by Tom Murphy
“I’m sorry.”
“I couldn’t help it, Lil, believe me.”
“Of course you couldn’t. Where did you go?”
“Well, I’d done a lot of growing up on that whaler, Lil. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I could do a man’s work. I knew about women. And I knew how to play cards. So when I ran, I ran with a wagon train, going West.”
“In fifty-five, this was?”
“Summertime. We gathered in Pittsburgh, went west from there. It was tough going. Dangerous. We got to St. Louis finally, and I stopped there awhile. Better part of a year. Then…I moved on.”
“More trouble?”
“I moved on to Kansas City. Not much of a town, Kansas City. Didn’t stay there long, just enough to get a stake together. Ended up in Denver. By then it was 1857. Last year. Denver’s quite a town, Lil. High up. Clean. Booming. I liked Denver.”
“But you moved on.”
“I moved on. And here I am.”
There was a pause while Lily considered what to say next, for her head was dancing with questions, and her memories of Fergy in the old days warned her to proceed with caution. Still, there was a thing she must ask, and she did so.
“Fergy, my dear, how did you live? How did you get money?”
She could tell in an instant it was the wrong question. The smile poured across his handsome face like spilled honey, announcing the lies even before they formed on his lips.
“Oh, you know how it is, Lil, I did this and that—some gambling here and there, a touch of clerking in a store, a few little ventures…none of it came to much, I’ll be the first to admit.”
Lily looked at her brother and smiled. He hadn’t changed one bit, for all his getting tall, and the broad shoulders and the fine clothes. He was still Fergy, her Fergy, a bundle of mischief and dreams and a wild itch to run from trouble. Yet, there was something about him: oh, fine to look at, sure. But that wasn’t what made the heads turn when he walked into Sophie’s parlor tonight. No, it was more than that: it was the sense of danger building in him, and the whiff of brimstone. She rang for supper and told him her own story quickly, quietly, before the maid came.
“That was tough, Lil, about the kid, I mean.”
“She’s a beautiful kid. She needs all the family she can get, Fergy. I’ll take you to see her one day soon.”
“I’d like that.”
They seated themselves at the table and enjoyed Sophie’s chef’s oyster bisque, roast quail, late-summer squash, and pecan pie. And there was more wine. It was a fine meal, Fergy was charming, but still there was a tension in him that was new to Lily. Even the wine failed to soften that. She toyed with her dessert.
“The question is, my big brother, what now?”
“What do you mean, what now?”
“What do we do? Together? You don’t think that now I’ve found you I’ll let you drift away again.”
“My eye is a rover, Lil, and my heart wanders, and my feet always want to find out what’s around the next bend in the road, over the next mountain. You might as well try to chain the wind.”
“I need you, Fergy. I need you bad.”
“Hitch your wagon to me, Lil, and you’re hitching it to a typhoon. It might be a pretty rough ride.”
He reached for the champagne bottle and refilled his glass.
Lily looked at her brother and was suddenly, vividly reminded of Jack Wallingford. Here was that same driven look, the wild glint in his eye, the self-scorn mixed with self-pity, the gambler’s terrible love affair with losing. She smiled her sweetest smile.
“I’ve been on rough trips before, Fergy. Do you think this place is some ivory tower? Your long-lost sister’s a whore, Fergy, in case that hadn’t dawned on you.”
He laughed. The laugh, too, was like Jack’s laugh, self-mocking, meant to tell whoever heard it that however little they might think of him, his own estimate was lower.
“I didn’t imagine Madam Sophie was running a convent, Lil. By the look of you, you’re doing right well.”
“I am doing well, and I’m going to do better. I’m saving every penny, Fergy, and I’m right on the lookout to do something with my savings. Some new business. Something that’s going to get me out of here, out of this life, something that’ll make us rich. That’s one more reason I need you. I need a partner I can trust.”
“And what business would this be? I’m a gambling man, Lil, not a businessman.”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure yet. It’s only the last few months that I’ve even been able to think about it.”
“You’re pretty famous, do you know that? I mean, with the pictures and all. People talk about you. I heard the name Lily Cigar just about as soon as I hit town. A fine green carriage went flashing by, and you in it, and someone said: There she goes! There goes Lily Cigar.’ By the time I looked, you were gone. But they know you. Your name means something. If a man’ll pay…”
“A thousand dollars a night, Fergy. Say it.”
“A thousand dollars a night, that means something. And you get to keep…”
“Half.”
“Suppose you got to keep it all?”
“My own place? You don’t get my meaning, Fergus Malone. I want to get out of this. The sooner the better. Maybe you enjoy gambling, but I don’t like whoring one bit.”
“How much do you have saved?”
“A little more than twenty thousand.”
“How long did it take you to earn that?”
“A year. But I started low. Lower, anyway.”
“And just suppose you got it all, plus half of what some other girls brought in, plus the profits on the wine and the food? You’d be rich in a year. Maybe very rich. Sure and you’d be rich enough to get into something else—in a big way.”
“Sophie might not agree.”
“Sophie doesn’t own you, Lil. You’ve done as much for her as she has for you.”
“Sophie saved my life. I’ll not soon forget that.”
“Think about it. You know the business now. You’d probably do it better than she does. Have fancier girls. Charge fancier prices. This place is fine, but the city’s growing, changing. There’s room for someplace even finer. Think, Lil. One hundred percent instead of fifty. You’re in this for the money, you say, so why not be in it for all of the money you can get?”
“I’ll sleep on it. Now let’s talk about something else, because if Sophie heard us, she’d probably murder me in my bed.”
They drank a little more wine, far more on Lily’s part than she was used to, and Fergy left just after midnight. Lily went to bed alone, and she was a long time falling asleep.
Lily’s blood churned, racing through her head, and her pulse beat fast from the thrill of discovering him again. Fergy, back from the dead! Who said there weren’t miracles? Fergy, charming as of old, filled with dreams and forever dancing with danger. Ah, but wasn’t it a fine thing to have him, for he made her feel safe, made her feel almost the way Kate made her feel, as though, at last, she belonged to someone. Someone who would not leave her, ever again. Lily smiled at her folly even as she thought this, for Fergy was Fergy, and you could not sooner put a net around the moon than tie him to one spot. Yet, maybe…maybe!
A funny little tune kept running through her head, a bit of an old ballad he’d sung just before leaving, laughing, flushed with Sophie’s good wine:
Her golden hair in ringlets hung,
Her dress was spangled o’er,
She had rings upon her fingers,
Brought from a foreign shore,
She’d entice both kings and princes,
So costly was she dressed,
She far exceeds Diana bright…
She’s the Lily of the West.
And Lily felt a bit tipsy herself, but not from wine. Ah, Fergy, my Fergy, you’re a blessing even if a mixed one. And you wouldn’t ask me to go on whoring if you knew what it cost me. But this was no night to think about whoring. This was a golden night. Sleep found Lily
smiling, for Fergy was back, and nothing could harm her.
28
Lily looked at her brother critically as they walked up the hill. Well I might have known he’d talk me into it. Fergy can talk a stone into flying, and always could.
Ever since he’d suggested the idea of going into business for herself, the thought had buzzed about in Lily’s head with the noisy insistence of a bumblebee. Try as she might, it would not go away. Lily analyzed her situation with all the logic she could summon, and she had to agree that, as far as logic went, there was much to be said for Fergy’s proposition.
“Why make money for Sophie, when you could be banking all of it? You may command a thousand a night, Lily Cigar, but you only get five hundred. And that’s what it boils down to, not counting the take on the other girls, and the profits on the gaming and the drinks.”
She sighed. He’d stated and restated his arguments a dozen times over, and she knew them all by heart. When Fergy got hold of an idea, he was like a terrier with a bone, playing with the thing, gnawing at it, getting the last possible ounce of meat and marrow.
“So you’d sell your own sister, would you, my fine brother, my protector?”
He laughed, assuming, wrongly, that she was joking. “But you’re already sold, my Lily, my Lily of the West! Not only sold, but famous too, and that’s worth hard cash, Lil, never forget it. Look, Lil, I know it’s no life for you. This way you’ll get out twice as fast—because you’ll earn twice the money.”
She looked at him and nodded her agreement, for there seemed nothing else to do.
Now Lily smiled as she smoothed down her walking coat It was the latest style, if you could believe Godey’s Ladies’ Book, which was one of her few sources of fashion news. The coat was a deep green tartan plaid, in wool, edged with black braiding, a great sweep of green and black and deep blue that matched the afternoon dress beneath it. The hoops were growing fatter by the week, like pumpkins in summer, and Lily found them inconvenient to the point of absurdity, and therefore had her Chinese dressmaker keep them to the minimum.
Lily had dressed with special care this morning, for it was to be a special day.
She and Fergy were going shopping. And what they were shopping for was nothing less than the real estate on which they firmly intended to build a whorehouse such as the West had never seen.
They had laughed and debated and come close to fighting about the name. In the end it was Stanford Dickinson who had solved it, smiling, his eyes mischievous and kind at the same time.
“Elegance is all, my love,” said he, “and nothing’s more elegant to the unwashed nouveaux riches than a touch of the French. I think you should simply call the place Fleur de Lis.”
“Flower-of-what?” Lily was still busy teaching herself proper English. French was on her list, but for later.
“Skunk cabbage, you goose. It’s French for ‘lily,’ and not only that, but the royal symbol of the kings of France.”
“Fleur de Lis. I like it. We can have a little sign.”
“Small and brass and very discreet, like its owner.”
“You find me brassy, do you, then?” She kissed him playfully on the cheek.
“Never, Lily. I find you more precious than gold.”
Lily looked at him sharply, decided this was more of his usual banter. “Gold,” she said, laughing, “is quite precious enough. At least for the moment. But I thank you for your name.”
Fergy had liked it too. “It has class, Lil,” he said. “A name like that makes you think everything’s going to be that much fancier, a bit more expensive, maybe…”
“A lot more expensive, and well worth it.”
“You bet.”
“Until you-know-who finds out, and then it’ll be lilies at my funeral, for sure as God made apples, she’ll murder me.”
“Sophie’s not the murdering kind. But she might not be too happy about it.”
They had left it at that, but every day Lily dreaded the inevitable confrontation more and more, the terrible moment when she must pay back Sophie’s uncountable kindness with treachery.
Whoring had taught Lily one lesson that came in handy now. It had taught her to keep her mind in many watertight compartments, so that what she did with one part of herself had almost nothing to do with the rest. Thus she could be charming to a stranger for his money, even if it was essentially a false charm. She discovered how easy it was to manipulate these men, how hungry they were for a kind word, a smile even, a bit of coquetry. For all their size and strength and rough language, these men were essentially children, Lily discovered, spoiled children screaming for their toys. So she learned to soothe them, to make them feel strong and admired and attractive.
Lily never looked on this as deception. It was part of the service. It was what they paid for as much as the more physical aspect of love, although they surely wanted that too.
So it happened that after almost two years in Sophie’s house Lily could look at Sophie and smile as she passed her on the stairs, and walk out into the bright November sunshine of San Francisco to meet Fergy and go shopping for the land on which they’d build a house that would outclass Sophie’s, Lily profoundly hoped, in every way.
It took Fergy and Lily two weeks to find the site. What they found was a corner high on Nob Hill at the corner of Sacramento Street and Powell. It wasn’t the biggest lot they’d seen, only one hundred and fifty feet by two hundred, but the situation was ideal, at the top of the growth district but not yet fully developed, and very nearly at the top of the hill. The land had four neglected shacks on it now, and a price of fifteen thousand dollars.
“We’ll need a mortgage,” Fergy said with the air of a solid old-school businessman, “and an architect, and decorators.”
“Now, who’d lend money to the likes of us?”
“Leave that to me, Lil. I’m not a gambler for nothing. Besides, we have the blessing of your pal Stanford Dickinson, and that must count in these parts.”
“Not a penny of his will I touch, Fergy. Not a penny, and don’t you forget it. What I do—what we do—we’ll do on our own, and be beholden to no man.”
“As you say. In any event, if I’m to be your partner, Lil, you must leave the business end of things to me. You’ll have your hands full just running the girls and the kitchen and the bar service. I’ll take care of the financing and the police and all that.”
Lily had many a doubt about Fergy’s capacity to handle this business or any other for more than a few weeks steady. But she buried her doubts, and for a reason. His eyes sparkled. Fergy had a new dream, and she was sharing it! This was a thing Lily had wished for since they were small children. And somehow it didn’t matter what the dream was, exactly, for what counted most was the sharing. The Fleur de Lis would tie Fergy to her in a way that would keep him with her forever. As far as forever went in San Francisco in 1858.
Two days later Lily was handed an envelope on her breakfast tray. She recognized Fergy’s writing, still nearly as crude as it had been in his cabin boy’s letter to her in St. Patrick’s orphanage. But the message was unmistakable and it sent a thrill shuddering through her to her toes. There was no greeting to the letter, and no signature. He must have been afraid Sophie’d open the thing, as though she’d stoop to spying! All the note said was “We’re in!” That was all it had to say. Lily closed her eyes and saw the Fleur de Lis rising brick by brick. But no! Maybe it should be marble! They hadn’t found an architect as yet. That would be next, and the decorations, and the staff. And the bad part, telling Sophie.
The day soon came when Lily knew she could put it off no longer. It was morning, a gray and foggy morning in early December. Just yesterday she and Fergy had spent two hours with the architect, looking at drawings, discussing materials, a timetable, costs. The Fleur de Lis was going to be very grand indeed, far grander than Sophie’s place, which thus far was the standard of luxury for San Francisco’s parlor houses. Near onto a quarter of a million dollars it would cost! At f
irst the size of that sum terrified Lily, still used to counting her pennies.
“If you’re jumping off the cliff, Lil,” Fergy said with the now familiar gleam in his eyes, “it might as well be a tall one, the best and the biggest, right?”
“I guess so. But the payments will be huge, Fergy.”
“And so will the profits! Are you not Lily Cigar? Will it not be the finest house in town? With the highest prices, the best wines, the greatest gaming?”
Fergy could talk the moon out of the sky, and Lily went along with his plans in a kind of hypnotic daze. His optimism might be far from rational, but it was infectious in the extreme. You could hardly be close to Fergy without sharing his moods, and his moods these days were expansive.
Although the sources of Fergy’s income were cloudy, he was never short of money, and never asked Lily for cash. He spent freely, mostly on women. Fergy had become a regular at Sophie’s place, and the girls all loved him. At first this embarrassed Lily, even as her profession embarrassed her in the most secret corner of her heart. But then she began to take a kind of pride in Fergy’s easy triumphs with the girls at Sophie’s. The more attractive he was to them, the easier it might be to recruit them, and she had every intention of trying that, and soon. These were her hopes, mingled with guilt and fear, as she went to knock on Sophie’s door. How often had she put off this dreadful moment, the moment of telling Sophie of her plans? Sophie, who had saved her life. Sophie, who had made her a whore. No, Lily, don’t turn hypocrite this late in the game: no one made you a whore. There weren’t any guns at your head. Sophie never even suggested it, and she had a million chances, especially when you were weak and sick and your money running out.
Lily knocked, feeling like Judas himself, and was bidden to enter.
Sophie was lying abed late, finishing her tea and toast.