“Oh and I’m not?” Anna asks, feeling odd about feeling offended, and wondering why she is.
“Not really just, filthy,” the barmaid says.
“No, she's Carrots,” Cider says.
“Carrots that’s about right, good for the eyes I see,” says the butch barmaid.
“Anyway, you seen Edward?”
“No sir he's in a meeting. He speaks of you often he does. Sir Edward will be happy to hear you're here,” the barmaid says.
“Good then let him know then, will ya now,” he says.
“He's in a meeting,” she says sympathetically, “A pint, on me?”
“Well not on you but sure. Anna this is Maggy. She'll break a man in half, in any tavern in town.”
“And anywhere else,” Maggy laughs.
“A Pitcher,” says Anna.
“A pitcher? what will you do with that? a little tart like you.” She bellows loudly in laughter. She fills a pitcher for each and slams them sloppily, spilling them onto the counter.
“You know how long it will be?” He asks.
“Who knows, been real busy since the strikes been startin'.”
“Well a friend in need I am,” Cider says.
“Wise ass, is he, isn’t he,” Maggy swipes at him with her bar rag, then smiles to Anna as a handless handshake.
“Well, We'll be staying till we could see him.”
“Oh will ya be?”
“Yeah. Put it on his tab will you.”
“Yeah sure. Let me see if we got a room,” Maggy says turning to a rotary phone and turning its rotary dial slowly.
“I need a room opened up. I don’t care. Now!” she punches the phone to its rotary base. “We'll have a place for you to put your pretty little head in a minute dear.”
“Can we have new sheets,” she asks.
“A fancy one she is eh? all the girls lay on the sheets, why shouldn’t you dearie?” Maggy asks throwing her rag over her shoulder and leaning over the counter.
“Well I'm not one of the girls, and that's an insulting assumption,” she answers.
“Oh she isn’t is she? a dignified lady in a cat house. Then you best watch yourself, these ones around here have sharp claws.”
“I don't know about dignified,” laughs Cider.
“That’s right, you don't know about dignified,” she cuts back.
“Ha,” Maggy laughs.
“My name is Anna.”
“Alright. Fresh sheets for Anna, the gentleman.”
“AAHHH,” yells a man falling from the third floor of the open atrium down through the lobby. Shattering a table that splits in two and splits his spine, and his body twitches and jerks under a dirty tablecloth. Muting the pub for a few seconds, as though the record skipped, which then resumes its track of boisterous banter.
“There's your room,” Maggy says, pointing to the napkin in the man’s hand.
“Does it have two beds?” Anna asks.
“Two beds?” a lady for sure, I say.”
“Hey I wouldn't, she’s filthy,” he says.
“What? you're filthy....Oh that's right we are,” she says with sudden nostalgia of her last hot bath.
“Thanks Maggy,” he says, then pouring ale into his mouth waving to the barmaid for more.
“More please,” she says.
“Say another and slam the counter,” Cider says wailing his fist to the counter to demonstrate.
“Another!” Anna yells slamming her fist to the wood hard enough to make peanut shells leap.
“Yeah yeah, take the tired lady to bed will ya, before she gets all liquored up,” she says swiping her rag at him.
“Nice to meet you Anna,” Maggy winks to bid both off to bed. He grabs the key without a care, though his smile leaves his face to a vacant gaze, and she looks to the ceiling intently though for nothing in particular as they make to their way to the room still sipping. Tripping up the slanted wooden stairs, that creek with even the lightest touch of dust. Peering through the window again, out her window sill perch to a massive mash of intermingling eras looking to her like a time mosaic metropolitan garden. The row houses seem as hedges, the town squares as stone grass patches, the steeples as colored flower and bushes. To the northeast, outside the civilized side is where the locals call the Soots, where what the smokestacks spew are the only clouds the sweeps, who live there, ever know. The streets are coated with dour colored soot falling like heavy snow, gradually shifting like sand off their pitched roofs, to fill the narrow alley's they use as streets. She listens to the Johns passing through the halls of the cathouse, to and from their paid pleasures, and the girls returning to their posts and pouring catcalls to the men passing down the street. She relates this to the people passing from shop to shop to purchase things they like, like a hat or shoes. She starts seeing the sameness of different places by the differences of how they deal with their similarities. Using her standard measure to measure the new realities she finds herself in.
Edward did come by, though while she was sleeping off the brew of the night before. He and Cider‘ve been habitually missing on days long drinking binges, and doing god knows what else. She’s been spending time with full mugs and Maggy. Sometimes picking a place from her perch that she wonders about and goes to see what it’s like. Always returning to her room and sinking into the boiling water of the biggest bathtub she's ever seen. Recounting the time scrambled scenes she's seen in her hours of wandering through the always rainy, time mosaic metropolis.
Cider’s been bringing all sorts of things back to the room, to her, like a squirrel filling a nest with nuts and berries. If nuts were empty liquor bottles, pearls and jewels, monies, and a half eaten swine on pewter platters. She’s been playing dress up in the jeweled trinkets and dresses that don't fit, having fun in front of a smudged Victorian vanity mirror that dominates the otherwise shabby green room. Not really wanting to wear them out at all, especially not out in the hall, thinking it will draw the ire of the working girls, and eye’s of desperate men. The main floor and hallways are grumbling with big band and ska music at all hours of the day or night. She takes a liking to the more animated ones, that sound to her like a cartoon’s marching band music playing as she takes her now familiar stool.
“Mornin' Maggy,” she says glumly as Maggy walks over with a decanter of dark liquor, whose tongue stinging taste of peach has become like water to Anna.
“I might as well just leave it for you.”
“Can I take it with me?”
“Don't be so low eyed dear. Worrying yourself for what? He hasn't tried ta trick ya out has he? he’s an alright sort if you’re not on the other side. They’re right old friends the two of em are, boys will be boys. Another pint?” almost every sentence since she’s been here ends with, “another pint?”
“No, I've got that,” she says.
“Didn't stop you yesterday.”
“It's stopping me now, I’d rather have breakfast. Please.”
“Breakfast, it's a quarter to seven.”
“I know that's why I want some breakfast.”
“Bangers and mash?” Maggy asks not telling Anna it's nearly seven at night.
“Bangers and mash,” she repeats laying her head on her arms folded on the counter.
“Peanuts,” a patron shouts. Startling her to sit up straight, then enjoying her breakfast. An hour later Cider and Edward march through the doors among a mass of slurring men, women and children. All swooning around Edward and dispersing as he approaches Anna and stretches his hand to shake hers. The first time she's seeing him as a person and not just a name. A balding fat man with a gullet of a hanging chin. The light touching his eyes highlights the lack of life in them, the two are completely inebriated standing for almost a minute without saying a word.
“Is this her, the girl here?” Edward speaks slowly, though every word spoken strongly, formed by habit by working as a public speaker.
“I am,” she says.
“Right then, I thought s
o. Anyhow, my name is Edward Watertop. The! Prime Minister Edward Watertop. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Anna,” says the gluttonous looking gray skinned monster of a man grinning between gelatinous cheeks. He shakes her hand as gently as a child. She’s overwhelmed, not by his obtuseness or his power in presence of a politician, but at how he so definitively dominates the rest of the room. His every notion having a domino effect spread through everyone around him. He has a wandering eye when in conversation, where he looks all the eyes in the room follow and when he gestures or shifts the crowd does the same. Their faces are all looking to Anna, like a flock of birds turning back and forth at his whim.
“Well, a, Prime Minister amongst others of many different times and that,” Edward says.
“Well nice to meet you, a friend of Cider's,” she says.
“Right. Well, how's it been for ya? Maggy 's been lookin' after you well I suppose.”
“Yes very well, thank you,” Anna says nodding.
“She don't need me she doesn't,” says Maggy, “you should've seen this one the other night.”
“Oh, and what's the other night,” Cider asks.
“A good time I bet,” says Edward.
“A good time for sure Minister, this little lady here was like a rabid raccoon she was.”
“And how's it that she was?” Edward asks with intrigue. Anna blushes a bit and looks away to hide her winning grin. Cider wonders with red faced envy of what she ‘d done.
“She beat this girl, this prissy little stray. Thrashed her proper she did, very well I’d say,” Maggy says.
Cider releases his lungs, relieved that it’s not another thing, and happy she held her own, and is making good impressions on his friends.
“It’s good you won, but you seem like such a sweet girl. Why are you going on and bothering with these wenches,” Edward asks with eyebrows bridged in bemusement.
“She attacked me, it was self defense,” she says feigning humility in defense of herself.
“Why? for what?” asks Cider.
“She thought I was like her, for sale and that you were my pimp, and that I was stupid to think you cared, that I'll never get out of this rag house,” the two catch each other’s glare, reminded of their circumstance, of her trusting him and of him supposed to be leading her. The shared glare is interrupted by Maggy continuing her recount of the last night’s events.”
“Anna called her a sloppy left over back alley stray, and the wench swiped for her head.”
“So then?” asks Edward.
“They tussled like alley cats then she swung for her head and grabbed the tramps hair, swung her up off her feet then dropped the girl belly first onto a table.”
“Who swung who?” Cider asks.
“Anna grabbed the other.”
“And then what?” Edward asks, the rest of the house is listening intently to the tale.
“Then what? the girl flopped to the ground gasping like a fish out of water,” Maggy says laughing and slapping the mahogany counter.
“A good one she is, I can tell these sorts of things,” Edward says, then leans in to continue “On your way home are you? a bit of a girl lost in the woods I hear. Sticking around with this one you'll end up always looking for the right porridge, you will.”
“Though I’m neither of those,” she replies.
“Sure you’re not, of course. Of course not, it's an inaccurate analogy of your predicament you see,” Edward says.
“She's doing fine, taking to traveling the ambers better than most,” Cider says.
“Here's to Carrots. Here! here! Cheers!” Edward hails.
“Carrots!” The mob roars then breaks back to unabashed alcoholism. His interaction with Anna is that of intrigue to him, having never seen a person treat Cider as anything but a viper, let alone an actual person.
“But can she shoot?” Asks the Minister “Running with this lad you'll do well to know how to shoot.”
“Sure she can, right Anna?” Cider says with an insistent eye.
“A hundred gallons for the lovely Anna to hit a bottle in the pub, any bottle anywhere in the whole of the pub,” the prime minister wagers aloud. The whole place breaks into shouting numbers like a full room of stock brokers. She pauses recalling what happened when she last held a revolver. She moves to meet chests with Cider, turning her face away from his while sliding the gun from his waist. Taking aim at a few bottles on a table thirty feet away. Focused until the steadiness of her breath is all she can think of, then snaps off one shot that shatters the glass of a passing servers tray forty feet away. Painting the petrified waitress' face white with whole milk.
“Ha, like a pie on the face,” Edward says leading the crowd in a swell of laughter.
“But can she shoot a man?” a court jester dressed man shouts with a prancing bow falling to the ground.
“She has,” says Cider, almost boastfully. Though she's embarrassed of it, and holds him scornfully in her mind while trying not to show that sort of feeling to the bantering pub of banshees and bandits.
“Oh, has she then, she may be in proper company,” Edward says slowly and the crowd again erupt into boisterous laughter. The thought seeps into her conscience like lemon juice dripping into a flesh wound. She struggles to hide her empathy, knowing the tune of the room, that emotion will be weakness in this haven of lunatics, not wanting to make him look bad in front of his friends. She joins the mob with hours more of bottoms up of every bottle, trying to keep up with the rest. The drinking days here never end, the only escape from the smell of booze here is to sleep or slip.
“Well the bad news is this, I’m sad to say,” says Edward.
“What is it?” Cider asks.
“That the rail men are on labor strike, and there is no way out that way, and anyway, aside from that I'm due at the courthouse for trial, shortly might I add.”
“Who's on trial,” she asks.
“Well I am of course,” Edward says with pride.
“But you’re the Prime Minister.”
“What kind of Prime Minister would I be if I weren't on trial. No worries though dear, I‘m guilty as sin.”
“How shortly?” he asks.
“When we get there I suppose, and don't worry about this fella here. Your feisty enough for em, I think you'll be fine. Well then, follow me,” Edward says, turns and walks out of the pub into a big black whale of a limousine waiting. The two follow him to their seats, his large cigar lights their three faces as the door slams shut and the limo pulls away.
“Here it is alright,” Edward says sharply.
“What is it already?” Cider snaps.
“Being that the train laborers are on strike, rightfully so I may say, you must take another route.”
“When's all this gonna clear up?”
“Who knows? I don't anyway, and I tend to know too much.”
“So what's the plan?” She asks.
“Oh right, the best I could do is drop you two as close to the Soots as I can manage. Now I'll put in a good word for you through town, but that is only as good as the word will go. Those sweeps are bit unruly and very, very homicidal, little buggers. Packs of hungry murderous orphans that will steal the gold from your teeth unnoticed when talking to you.”
“Right,” Cider agrees.
“Thanks,” she says squeamishly. The city, a kaleidoscope of time rapidly passing by the window of the speeding car. She fixates on the road ahead as Cider fumbles around, soaking himself trying to add ice to his drink. The Prime Minister silently sips his cigar and scotch between each hand interchangeably, probably thinking of his upcoming court date, Anna supposes she would be worried to near death of it.
“Down twenty decades and across seventeen, to the east,” Edward demands of the driver before asking, “thorn apple anyone? no taker's, suit yourselves,” before either of the two can answer, then takes a swig from a clear flask from his breast pocket.
A few intersections and a roundabouts later they abruptly stop,
tumbling the two toward the front and swinging the limo doors open. The two then follow Edward diving out his seat and up the courthouse stone slab stairs in one motion. Wading through a swarm of journalists and photographers who're tripping over each other’s words and feet to greet the Prime Minister in his political pageantry. The courthouse is jam packed with white clothed dining tables and the candle lit faces of diner's eating luxurious dinners. Tapping their glasses with their forks as Edward enters to jubilant uproar and polite applause. His smile is sincerely spread across his overjoyed jowls, to be among his own kind, under a large polished silver chandelier hanging like a guillotine over the courtroom of criminals head’s.
“We'll sit here by the left podium, I'm next.”
“Got good reservations?” Cider laughs.
“That's right. though my turn has elapsed several times. I’m next, whenever I may appear,” Edward says assuredly as a waitress brings them a tray of wines and cheeses. The atmosphere is more of a dinner party then a day of judgment. They have seats right behind the Prime Minister, sitting at the left podium facing a wall decorated with demigods demonstrating insurmountable power to those who stand before it.
A vulture faced judge presides over the court, who’s been sitting in this seat for so long his spine’s bent to slouch in a way that permanently pins him by his shoulders to his desk. His powdered wig and funeral home made up face grins grimly down his long bent nose. His needling pupils peer out from behind gold rimmed glasses at a man standing in a white suit sweating as his lawyer elaborately explains his innocence, with evidence and eyewitnesses. There is no jury box, and the witness stand is grown over with the same mold as on the outer walls of the station.
“I have heard the case,” the judge squawks, quelling the room to murmurs.
“By the evidence placed before me I have made my decision. You sir are…”
“My client is..”
“Innocent!” the judge declares, then cuts the air with a chop of his gavel to a room silencing gasp.
“Innocent!?” the man shouts in hysterics “No, no I'm not innocent, I, I can't be, I have kids, a boy and girl and a wife.”
The Altonevers Page 9