Then she sang, unaccompanied, in a strong, clear voice:
As Joseph was a-walking
He heard an Angel sing:
This night shall be the birth night
Of Christ our Heavenly King
The song was received with quiet awe for the first few verses, but then as her confidence grew, she began to move with the rhythm she’d chosen, bouncing her breasts with every downbeat. Objections were raised, but those men were either shouted down or escorted out of the party.
Lily’s profane performance was hypnotic, and by the time she finished the jolly mood gave way to a kind of hunger that spread wordlessly throughout the hall. Those who kept their senses moved to private rooms to exercise their urges, but some, in fact many, simply couldn’t wait.
Tanglewood played the pianola with his back to his guests. He played the three songs he knew, and then he played them again. When he tired, he loaded the paper rolls and pumped the pedals, trying to look professional under the circumstances.
Lily followed Goud to a padded bench near the Faro tables, where he snuffed out the candles of her crown one by one. The Ophelia, darkened by just that much, began to hum with low, devotional murmurs and other unmistakable sounds of release. While bankers and merchants cooed like children, miners reverted to their native speech: German, Italian, and whatever witchy noises the Irish fell into when they’d drunk the barrel dry. As Goud caressed Lily’s breasts through her fragile garment, he also stroked the great green pendants. She enjoyed his fascination with the stones, and as he made love to her, she took particular delight in the knowledge that Lily Joy would be forever remembered for this evening, her last on earth and her greatest triumph.
* * *
While the men of the town were indulging in an orgy conducted by their own Messalina, Marcus Skinner was the only man of means not in attendance. He’d been left home like a cleric, alone with his wine and his imagination and his reports. Retained by a minority committee of stockholders, Skinner was investigating irregularities in engineering assessments for the Apollo mines.
The news was bad. The mines were indeed played. His research also showed that the original assays were fraudulent. He would say “in error” in his own reports, but he knew that the mines had been overrepresented from the start. There was nothing to be done.
Centenary was doomed. Skinner would make his recommendations before the New Year. He’d already sold his own shares.
Things were changing. The painting of the Dutch children had lost its charm once the safe behind it was emptied. He could claim that Becky had finally forced him to reveal his secrets, but if he were honest, he’d grown tired of the loneliness. Now his secrets were hers, all hers. It was liberating.
All Skinner had to do was hope Becky would keep their bargain: she could do what she liked with the emeralds, anything at all, but she could not reveal what they were. He’d told her that they’d both go to jail, and that she would be identified as his accomplice. She pretended to believe him, like any good wife would. It didn’t matter. If The Juliet was discovered, Becky and Marcus would lose her, one way or another.
Once the idea of the Ophelia fête had been conceived, Becky set to work on her costume, which involved the delicate work of separating the emeralds from their all too recognizable setting. She had traded with the dentist/abortionist Liegertz for temporary possession of a set of probes and files, knowing that the currency of her favors also bought discretion.
Marcus took a glass of claret outside into the sharp night air. He and Rebekah were quietly beginning to move their things into Hogg’s house, even though the lottery in which the Skinners would “win” the property was a week away.
The view from the bluff was breathtaking. The lights of High Street burned a comet’s tail across the dark desert.
Rebekah was down there in the Ophelia being wicked. She’d promised it would be her final outing as Lily Joy. She cited many reasons, most having to do with discretion, but the most credible explanation she had offered was that she did not want Lily Joy to grow old. She also claimed that the secret of The Juliet would sustain her.
So many good reasons, she had. Sometimes Martin wondered if Becky was planning to have him killed.
He imagined that she was being taken by many men, though in a courtly, polite manner, each taking his turn. He wished he could be there for her, stroking her brow as she endured them all. She’d shown him her get up earlier that afternoon, and though his brain boiled with lust for her, the blood did not obey—not then anyway. It did now, as his imagination swam.
Now that his secrets were hers, they’d have something to talk about, wouldn’t they? There was much she didn’t know about his old life in Philadelphia. He never imagined that sharing The Juliet would bring him such hope. It was strange to feel so good and know that disaster was imminent.
His cheeks stung, and for a moment he thought about that final day at Morecambe’s store. The funeral, the cold weather, Jilka. It was the last time he’d seen snow.
A flake settled on the top of his veined hand. A snowflake? It wasn’t impossible. He tilted his face to the sky, and he could see them then, tumbling down. A snow shower in the desert. He’d heard of such things. The flakes were fat and slow, resisting their own gravity, as if they knew how lost they were.
* * *
Goud awoke on the bench, alone in the dark. He was still inside the Ophelia, but there wasn’t another soul with him.
He knew his way out. He’d slumbered on these benches before.
His head was heavy as he shuffled towards the great doors of the Ophelia. Would the night, having been anticipated as The Ophelia Fête or The Doves’ Gala, still have a name in the morning? Angels had become devils, and at such a holy time of year. Would there be rumors and jokes, or would there be a great silence?
There would be a cost. There always was when magic was involved.
And his lovely Lily Joy…he’d mouthed every part of her body, even her green stones, and made her cry out. The union felt so final. And then at the end, he was mesmerized by the emeralds, asking her where they came from. She cooled suddenly, as if he’d been rude to her.
Perhaps he had been. He felt she would never take him again.
Goud found the doors and heaved them open to a fantastic sight: snow had fallen in Centenary. The heavens had covered the basin in pure, white snow. Goud paused to catch his breath.
Snow in the desert, after such a night, was too beautiful to be a blessing.
* * *
February 1908: Centenary, NV
Becky made her list for the week ahead. She was a list-maker now. Traveling up and down the bluff was simple enough, but not with supplies in tow. Before she made the journey to Centenary Mercantile she had to write it all out, and be careful with her numbers. Gone were the days when she could step outside her door and pick up a saddle of rabbit and a few turnips to improvise the evening meal.
Becky paused over her work. It was too late to start a garden, wasn’t it? In the basin, gunshots echoed, something that didn’t happen as often as it used to.
The contest was over, the results announced, and Hogg’s bottle house was now called the Skinner place. Though it was only the middle of the day, long shadows kept the house a little too cold for Becky’s taste, but Marcus reminded her how grateful she would be come summer.
She was grateful already, quite glad to be out of common contact with the citizens of Centenary, especially after Marcus’ report was made public. The town’s collapse, which had begun as soon as the mines showed signs of petering out, suddenly sped up. She watched it change from her vantage point on the bluff. First the clusters of tent homes disappeared, then construction stopped on the school. Some of the burros that patrolled the weeds around their home seemed awfully thin and confused. She assumed their owners had let them go in the hopes that they would join a wild herd.
Then, one night, the electric lights of High Street were not
switched on, and they remained unlit from that point onward. Centenary would no longer turn night into day.
Becky put more wood into the stove, but just enough to keep the embers going. Even after unpacking all of their belongings there was still so much to do. The Hogg children had managed to make a young house look old, and one of the first things Becky wanted to do was plaster over the bottles. It made her uneasy, feeling as if she lived in a glass house.
A sharp whistle from below the bluff meant a message had come for Marcus, but Marcus was in town. He still went into the office on a daily basis. Becky went out to the edge to tell the courier just that, but when she looked down there was no one waiting.
“Boy?” she called out. “Are you there?” There was no reply. If the kid was still down there he was probably passed out drunk. A year ago she would have climbed down to his aid, but a year ago he would have delivered his news and received a tip before going off to drown in the beer. Centenary was crumbling around the edges.
Becky returned to the bottle house, pausing on the threshold. She could smell him. The sweat, the filth, the alcohol. Someone was inside her new home, and it wasn’t the courier, either.
She recognized this particular pungency. The kitchen knives were a few steps closer than any of the guns Marcus kept, but her visitor was even closer. She smiled her brightest and widened her eyes. “Arthur?” she said. “Are you really here?”
Becky stepped inside and gasped when she saw him. He was so covered in grime that his eyes seemed to glow. This was not the natural soil of a working man, this was something else. Soot?
“Arthur, you tricked me.” Becky’s smile never faltered. “How charming.”
He pushed the door closed behind her, leaving dark trails from his fingertips behind. “Lily,” he said.
“Lily is retired, my love.”
“Why did you leave me?” he rasped. He’d lost a front tooth since she last saw him.
“You lost a tooth,” she said, placing her pristine hand on the side of his face. “I left the life, not you.” And that was the truth she had not even shared with her husband. In the year that she had worked at the Ophelia she saw how the men who visited slowly became ghosts of themselves as their despair in the mines outpaced the delights of the body. It was only a matter of time before the brothel became a squalid dope den like the ones in Ballarat. Marcus’ report would only hasten that decline.
He took her hand from his face, completely enclosing it in his. Then he reached out and placed his other hand around her waist. She could feel the vibrating power just under his pretense of his tenderness.
“I’m a married woman, Arthur.”
“I’ll kill Skinner for you.”
It wasn’t a terrible thought. Becky often wondered if she should kill Marcus and run off with The Juliet, but that would take effort. Now Arthur Goud was offering to do it for her, but that would leave her with Arthur—the perfect example of the despair she’d hoped to leave behind.
“You read too many dime novels,” she said, hoping to flatter him.
He pulled her close in a rancid embrace, the greasy soot transferring to her dress and skin. His kiss was foul and deep, and as she struggled he simply held her still until she understood the truth of the situation.
Only one of them would survive.
* * *
Back east, an establishment with a French name meant a guarantee that the proprietors would make an effort, but in the desert such flourishes were mostly nostalgic and sometimes even apologetic. The watering hole called Le Bonsoir was little more than a shelter over plank tables and benches, but these days Marcus Skinner preferred its raw shabbiness to the fading elegance of the public houses on High Street. He was about to stop in for a beer when he nearly collided with a rank, stumbling prospector he almost did not recognize. Arthur Goud.
Goud attempted to stand his ground but he was shaking hard. He was a sick man.
He said to Skinner, “Used to have my fortune told by yours.”
Marcus nodded. “You could try to get your money back, I suppose.”
Goud gave the attorney a wild look, but Marcus was unimpressed. The once-savvy miner was nothing more than a burned-out drunk. He should have left when his brothers did, more than a year before, having packed up their tent homes one by one, each of them leaving by night. Only Arthur stayed. He kept digging and digging, and only God knew why.
Goud swung a satchel over his shoulder, and Marcus stepped back to avoid being hit by it. He watched as the wrecked prospector climbed up to High Street. Those he passed gave him a wide berth.
Eventually, Goud paused in front of the stock exchange. He placed his satchel in the street. He reached in and extracted a small bottle.
“Arthur, stop!” Marcus yelled, but he was too far away to prevent the inevitable.
Goud drank from the bottle and almost immediately collapsed. A cloud of dust burst around him.
By the time Marcus Skinner reached High Street, a crowd had gathered. Goud had swallowed several ounces of carbolic acid, the corrosive effects of which were rapid and irreversible. The miner shuddered as his insides burned away.
Bankers and school children came out in the noonday sun to watch him die. It was the least they could do. Arthur Goud had made his choice. When he finally stilled, his dirty face was burned red around the mouth, nose, and jawline as if he’d been beaten with a fiery club. Someone had already fetched an old horse rug, and a couple of the bankers began to roll the corpse onto it.
Marcus hoped the children would remember this part of the day, when men in expensive suits, starched collars, and gold watch chains raised up Arthur Goud on a rug to transfer him to the deadhouse.
* * *
The bottle house was still. The fire was out, no lamp burned, and supper wasn’t waiting. Becky waited in the dark, a quilt over her lap. She heard someone enter the house, and she was ready. If it was Arthur, he was there to finish her off. Her neck burned where he’d tried to strangle her. If it was Marcus, he would assume she had finally run away from him, especially if he checked the strong box first and saw that The Juliet was no longer inside it. Would he even look for her?
“Becky?”
“Marcus,” she whispered. The relief brought tears to her eyes. When Marcus found her the bedroom, he lit the lantern but halted when she produced a Colt revolver from underneath the quilt.
Becky said, “Thank you for showing me how to use this.” She had meant only to hand the weapon back to him, but when she saw that Marcus misunderstood her intention—he was frozen in place, fearing for his life—she realized that this was one of those moments upon which everything in her life depended. She could leave and become someone new again, or she could stay and remain Becky Skinner for the rest of her life.
She began to laugh, and that frightened Marcus even more. She was probably quite a sight, with her hair mussed and her dress torn at the shoulder. “You’d better take this back,” she said, when she recovered. “So how was your day, darling?”
Marcus would be justified in thinking that his young bride had lost her mind. “You’ve been attacked,” he said. He accepted the Colt from her and examined it. “You haven’t shot this.”
“Not yet, but it’s a comfort nonetheless.”
“It was Goud, wasn’t it?” Marcus asked. There was a note of fatality in his voice. “How’d you fight him off, then?”
“I didn’t,” she replied darkly. “How did you know it was him?”
Again, Marcus had taken her meaning wrong. He returned the Colt to the night table and said, “I’ll fetch the doctor, if you need him.”
“I don’t.” Becky touched her neck. “Marcus, I tried to pay Arthur off. He’s insane. He nearly killed me, so I gave him The Juliet.”
Marcus stiffened. “You gave him The Juliet? You should have just shot him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Becky said, throwing aside the quilt completely. There in her lap lay the emera
lds, nestled in a satin handkerchief. “He wouldn’t take them. I’m telling you, the man is mad.”
Now Marcus was offended. “He wouldn’t take them? Why the hell not?”
“It’s all that mumbo jumbo, my dear. The cards, the omens. Arthur was a believer.” Becky selected one of the stones and held it in the palm of her hand as if it were a truly mystical object. “He said they were cursed. That I was cursed by owning them.”
Marcus took the emerald from her. It was the smaller half, but it shone brilliantly by the light of the lantern. He returned it to Becky’s lap, next to its twin. “And he just left you alone, then?”
“You sound skeptical, Marcus. That’s unkind.”
Marcus Skinner sat on the edge of the bed, weary of so much emotion. Becky leaned forward and tucked her hand inside his. He brought it to his lips for a kiss.
“‘Who can find a virtuous woman,’” he said. “‘For her price is far above rubies.’”
* * *
March 1922: Centenary, NV
Mollina Grease was flat as a board, and if she were in Philly or New York or Chicago, she would have fit right in with the flappers in their spangly beaded gowns designed to show all even when there was nothing much to show. But she was in Death Valley, stuck inside an old-timey bustle and corset affair padded to suggest a womanly figure Mollina herself did not have. In fact, as the only female stunt actor for National Pictures, nearly all of her costumes were designed to be worn by men.
No one had heard of National Pictures. The company was an upstart, and Mollina, not pretty enough for face acting, had been hired on to do the rough stuff. The president of the company brought her on as a kind of good luck charm because she was the only child of Gabe Grease, a famous trick rider in traveling “Old West” shows. Gabe Grease was notorious for showing up the drunkard headliners who acted like heroes because they’d massacred so many Indians. He had passed on the performing itch to Mollina, and she was lucky to find work getting tossed around. Directors liked her because she knew how to fall like a woman and survive like a man.
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