“I’m sorry to disturb you so early.” Her glance flitted from his stubbled cheeks to his naked chest, then down to his bare feet, and finally to the end of the hall. She’d never seen him any way other than impeccably dressed. She was unsure of the rules of propriety when faced with a man’s hairy chest and toes. Her face turned pink.
“Believe it or not, I was already awake.” He combed his hair back with his fingers, giving her a flash of dark hair under his arms. “Collinson’s a real sweetheart, isn’t he?”
She met his eyes squarely, her brow wrinkled in concern. “Do you think Willy is all right?”
“I don’t know.” He, too, frowned.
“What should we do?”
“Do?” Dammit! He hadn’t wanted to get mixed up with Willy in the first place. “What would you suggest we do? March down to Collinson’s house and ask him if he’s mistreated the boy?”
Agatha’s irritation sprouted. “Well, we can’t stand by and do nothing.”
“Why not? Look what happens when we try to play the good Samaritan.” Even as Gandy replied, he remembered Willy, naked as the day he was born, looking up with his liquid brown eyes, asking him, “When I grow up, will I be like you?”
Just then Jubilee shuffled up behind Gandy, yawning, her white hair bunched in disarray. “Who is it, Scotty...? Oh, it’s you, Agatha. Mornin’.” She was wearing the turquoise dressing gown. It buckled open as Jubilee balled her fists and stretched both arms sleepily, tilting her head to one side. Agatha caught a glimpse of enough cleavage and flank to guess that Jubilee slept in the altogether. Her voice became sharp.
“As soon as you wake up, you can tell Mr. Gandy I’m sorry I got him out of bed.”
Picking up her skirts, she turned and made an exit with as much dignity as she could muster.
* * *
Not five minutes later everybody arrived at the millinery shop at once: Mrs. Alphonse Anderton, for a fitting on her new dress; Violet, for work; Willy, bawling; and Gandy, still barefoot, buttoning a wrinkled shirt with its tails flapping.
“Listen here, Agatha, I resent your—” Gandy pointed a finger angrily.
“Well...” Mrs. Anderton pompously scrutinized them, ending with Gandy’s bare feet. “Good morning, Agatha.”
“Tt-tt.”
“My p... pa... he s... says I c... can’t c... come here no more t’s... see youuuuuu...”
Agatha stood behind a glass counter, so Willy ran straight to Gandy. Gandy went down on one knee and hauled the sobbing boy tightly against him. Willy clung to Gandy’s neck. Gandy forgot his anger and Agatha’s chest felt as if it would crack as she listened to Willy’s sobs. “He t... took away m... my new b... boots.”
“Please take care of Mrs. Anderton, Violet,” Agatha ordered quietly, then moved to Gandy, and he straightened with Willy in his arms.
“Bring him into the back room,” Agatha said.
Even after they were alone the boy sobbed and sobbed and spoke in broken snatches. “M... my n... new sh... shirt and br... britches... he... t... told... m... me...”
“Shh!” Gandy whispered going down on one knee again. Willy burrowed his blond head against the man’s sturdy dark chest and half-buttoned white shirt.
Agatha felt as if she were choking. She sat down on Willy’s little stool beside them, petting his head, smoothing his hair, feeling helpless and woeful. Over Willy’s shaking shoulder her gaze met Gandy’s. He looked shaken. She reached out and touched the back of his hand. He lifted two fingers, hooked two of hers, and pulled them against Willy’s neck.
Why couldn’t this child have been ours? We would have been so good to him, so good for him. It was a fleeting thought, but it brought to Agatha a bitter realization of the injustices of this world.
In time Willy calmed. Agatha withdrew her fingers from Gandy’s and pulled a scented handkerchief from a pocket concealed within the back drapes of her dress.
“Here, Willy, let me clean up your face.”
He turned, dripping, eyes and lips puffy. As she mopped his cheeks and made him blow, she wondered what either she or Gandy could say to restore Willy’s broken heart.
“You mustn’t blame your father,” she began. “It was our fault, Scotty’s and mine.” She had never called Gandy by his first name before. Doing so gave her strength and a feeling of communion with both him and Willy. “We hurt your father’s pride, you see, by giving you new clothes, taking you for a bath. Do you know what that means—pride?”
Willy shrugged, trying not to cry again.
Agatha didn’t think she could speak one more word without breaking into tears herself. She looked to Gandy for help and he came through.
“Pride means feelin’ good about yourself.” His long, dark fingers combed back the blond strands above Willy’s ears. “Your father wants t’ buy you things himself. When we bought them instead, he thought we were tellin’ him that he wasn’t seein’ after you properly.”
“Oh.” Willy said the word so softly it was scarcely audible.
“And as for you comin’ t’ visit us—I don’t see why you shouldn’t. We’re still your friends, aren’t we?”
Willy gave the expected smile, though it was tentative.
“But it might be a good idea t’ slip in the back door and make sure you don’t come when your pa’s in the saloon, all right? Now, how about a licorice stick?”
Willy’s face remained downcast as he answered unenthusiastically, “I guess so.”
Gandy got to his feet, lifting the boy on his arm. He waited until Agatha, too, rose, then hooked an arm loosely about her shoulders as the three of them ambled toward the back door. She felt awkward, bumping against his chest and hip with each clumsy step she took. But he didn’t seem to mind. At the door he dropped his arm and told her, “Willy’ll be down later, but send him back up at dinner time and I’ll have Ivory go over to Paulie’s and pick up some picnic food.”
Perhaps that was the moment when Agatha first realized she was falling in love with Gandy. She looked up at him, his hair still tousled, his cheeks still shaded with a night’s growth of whiskers, his shoulders and arms looking as if they could handle all the Alvis Collinsons of this world as they held Willy.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “And I’m sorry I was short with you upstairs. I understand. I feel the same way at times.”
For a moment his eyes lingered on hers, bearing a soft expression, while Willy glanced back and forth between the two of them, his freckled arm resting on the back of Gandy’s neck.
“Ain’t you comin’, Gussie?” the child asked plaintively.
“No, Willy.” She dried a lingering tear with her thumb. “I’ll see you later.” She raised up and kissed his shiny cheek. As they left she realized she had placed herself in double jeopardy. She was falling in love not only with the man, but with the boy as well.
Later that day the girls came to try on their finished cancan dresses and Agatha seized the opportunity to apologize to Jubilee for her snappishness that morning.
Jube passed it off with a wave of her hand. “I was still so sleepy I didn’t even know what you were saying.”
All the while Agatha buttoned Jubilee into the sleek-fitting bodice she couldn’t forget the way Jube had padded to Gandy’s door, all warm and tumbled from sleep, looking more beautiful in disarray than most women looked after an hour at their dressing tables. She recalled Gandy’s bare chest and mussed hair, his trousers with the waist button still freed, his bare feet.
Then she glanced at Jubilee, twirling before the wall mirror. Radiant, beautiful Jubilee.
Gandy is spoken for, Agatha, she told herself. Besides, what would he want with someone like you when he has a stunning gem like her? “Will you dance the cancan tonight?”
“Tonight’s the night,” Jube answered. “Second show, though. We’re going to make them wait till eleven so they’ll be good and anxious.”
“Will you be there?” Pearl asked Agatha. Nobody found the question the least bit
odd. The girls had grown used to seeing Agatha and her troops in the Gilded Cage at one time or another each night.
“I’ll be there earlier,” Agatha replied, squelching her disappointment. After all the work she’d done on the dresses, she wanted to see them flashing to the music.
But that night, true to their word, the girls saved the best for last, and Agatha bade good-night to the W.C.T.U. ladies on the boardwalk without seeing a solitary flash of red or a single high kick. It was a warm, sultry night for mid-June. The saloons had been stuffier than usual. No wind blew under the doors. The odor of dung from the hitching rails seemed to permeate everything. She took the shortcut through her store, made her last trip to the necessary, then mounted the stairs.
Her tiny apartment seemed stifling. She carried a hard wooden chair onto the landing and sat listening to the music from below, fanning herself with a lace handkerchief. From the opened back door of the Gilded Cage came a lively new song she’d never heard before. The cancan, most likely. Her fingertips kept rhythm against her thigh and she tried to imagine Pearl doing her notorious high kick with the red taffeta ruffles rustling and frothing about her.
A coyote howled in the distance.
Yes, I feel the same, she thought. Howlingly lonely.
She thought of Gandy and Willy—it was insanity to become embroiled in the lives of two such unlikely candidates, yet she feared it was too late to extricate them from her affections. She was doomed to heartache on two counts, for Collinson had made it clear Willy was his, and Jube had made it clear Gandy was hers.
She thought of Jube, pretty, pretty Jube, dancing the cancan downstairs right now with Ruby and Pearl. She pictured their legs flashing through the air, and it made her feel weighted and unwieldy. She wondered what it felt like to kick a man’s hat from his head. She wondered what the cancan looked like and had a sudden idea that left her feeling nervous but determined.
She took her chair back inside, but instead of getting ready for bed, she found one of her voluminous outdated petticoats and laid it on the table. Into it she put the items she needed, then lay down on the bed fully clothed to wait.
It seemed to take forever for the noise below to stop and for the bar to close down. Then again forever before Agatha heard everybody from next door make their way to their rooms and retire for the night. She lay stiff and flat, as if any movement would betray her plans.
She allowed a full hour to pass after all was quiet before she cautiously sat up and slipped from her bed. In total darkness she found the bundle she’d prepared beforehand, plus a single candle in a holder and her sampler from the wall. She moved down the outside stairs barefoot, making no more noise than a shadow.
The dress shop was silent and dark. She felt her way into the workroom, lay her bundle on the table and lit the candle. She lifted it to check the shadowed corners of the room, breathing shallowly.
Don’t be silly, Agatha, it’s only your own conscience you’re scared of.
Turning her attention to the bundle, she felt like a burglar. She folded back the white petticoat to reveal a hammer, nail, brace, and bit. She picked up the brace and bit and Willy’s stool and shuffled to the common wall between the millinery shop and the saloon. From the corner she measured off four paces, picturing the pine boards on the other side of the wall, the places where occasional knots had fallen out. She set the stool down and struggled up onto it. Guiltily, she glanced behind herself—but of course no one was there. Again it was only her conscience that seemed to be watching from the shadows on the far side of the room.
Determinedly, she braced the bit against the wall and slowly, slowly began boring. She stopped often and lifted the candle to check the depth of the hole. At last the far end of the drill slipped through. She closed her eyes and sagged, resting a palm against the wall. Her heart hammered crazily.
Please, don’t let there be any wood shavings on the saloon floor.
Agatha, you should be ashamed of yourself.
But I only want to watch the girls dance.
It’s still eavesdropping.
It’s a public place. If I were a man I could sit at a table and watch everything I’ll see through this hole and nobody would think a thing of it.
But you’re not a man. You’re a lady, and this is certainly beneath your dignity.
Who will it hurt?
How would you like it if somebody looked the other way through the hole?
Agatha shivered at the thought. Perhaps she wouldn’t use it after all.
The wood shavings all seemed to come her way when she withdrew the drill bit. She pressed her face against the wall and peered into the hole. Solid black. The wainscot felt cool against her hot, flushed cheeks and again she experienced the queer sensation that those upstairs knew what she was doing.
She set the drill down and with three sharp raps drove the nail into the wall. Holding her breath, she paused, looking up at the ceiling, listening for the slightest movement. All remained silent. Releasing her breath, she hung the sampler over the hole and put Willy’s stool where he’d left it. Then she carefully swept up the wood shavings and hid them beneath some fabric scraps in her wastebasket, blew out the candle, and returned to her apartment.
But she could not sleep for the remainder of the night. Clandestine activities at three A.M. did not set well with Agatha. Her nerves jittered and she felt as if she had a touch of dyspepsia. She heard a train rumble through town. And near dawn the distant coyotes yapped in chorus. She saw the sky lighten from black to indigo to chambray-blue. She heard the lamp-lighter move down the street, snuffing the lanterns, closing their doors, growing closer and closer, until he passed beneath her window and then faded off in the opposite direction. She heard the town cowherd gather the local cows from backyard sheds and herd them down the main street toward the prairie to spend the day. The dull clong of the lead cow’s bell became fainter and fainter and fainter... and at last Agatha slept.
She was awakened by her first customer of the morning rattling the shop door downstairs. After that the day was disastrous. She snapped at poor Violet and became impatient with Willy’s questions. A fight broke out in the Gilded Cage in the late forenoon, and when Jack Hogg threw the two hotheads out onto the boardwalk their momentum carried them in the direction of the hat shop and a flying elbow broke one of the small panes of her front window. When Gandy came to apologize and offer to pay for the damages, she treated him abominably and he stomped out angrily with a scowl on his face. The mute man, Marcus Delahunt, brought over a shirt with a simple torn seam, but the bobbin jammed on her sewing machine and the thread formed a bird’s nest of knots on the underside of her stitching. Delahunt watched her slam things around in frustration, touched her calmingly on the shoulders, then sat down himself to find the problem: two coarse blue frayed yarns caught in the bobbin race. He mimed a question: Did she have any oil? She produced a tin can with a long, skinny spout and he squirted oil into twenty places, worked the flywheel back and forth, rose from the stool, and flourished a palm toward the machine as if introducing it to Agatha.
It ran as if new. In no time she had his shirt mended.
She looked up square into Marcus’s face, feeling small for her churlish behavior, not only to him, but to everyone all day long. “Thank you, Marcus.”
He nodded and smiled and mimed something she could not understand.
“I’m sorry. Say it again?”
He glanced around the shop searchingly, spotted the calendar hanging beside the back door, and took her hand, leading her to it. He pointed to her, the oil can, and measured out seven days on the calendar.
“Every week. I should oil it once a week?”
He nodded, smiling, making a smooth-running driver of his elbow, illustrating how the machine would run if she’d follow his advice.
“I will, Marcus.” She squeezed the backs of his hands. “And thank you.”
He reached for his pocket, as if to extract money. She stopped his hands.
&nb
sp; “No. It was nothing. Thank you again for fixing the machine.”
He smiled, doffed his hat, and left.
After that Agatha’s temper mellowed, but at suppertime, instead of eating, she napped, overslept, and was late joining the other W.C.T.U. members for their evening circuit.
By the time ten o’clock came she was in a state of intense anxiety.
Her conscience would not relent.
You were surly and short with everyone all day long, and you know why. It’s because of that blame hole you drilled in the wall. If you can’t live with it, patch it up!
But it drew her like an Aladdin’s lamp.
In the dark of night she shuffled through the blackness of her familiar back room, then ran her fingers along the stamped wainscoting. Against her fingertips she felt the beat of the music sending tremors through the wall. The rhythm pulsed up faintly through her shoes. Carefully, she lifted the sampler away. Into her silent, lonely world streamed a tiny pinpoint of light. She leaned close and put her eye to the hole. There were Jubilee, Ruby, and Pearl doing the cancan.
Their magnificent skirts—shining black on the outside, ruffled red on the inside—flashed left and right. Their long legs created shots of black fishnet in triplicate. In ebony ankle-length high-heeled boots they pranced and strutted, wagged their calves and kicked. Their feet shot to the heavens. Their torsos leaned forward, then back, before they circled and shouted and tossed their heads until their red hair feathers trembled.
It was a bawdy dance, but Agatha looked beyond its lustiness to find in their leggy bodies the symmetry, grace, and agility she herself had not possessed since she was nine years old.
The music hushed and Jack Hogg was pressed into work as an announcer, calling out above the noisy crowd. Though Agatha couldn’t make out the words, she watched everything. The girls circulated through the saloon, capturing the hands of six bright-faced, eager men whom they tugged along to the front of the bar. Ruby and Jube arranged the cowpokes in an evenly spaced line and flirtatiously squared the men’s Stetsons on their heads. Jack produced a pair of cymbals and called out a verbal fanfare joined by that from the instruments.