Feeling so self-conscious of her appearance, she hung her head, not wanting anyone to see her face. She was humiliated. What if even Michael suddenly appeared before her? But she had to remember. Michael had seen her this way. He had even taken her into his room and had made love to her after having seen her look so terrible. She just hadn't known at that time . . . just how terrible . . . she had looked. She hadn't had a mirror at her Gran-mama's house to gaze into, to see the qualities about her appearance that were good … or poor. Now she was even more eager to get to her Papa's house . . . throw these dreaded clothes into a fire … and even laugh as she watched them burn.
“There. Over there,” Alberto said anxiously. “There is the marvelous train that Papa wrote us about, the one we shall ride to get to Papa's town. Hurry. We don't want it leaving us behind.”
Maria's eyes widened. To her, the train looked like some sort of black monster. And the smoke billowing upward from the smokestack reminded her of a dragon, puffing. People were boarding, attired in all sorts of ways. Some were almost as pitiful in appearance as she and Alberto, and some were elegant, the women in fully gathered dresses of silk, and the gentlemen with black frock coats and matching hats and breeches. The thing that grabbed Maria's attention the most about the women she was admiring were the different styles of hats perched atop their heads. Some hats had large feathers blowing in the gentleness of the breeze, and others appeared to be gardens, filled with assortments of beautifully colored flowers.
She sighed to herself. One day she would own such a hat. One day she would look just as lovely.
“Our tickets. I must first get our tickets,” Alberto said, stopping, setting their trunk down beside him. He searched frantically inside his pockets, then smiled broadly when he pulled the two tickets out. They had been somewhat damaged, due to the wet, damp temperatures aboard the ship, but they still represented further adventures for brother and sister. Alberto squared his shoulders, then kissed the tickets. “Let's go, Maria,” he said. He lifted the trunk to his shoulder and moved on along and boarded the train after having let Maria enter first.
Almost breathless from excitement, Maria moved into a car of the train, looking slowly around her, seeing how crowded it was. She recognized the look in many of the eyes, and knew this to be a look of immigrants, such as herself. She noticed that on this particular section of the train, none of the more elegant people were present. They had apparently been directed to finer cars. This particular car was drab, colorless, almost the same as that dreaded Ellis Island that would haunt Maria's dreams for many months to come. This car even stank almost the same, only more so of stale cigar smoke and an occasional whiff of some alcoholic beverage.
“Where can we sit, Alberto?” she whispered, inching her way down the long, narrow aisle.
“Just keep moving until you see two vacant seats,” Alberto said, furrowing a brow. He had expected more from such a fine train. He had expected possibly even velveteen seats and shades at the window. But only dark, ugly, uncomfortable-appearing seats, most of which were already filled with travelers, met his eye.
“I see two. Just up ahead,” Maria said, moving more quickly, afraid someone else might get there before her and Alberto. Breathing hard, she rushed ahead and settled down onto the seat. She placed her violin case on her lap, eyeing Alberto anxiously as he moved next to her, setting his trunk out in the aisle. Maria then watched all around her, wondering where everyone else aboard this moving giant was going. She held her head high. She was going to her Papa . . . Giacomo Lazzaro. How proud she was to be able to say his name . .. and know that he wasn't all that far away, now.
Michael was relieved to finally feel the vibrations in the floor beneath his feet, knowing that the train was moving away from the busy depot. He lit another Cuban cigar. He pulled a green velveteen curtain aside, then stood with hands clasped tightly behind his back, watching the New York skyline pass by him.
At one time, New York had been his playground. He knew all the nightspots. He had frequented them all with the most beautiful of female companions. But he had grown tired of this fast pace and had taken his fortune to the quieter, more conservative city of Saint Louis, Missouri. There, he had discovered the United Mine Workers of America and what the union represented to the poor, and hadn't been able to resist becoming involved, so vividly remembering his youth, and how his own father had slaved in a small shoe shop, barely scraping in pennies.
Michael had learned to hustle early in life. Lower Manhattan became his stomping grounds. His skills became that of a shoeshine boy, and he shined the shoes of the richest politicians and bankers. The tips he would receive were quickly turned into higher earnings when he learned the art of gambling. Dark rooms in back alleys at the age of thirteen had been the beginnings of Michael's wealth. And now? At age thirty-five, he could buy and sell most of those people who had been the recipients of his skills as a shoeshine boy.
A rustle of a skirt behind him made Michael turn with a start. A slow smile curved his lips upward, seeing Alice Moberly standing at his side, waiting patiently for his acknowledgment of her presence in this magnificent private car of the famous National Limited Train.
Michael's eyes wavered as he pulled the cigar from between his lips, realizing that he had ignored Alice. He studied her now and how shatteringly pretty she was, attired in a pale green serge traveling suit that accentuated the smallness of her waist and the soft curve of her breasts, and her blazing red hair circled in a fancy pompadour atop her head. Her facial features were petite and her coloring much too pale, but highlighted with a touch of pink rouge on the shallow slope of her cheeks.
She flashed her green eyes upward, smiling seductively as her tongue wetted her lips. In the past, this would have set Michael's blood to racing, but not this time. Maria, and what they had shared, were too fresh in his mind. An emptiness had been left inside him when she had walked away from him and his offer of marriage.
“Michael, you haven't said two words to me,” Alice purred, lifting her fingers to smooth a lapel of his navy blue, pin-striped woolen suit. She formed her lips into a soft pucker, as though ready to kiss him, then turned and walked away from him, sulking. “Not even a kiss, Michael?” she said, turning on a heel, facing him once again, her eyes now narrow, anger reflected in deeper colors of green.
Michael placed his cigar in an ashtray and went to her, taking only a hand in his. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I've much on my mind.”
“It's been a long time between kisses, Michael,” she said, tracing his lips with a forefinger. “I know of your restlessness. Your needs. Why is it you haven't pulled my clothes from me and thrown me across the bed? Has this trip changed you somehow?” She jerked her hand free, with lips suddenly straight and sealed, studying this man's blue eyes, the gentleness to the curve of his jaw and the hair that had now grown to curl in gold at the top of his shirt collar.
She had always marveled at his stubbornness when she had suggested that he wear the popular pomade that was used to slick a man's hair. Instead, Michael had preferred letting his hair lie in loose waves, curling at the ends, having liked being different, even though the sleekness of hair was more fashionable for men. He even parted it on the side, instead of in the middle, and these things made him appear more handsome than most men of his same age.
“Or is there another woman, Michael?” she whispered between clenched teeth. “Is that it? Did you meet another woman? Among the foreigners did you find someone who could please your sexual fantasies even better than I?”
Michael turned his back to her, knowing that the answer lay in the depths of his eyes. He knew that all she would have to do would be to take one look now, while his thoughts were so full of Maria, to reveal the truth to this woman who had been his steady female companion for two full years now.
Marriage had never been spoken of between Alice and himself. The sensual side to their relationship had begun shortly after Alice had become his private secretary, assisting him
in his business, the mammoth Hopper Shoe Company that had grown to be known all over the country.
Alice, being closer to Michael's age than Maria, had already left a trail of tumultuous love affairs behind her, and this alone was reason enough for Michael to have chosen not to ask for her hand in marriage. He had been watching and waiting for the right woman … a virgin … an innocent… to take as a wife.
Maria. Oh, how he now ached for Maria. She was all that he had wanted in a wife, and even more so, being so gifted in beauty and bodily proportions. “Oh, God,” he worried further to himself. She had trustingly given up her own virginity while in his arms. And now he had let her slip through his fingers. She was now gone from his life, to never be again. . . .
“Michael,” Alice stormed, moving to his side. “You haven't heard a word I've said. Please tell me. What is it that's bothering you?”
Michael went to a desk and opened his journal, reading a few entries. “When will you begin typing the report, Alice?”
“Is that all you have to say, Michael? Are my skills as a typist suddenly more important than my skills as a lover?”
Michael scowled, slamming the palm of his hand on the desk top. “You must remember that you do get paid for clerical services,” he said darkly.
“Michael.. . please. . . .”
“The journey was a long one, Alice,” Michael grumbled. “I am tired. Please excuse the sharpness of my tongue.”
An abundance of white lace was revealed when Alice slipped her jacket off. She smoothed her skirt with her fingers then went and sat down on a cushioned chair behind the smaller secretarial desk that sat facing Michael's. She rolled a sheet of paper into the Remington typewriter that Michael had purchased for her own private use shortly after she had been hired as his secretary. In only a matter of weeks she had mastered this new “contraption,” as Michael still continued to call it.
“Hand me the journal, Michael,” Alice said, straightening her back. “If work is what you want, work is what you shall get.”
Michael closed the journal and carried it to her. “I would like to have the report ready for the union meeting upon my arrival in Saint Louis,” he said. “You see, I also have duties to perform. I was asked to make this trip with a specific purpose in mind, so it is only proper that I be ready for any questions from those union members who put their trust in me.”
“But, you are so somber,” Alice said, reaching into a top drawer, pulling out a cigarette.
Michael struck a match and lighted it for her, then relighted his cigar. He went and sat down behind the larger desk, positioning his. feet to rest on the top, crossing his legs. He inserted his hands into his breeches pockets, fitting his thumbs to hang over the outside. “The immigrants are a sad lot,” he reflected. “Well, I should say most of them are,” he quickly added. Maria's face flashed before his eyes, making the pulsebeat throb in his temple. If he let himself, he could even feel the touch of her lips….
“Most of them you say?” Alice asked coolly. “How can you tell one from another? All the ones that I have seen are dressed in drab clothes and slouch so as they walk, like scared peasants.”
Michael pushed himself up from the chair, trying to keep from lashing back at her. He knew that to do so would be to reveal too many truths to her. Instead, he went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass of port, then slouched down into a heavily upholstered chair, turning the glass in his hands, watching the overhead light reflect into it, like diamonds on display. “These .. . uh . . . peasants. . . .” he murmured, then jerked his head up to glower at Alice. “They are soon to discover what a mistake it was to come to this land of opportunity. The peasants? They will soon find out that only drudgery awaits them. Yes. They are afraid now, having left the only way of life behind them that they have known since the day they were born. But wait until they reach the town of Hawkinsville and meet up with Nathan Hawkins. Then they will really have just cause to be afraid and walk as though defeated. Because they will be. Only the union can give them hope. Only I can intervene and see that the wrongs are made right.”
Once again his thoughts returned to Maria. He was glad that she wasn't a part of this train carrying these people to a life of impoverishment. At least Maria and her brother had been paid passage by their father, instead of by the likes of Nathan Hawkins.
“So you found out that what we all suspected was true?” Alice asked, flicking ashes from her cigarette into an ashtray. “Everyone aboard that ship did have their passage paid by Nathan Hawkins? They are all headed to work as slave labor for this man's coal mines?”
“It appears so, Alice,” he grumbled. “It appears so.”
“That's so horrible, Michael,” Alice said, mashing her cigarette out, then opened the journal and began to study it.
Again Michael pondered over having discovered Maria and Alberto as part of this ship's passengers. He had thought the ship had been taken to Italy only at Nathan Hawkins's expense. It was Nathan Hawkins's ship.
Michael had only lucked out himself by having played the role so well of a buyer for a winery, saying that all other ships had been booked completely, and that he had a deadline to meet, convincing the ship's captain to let him travel along with him this one time. He smiled to himself, remembering even having been given the private cabin of the bastard Nathan Hawkins, since Hawkins hadn't taken this voyage himself.
Michael knew that if Hawkins ever found out the true identity of the man who had used his cabin in every way possible, the craggy face of Hawkins would grow even paler than Hawkins's eyes, which always appeared empty… unfeeling.
Damn. Michael so hated himself for not having found out the destination of Maria and Alberto. When he had asked Maria, she hadn't remembered, and when she had suggested she search in her violin case where she had the name written on train tickets, Michael had thought it hadn't been necessary, having thought they would have plenty of time to discuss this later. But as time went on, their moments together had been spent talking about other things besides where the journey would end for the both of them.
And then there was Alberto. Alberto had refused to even talk with Michael, let alone discuss such congenial and simple matters of life that Michael would have so liked to have shared with him. No. Alberto had been close-mouthed. He had mainly been there to protect Maria, whom he had hovered over as though he was the husband of the beautiful female at his side.
Damn. He had to quit thinking about Maria. She was no longer a part of his existence. His main concern now was for the welfare of this new group of immigrants and what the success of his findings could mean to the success of the unions in Southern Illinois.
“This private car of this train,” he said, looking around him, seeing the plushness of the seats, the velveteen-covered bed at the far end, and the fringe-trimmed curtains at the windows.
“Did you say something, Michael?” Alice asked, eyes wide.
“I feel a sense of guilt, knowing I am traveling in such luxury, and the immigrants having to travel in such crowded, smelly quarters as the car they have been directed into. Is it even fair that I have the money to use to rent such a private car as this?”
“God, Michael. You carry the burden of the poor on your shoulders. Must you always?”
“I was just as poor once,” he mumbled, pushing himself up from the chair. He walked to Alice's side, bending to turn the pages in the journal. He suddenly smelled the aroma of her perfume as it circled upward and into his nose. Why hadn't he noticed it before? Wasn't it even the perfume he had brought back, to her from France? He cleared his throat nervously, pointing to an entry.
“Do you see this?” he said. “This was entered on a day that two bodies were thrown over the ship's side. These two women died from consumption. They left behind two families in need of mother and wife. Their journey started on the mournful side, wouldn't you say? And I have many more of these same entries. This ship is a death ship. And even the ones who do make it to America too soon fin
d that they wish they had been the ones tossed into the hungry claws of the sea when they find what is awaiting them.”
“Did you speak with many of these people?”
“Those who were not too afraid to speak to a stranger.”
“And each spoke of Nathan Hawkins?”
“They had only the deepest respect for the man who had paid their passage.”
Alice rose from the chair, taking Michael's hand in hers, guiding him toward the bed. “Michael, you must relax. You must let me massage your neck and back muscles. I have never seen you so tied up in such bleak thoughts before. Let me help to ease this all from your mind.”
Michael unsnapped the tie from his shirt, then slipped his suit jacket and shirt off, revealing his massive chest that was heavily covered with curly blonde chest hairs. He sighed deeply as he stretched out onto the softness of the bed. “Yes. I'm sure you're right,” he said, turning to lie on his stomach.
He closed his eyes and let Alice's fingers begin to knead and rub his flesh, already feeling it loosening beneath her touch. When her lips exchanged places with her fingers, he tensed for a moment, then flipped onto his back and yanked her down atop him, crushing his lips against hers. She wasn't Maria but she was with him, ready, willing to help possibly erase Maria and all the mounting problems from his mind.
His fingers went to her blouse and reached beneath it. In no way did this woman's breasts compare with those of Maria. Maria's had been so large, so firm, so inviting to the touch from both his lips and hands.. But as the need for a woman … any woman … built inside him … he grabbed Alice's breasts and began brutally to squeeze them.
“Oh, Michael,” Alice moaned, reaching down to unbutton his breeches with trembling fingers. “It's been too long. I almost went wild without you. Darling, please . .. don't… leave again for a long time. These trips? They just mean loneliness for me. …”
Rapture's Rendezvous Page 12