by Megan Chance
Gideon is my only family now. He is all that matters. To think of what we will do with the money ... I suppose it will not be so hard, and I like Leonard well enough. And after that, it will be over, and I shall never have to do it again.
JANUARY 22, 1874--I have received Leonard's invitation to a private supper at his club. Along with it came a very beautiful snood of gold and diamond and pearl.
I have accepted. Gideon seems satisfied, and though I drank a glass of champagne with him, I begged leave to retire early; my stomach is very upset.
JANUARY 25, 1874--It is done. I have fucked Leonard Jerome and he has given us ten thousand dollars as an investment in our new troupe, which is to be named the Price Company.
I am more persuaded than ever that I did the right thing. I went to the Club at ten o'clock, as Leonard instructed, and (because a child would ruin everything) I took one of Gideon's "precautions" from the drawer in the bedside table. I was not sure if Leonard had his own now that the Comstock laws have made them so very difficult to get; Gideon must have a prescription to procure them, and since Leonard is married with children I did not know if he could do the same.
He had taken care to bring all the best foods that the kitchen could provide--we had oysters and wine and roast capon that he cut and fed to me from his fingers, and sweet grapes and strawberries which came from someplace faraway that I cannot remember. I did not eat very much, as my stomach was still upset, but I did not turn away the wine, and by the time he led me to the chaise I was drunk and relaxed and not at all averse to him and when I closed my eyes I imagined his kisses were Gideon's and the only thing that spoiled the illusion was the brush of his very big and bushy mustache against my skin. I did not have to offer any precaution after all, as Leonard had his own, and I was relieved for it, because I was not sure how I would explain it, given that that part of my relationship with Gideon is still secret and I was fairly certain that Leonard may have believed I was still a virgin--I know he doesn't suspect anything at all about Gideon. I have told him Gideon is like a brother to me, and he has not questioned it, which is good, as I think he would not want me if he knew exactly how unlike a brother Gideon is!
I made convincing enough moans I think. In any case, he seemed satisfied and called me all kinds of endearing things afterward. I was relieved when it was over, and all I wanted to do was go back to my own room and sleep, but I pretended to be quite disappointed to leave him, and when he wrote out the cheque and gave it to me, I felt I might be sick, and I had to work to keep my smile, which was strange, as the money was what I had wanted most of all, and now that I had it I was out of sorts. I was near crying as Leonard's carriage took me back to the Fifth Avenue.
By the time I reached the hotel I was angry with the world, and, as Papa used to say when I was a little girl, wanting to fight the air because it was too easy to breathe.
I went to Gideon's room to give him the money. I thought I would just leave it on his bedtable, as it was very very late--after three a.m.--and I thought he would be asleep. I both wanted him to be and hoped he would be awake, because I knew I would not be able to sleep, and I wanted someone to snap at.
He was not in bed. There was an oil lamp burning low and he was in the bathtub, and he looked almost as if he were sleeping there. His hair was wet and slicked back from his face, and his arms were dangling over the sides, and when I saw him I loved him and was angry with him at the same time, and I could not move but only stared down at him until he opened his eyes--which were as sleepy as if he'd been smoking opium--and said, "You're back."
I took Leonard's cheque from my purse and held it out, letting it flutter down so that he must catch it with his wet fingers before it landed in the water. He sat up a little, and looked at it, and then he said, "I don't like cheques."
I told him very sarcastically that I thought Leonard Jerome was good for it, and he let it drop on the floor and said I had made our futures, but he didn't sound happy, and when I knelt down beside the tub and told him I loved him, he pulled me close to kiss me. Then he said, "You stink of him," and I said wasn't that what he'd wanted?
Then he grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into him so hard I fell into his chest and halfway into the water. He told me to take off my dress, which was soaked now to the waist. It was the blue-striped silk, which looks very well on me, and which he'd told me to wear tonight. It buttons down the front and he likes to watch me take it off. I supposed he thought Leonard would like it too, though I hadn't been able to bring myself to tease Leonard the way I liked to tease Gideon, and he'd taken the gown off himself and made quick work of it. When I thought of that, it made me angry again, and I shoved each button through its loop very roughly and peeled it off, and once I was done Gideon made me take off everything and when I asked him why he said he was checking for damage to his property and I grew so furious I stripped to my skin and pointed to the red mark above my breast where Leonard had kissed too hard. I meant to make him angry and I did. He grabbed my wrist and jerked me into the tub and it was too small and awkward and water spilled out all over the floor. He was very rough with me--but I was rough with him too. I bit his shoulder twice hard enough to leave a mark and I hoped rather viciously that it would scar, though it has faded to just a bruise, and I have a bruise too, very large and painful, on my hip, where he'd gripped me so hard when he spent himself that I gasped and cried out my own release. It embarrasses me now to think how loud I was, because Gideon had to clap his hand over my mouth to muffle me.
This morning it was as if none of it had happened, and he has gone downstairs to put the cheque in the hotel safe until the banks open. On Monday, we are to commence looking for the rest of the Price Company, and he is to start arranging tour dates, and he has promised me that our future is very bright indeed.
CHAPTER 12
Seattle, Washington Territory--July 1881
T wo days later, Johnny pulled me aside and said, "I've scheduled dinner with our investor for tomorrow night. At the Occidental."
"The Occidental Hotel? Isn't that a bit uptown for us?"
"It's where he feels comfortable, honey, and my guess is we'll fit in just fine. Wear the widow's weeds. There ain't time to get anything new, and it makes you look respectable enough."
"With the veil?" I asked.
Johnny shook his head. He ran the back of his finger down my scar, making me shudder, and gave me a smile that reminded me that I'd once seen him almost kill a man with his bare hands. "No veil. Best if he knows who he's dealing with. A little fear don't hurt."
"Afraid of me?" I laughed a little shakily. "Oh, I doubt that."
"He won't know how you got it, now will he?" Johnny asked. "Maybe he'll think I gave it to you."
I stepped away, and Johnny laughed and said, "Just bring your charming self to the table, Margie. And make sure it's the charming you, not the Medusa."
"Who enraptured men with her gaze, as I recall," I said.
"We need him alive and ready to hand over cash. Not turned to stone."
He left me to go into his office, and I stood at the bar and watched the floor. Charlotte sauntered up, smiling, and when I smiled back at her, she said, "I got a surprise for you."
"What?"
"You'll see," she said, and then she stepped away again, her hips twitching beneath the satin frock, and I watched her go and found myself humming--something that had been happening far more often in the last two days. I had guarded even against that; my voice was the most recognizable thing about me, and I could not take the risk. But she had not recognized it, and I began to think, why not? It was only humming, after all, and silly little songs, and surely it was safe enough. And it loosened something inside me, a tentative joy I had not felt in a very long time. "You were happy when you were singing," Charlotte had said, and I knew that was true. Perhaps the truest thing about me, if she could have known it.
THE NEXT MORNING, Charlotte swept into my room like a storm. I woke, startled at the noise of the door bo
uncing against the wall. Before I could comprehend it, she had jerked open the curtains so the sun filled the room, and I blinked, my eyes watering at the sudden light.
"You overslept," she said. "I expected you in my room an hour ago."
I peered out the window. The sun was high in the sky; it was past noon. I sat up, pushing back the hair I'd neglected to braid the night before. "I'm sorry. Had we some plan for today?"
"It's time for my surprise. Get up. Get dressed!"
Dutifully I rose, stumbling to the ewer, pouring water to wash. "What are we doing?"
"It wouldn't be a surprise if I told you, now would it?"
I dressed quickly, and she took me from the boarding-house and past the blooming sweetbriar twined about the rail, into the street. The day was already hot and shimmering. The Mountain was hazy, as if we viewed it through the dust rising with our every footstep, and men wiped the sweat from their faces with their neckcloths as if it were much later in the day. There was a group gathered about the Puget Sound Ice Company buggy, leaning close to feel whatever cool air there was as the delivery man unloaded the chunks of ice with large metal pincers, dropping wet sawdust to the street.
Charlotte led me without hesitation down one block and up another, and then we were climbing the steep hill of Mill Street's skid road to the Occidental Hotel and then onto Jefferson.
"Where are we going?" I asked, trying to catch my breath. There was nothing up here, only half-cleared lots and houses and the Brewery.
"It ain't much farther," she said. Before long, she stopped be fore the Gothic-styled clapboard of Trinity Episcopal Church, with its arched windows and door and wretchedly ugly bell tower that could be seen from the Lava Beds.
Charlotte smiled. "Here's your surprise."
"A church?" I frowned and started to turn away. "Charlotte, I haven't set foot in a church in ... a long time. I've no wish to hear a sermon, and--"
"Don't you dare walk away," she said, stopping me. "We're going inside."
"Why? Are you worried for my mortal soul?"
"Yeah, that's exactly right." She rolled her eyes. "Christ, Marguerite, you think I got any interest at all in getting you into a sermon?"
"I don't understand."
She took a deep breath. "A customer of mine said there was a choir here. I think you should join it."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"I already talked to Mr. Anderson. He's the master of the choir. We're here to see him."
"Charlotte, I can't sing in a choir."
"Why not?"
"Why would they have me? This is Trinity. Society comes here."
"You said before they wouldn't snub you."
"It's not that--"
"Too late. I already told him what a beautiful voice you have. He wants to hear it."
I shook my head. "I can't. I'm sorry. I know you meant well but I can't."
She stepped over to me. "D'you remember that night on the wharf? You remember what I said?"
Reluctantly, I said, "That singing made me happy."
"At least talk to him. He's waiting to see you."
She looked anxious, and I felt an uneasy guilt. I did not want to hurt her or to spoil her obvious pleasure in her surprise, but neither could I do this.
"Just talk with him a moment," she pleaded.
He was only a choirmaster. What could it hurt to talk to him? I didn't have to agree to stay, or to sing, and it would please her. So I nodded. "I'll speak with him. But only that."
Her smile broadened. "All right."
I sighed and followed her inside.
The nave was quiet and dim, lit only by the sunlight coming through the windows on one side and making the stained floors and the well-tended, uncushioned pews glow. The altar was hung with a purple and white silk cloth and flanked by candlestands. The risers for the choir were behind it, and a small upright piano was at one side.
I had not been inside a church for some time, and now--as I'd feared--it brought back memories from so long ago it seemed another world. I remembered the pounding chords of the organ and the organist who sprawled across the keys as if he and the instrument were one. I remembered the heavy robes hanging in the wardrobe, smelling of sweat and must, decades old, raising dust motes to float in the sunlight that always made someone sneeze whenever they were put on....
I heard the sound of boot heels. A neat woman in brown came from a doorway near the altar, bearing a feather duster. She stopped when she saw us, and said, "Oh--good morning, ladies," and made to turn away as if to give us the privacy to pray, but Charlotte hurried forward.
"Pardon, ma'am," she said. "We're here to see Mr. Anderson. About the choir."
The woman turned back again, obviously delighted. "Oh yes, of course. Please, come this way." She skirted around the corner, disappearing into a doorway on one side of the altar, and with a quick glance at me, Charlotte followed.
I came more slowly. I followed them, passing the choir robes hung in a shallow alcove--purple, worn satin--to a hall that led to two doors. The woman stopped before one of them, rapping sharply.
"Mr. Anderson! I've someone here to see you!"
"Come in, come in," said a deep voice, and she opened the door and ushered us into a small office, closing the door behind us. Inside was a tall, stooped man sitting at a table; behind him were rows of shelves lined with hymnals and sheet mu sic. A jumble of music stands and a leaning piano bench were jammed into a corner. Next to them was a small bookcase littered with sheets of music scribbled upon with spidery handwriting. There was a narrow case on a shelf above it--I recognized it as similar to one from my own past, and I knew it held a triangle or perhaps chimes. Beside that was a row of golden bells. There was not much room to stand. Charlotte and I were so close to the table that served as his desk that our skirts brushed up against it.
Mr. Anderson glanced up, his blue eyes watery through the thick glass of his wire spectacles. His nose was long and beaklike, his hair gray but still abundant except where it receded sharply at his temples.
"Ah yes, Miss Rainey," he said to Charlotte. He glanced at me. "This must be the friend you spoke of."
"Miss Marguerite Olson," she said, introducing us, and I took Mr. Anderson's proffered hand. His glance slid down my scar before sliding unobtrusively away.
"Miss Olson, I'm delighted," he said. "Miss Rainey tells me you have an interest in joining our choir."
"I'm afraid she spoke too soon."
He raised a wiry, rather unkempt brow. "You don't wish to join the choir?"
"Oh yes she does," Charlotte put in.
"Have you ever sung in public, Miss Olson?"
I hesitated. I would have said no had Charlotte not been standing there. "As a child," I said, the half lie only, the one she knew.
"And not since? But there's no need to be afraid. You won't be alone. There are ten others in the choir. We rehearse on Sunday, after we sing at the morning service."
"You see? That won't get in the way," Charlotte said.
Mr. Anderson peered at me with his watery eyes. "Do you read music, Miss Olson?"
Charlotte spoke before I could. "Yes. She chooses the music for the girls at the Palace."
"The Palace," he said slowly, and I thought I was saved.
"The boxhouse," I said in relief. "I'm Johnny Langford's partner. So you see, Mr. Anderson, I am sorry to waste your time--"
"That ain't a problem, is it, Mr. Anderson?" Charlotte asked quickly. "She ain't a whore."
"We are all lambs of God, Miss Rainey," he said. He looked at me. "As are you and Mr. Langford, Miss Olson. Your ... position ... holds no impediment to the choir."
"Oh, but--"
"Miss Rainey led me to believe you wanted to join," he said. "Please don't let any nervousness you might have keep you from trying. The choir here at Trinity is well regarded in the city. I flatter myself that I have some skill in bringing voices together to form a pleasing whole. We've recently purchased a pipe organ--we'll be lengthenin
g the church to make room for it later this year. So, you see, I have high ambitions for the choir."
"A pipe organ," I said, startled by the announcement, by what it meant: Seattle had a church large enough to buy a pipe organ, large enough to support one. "Have you someone to play it?"