The Juliet (19 page)

“Yes sir.”

So the porter’s discomfort was warranted. Skinner was more curious than bothered. “What is your name, child? Your full name.”

“Rebekah Akins.”

“And what is your father’s name?”

“Jeremiah Akins.”

“I take it he passed.”

The girl nodded.

“Rebekah Akins,” Skinner said, as if the notion were ridiculous. No doubt about it, women were changing. He’d seen it first hand, regrettably, and it was bitter nostalgia that made him go in for the kill. He returned to reading the
Prospect
and asked behind the page, “What name will you trade under, do you think?”

Young Miss Akins feigned shock, but Skinner shut her down with an impatient frown. “It’s your life,” he said. “A chance for you to become someone wholly new. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

The mousy simper disappeared, and she picked up her soup bowl to drink from it. “I like the name Lily,” she said, like a true rawbone.

Honesty, thought Skinner. Yet another manner to which he’d have to grow accustomed.

* * *

June 1907: Centenary, NV

The man put his coins on the table. He was a little drunk and unsteady in his boots. The room was dark and comfortable though close with heavy velvet curtains blocking out both the heat and light of the desert day. A bed piled with cushions took up most of the space, and its posts were decorated with oriental scarves. His younger brother, Simon, said they were for tying a fellow up if he wanted that sort of thing. Arthur had never considered the option until he saw the pretty patterns in the silk. He could tolerate a wrapping with something so soft and smooth, and he couldn’t imagine Lily Joy would let his mine-ruined fingers touch the scarves under any other circumstances.

The ceiling was low, and there wasn’t a lot of air to spare, but it was blissfully dust free. Arthur’s work funk and Lily’s perfume did battle while the two of them exchanged pleasantries. She wore a pale dressing gown trimmed in squirrel, and her red hair lay in curls on her shoulders and around her throat.

“Please be seated,” she said. She waited for him at a small round table set up in the corner of the room. She was barelegged again. She was always barelegged when he came to visit. There was a vanity on the other side of the room with a pair of striped stockings hung across the pocked mirror. The stockings were curved just like a lady’s legs with the calves bowing out and the ankles narrowing inward. They were just for show, he knew. Too nice to be worn.

He removed his grime-stained hat and dropped it on the foot of the bed before taking a seat at the table. Lily smiled at him the way a mother might smile at her child, but Arthur didn’t know for sure. He’d been working claims all his life, and he barely remembered his mother’s face. Since the age of ten he only ever saw the woman at night, and then only by the light of a single grease lamp dangling from the middle of the family tent. Her funeral had been a daytime affair though, and he remembered being surprised by her pink forehead and coarse gray hair.

Lily played with her cards, shuffling them with a dainty flutter. They were purple and elegant, not at all like the stubby, cheap cards they used at the Faro tables downstairs. Lily’s cards had come all the way from Romany, she said.

Arthur watched her fingertips. It always took a while for him to shake off the jitters and adjust to the peace of her chambers, but Lily was patient. That was one of the things he liked about her, that she wasn’t the sort who had to fill the room with noise. The other girls chattered like birds because he made them nervous. Each girl trading out of the Ophelia possessed a talent beyond the usual, with singing and dancing being the most common, but there were girls who played instruments, painted caricatures, and did card tricks. Lily told fortunes, and sometimes she was asked to recite poetry.

Lily stopped shuffling. “No cards today?”

The other thing he liked about her was she could read his mind. “No ma’am. Too damned tired for a story.”

She nodded sweetly and took one of his hands between both of hers, and he could feel his blood beat against her cool grasp. Their bond was unusual. Lily said so herself. She said she could read the cards for anyone, that was a skill like baking or sewing, but to be able to share minds was a rare privilege. She couldn’t even read her husband’s mind the way she could read Arthur’s. That last bit was what did Arthur in. He’d never fallen in love before.

Lily didn’t read palms, she just read Arthur. She opened his calloused fingers, spreading each one out like a stubborn piece of lace. His hand kept curling inward, but she massaged it until it relaxed in the open, palm up position. She loosened her gown to expose her left breast, then drew his hand to it and urged him to squeeze. He moved his chair closer to her so he could reach into her robe with both hands, and she responded by closing her eyes and rolling her head back until it touched the wall. It was always this way, Arthur doing all the heavenly work during their afternoons together.

“Tell me what you see, Miss Joy,” he said. “Because I am losing my way.” His brothers had pulled up stakes and left Centenary months ago.

“Faith, Arthur,” she breathed. “There is treasure here, yet.”

He placed his mouth over her throat like a wolf on a hare. She seemed to like that, and sometimes even the slightest noise of approval was enough to finish him off. But not today. He’d prepared himself down in the mine, wasting himself in a barren crevice. Today he wanted more time. He slipped to his knees, and buried his whiskers into her soft tummy. She ran her fingers through the stiff spikes and tangles of his filthy hair.

“Arthur, I have to tell you.” She pushed him gently, tilting his flushed face up. Her legs were spread wide apart with her knees hugging his shoulders.

Arthur blinked. Lily Joy had diverted from their usual pattern of discussion. He was breathing heavily, torn in two by his lust and curiosity. “What is it, Miss Joy?”

“Sometimes I see things I don’t understand.”

“What do you see?” He rested his cheek on her inner thigh.

“I’m unsure. Something hidden.” And that was all she was willing to say for the moment, so Arthur gathered her up and made love to her on the pillow-covered bed. Other men partied with the Ophelia frails, drinking and dancing and tossing their hard earned money away, but Arthur knew his relationship with Lily Joy was special. Theirs was a quiet, intense passion, not for display. To the extent that her visions had kept him in Centenary well after the Apollo mines had peaked, he would have to say she was his muse. Well, one of them, anyway.

They dozed together for a short time before Lily woke with a start. “It’s hidden, Arthur. Something precious.”

“You dreamed it? Was it gold?”

“Not gold,” she said. “But something like it. Something rare and valuable.” She turned and set her gaze on Arthur so fiercely that he squirmed. “I need you to find it,” she said. “That’s what you do. You find what’s hidden, don’t you?”

Arthur sat up, scratched himself under the sheet. “I used to.”

Lily laid back and stared at the ceiling as if she could see that elusive prize. Arthur crawled out of bed and refastened his clothing.

“Where will you go, now, Arthur?”

He was surprised to be asked. “Well, there’s still a good chunk of the day ahead. I was going to have a drink at Le Bonsoir, but now I think I might return to the mine.”

Lily propped up on her elbows. “Why go back?”

“To be honest, it’s the only place I’ve ever looked for anything and found it.” He could see she was disappointed by his answer. She lay back and resumed her personal contemplations.

“Miss Lily, I am sorry. I’m only an expert at finding that which God has hidden, like ore inside the rock. All it takes is natural instinct and a hard head. But if the treasure you’re dreaming of has been hidden by man, you need a quality of mind that I can’t offer.”

It seemed as if she wasn’t listening, but then Lily asked, “And what is that?”

Goud put his hat on and shrugged at the same time. “I think you need imagination, ma’am.”

* * *

Sometimes the most outrageous fantasies can become functioning realities. The whore known as Lily Joy existed only within the confines of her Ophelia crib, and she appeared and disappeared as she pleased, owing to her privileged relationships beyond the brothel. When Arthur Goud left, she decided the working day was done. She removed a cloth satchel from under her vanity to make ready for her transformation.

Within the bag she kept the costume that turned her into the semi-respectable citizen known as Becky Skinner, née Akins: a simple, high-necked white blouse and a long drab skirt fit for a lawyer’s wife. She pulled her wild hair into a tame knot, and she scrubbed the rouge from her face. The worst part was buttoning her shoes. She preferred her barefoot freedom, but she and Skinner had agreed to the terms of her lifestyle. It was a condition of their partnership that she would conform to a palatable domestic identity outside of the Ophelia, and compared to other marriages, the bargain was very generous.

Becky Skinner passed through the hallway with considerable grace, as if the sins hidden behind its closed doors did not exist. The manager of the Ophelia, Mr. Tanglewood, concealed his disappointment at Lily’s early departure by saying, “And there goes Sister Becky.”

Becky left the Ophelia and headed towards the small house she shared with Marcus Skinner. As she walked down High Street, she was recognized and greeted as Mrs. Skinner. True, more gentlemen than ladies were willing to make eye contact with her, but that wasn’t a concern. It was as if in the barely tamed, brutal landscape of Centenary, the effort it took to sustain one’s own humanity made it impossible to critique another’s. “Becky Skinner” was a gift to society that allowed its men and women untroubled passage.

Becky and Lily were both personae, she had decided. She was no more Lily than she was Mrs. Skinner. In both cases, she was a performer.

She remained Becky at home, cooking chickens and bread; Marcus had an appetite that surprised even himself. He attributed his expanding waistline to his experience as an aesthete coupled with his inexperience as a husband. They rarely talked about the sacrifice he had made in marrying her. That coveted judgeship was certainly out of reach now.

That night, she prepared the evening meal and poured wine when Marcus arrived home from the office. His clothes, the same garments tailored for him back east, were beginning to show stress at the buttonholes and seams. His whiskers, rapidly graying, had grown a little wild as well. Becky found her husband’s appearance amusing. She served his plate in the tiny dining alcove tucked between the kitchen and the front room. “We need to let your vest out,” she said.

Marcus agreed. He dived into his cold roast chicken. “I’m beginning to resemble a Cruikshank sketch.”

“Show mercy, Marcus. I don’t know what that means.”

He smiled but didn’t bother to educate her. His habits were so frustrating, especially since Becky knew no woman from his old life would ever be so honest with him.

She caught him looking at the painting again. It was a simple scene depicting two Dutch children playing with a rooster with a string around its neck. Marcus cared nothing for children, and only a little more for chickens, but his attentions often settled on the painting when he was in a contemplative mood.

“What’s wrong?” Becky asked.

“John Hogg is looking to sell out,” he said. Hogg’s news was not news, in general. More folks were moving out of Centenary than in, but Hogg was a saloonkeeper, and if any business could hold on, it should have been Hogg’s.

“Should we be worried about that?” Becky asked. She did not expect a direct answer. Due to the disparity in their ages, their marriage was like a conversation held by time travelers on different journeys.

Marcus said, “Hogg’s house is up for lottery in the new year. Perhaps I’ll buy a chance or two. Lord knows Hogg will make twice as much on tickets as he would in a straight sale.”

Hogg had built a remote cottage on the outskirts of Centenary. Lacking timber, he constructed it out of stacked and cemented whiskey bottles. It was as much a triumph as an embarrassment.

Becky rubbed her temple. The headache was coming on, as it usually did when the sun went down. All those bottles, concealed under plaster, now flooded her imagination.

“I forgot the compote,” she said, and as she passed behind him she gripped his chair back to steady herself.

“What is it?” Marcus lowered his fork.

Becky had closed her eyes against a streak of pain, and when she opened them again, she was staring straight at her husband’s beloved painting.

Marcus seemed very worried about that. His pause was a thickness between them, like an accidental child.

She smiled to reassure him. “A headache, that is all.”

Slowly, Marcus began to eat again, recovering his former rhythm, while the Dutch children played on the wall without a care in the world.

She didn’t need Arthur Goud, after all.

Becky cleared the plates and poured more wine. She kissed Marcus lightly before she kissed him fiercely. As she retired for the evening she said, “We will win that terrible house, my dear.”

Marcus Skinner laughed and bid her good night. With so many years of not being amused by anything, he was out of practice. His laughs sounded like asthmatic sobs of terror.

* * *

December 23, 1907: Centenary, NV

Two days before Christmas, Lily made a legend of herself. The girls of the Ophelia offered up a holiday pageant, and the white lights of High Street were wrapped in gold and green veils with ribbons tied to every post. The air was cold but dry, and yet there was a promise in the clouds.

There had been parties for weeks. Polite parties, family parties, feasts and dances, and pious choirs in Dickensian robes as if they could call down winter snow by acting the part. And there had been a myriad of church events, even though the Blessings—the Blessing of the mines, the Blessing of the burros, the Blessing of the dynamite stores and the like—would not happen until the New Year. It was a socially fatiguing season, particularly because Centenary’s population was so small relative to its largess.