Summers, True

by Poppy

  "He spends a lot of time in Sacramento. Good luck to you at the Eureka, Poppy."

  The Eureka was five doors up the street from the Palace, but a steep drop down socially. The carpets were crimson, but brighter strips showed where places had been patched, not the whole replaced. The lifesize oil paintings of languorous ladies, nude and voluptuous, had frames as wide and elaborately carved and gilded as any in town, but the artists had favored bright pinks, blues, and yellows. The musicians were noted, even in a drinking town, for deep thirsts and loud music. The dealers were as immaculate in black and white and as soft-voiced as any at other tables in town, but strangers were warned their hands were as quick on their guns as on their cards. The gleaming bar was mahogany, and the shining mirror reflected rows of bottles, but rumor had it the expensive contents were not always the fine imported brands of the labels. The bartenders were deft and quick, but their skills were reputed to include magnificent mickeys.

  The girls were young and pretty, but the men who wished their company only for a drink sought them out early. Later they disappeared one by one on the arms of escorts and did not return.

  Only the two who had worked at the Palace were different. Pretty, lack-witted Phillipa drifted in, moved decoratively and slowly through the hours, and vanished as quietly as she did everything else. Poppy, too, stayed the long evening and was known to leave alone in the hired carriage that waited for her every night.

  Poppy was unhappily aware she was not as soignee as she had been at the Palace. Her Paris wardrobe had been handsome, complete but not extensive, and a year's wear had left her with only two possible gowns for evening. Both were subtly dated in style and trim. She yearned over the new imports with the changed fashionable flare of skirt and cut of waist, but despaired at the prices.

  Dressed in rustling silk, sipping champagne, Poppy smiled at the men who told her she was beautiful, deftly avoided their hands, sang snatches of the songs the band played, and chattered, watching, listening, waiting for something, but she did not know what. Casual-sounding questions, phrased as gossip, only informed her the English banker that the Pannet girl was so crazy about had been in town and had left again. Maybe he was coming back, or maybe he had sailed for home. Nobody really knew. If Jeremiah heard she was in town, he did not come to the Eureka. More miners straight from the diggings came in there than had at the Palace.

  They tipped lavishly when their pokes were full, but strikes were few in winter. The city men, except those who lingered with the more compliant girls, came in only to have a quick drink and a word with other businessmen.

  Poppy listened to their talk. Some of it was about the new growing wave of lawlessness and whether it would be necessary to bring back the Vigilantes. More was of money, and much she did not understand, though as always real estate was booming.

  She dared not sell her houses. That roof and the rent were her security, her assurance she could not end homeless and hungry. But her poke did not fill. It grew steadily lighter.

  She could not cut expenses. The days were cold and gray, with pounding rains and thick fogs. The price of wood to heat the house dismayed her, but she bought. She could not afford to catch a cold. She had to hire a carriage to take her back and forth to the Eureka. Jobs were scarce and money tight, so the streets were not safe even in the gray daylight, if she had been willing to risk her delicate, wide-skirted dresses on the muddy streets.

  That day started badly. The rain clogged the chimney, and the house filled with smoke. When she got out her best dress, the green silk with the silver-braid trim, she saw that the elaborate scrolls of braid around the hem had been ripped loose and the silk torn past all mending. She had been too tired the night before to know when or how it had happened.

  The week before she had gone to her favorite shop. She had yearned over a brilliant blue gown with layers of overskirts that paled in graduated tones to a pale azure at the bodice, which was cut so it cupped her shoulders like the petals of a flower. She had disdained the yellow rep that was the only thing she could afford, and walked out without buying. Now she weighed her poke in her hand. She hated the yellow that faded the gold in her hair and made the red tones look coppery. She could not afford the blue. But she would buy it anyhow.

  This would be the first dress she ever had selected and bought for herself, with nobody at her elbow to censor her choice, and she would never own a lovelier one. So, smiling, she walked into the shop and described it.

  "Oh, miss, that was perfect on you," the owner remembered. "Just yesterday, what a pity."

  "You've sold it?"

  "Miss Pannet. Usually she orders direct from Paris, but she saw that, and she would have it, though we had to tear it apart and are remaking it. She's so petite."

  Petite but big enough to take everything she wanted, Poppy thought, choking, fists clenched. Dex first. Now the blue dress.

  "You did consider the yellow?"

  "No," Poppy cried and started to fling out of the shop. Then necessity drove. She had to have something. "What else do you have?"

  "One dress, a special order rejected."

  "By Felicite Pannet? Not good enough for milady?"

  "Oh, no, you wouldn't mind that, I'm sure." The woman clasped her hands tightly in embarrassment. "By one of Madame's, the Frenchwoman's, girls."

  Poppy laughed shrilly. "Let me see it. I'm not offended by that."

  Poppy saw why the dress had been rejected. The layers of delicate embroidered white silk voile were unseasonable, but worse, the merest spark from a cigar would destroy its freshness permanently. She shuddered as she pictured a large brown bum on those skirts.

  "Not practical," Poppy sighed.

  "Not for one like that, in and out of her clothes," the woman agreed and touched the tiny gold and glass buttons. ''Thirty of these, miss, and it takes patience, they're so small." Then she blushed. "If you don't mind my mentioning it."

  "What else?" Poppy sighed.

  "There's a purple velvet, the finest French velvet, but you're young for such a color."

  "Purple's for royalty, isn't it?" Poppy said. She seldom remembered that. "Sounds nice and warm. Let's see it."

  The purple was ruinously expensive, but it made her eyes look the same deep-velvety color and turned her hair into a glowing halo. Poppy took it and wore it to the Eureka that night.

  The minute she walked in, she realized the place was tense as a fiddle string. Phillipa had painted a thick mask on her face, but it could not conceal that her face was swollen from long weeping. Poppy whispered a question but Phillipa, inarticulate as always, only shook her head and sidled away. Clyde whispered a customer had challenged a dealer's card, and the dealer had shot too quick and too straight. The customer was dead, and the dealer was in jail. The gambling tables were almost deserted. By tomorrow, everybody would have forgotten, but now the dealers handled the cards slowly, and the few players laid only small bets. Joe, the young Italian waiter, came up for an order, limping. The night before, some thugs had cornered him in an alley on his way home.

  Because he had not pulled out his poke fast enough, they had knocked him down and kicked him senseless. He was lucky to be alive, he confided out of the side of his mouth as he passed with the loaded tray. Later, when two businessmen came in and told how their stage had been held up, on their way back from a trip to inspect some mine machinery, nobody was surprised. Violence was in the air.

  "Vigilante times are a'coming again," Clyde murmured to Poppy.

  She shivered and gulped the champagne in her glass, wishing it were something as strong as brandy. She only wanted this night to end, but she had a role to play. She smiled and moved closer to the two men who had been held up, but the younger, red-faced one was staring over her head.

  "Prettiest girl I ever seen, but all blubbered up from crying," he said to his friend. "In the lacy ruffles over there. Say, pretty girl, come have a drink with us."

  Even more slowly than usual, Phillipa joined them and stood looking pre
tty and saying nothing.

  "Cat got your tongue, pretty girl?"

  Phillipa's eyes widened. "It's a cold evening," she said uncertainly. Comments on the weather were the extent of her conversational powers, hut she did try, "And turning colder."

  "That isn't what I asked."

  Poppy laughed and patted his arm. "She's too afflicted to tell you, sir. Just buy the pretty girl a drink, and that will help."

  The man jerked his arm free. Plainly he had had several drinks to help him reccver from the shock of being held up. "I didn't ask you. I asked her."

  Phillipa looked terrified, and her lips began to quiver.

  "Her kitten died, sir," Poppy improvised desperately. "Such a pretty kitten, and she loved it."

  The man shoved her aside. "I don't think it was any kitten. Let her answer for herself."

  Already shaken, Phillipa wailed and turned to flee. The man swore, then caught her arm and jerked her around to face him. Joe, again loading his tray at the bar, crashed it down. He caught Phillipa and whirled her around behind him.

  "The lady is upset, sir," he said, breathing heavily. "She'd like to retire."

  "I'll retire you, you two-bit tray juggler," the man said, and hit Joe hard on the jaw.

  Joe sagged, his knees collapsed, and he crashed down. His head hit the brass rail with a dull, hollow thud. Remembering another hollow thud, Poppy bit back a scream and fought against a dizzying wave of blackness that left her blind and staggering for a moment. A piercing shriek jolted her upright.

  Phillipa was on her knees beside Joe. "You've killed him, you've killed him," she wailed. "He was half killed already, and I was up nursing him all the night, and now you've killed him completely. He's dead, my Joe's dead!"

  So she's Irish, and that's more words than I've heard her say in all these months, Poppy thought dazedly. And Joe's the reason she came to work here.

  "I'm a doctor," a man said. "Let me look. Stand back. Everybody away, please." He knelt and prodded briefly and looked up. "I don't know. If somebody will call a carriage, I'll take him to the hospital."

  "There's no money," Phillipa shrieked. ''They took all his money and half killed him, and now he's killed completely, and there's no money, and my Joe's dead!"

  Poppy shook her head free of the dizziness, snatched the tallest glass she could find, hoisted herself up on the bar, and scrambled to her feet. She fumbled her poke out of the placket where she had tucked it and held it up in one hand and the glass in the other.

  "We're all sorry this happened," she called. "I'm sorry. You're sorry. We're all sorry." She chanted like an auctioneer. "I'm sorry this much." She poured the little that remained in her poke into the glass where it glittered. "Poppy's sorry that much. All she's got. How sorry are you?"

  "Give that to me, I'll pass it," Clyde said and held up his hand and grabbed the glass. "Come on, boys. Fill 'er up, fill 'er up. We want to have this full up to give to the little lady to take to the hospital with her Joe. Fill 'er up before the carriage arrives. That's right, boys. Keep those pokes open and pouring."

  Poppy moved through the rest of the evening in a numbed daze. She had learned with Dex how treacherous wine could be, and she always tried to be careful. But that night every man in the place, and every man who came in and heard the story, insisted on buying her a drink. Many of them pressed gold pieces into her hand as they murmured awkward compliments. By the time her 'carriage was due, she did not know whether she was dead drunk or only dead tired. She got her cloak and walked to the door, pausing to steady herself for a moment on the bar.

  "Never mind," Clyde whispered. "Bad night, but the boss will have a little something extra for you at the end of the week."

  Poppy swallowed sickly. ''The men tonight, generous," she muttered. "Have you heard anything about Joe?"

  "Nothing," Clyde said and shook his head. "But that's two, and these things go in threes. I wonder who the third one will be?"

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  POPPY dreaded going to work the next day. She if dawdled over her dressing, steaming invisible creases from the purple velvet and working her hair into a coronet of curls to form a crown above the short tendrils that framed her face.

  Formless fears shadowed her mind. When she finally forced herself through the door of the Eureka, she hesitated there as if balancing on the edge of a precipice before letting out her breath in a long sigh of relief. Everything was almost as usual.

  The band was playing, the gambling tables were busy, and Clyde wall working a full bar. Yet as she walked into the room, her step dragged. Everything seemed subtly damaged and sinister. She winced and moved away from the brighter strip of carpeting near one of the tables, doubtless replacing the bloodstained one. The brass rail of the bar was freshly shined and polished until it glittered as harshly as the barrel of a loaded gun. The girls were moving around too fast, as if they were trying to give the impression of being double their number. A young blond giant was working Joe's place, looking uncomfortable in a too-small white coat.

  Poppy disposed of her cloak and strolled over to lean on the bar. Clyde eased toward her, polishing a glass over and over.

  "Gone," he said, breathing on the glass and giving it another rub. "Before they ever got him to the hospital."

  "Phillipa?"

  "Everett G. Wilton came in this morning," Clyde said impressively.

  "Wilton?"

  "Everett G."

  "Should I know him?"

  "Big man. Very big. Mines. Other things. Everything. Quiet. The quiet one."

  "Those two from the stagecoach? Oh." Poppy tried to recall the second man who had stood back while his companion blustered and bullied, but only had an impression of a middle-sized man in ordinary clothes with no-color hair and a face that was just a face. She said, "Oh, that one."

  "The other's gone, long gone, and I don't think we'll be seeing him around these parts again. Mr. Wilton said it was an accident and best to handle it quietly. Mr. Wilton said he was taking care of the funeral, and he would let us know. Mr. Wilton said he had sent his own minister to Phillipa, but she asked for a priest." Clyde breathed and polished again. "That upset him some, yes, that upset him."

  "Mr. Wilton said?" Poppy prompted.

  "He got her a priest, of course. And everything else she wanted.

  But that tells a story, when a man's upset because a girl's of a different religion. He's serious, very serious. Phillipa may be weeping her eyes out now, but she's a lucky girl, very lucky."

  Poppy remembered she had joked that someday a wealthy man would see Phillipa and take her home to keep as an ornament. The Prof had murmured more than once that many a true word was spoken in jest. "Did Mr. Wilton say anything else?" ,

  "He did. He said he wouldn't forget a girl who was willing to give the last grain of dust out of her poke for a friend. And if you ever needed anything, ever, anything, and he meant exactly that, you were to let him know. He left this for you."

  Clyde pulled something from his pocket and unobtrusively thrust it across the bar to Poppy. She looked down and gasped. The long elaborately wrought gold chain, made of half a dozen different fine chains intricately worked together into one heavy strand, ended in a nugget half as big as her fist.

  "Fine man, Mr. Wilton, fine man. He wouldn't leave a tip, not for what you did. A tip's for something ordinary, and he's got fine feelings for what's proper. So he meant that to be a personal thanks, a free gift repaid freely a thousand fold in kind, and don't you insult him by refusing it."

  "I wouldn't think of it," Poppy said, and put the chain around her neck where it hung warm and glowing against the purple velvet. "Anything else?"

  "Pamette didn't turn up, Georgie sent word she had a headache, and Clara says her feet hurt and she wants to go home. What did they think they were working, a church supper? We've passed the word all over town that we need more girls-right now. But meanwhile, you do your best. Just keep moving."

  "I'm moving."

 
The Eureka was at the same time quieter than usual and noisier. The regulars were quiet, dropping by for a glance at the papers or a fast drink with a friend and leaving quickly. An exceptional number of strangers, transients who must have heard this was the gaudiest, toughest spot in town, swaggered in, loud-voiced and rambunctious, looking for trouble. Oppressive looks from Clyde and the new giant waiter sent them out again after a single drink. The miners from the diggings gawked at Poppy's purple velvet and whispered together over the size of the nugget, but they were not inclined to waste the price of a drink. She smiled at them prettily. They were not troublemakers. That was the important thing tonight.

  Still, as the hours passed, her smile grew strained. That deaths went in threes, that anything went in threes, was sheer superstition. She did not believe it. But all the strangers wandering in, eyes glistening in anticipation of seeing some violence, of having a tale to tell when they got home about the dangers of the wicked city of San Francisco while they swaggered in the glory of surviving such terrors, were fraying her nerves.