“But, my darling, I need them nearby,” the General insisted, though with nothing of his usual force. “Gilo is a superb amanuensis. You can use his services.”
“That may be so, but they will be comfortable enough in the barn.”
As the weeks wore on, the two men had begun to realize that the daring leader they knew in Libya was not the same in this cold place. Over time, as the General’s plans stalled, the Arab and the Italian came to despise one another Gilo mostly smoked and sneered. Mustafa furtively courted the servant of a neighboring farm, meeting her at night in the woods to soothe her fears with cold fingers.
“You will only ruin her,” Gilo had chastised Mustafa.
When the General’s wife asked her husband to leave, Mustafa found that Gilo had been right about the girl. It wounded him far more than she knew when he revealed that he was leaving, far more than the elbow she delivered to his jaw, which chipped a tooth.
Gilo had found ways to twist the knife. “I won’t be missing nothing here. How about you, Mufti?” he prodded as they set out with the General. “No, this place is like a punch in the mouth.” When they reached New York City, Gilo, who served as the General’s purser, deserted them, taking along a good deal of the General’s cash.
A man with two tankards in his hands teetered up to the card game. “You shoulda seen the Gen’l today,” he crowed, slamming a pint down and sloshing it on the table. “For you, sir, a real hero, not one of them quill scratchers. Damn fine testimony today.” The Hall of the House of Delegates had been filled to capacity. The prosecution’s first witness, the General had slipped back into character, a field commander again, not to be toyed with by legal men. He described a conversation with Burr in Washington during the winter of ’05–’06. “I listened to Colonel Burr’s mode of indemnity,” he declared, “and as I had by this time begun to suspect that the expedition he had afoot was unlawful, I permitted him to believe myself resigned to his influence that I might understand the extent and motive of his arrangements.” The General, who had admired the scale of the former vice president’s ambition, if little else, paused for effect. “Colonel Burr laid open his project of revolutionizing the territory west of the Allegheny, establishing an independent empire there; New Orleans to be the capital, and he himself to be the chief.” The courtroom had been transfixed.
The General quaffed the tankard in two large gulps and chased it with a shot of sailor’s rum from another admirer, delivered by a plump lass with wet lips. As the Eagle filled with smoke, the General regaled the men at his table with stories of his military affairs. The Shirley and Westover men listened intently, he noticed, while playing cautiously. When the stakes started to rise, they folded. They attended to their pipes while the General and the Maryland sharp traded financial blows. At length the Shirley and Southside men were replaced at the table by new money, Willcox — “two Ls, sirs” — of Belle Air Plantation and Wilcox — “single barrel, my friends” — who had married an heiress and restored Flowerdew Hundred.
As the hour grew late and the smoke and din intensified, the fortunes of the General and the Marylander seesawed back and forth. For the Marylander, this was sport — or was it? The General wondered. He had every penny he owned on the table. He felt a sudden sense of doom, a keen feeling in the pit of his stomach that he had been played. He had enemies in high places, he knew, in Washington, where he had browbeaten more than one feckless politician. The medal he wore under his vest bore the tarnish of those who had betrayed their allies in Derna.
The presence of working women had slowly increased as they trickled in through the back door at intervals. They caught the General’s eye, like flashes of fish striking flies in the afternoon light. The pressmen huddled together at the bar The merchants and plantation owners mingled, clapping backs, laughing heartily, drinking, and puffing their long pipes. Some furtively pawed the women with leathery hands, maneuvering toward dark recesses. Others watched the card game. After several hours, it was winding to its conclusion, tension high as the final pot rose. The Marylander seemed to be forcing the bids. First Willcox swallowed his bourbon, shook his head, and folded. Then the single-barreled Wilcox threw down his cards in disgust.
The General eyed the pot with apparent serenity. It could keep him for weeks. If he lost, he would not be able to pay for his room the next day.
As if on cue, the back door crashed open. In danced a mulatta in bedouin robes, her face covered, her hands and hips swaying rhythmically to the strings pining in the back corner. A hush spread across the room, as the glassy-eyed dancer twisted and spun through the haze toward the card table.
The woman sashayed over to the General, whose fondest conquest had come in Rabat, where he had learned Arabic and donned robes, going native in every discernible way. She beckoned to him, and he rose as if in a trance, with a thin smile. She swayed around him, and he bit his lip. His eyelids sagged while he became lost in the music of her body. The men, clinging to their mugs and pipes, were mesmerized. The women, gathering up their tips, looked on, whooping encouragement. The dancer stroked the General’s collar When she popped free a button on his coat, a cry of encouragement went up from the crowd. She allowed her robe to fall open until the men could see nearly her entire breast. The General leered. The crowd clamored, circling inward around the pair. The General was back in his element, the center of attention, the commander. He maneuvered behind the dancer, swaying, his hands groping.
Mustafa kept his eyes on the Marylander, taking in the smirk on his face, rising abruptly as the man swiftly raked in the money on the table and headed for the door.
“Inshallah!” the General groaned. “Inshallah.”
The pressmen would report the scandal in the papers the next day. The General, a national hero and star witness in the Burr trial, had copulated with a woman in front of a crowd at a downtown tavern. The General would not know whether it was true or not. He would remember the white robes. And he would discover that his congressional medal had been taken from around his neck.
Rosie met Mustafa outside the back door. Shockoe Slip — a place stolen from the Powhatans and gilded by the slave trade — lay on a mosquito-ridden flood plain. The bloodsuckers swarmed at dusk. She led him across the alley into the brush near the johnnies on the bank, where the women met when they needed to discuss their private affairs. She showed him some bills and the glinting gold. He showed her what he had and lit a cheroot. Beneath the dappled stars and a crescent moon that lit both the Old and New Worlds, just above the river’s fall lines, the two talked briefly about getting out of town and danced in the Southern stink.
Part III
Neurosis
The whole infelicity speaks of a cause
that could never have been gained.
Playing With Dablonde
by Tom de Haven
Manchester
They’d finished having sex, Tacko and DaBlonde, but her husband Louis (you couldn’t call him Lou, she called him Daddy) was still taking pictures with a small silver Canon PowerShot. He’d circle the bed, crouch, loom, even push in between DaBlonde’s open chapped thighs. She’d threaten to trap him there, scissor him, and they’d laugh. Weird shit. Very weird shit, thought Tacko.