by Denise Dietz
“You want me to blow my nose?”
Flo nodded.
“Crying doesn’t make it better? All right, stop wagging your head like that. It’ll fall off.” Robin sniffled. “I’m poor as Job’s turkey, child, and I don’t know what to do. Why are you pointing at yourself? What can you do? Sell your pets?”
This time Flo reached into her pocket and retrieved the stub of a pencil. Turning Robin’s letter over, she wrote: DUMAS.
“Sell your horse? Thank you, but the amount we’d get would be a drop in the bucket.”
Flo wrote: ANGEL.
“What do you mean? No, don’t write it again. I’ll never allow you to join the profession. Minta would creep from the grave like a dang vampire and suck the blood from every gent who entered your room.”
IT’S THE ONLY WAY. BETH AND JESSIE ARE GONE. FRENCHY AND SCARLET TOO.
“No!”
I WANT TO HELP.
“No!”
Flo scowled. Why was Madam Robin so stubborn? How would she pay the next grocery bill? Since Minta’s funeral, Flo had returned to her old eating habits. Hummingbird Lou had stayed on without pay, but the larder was empty.
What if Lou decided to cook Alice and Teddy?
Flo licked her pencil and bent over the piece of stationary.
WHY NOT? MY MOTHER WAS A WHORE.
Robin slapped Flo’s face. “Blueberry conducted herself like a lady, and she gave up the profession for your daddy.”
Flo bolted. Robin scurried to the open door and watched her run toward Welty’s livery. In no time, she’d leave the stables atop Dumas, her skirts flying.
At first Robin had fretted over Flo riding out alone. What if she got lost or hurt? Then the artist, Jack Gottlieb, had knocked at Little Heaven’s door and told Robin that Flo came almost every day to watch him paint. He didn’t mind, he said. Flo missed her mama, and he knew how it felt to pine for someone.
*****
Flo bit the end of her thread and jabbed her needle into a pincushion. She heard Washman’s piano. That meant a few gents had visited. But they wouldn’t stay long when they discovered that Dee and Robin were the lone choices. Maybe one would linger with Dee if she didn’t pass out early from drink. Since Minta’s death, Robin had aged ten years.
Only Flo could save Little Heaven.
She had thought it over all afternoon while watching Jack Gottlieb paint, and she’d reached a firm decision. She’d become an Angel.
According to Robin, Flo had been attacked by Samuel Peiffer the night of her party. But Flo couldn’t remember anything that happened after her songs and the gift of Dumas. The next thing she knew, Mama Min was dead and so was Spinach. And she couldn’t talk. When she opened her mouth, nothing came out.
She had watched the police lead Mr. Peiffer from the house. “Tell them I was with you,” he had yelled.
How could she tell them that? She couldn’t even talk.
Leaning forward, she studied her open mouth in the mirror. She had teeth and a tongue. Her throat didn’t seem to be missing any parts. It was as if someone had nipped her voice box the same way she’d nipped the greens from this morning’s carrots.
Turning sideways, she studied her reflection, wishing she had a corset to slim her waist and plump up her bosom. What bosom? Shortly before her birthday party, she’d borrowed Beth’s Princess Bust Developer. Beth said it was “a new scientific help to nature.” But science couldn’t change what nature hadn’t provided.
Flo smoothed the folds in the orange taffeta she had just altered. Then she rolled her thick hair into the popular Gibson Girl style. She looked older but not old enough. Opening Mama Min’s La Dore Rubyline, she rubbed pink color onto her cheeks. She fingered carmine lip rouge across her mouth, brushed a black paste mixed with water across her lashes, and added a puff of Floral Complexion Powder.
She wished she could fit Minta’s heeled silver-gray oxford shoes, but her feet were too small. Her own patent-leather Colt Bucher boots would have to do.
Squaring her shoulders, she glanced around the room. Vanity. Straddle chair. Dragon screen. Spool bed. The mattress and cherub counterpane had been burned, but just like Flo’s boots, the new mattress and muslin sheets would suffice.
After descending the staircase, she entered the parlor.
Washman was playing a jazzy rendition of Porter Steele’s “High Society.”
Dee gave Flo a startled look.
Madam Robin was nowhere to be seen, thank goodness.
A man with combed-back strands of mud-colored hair approached. He held a whiskey bottle. “My name’s Jim Willy,” he said, “and I’m new to Cripple Creek. The madam didn’t tell me nothin’ ’bout you. I was gonna leave for better digs, but I guess I’ll stick a while. You’re awful young but big. I like bedding big girls.”
Flo batted her lashes at the skinny gent. If she ever owned another snake, she’d name it Jim.
“Cat got your tongue, missy? Never mind.” Jim’s teeth made dents in his lower lip. “I prefer me a girl who knows when to keep her yap shut. Care for a drink?”
Flo considered the offer. No, she’d not add drinking to her other sins. She shook her head.
“Bought me a bottle and I’ve near finished half. Hope you don’t mind if ol’ Jim gets hisself pissed.”
Flo smiled.
“Ain’t you a pretty thing when you smile like that? Got me an itch to retire upstairs, but I ain’t paid the madam. Where is she?”
Probably in the kitchen. When Washman finished his ragtime piece, he took off in that direction. So I’d better hurry and get this Jim upstairs, because once it’s done, Robin can’t say no to another time.
Flo walked quickly toward the staircase. Jim Willy followed, his odor leaving a distinctive trail. Mr. Willy didn’t bathe.
“In a rush, are you?” He ran one finger along his tight linen collar and madras bow tie. “Slow down, missy, we got the whole night. Besides, I ain’t paid yet. What’s the charge?”
Flo held up ten fingers, put her hands behind her back then held up five fingers.
“Fifteen dollars?”
She nodded.
“Only figured to spend ten. How ’bout ten?”
Flo shook her head no. She climbed the first few steps, grasped the hem of her dress, and lifted the orange taffeta above her knees.
Mr. Willy attempted a whistle. “You sure got pretty legs. I like them boots, too. Reckon I can spend fifteen, but you better earn it.” He flicked his tongue, lizard-like.
Flo climbed the stairs, entered Minta’s bedroom. When Mr. Willy staggered inside, she slid a chair beneath the doorknob then reached behind her back for the buttons on her gown.
“What’s your hurry, missy? I ain’t drunk all my whiskey. Sure you don’t want a thimbleful?”
Flo shook her head, held out her hand, and stamped her foot.
“Oh, I get it. You can’t talk.” Mr. Willy tilted the bottle, drank, wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Why’re you waggling your fingers like that? You want the money first?”
Flo nodded.
“Ain’t sure it’s worth fifteen for no dummy. I like my gals to scream.”
I thought you liked ladies who keep their yaps shut.
Flo buttoned her gown and pointed at the door.
“What’ll you do if I bed you for free? You can’t yell for help.”
Seizing the jewelry box, Flo aimed it at the mirror.
“All right. I’ll pay. Show me your legs again.”
She shook her head.
Mr. Willy took off his trousers, kicked them across the room, and sat on the edge of the mattress in his red union suit. “Money’s in the front pocket.”
Anchoring the jewelry box under her arm, Flo bent down, picked up Mr. Willy’s skinny pants, and pulled fifteen dollars from his pocket. She laid the jewelry box on the vanity, wound the key, and set the money next to the box. Music sounded and the ballerina twirled.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she walked toward the bed. M
r. Willy lifted her petticoats and ran his hand up between her legs. With a gasp, Flo opened her eyes and moved away.
“What’s this game? Come back here!”
Shaking her head, she retreated until her behind pressed against the vanity.
Mr. Willy stood. “If it’s a game you want, a game you’ll get, but you’ll bend over when I catch you.” He patted his backside. “Reckon my meaning?”
Her fingers closed around the jewelry box.
“Oh, no. We don’t want others running to the sound of broken glass.” He grabbed her wrist.
Yanking her hand free, she dropped the box.
“Pun’kin, you in there? Washman says you sashayed into the parlor, dressed in Minta’s gown. I’m sorry I hit you this afternoon, but I’ll spank you good if you’ve done what Washman says you’ve done. Open the door.”
Mr. Willy had turned at the sound of Madam Robin’s voice. Flo ran toward the door and kicked the chair away. Shouldering Robin aside, she stumbled down the stairs, fled through Little Heaven’s entrance, and raced toward Welty’s Livery.
By the time she had bridled Dumas and mounted from the block, rain had begun to fall.
*****
Jack Gottlieb needed more wood, but was it worth getting soaked? The woodpile was outside, next to his crude corral.
“I could use my paintings for firewood,” he told Leah’s heliochrome. “I have lots to spare and it might be fun to see them go up in smoke, just like my life.”
He shivered. It was cold inside his two-room cabin. There was no warmth beneath the quilt that covered his cot. The hand-built table and chairs and rocker mocked him. Only his dead wife’s photograph and a Disc Gramophone, with its funnel and cabinet, interrupted the stark monotony.
He had ordered the gramophone from his Sears Catalogue because Leah had loved music. Thirty dollars thrown away, money he could ill afford. Now he turned the gramophone on and sang “Sidewalks of New York,” sang about the east side and west side, until he reached the last line of the chorus. He didn’t want to think about the sidewalks of New York. If he did, he’d think about Leah, and he didn’t want to think about Leah. But he couldn’t sleep, he was chilled to the marrow, and—
His marriage to Leah Schoenbrod had been arranged in advance, before she shipped out from Germany. The day after her arrival, they stood before a rabbi. Jack had crushed a glass beneath his heel for luck, lifted her veil, and fallen deeply, irrevocably in love.
Within three years they had two sons. He worked in the garment district. With Leah’s encouragement, he painted whenever he had a free moment. Then came the tenement fire. Jack was at work. He was told how Leah stood by the open window of their sixth-floor apartment, trapped from the flames above and below; how she’d dropped both children toward the extended arms of the people on the sidewalk — the sidewalks of New York. Hopefully, smoke had blinded her, disguising the sight of two smashed bodies and skulls. Hopefully, she had died from the collapse of the building rather than searing flames.
Following the fire, he hadn’t known anything for two years. Crazed with grief, he had been confined to a sanitarium in upstate New York. For therapy, he began to paint again. At first he covered his canvasses with black. Then, as he emerged from his own dark place, he added a tree, a flower, a piece of sky. He had left the Catskill Mountains for the Rockies, praying the change in scenery and altitude would expunge the past and—
Right now, he needed to expunge the cabin’s chill.
He stepped outside and strode toward the woodpile. Through the pelting rain he saw the outline of a horse with no head. Had he gone stark raving mad again? No. The horse nuzzled a crumpled heap on the ground. A human heap.
Dear God, it was Flo, Minta’s daughter, the parlor house child. What was she doing here?
“Never mind why she’s here, you idiot. Get her inside where it’s dry.”
Could he carry her? She was a plump girl, and sodden clothing increased her weight. Taking a deep breath, inhaling rain, Jack slung her body over his shoulder. He prayed that her bones weren’t broken and he wasn’t doing more harm than good.
Kicking the door shut, he placed her on the cot. She moaned.
“Where does it hurt, Flo?” He remembered she couldn’t talk, or wouldn’t talk, so he ran his hands over her body, searching for broken bones.
Her mouth formed a scream. She rose from the cot, limped to the cabin’s corner, and slid to the floor.
“I’m not going to harm you,” he said. “But you know that, else why’d you come here?” No broken bones, though she’s wounded her leg.
She staggered upright and stood against the wall, her blue eyes smudged with black. Rain dripped from her dirty face. Her hair, a thick mass of curls and rattails, tumbled down her back. Her orange gown was muddy. Its damp bodice clung to her heaving bosom.
Grabbing a clean towel and shirt from a wooden shelf, Jack tossed them toward her. “I’ve got to fetch some firewood or you’ll catch your death, child.”
When he returned, she had put on his shirt and folded the quilt around her lower body. She stood near the dying embers but moved away when Jack dropped his wood.
“I won’t harm you,” he said again. “May I bandage your leg?”
She shook her head.
“If I give you warm water and bandages, will you do it yourself?”
She nodded.
“Sit on the rocker while I fetch my supplies.”
Jack settled into a chair by the table and watched her cleanse her leg efficiently, as if she tended a hurt animal. Why had she ridden to his cabin? She visited during the day, almost every day. Why had she sought him out tonight? He couldn’t escort her home in this storm.
“Stretch out on the cot, Flo.”
She shook her head, her expression anguished. No, frightened. She was scared to death. As if he would ever touch a child. What the hell had happened at Little Heaven?
“Then stay put in the rocker while I sit here and sketch a portrait. Is that all right? Do you trust me to leave you alone?”
She nodded, but still stared at him wide-eyed, and he was reminded of a deer he had once startled. Its reaction had been the same: large staring eyes and a body poised for flight.
He sketched with charcoal, occasionally adding more wood to the fire. The cabin grew warm and smoky. Flo rubbed her eyes. Her lashes fluttered. She slept.
After a while, Jack dropped his pad to the floor and his head to the tabletop.
When he awoke, the girl stood before him, dressed in one of his shirts and a pair of blue jeans, tied at her waist with a piece of rope. Her face was clean, her hair neatly braided. The fire in his cookstove had been lit, and steam poured from the spout of an enamel coffee pot.
“That coffee sure smells good,” he said, glancing toward the window. “I had hoped the rain would stop but it looks worse. Now it’s a thunderstorm.”
As if to prove his words true, there was a rumbling noise. The cabin shook. Flo paled and covered her face with her hands.
Jack ached to hold and comfort her, but he didn’t dare. “Are you afraid of thunder, child? Hasn’t anyone ever told you that thunder is God’s cough?”
She shook her head.
“I came here from New York. Outside the city are mountains called the Catskills, and people who live there say thunder is the sound of the little people bowling. Have you read the story of Rip Van Winkle? No? Rip bowled with the little people and got so tuckered he fell asleep for a hundred years. When he woke, things had changed. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could sleep and change things?”
She nodded, walked to the window, rubbed a pane of glass with her shirt sleeve. Thunder sounded again, but this time she didn’t react the same. This time she whimpered.
“What’s the matter, honey?”
She yanked opened the cabin door. A blast of wind blew rain inside. Without thinking, Jack pushed her away and shut the door. “I’m sorry,” he began, then paused.
Flo whirled in circles. S
trands of hair escaped from her braids and stuck to her wet face.
“What ails you, child? Stop spinning.”
The girl obeyed, though she now rocked back and forth. “Dumas,” she said.
“Alexandre Dumas? The author?”
“Dumas. Mare. Gone.”
“Your mare’s name is Dumas? She’s not gone. I built a barn out back, just a few sticks nailed together, but it’s got a roof. Last night I put your mare inside with my own nag.”
“I thought she was dead, like Mama Min and Spinach.”
Jack gently grasped her shoulders. She didn’t flinch, thank God. “It’s okay if you cry,” he said. “We’ll talk afterwards. They say time heals all wounds, but it’s tears that help cleanse the hurt. Cry, child. I’ll cry, too. We’ll cry together.”
*****
Autumn leaves couldn’t hide Little Heaven’s sagging roof or the gardens overgrown with fungus. Weeds had choked out the more desirable plants, and the house itself exuded an odor of defeat, not unlike rotting vegetation.
“Where is she?” Cat McDonald tried to keep his voice steady. “Where’s Fools Gold, Madam?”
Robin wore a loose black dress with no corset, but it didn’t really matter since her hourglass figure had shrunk to skin and bones. Blocking his entry, she said, “Flo’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Gone for good. She’s found a new place.”
“Another parlor house?”
With a shrug, Robin began to shut the door.
“May I come in, Madam? Please?”
“Why not?” She swung the door open.
Cat took off his Stetson and wrinkled his nose. The house smelled of vomit and grease. He followed Robin into the parlor. All the furniture was missing — couches, tables, banquettes, piano. Ceiling satyrs and nymphs were an ironic rebuke to the empty room.
“Had to sell my goods,” Robin said.
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t find new Angels. Them that applied were a scruffy lot. Others were scared away by Minta’s murder. I’d offer you a chair, but as you can see I’m hard up for chairs.”
“Please, Madam, where’s Fools Gold?”
“Why’re you asking?”