“Of course,” Alma said.
She left him, then, alone in his office. She was discovering that watching him mope and self-pity was the most infuriating thing in this town, even more infuriating than the way Elise the whore licked her lips, or Beryl raised her eyebrows in judgment each time Alma looked at Solomon. She returned to the hotel and waited in her room for evening, when Abraham would return to the offices. When she heard the men returning from the mines, she went to the offices and up to his door.
She knocked. He answered: “Come in!”
Abraham looked five years older, though it had only been a year. His beard was stringy and thin and he no longer shaved the top of his head so studiously, so thin wisps of fuzz sprouted all over the place. He had lost more teeth. “Alma,” he breathed. “Hello. It’s good to see you.”
“And you, sir,” she said, taking a seat without asking.
He had lost much of his aura of power. He seemed like a tired old man more than anything. Alma waited for a few moments to see if he would talk. When he didn’t, she got into it: “Look at you, Abraham. You’re breathing so heavily I’m afraid you might blow this whole office down! Think of your legs! Your back! You must be in monstrous pain.” Alma’s voice was full of sympathetic, caring tones: tones of a woman who is genuinely distraught by what she is seeing. “You need to stop this,” she said, now pleading. “Please, Abraham, I care about you too much to see you in this much pain. Let Wallace take over. There is no shame in it. He is your son. He is ready. You have trained him well.” I have, anyway.
For a moment he regarded her as though he would throw her out of the office. Some of his old fire came into his face. Alma half expected him to smooth his hand over his wispy hair and exclaim: “I am not an old man yet!” But he didn’t. As soon as the fire entered his eyes it left. He deflated before her, his shoulders slumping, and let out a heavy sigh. “You’re right,” he said, and Alma felt a moment of triumph. This last year had been worth it, then. She did not let it show on her face; she would never make that mistake.
“You do not need to think less of yourself, sir,” she said. “You have showed great resilience in lasting this long at your age. Many men would have given up by now. Is it not true that DeBell and Gaston no longer roam as far as you do? Is it not true that both men have under their employ men who do that for them?”
Abraham admitted that it was true.
“Is it not acceptable, then,” Alma went on, “to pass on your responsibility to your son, whom you know you can trust above all others?”
He looked at her with such gratitude that Alma did not know whether to laugh or weep. He really thought, poor man, that she had his best interests at heart. He was truly under the impression that she was Alma the Angel, selfless in the extreme, a true saver of souls.
“I can finally rest,” he breathed. He nodded, and a smile broke out across his face. “I had never considered that I could rest but you, girl, you are something else. What are you? Eh? Tell me that. You are like no woman I have ever met. You are nothing like my dear dead wife. You are nothing like any woman . . . you are a goddess, a vixen, a . . . ah! I don’t know what you are, only that you cannot be a mortal woman.”
Alma found this speech ridiculous, but she bowed her head as though it was sweet to her ears. “You flatter me, sir,” she said. “But I am merely pointing out what you are too stoic to see. You no longer need to work yourself to death. You have built an empire. Now, enjoy it.”
Tears in his eyes, he nodded once more. “I will!” He laughed wildly and slapped the table. “Yes, yes, I will!”
Alma found Wallace in his office, leaning back in his chair. “How did it go?” he said, unable to hide the hope from his voice.
“Well,” she said, taking her seat. “You should go and see him to iron out the particulars.”
Wallace left the office.
Alma studied the chair, the high-backed, fancy chair that Wallace sat in. It was the kind of chair a man with delusions of his own power sat in. Alma believed she had robbed Wallace of many of those delusions, but he still sat in that chair like it was a throne. Imagine, she thought, a scarred girl from Bristol sitting in a chair like that! An abused, wretched, fleeing thing sitting in a chair like that!
Wallace returned. Like his father, he had tears in his eyes. He fell to his knees next to her and clasped her hands in his. “You’ve done it!” he cried, and kissed her cheek, her forehead, her nose. “You’ve done it! Look!” He waved a document in her face. “I’m in charge now. I’m in charge!”
Alma did not correct him. He could think he was in charge all he wanted. It may, in fact, help her to let him think it. “Yes, you are,” she said, returning his kisses. It was a perplexing paradox for Alma that she could scheme against this man whilst simultaneously desiring him. When she kissed him, and felt his beard against her lips, her body ached for his body. She imagined his cock, hard, sliding inside of her, and her cunt became warm, and wet, and an urgent longing fired throughout her body.
She reached down and grabbed his cock. “Let’s celebrate,” she said.
* * *
Her favorite times were when she and Solomon were alone in the stables. She would rest her head on his shoulder and he would wrap his arm around her, hold her close. For the first couple of months they had hardly spoken. Now, Alma had drawn him out. She discovered that his parents were indeed slaves and had both died in the years following the war. He had been raised by Beryl and had come to Calico with Beryl when she heard about the silver mines and the population explosion (if one-thousand miners can be called an explosion). He was a hard worker, played the harmonica and was a good, solid man with a good, solid body.
Though Alma had never been overly concerned with her body – with what she did with her body and with whom she did it – she did not allow her attraction for Solomon to move onto anything overtly lustful, to anything which would change their relationship from one of almost platonic affection to one of animalism, to the kind she shared with Wallace.
“What are your dreams?” she asked him that night, the night she had secured for Wallace a third of the company.
“Dreams?” he said, as though he did not understand the word. “When I was a boy, my dreams were not to starve. Now I am a man I suppose I have carried those dreams with me. Not to starve, to work hard, to get on in life.” Quietly, he added: “Maybe find a woman.”
“Nothing else?”
He stroked his knee with his forefinger, as he often did when he was thinking, tapping his foot as he did so. “I would like to read,” he said.
“Wait here!” she laughed.
She ran from the stables, into the hotel, past a bemused Beryl and a half a dozen drunken miners, into her room, and back down to the stables. “Slow down!” Beryl snapped, but Alma ignored her.
“Let’s edify you, Solomon!” she giggled, and sat down beside him, novel in hand.
Chapter 7
“I speak for my father now,” Wallace said.
Neither Bill nor Avery looked overly pleased at this revelation. Bill, whose face was so round it was difficult for him to grimace, managed it anyway. Avery looked like a skeleton, eyes sunken, hollowed out, twisted lips ghoulish. Alma stayed at Wallace’s shoulder. These men needed to see that she was part of this agreement. These men needed to see and accept that she, a relative stranger, had a hand in their business.
Avery sneered openly at her. “Are you in charge, Wallace, or is your whore?”
This was dangerous ground, Alma knew. She rushed forth and made her voice whore-like. “My master is in charge,” she said, sniveling. “He is in complete and total control; he can do whatever he wants with me.” She touched Wallace’s hand, carefully, like a slave touching an emperor’s hand.
“Easy,” Wallace said, brushing her away. “Like she says, I am in charge. I am your partner now, Avery, Bill. Is that so difficult to accept? Once, you were like uncles to me.”
“This is business, boy,” Avery said.
“And it is not you we have a problem with. We always knew one day you would take over the business. It’s her. Who is she, anyway? Some ghost, drifting into town!”
“She is my advisor,” Wallace said, but his voice was somewhat embarrassed.
Alma floundered. How to correct this? But nothing came to mind.
“Very well, she’s your advisor,” Avery growled. “But must she sit in on these meetings? Must she ride with you, making a mockery of the men? Must the men endure a trouser-wearing woman staring down at them? I say – and I think Bill feels the same – she should be your advisor in private, and should wear dresses too!”
Alma kept her face impartial when Wallace turned to her, and – with a wave of his hand – said: “That will be all for today, Alma.”
Alma saw in his face that he would not budge and if she pressed, she would be more than momentarily dismissed. She swallowed, nodded, and left the room. When she left the building, instead of walking toward the hotel, she walked out of the town, into the Mojave until the town was a speck on the horizon, and fell to her knees. She clenched her fists and smacked the sand until her knuckles were red and raw.
“Goddam Avery!” she screamed, punching the sand. “Goddam Avery! Goddam him! Bill I can take care of! But him, the skeletal fuck!”
Once this outburst was over, she rose to her feet, rubbed her knuckles, and brushed her knees. She took a deep breath as she began the walk back toward town. Entering the hotel, she approached the front desk. “Where is Elise?”
Beryl lifted her hands. “With a client,” she said. “Is something wrong, Alma?”
“No,” Alma said. “Life is wonderful. Life is one wonderful moment after another. I have never experienced anything as wonderful as life!”
She marched up the stairs and into her room.
* * *
After around thirty minutes, a knock came at her door. “Enter!” Alma snapped.
Elise wobbled into the room, her legs as unsteady as ever. She wobbled to the side of the bed and crashed into the chair. “Beryl said you wanted to see me, Alma.”
“I do.” Alma sat up in bed and looked at the whore, at the leathery folds of skin and the hopeless eyes and wondered how far it would take for Alma to become that. Not far, she decided, and knew she had to fight all the harder. “You once mentioned that you knew Avery DeBell. Do you still know him? Do you still see him?”
“I do.” Elise’s hopeless eyes became a little less hopeless.
“And are you still interested in promoting yourself?”
Elise nodded eagerly. “I am.”
“Then, please, find out something about him, something that will bring him under my power.” Alma gripped Elise’s hands. “Find out something that will put him beneath me, and I will raise us both above him. Now, please, turn your back.”
“Turn my back?”
“I need to collect some money.”
Elise dutifully turned her back. Alma lifted her mattress and pulled out two months’ wages. “Here,” she said, and thrust one months’ wages into Elise’s hand. “You get half on top of that once the job is complete. Do you understand? Something serious, Elise. Something damning.”
Elise nodded and licked her lips with a snake’s flickering tongue. “I understand.” She waddled from the room and closed the door behind her.
After about an hour – in which time Alma did nothing but stare at the ceiling and fantasize about the myriad ways she could kill Avery – another knock came at her door. “Yes?”
“Mr. Saville to see you,” Beryl said.
“He can come in.” She stood from the bed and smoothed her clothes down.
Wallace walked in with that awful sheepish grin on his face which made him look simple. He seemed to be expecting something, some rage, perhaps. He had the stance of a man expecting blows. But Alma did not rage at him. She knew that would only harm her cause. Instead, she waited.
He walked to her, laid his hands on her shoulders. “They are laughing at me, Alma,” he said. “They think I am not my own man. They think you are my puppet master!”
“What have you agreed to?” Alma whispered. His voice hid little.
“You are no longer to ride with me round the mines,” he said. “I will keep you on as my adviser, but only in the office.”
“What am I to do when you are at the mines?” she said.
“Go over the accounts,” Wallace said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Organize the files. Anything. But I will not be laughed at.”
She could have said: You would not be in this position if it were not for me. You would not have this power if it were not for me. But that bullet could wait. She was not the kind of woman to fire too soon.
He looked like a pouting little boy. Alma had to resist the urge to slap him across the face. She had been talked down to by men her entire life, starting with dear deserted Father and never ending, really, all throughout her life: old men, young men, in-between men, trying to claim her just because she was born with a slit and not a cock. She would not let this man talk down to her; neither would she reveal herself too soon.
Swallowing something sickly, she rested her head on his shoulder. “I understand, my love,” she said. “How awful it must be for you. You are so, so much better than them. Oh, my love,” and here she wrapped her arms around him, stroked him, caressed him, “you are a god compared to them.” Inwardly, she cringed. How could he believe this?”
But he did, and they stayed like that, hugging, for a long time.
* * *
They met in the stables, as they always did. Alma paced up and down, wringing her hands, kicking the walls, every so often muttering a curse so vivid that Solomon shrunk away from her. “Who do they think I am?” she muttered, wishing the stables were bigger. They were no good for pacing. “Some whore? Some fool to be laughed at? Nobody knows me, Solomon. You don’t even know me.”
“I know you better than they do, anyway,” Solomon said quietly, picking his nails with his small knife. “I know that you’re not this – this – temping sort of woman you pretend to be.”
“Ha!” Alma sank down next to him in the hay. “A temptress, you mean. Oh, Solomon, I am a temptress. Just look at you. Instead of resting for your early rise tomorrow, here you are, in the hay with me. Why are you here, if I have not tempted you?”
“I am here because I want to be here.”
“Ha! Men never know what they want. They think they want something and then, magically, they want something different. You’ll discard me soon. Or else they want unnatural things, like Father, and they force the women around them to adapt. Do you imagine I was born this way, Solomon?” She took his hand, ran her thumb along the ridges, the calloused fingertips. “Do you imagine I was born with a bonfire in my belly? I was quiet, meek, womanly, once.”
“I can’t imagine that,” Solomon said, squeezing her hand. “If your fire disappeared I think I’d be mighty scared.”
“So would I, now,” Alma said. “But it wasn’t always like that.”
She took a deep breath and went on: “When I was younger my father tortured me. I tried to think of different words to describe it for a long time, but it was torture, Solomon. Rape, if you insist on being explicit. For a long time, I mean . . . for a hellishly long time. Day after day, and my mother knew, and she did nothing. Once, my mother tried to kill me with a broom handle. Out of jealousy, I think. She was an ugly woman. I ran away, and ran and ran, and seduced and yes – once – I killed a man, a man who tried to rape me. He was on top of me and fumbling at his britches and instead of just letting it happen I reached and I found a bottle and I smashed it on his head and he fell and I hit him over and over and he bled and he died.” She breathed through her teeth. “I met his wife, you know, and she thanked me. Thanked me! And now I am here. My name is Rebecca Hardy, but I have had many names since then. Today I am Alma.”
She knew she was ranting. She had no clue why she told Solomon. She thought he could be trusted, but she
had thought the same before only to be betrayed. Something warm and wet was on her cheeks. She lifted her hand, brushed away tears. “Say something,” she urged.
Solomon kissed her on the lips. When they moved away from each other, he smiled softly. “Do you imagine this changes anything, Alma, Rebecca?” His smile grew wider. “I killed a man once, too. A white man who called me nigger and tried to make me shine his shoe. Out on the road, in the middle of nowhere, this man thought it was a good idea to stop and ask me to shine his boot. And when I said no he fought me—and I won.”
“Here we are, then, just two devils.”
“Here we are,” Solomon agreed.
“If I win, Solomon, I’m taking you with me.”
He nodded, and kissed her again.
Chapter 8
They had given Alma her own ‘office’ on the lower level of the building, at the back, in a room that smelled suspiciously of whisky.
Feeling like a spare part, she looked at the piles and piles of documents on the table before her. The Silver King Mining Corporation was woefully disorganized. Alma could not find any kind of order in the documents. They had just been thrown together, into a cupboard, ‘to be dealt with later’. Now, ‘later’ had come. For the first half of the morning Alma simply looked at them, fidgeted with her fingers, and wondered how in God’s name she would bring order to them. Wallace, she knew, was out there right now. Roach, she also knew, poor girl, was in the stables. And Alma was here, useless.
There was no reason for her to actually sort through the documents. This was, after all, just busy work. Nobody would care whether or not she did it. But there was something about their disorder that bothered her. How could rich men be so sloppy? she thought. How can they be allowed to be rich when this is how they treat their business?
She found she was gripping the edge of the desk, her fingernails digging into the wood. She started to think something along the lines of bad people get everything, whilst good people only suffer . . . but then reminded herself: I’m a bad person, and I’ve suffered plenty.
Romance: The Bad Boy Affair: A Second Chance Romance Page 101