, brushing it away from her face.
Tacha and the tailor began working again as Fisher looked around at them. He motioned Norma to get up. “You go on to your cell till I’m ready for you.”
Shelby waited, while Norma gave Fisher a look and a shrug and walked out. He said then, “Were me and her doing something wrong? Against regulations?”
“You come with me,” Fisher said.
Once outside, they moved off across the yard, toward the far end of the mess hall. Fisher held his set expression as his gaze moved about the yard. Shelby couldn’t figure him out.
“Where we going?”
“I want to tell the new superintendent what you were doing.”
“I didn’t know of any law against it.”
Fisher kept walking.
“What’s going on?” Shelby said. Christ, the man was actually taking him in. Before they got to the latrine adobe Shelby said, “Well, I wanted to talk to him anyway.” He paused. “About this guard that watches the girls take their bath. Pulls loose a brick and peeks in at them.”
Fisher took six strides before saying, “She know who this guard is?”
“You bet,” Shelby said.
“Then tell the sup’rintendent.”
Son of a bitch. He was bluffing. Shelby glanced at him, but couldn’t tell a thing from the man’s expression.
Just past the latrine Shelby said, “I imagine this guard has got a real eyeful, oh man, but looking ain’t near anything like doing, I’ll tell you, ’cause I’ve done both. That Norma has got a natural-born instinct for pleasing a man. You know what she does?”
Fisher didn’t answer.
Shelby waited, but not too long. “She knows secret things I bet there ain’t ten women in the world can do. I been to Memphis, I been to Tulsa, to Nogales, I know what I’m talking about. You feel her mouth brushing your face and whispering dirty things in your ear—you know something? Once a man’s had some of that woman—I mean somebody outside—he’d allow himself to be locked up in this place the rest of his life if he thought he could get some every other night. Get her right after she comes out of the bath.”