“Are you souping that up, too?”
Priya looked up, but at Miss Lizzie, not at me. “Miss Lizzie won’t let me modify this yet,” she said with an easy smile. “Not until we’ve rebuilt the sewing machine a few thousand more times.”
“We’ll be able to use it for construction work, too, when we’re done,” said Miss Lizzie.
I was busy trying not to stare at Priya. Priya, who had kissed me.
If I had my way about it, I’d drag her off right now and get back to practicing that. I wondered if she could learn to like horses. I wondered if the horses would mind if part of the barn was a big garage for Priya to work in, and whether it was likely she could get paid to do repairs.
Half what a man half as handy at it could, probably.
Well, two half wages was one living, and folk were always saying that two could live as cheaply as one. I waited for a smile to reflect what I was thinking on Priya’s face, but Priya only had eyes for Miss Lizzie.
“Finish greasing those bits,” Miss Lizzie said to Priya’s questioning look, “and you can go down. Thank you, Karen.”
“Welcome,” I said, and shut the door. I knowed my feeling stung was just the raw flinching skin of infatuation, where every gesture feels six times as important as it should. And I knowed that Priya was thinking of nothing but her sister and getting away from Miss Lizzie as fast as she could and maybe hiding our conspiracy and the reason for that eagerness — and that’s why she stared at Miss Lizzie. She hadn’t kissed Miss Lizzie, after all. She’d kissed me.
I still felt it. These feelings ain’t nohow sensible. They just is.
I had to glance in the mirror to smooth the thoughts off my face before I went back down to the parlor. Men don’t like women with too many thoughts.
At least, the men such as come into whorehouses doesn’t.
* * *
It weren’t no good night, neither.
I mean, it started off just fine — typical weekday evening, with the trade slow and steady. A few of the men just came to sit at Miss Bethel’s bar and drink and order a plate of oysters from Connie’s kitchen. Most of ’em, though, sooner or later they wanted a tumble, though that’s not the only service parlor houses offer. In addition to the gamblers, and a few that comes to hear the Professor play piano, and the eaters, well. We get some gold miners in for a bath, too, and some of ’em want a bath attendant. Or two.
I got one of those to start the evening off, and then a little lull. Miss Francina gets almost nothing but regulars and special requests, and Miss Francina’s requests don’t want any of the other girls. Pollywog was in demand, as she always is, and Effie too — redheads is popular. By the time they were pretty busy, my own trade started to pick up some and Effie was on an all-nighter. So I did my share, and took care of two regulars — both of ’em, for a giggle, named Adam. Though the second one could have gone by Goliath: he had rusty hair and furry, freckled arms and might of made another half a Crispin stacked on top of the first. Scots and Swedish, I think, and come out west as a convert to one of them new religions. Though he tipped well.
When the trouble started, I’d just come downstairs from fixing my stays after the second one. I was nibbling on a little sandwich at the bar while flirting with an easterner just off the Overland Route from the old states. I didn’t think he’d be spending any money on a girl that night — he had the rail-carriage-glazed look of a tourist and the wide eyes of a man who’s never been in a nanny shop before and just wants to take it all in. We get those sometimes, men who just want to claim as they’ve seen inside a real Wild West gold rush vaulting-house saloon like the Hôtel Mon Cherie — without actually getting inside it, if you take my meaning — and they’re easy work. We keep ’em company, drink pay-mes (which are mostly unsugared cold tea) while Miss Bethel serves them the real stuff, and encourage ’em to talk about their sweethearts back home.
Not that I’m one to judge.
Hell, I ain’t in no position to. And that’s possibly the only position I ain’t been in.
So I was soft-selling all my soft soap: “Is this your first time, honey?” to this easterner with his slick boots and slick togs, and his name, for a wonder, weren’t Adam. He claimed Jonathan Smith, but don’t they all? I thought the Jonathan was a nice touch, anyway. Showed a little creativity. He’d been sneaking up on grilling me about my job — out of curiosity and prurience both, I reckoned, like most of ’em. And I was engaged in weaving him what Miss Bethel refers to as The Usual Tissue of Pleasing Lies. You can hear the capital letters when she says it.
Anyway, he was on his fourth whiskey and I was on my third cold, bitter tea. I was actually starting to think I might unwind him enough to get him upstairs — or at least that I was making a close enough friend that when he came back — and about half of ’em do, pluck up their courage and come back — he might ask for me special. And he was clean and smelled fine, so I didn’t mind none.
My house name’s Prairie Dove, on account of being deep bosomed and having that Hay Camp accent. I was trying to make sure he’d remember it when he woke up the next morning with the inevitable hangover. I leaned my head back on his shoulder, careful of the curls Bea had slaved over and also not to stab him in the neck or the eye with a hair comb or a pin.
I had just about gotten comfortable perched on his bony knee — the petticoats help, thank Jesus — when with no more warning than a snaky-mean horse biting, he jumped up, dumped me to the floor, and roared.
I don’t mind saying it knocked the wind out of me. I landed flat on my butt and banged my tailbone on Mr. Jonathan Smith’s boot toe, which is an exquisite sort of agony I can’t even begin to describe. I lay there — well, half-lay, half-sat, propped on my elbows and wheezing with pain and disbelief — as Smith yanked his foot out from under me and snatched up the tufted bar stool he’d been sitting on. I had the clearest view ever of the red velvet seat dented under his smooth white hands, and I couldn’t even raise up a hand to shield my face.
And that sound he was making! Sweetness, half roar and half wail, like a bear crossed with a panther.
I won’t lie. I thought I was dead. Dead, or crippled. I thought he was going to break that chair over my head, and I couldn’t even scream. I knowed Crispin would be coming, and Miss Francina too, and Miss Bethel diving under the bar for her gun — and I knowed weren’t none of them going to be fast enough to stop him doing whatever he was going to do to me. It was like a time I went out to halter Da’s new sorrel gelding and nobody told me he was head shy on account of having been twitched and beat, and when I pulled the noseband over his lip he went straight up on me and I was too surprised to let go and wound up dangling from the lead rope between his legs while his hooves beat the air to batter around my head. I was too surprised to be scared, though I think Da was scared enough for the both of us, from the way he hugged me when I got back down.
This time I had the time to be scared, though. Because Mr. Smith stood over me for long enough for me to think real hard about that stool, and how solid it was joined together.
Then, with a grunt, he turned and hurled it over the bar. I heard Miss Bethel yelp — I couldn’t see much from the floor — and then I heard it hit, and the crash of all the glass in the world.