“It is all right, boys,” Kassandra said, encasing the last word in a reverberating belch. “Next time you will know better.”
There was much muttering that there’d never be a next time to come into this swindling snake pit, but soon their anger melted under the flirtatious persuasions of Bridget and Fiona. Even Kassandra took Burly Joe’s unfinished beer out of his hand and offered to dance with him if he’d buy her just one more drink.
The small gathering of musicians struck up a lively jig and tables were shoved to the side to make room for the men and women who paired themselves off with little discrimination and even less decorum. The room was a spinning mass of music and bodies, and Kassandra found herself bounced and tossed and flung from one man to the next, pausing just long enough to rest against the bar and convince one man or another to buy her a drink, too, if he was to have one. She tipped Stymie a wink and a smile with each nickel handed across the counter before whirling off again on some other broadcloth arm.
At some point she broke away and walked over to the fogged over window to rest her head against the cool glass. Kassandra brought her sleeve up to the glass, wiped a clean, imperfect oval, and peered through to the other side. There she saw Sean and a small gathering of Branagans standing around a fire built high in a steel drum. They all assumed an identical posture—hands shoved deep into pockets in an attempt to appear impervious to the bitter cold, caps pulled low over their eyes, green mufflers wound right up to their chins.
She saw young Ryan, too. Of course he wasn’t so young anymore. He was nearly as tall as Sean and probably sixteen—almost the same age she’d been when Ben first brought her to this place. That was two years ago? Three? She’d have a better idea this spring, on the baby’s birthday. Or even tomorrow morning when her head wasn’t packed with whiskey batting.
A rough tugging on her waist caused her to turn and face head-on the barreled chest of Burly Joe.
“I’m taking you upstairs,” he said, baring a mouthful of sparse brown teeth. “Gunna try and get some of my money back.”
“You need to settle up with Ben.”
“We’re settled,” Burly Joe said, moving his hand from her waist to grab her upper arm. “Let’s go.”
“Buy me a drink first?”
He laughed at that. “I’ve bought you enough drinks.”
“Just one more. It is cold upstairs and—”
“I ain’t buying you no drink. Come on.”
Burly Joe pulled her through the crowd, their conversations and laughter washing over her like one continuous wave. As she passed by, she tried to latch on to someone to anchor her to this place. She wasn’t going upstairs with this man until she saw Ben. He always screened her men. Certainly he wouldn’t approve of this loathsome fishmonger.
When they got closer to the bar, she saw Ben standing behind it, drawing a beer. He always liked to help out on busy nights like this, saying it helped him keep in touch with his people. Burly Joe was trying to steer her past the bar, towards the door at the back, but Kassandra veered resolutely and pounded her hand on the counter, trying to capture Ben’s attention.
“I ain’t buying you no drink,” Burly Joe said, leaning his body against hers, trapping her against the bar.
“You need to settle up with Ben,” Kassandra said. She continued to pound on the bar, rattling the empty glasses littering its surface. “Ben! Ben!”
“I told you I already settled with Ben.”
“That is impossible. Ben!”
He heard her that time and, after handing the beer across the bar, excused himself from his conversation and walked toward Kassandra.
“What’s the problem?” Ben asked, looking right over Kassandra at the man standing behind her.
“You tell me,” Burly Joe said. “Your girl here ain’t being much of a sport.”
“There’s no problem, Kassie,” Ben said, still not looking at her. “We’re good.”
Ben turned to walk away as Burly Joe reached his hand between her body and the bar and began to pry it loose.
“Ben, wait!” Kassandra thrust herself forward and grabbed a handful of Ben’s shirt.
“What are ya thinkin‘?” he said, turning and wrenching himself out of her grasp.
“Come closer.” She crooked her finger, beckoning him. “Closer.” He brought his face nearly next to hers. “I am not going upstairs with that man tonight.”
Ben smiled at her—the smile that never quite reached his green eyes. “He’s already paid for ya, Kassie. Go.”
“I will not,” Kassandra insisted. “He stinks of fish.”
The smile now crept up to his eyes, and Ben laughed. “Have ya taken a whiff of your own self lately, love? That’s hardly a reason for turnin’ anyone away.”
Ben was still chuckling to himself as he set out two glasses on the bar and poured three fingers of dark liquid into each one.
“This one’s on the house, friend,” he said, pushing the glass toward Burly Joe. “And one for you, love. I forgot that it sometimes takes a little more to warm y’up.”
Burly Joe reached around Kassandra and picked up the glass, thanked Ben by raising it to him, then downed the drink in one full swallow.
Kassandra stared at the glass she held, surprised at the appearance of her fingers—red and rough, the nail beds encrusted with grime. Her hand shook just a bit, though not enough to slosh the liquid over the side. She took a breath to steady the glass before raising it to her lips. She’d never developed a taste for swill—traces of wine and scotch and gin dumped together when there wasn’t enough of any one to tap from its keg. But it was one more drink. Kassandra braced herself against the bitterness and tipped her head back, filling her mouth with the vile stuff.
When she looked straight again, there was Burly Joe, smiling at her with that mouth half full of rotted teeth. He was laughing—probably at something Ben just said—because the two of them were sharing a conspiratorial look. For just a moment, Kassandra considered spitting that mouthful of swill right into Burly Joe’s face. Maybe that would get him to close that mouth, make him angry enough to leave her alone. If nothing else, it would mask the smell. But who knows what he might do to her once he got her upstairs? And Ben would see to it that he got her upstairs.
So she turned and spat it on Ben instead.
The ensuing silence didn’t fall all at once, but began with those closest enough to see the drink hit Ben’s face, and spread layer by layer through the crowded tavern until the only sound was a single fiddle note that screeched to a halt at someone’s nudging insistence.
The initial angry curse was the only emotion Ben showed. Even as the droplets of his tavern’s swill dripped down his chin and clung to his pale eyelashes, his expression remained passive as he calmly took the bit of towel Stymie offered him and wiped his face dry. But Kassandra knew–saw it in the narrowed slits of his green eyes—just how angry he was, and she wasn’t fooled for a minute by the unruffled timbre of his voice when he said, “Go upstairs.”
“Not with him.”
“Find another girl,” Ben said to Burly Joe. “Got plenty of ’em here.”
“Don’t want no other girl here,” Burly Joe said.
There was a soft, unison gasp from the crowd at the challenge in his voice.
“Well, then.” Ben folded the towel neatly and set it down on the bar. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ever-present bundle of folded bills, pulling two off the top and setting them down on the bar next to the towel. “Go somewhere else. Go hit the places on Centre Street. Girls there dance with bells on their feet.”
The man actually seemed to be considering whether to take Ben’s order, but to Kassandra’s relief he soon swiped the pile of bills off the bar, dropped them in his own pocket, and went out into the cold night.
“Now,” Ben said, capturing Kassandra’s attention once again, “go upstairs.”
Without a word, Kassandra turned away from the bar and made her way through the crowd to the door at the back a
nd up the stairs to wait in her cold room.
It turned out that she had quite a bit of time to wait. Long enough to run her brush through her hair and put a cleaner skirt on over the two she was already wearing. She dropped a bit of lavender water into her washbasin and splashed it over her face and clothing. The icy water may have stung her skin, but it also cleared her head—so much so that she subjected herself to a few more splashings long after she felt clean. She plaited her hair into a soft braid that she coiled and secured at the back of her head with the one comb he’d given her.
All of this she did by the dim light of a single candle. She hoped the softer light would lend warmth to the puffy pallor of her face and hide the cluttered corners of the room. Ben always did hate a messy room. She puttered for a few minutes, straightening the cover on the bed, hanging up her discarded clothes, laying her brush and mirror straight on the bureau top. Then, with one short, bitter breath, she doused the candle, saving it to light the room when Ben came to see her.
The sudden darkness caused the room to spin, and she staggered a bit before the backs of her legs found the edge of her mattress and she fairly fell down upon it. Groping around the end of her bed she found the shawl Imogene had given her the night Kassandra first helped bring a child into the world. She never let the garment leave this room, but kept it close by for those times when she needed the comfort of its warmth around her shoulders. She needed that comfort now—though it did little to ward off the bone cold of the room—and she pulled the edges of the shawl tight against her as she lay down on her bed, curling her legs up against her body.
She must have dozed off, because the minute she heard the knock she was fifteen years old again, racing down the back stairs to open the kitchen door. So great was her haste to get to the door before Clara, her legs became tangled up in her skirt and her arms were pinned helplessly to her side by the corners of the shawl. She lost her direction in the blackness of the room and fell against the bureau in her quest for the door. The knocking continued, giving her a target to aim for, and within two steps she found the latch.
He wasn’t the only man in the hall. The space was packed with men jostling each other good-naturedly for position. The walls were lined with kerosene-fueled flames ensconced in glass globes. The light behind him, coupled with her own bleary vision, swept away his features in dark silhouette, but his stance was unmistakable. Chest puffed up. Arms straight at his side. Fists clenched. Legs anchored as if ready to withstand an attack.
“Ben?” The word was thick in her mouth.
“Were you expectin’ some smelly fishmonger?”
She laughed and opened the door wider to let him in.
He walked through the door, rubbing his hands together. “It’s freezin’ in here. Colder than a—”
“Let me get a light.”
She took the candle from the bureau top and dipped it in one of the glass globes in the hallway to catch a flame. She closed the door behind them, and without invitation or request they sat side by side on Kassandra’s bed.
“I was not expecting you.”
“Liar,” he said, reaching over to smooth the strands of hair torn loose during her waking.
“You have not been up here in a long time, Ben. Months.”
“I shouldn’a started up again with you at all.”
“But you did.”
“I did,” he said before kissing her with the hint of soft penitence that always lurked behind the first kiss.
When Kassandra allowed her mouth to open to his, she imagined him cringing at the stale whiskey on her breath and tried to pull away, but Ben clapped his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her closer. Deeper.
She was alive when he was here. She imagined these kisses held the same promise as their first ones, and sometimes the same girlish flush came to her cheeks. Everything—memory, pain, disappointment, loss—disappeared behind this embrace.
It was much the same feeling that she had when she reached the end of a drink, only instead of staring into the bottom of an empty glass, she kept her eyes firmly closed, trapping her in darkness where she and Ben swirled together. Shadows of the people they might have been. Before he took her breath. Stopped her heart. Dropped her in this cold, dark place.
The muted sounds of gathering outside continued to seep through the walls, little more than some harmless rumble until something—or someone—collided with the door, threatening to tear it from its frame.
Kassandra jumped up from the bed. “What was that?” she said, heading toward the noise.
Ben caught her hand. “Leave it,” he said, pulling her back. And she obeyed.
She settled next to him again, and they sat in companionable silence, holding hands and staring at the floor.
“I am sorry,” she said after a time, “for spitting that drink in your face.”
He chuckled. “You know, I woulda killed any man that did that to me.”
“But you would not kill me?”
“No.” He brought her hand to his lips.
“Well, of course not you. But you might send someone else to do it for you.”
“Stop it, love,” he warned.
“Maybe it is time for young Ryan to get his first kill.”
“Wouldn’t be his first.”
“Oh, Ben,” she said, her bravado deflated. “He is just a child.”
“No such thing as a child here. You should know that.”
“You could send—”
“D’ya really want to talk about this?”
“Of course not,” she said, embarrassed that her levity had taken such a turn.
“Well, then …” He put his arms around her and eased her down on the mattress. She wound her fingers through his curls and tugged him down.
The fracas in the hallway continued at a constant, harmless volume, though occasionally there would be an insult or curse that would distract Ben, stopping his hands midcaress and lifting his head to listen. A particularly thunderous crescendo punctuated by the sound of shattering glass prompted him to disengage from Kassandra entirely—amid a cloud of his muttered curses—and tear across the room to throw open the door. The human missile aimed to collide with it flew through, landing with a thud on Kassandra’s floor.
“Hold your noise out there!” Ben called out into the hallway. He bent over to grab the fallen man by his collar and hauled him to his feet. “Get out of here, y’idiot,” he said, thrusting him out the door. “An’ quiet down before I wipe the floors with the whole lot of ya!”
The responding laughter proved that the only blows Ben would be throwing tonight were those delivered good-naturedly to the back of the ousted intruder.
“Lousy drunks,” he said, closing the door.
“There are enough of them here,” Kassandra said, scooting away from the bed’s edge as Ben sat down. “In fact, had I swallowed that drink instead of spitting it in your face, you would have no reason at all to send someone to kill me.”
“That bad, is it?”
“Awful.”
“Well, I’ve seen you drinkin’ enough of it.”
“What does that mean?” She sat up, dodging his lunging embrace.
“I just don’t like what it’s turned ya into.”
“I am exactly what you made me, Ben Connor.” She inched further away.
“I never set out to make you a drunk.”
“You put me here,” she gestured to the small, dark room. “This after a promise to take care of me.”
“Would you rather be out in the streets?”
“I had other options.”
“But you made this choice, love. You made the choice to come back here with me, and you made the choice to pour whiskey down your throat every night.”
“It helps me,” she said, consumed with the need to justify this to him. Wanting, like she never had before, to make herself seem worthy and blameless.
She knew he wasn’t a man drawn to compassion, but he was prone to pity. And, under the right circ
umstances, guilt. She knew that was why he ever came to see her at all. Not out of love, not any lingering feelings from before. Not even because he was that every now and then he remembered her exile and took a passing shot at absolution by coming to her like this—sharing a laugh, sharing a bed—before turning back to the less bothersome realm of his conscience. She wished she could hate him for it.
“Drinkin’ never helped anybody,” he said, settling in to untie his shoes.
“It helps me forget.”
“It’s makin’ you fat.”
Had he thrown his discarded shoe at her he could not have shocked her more. “I am no such thing!”
“It happens to drunks. They tend to get a little puffy—”
“I am not puffy! I might seem that way because I happen to be wearing three skirts.”
“So now you’re one of them, the walkin’ poor, goin’ around wearin’ everything you own, all your worldly possessions on your back?”
“What I am,” she said, “is cold. This isn’t your flat. We do not have the luxury of a nice little stove in every room on the second floor.”
“But you have those other options, don’t ya?”
“Which I do not care to—”
“Ah, but you care when it’s me.” He reached for her. “Stop it.”
“Or Sean.”
“Do not talk about Sean.”
“He cares for ya, you know.”
“Does he?” Somehow she was lying down beside him again.
“I worry sometimes that he might take you away from me.”
“What if he did?”
“You wouldn’t go.”
“He has not asked,” she said, quickly learning that a multitude of skirts posed no problem to a determined man. “An’ I haven’t heard any of the others complain.”
“You are a pig.”
“Ah, but you love me.”
She wanted to tell him that no, she didn’t, but before she could utter anything at all his mouth covered hers.
They were, by now, able to ignore the concert of voices on the other side of the wall, though when they heard the sound of another broken glass, Ben wondered out loud if he was going to have to beat the life out of them. This time, however, the sound of the broken glass was followed by shouts of panic. Fear. A solid mass of terrified noise with one discernible word rising above all the rest.
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