Wilde West Part 23

Grigsby closes his eyes. He wants nothing now but to sink into the embrace of his absent wife, bury his face in her neck. He hears himself mutter her name: "Clara."

"Clara!" he cried out, and he twisted his body away from the room, from the terrible thing on the bed.

And felt a hand at his brow and heard a soft voice murmuring in a foreign language. "C'est un mauvais reve, cheri."

And opened his eyes and in the moonlit dimness saw the soft white shoulders and the curling blond hair and the troubled blue eyes, and he reached out and drew to him the warm enfolding body of Mathilde de la Mole.

DEAR OSCAR.

Baby and I wanted to tell you that we will be joining up with the noon train to Manitou Springs today. My private car will be hooked to the rear of the train. We hope you will join us for a chat! See you at the station! I remain Yours truly, H. A. W. Tabor Pathetic, really, those exclamation marks.

And that sloppy childish scrawl.

And my private car indeed. As though to say, "I'm really quite appallingly rich, you know." Why hadn't the boor simply enclosed one of his bank statements?

Yet Oscar was inanely smiling as he thanked the desk clerk for the note. He felt potent, invincible: Ulysses rearing up, leonine, from the lobby of a Denver hotel.

She would be there. He would see her.

"Good news?" said a voice to Oscar's left.

Vail, looking today rather the worse for wear: sagging gray dewlaps and bloodshot eyes.

"From Tabor," said Oscar, folding the note and sliding it into his coat pocket. "To inform me that he'll be on the train today."

The bloodshot eyes grew wary. "Is she coming? The doxy?"

"I couldn't say. By the way, I looked for you last night, before the lecture. Where had you gone?"

"Nowhere. I was out cold all night." He shook his head ruefully, and then suddenly winced, as though the movement had sent a splinter of bone spearing through his brain. "Jeez," he said, and reached up and tenderly touched his temple. "That booze is a killer. I don't know how O'Conner does it."

"So you never went to the ticket office?"

"Not till this morning. Receipts were down, huh? A hundred and seventy-five tickets. That sound about right to you?"

Oscar waved an indifferent hand. "Somewhere thereabouts." He would have said a hundred and seventy-seven, but perhaps last night's distress had affected his reckoning.

"Yeah, well," said Vail, "I got a telegram today from Tabor's manager in Leadville. Tomorrow night is sold out already."

Oscar nodded, distracted. He must buy her something. A gift.

Vail frowned. "Hey. You should be happy. Four hundred tickets, that's eight hundred bucks."

"Hmm? Yes, of course. Delighted. You know, I think I'll trot over to the station and see if Henry's gotten the luggage safely on board."

Another frown. "The train doesn't leave for another three hours." The frown became a scowl. "s.h.i.t. She is coming, am I right?"

"I really don't understand why you're so prejudiced against the woman. At bottom, you know, she's rather shy and retiring."

At bottom: lovely phrase.

"Shy like a cobra," said Vail.

Oscar laughed. "Ah, Vail, you're too much the trusting soul. You really should acquire a little cynicism. It would go so well with your necktie."

Vail glanced down, frowning, at his checkered bow tie.

"Now," said Oscar, "you'll see to the others? The Countess and the rest? Make sure they get to the station? Oh, and give me one hundred dollars, would you?"

Vail squinted at him. "What for?"

"For cigarettes."

"Aw, come on, Oscar. Be fair. I'm the business manager. I got to ask questions like that."

"But I'm the business," Oscar smiled. "And I needn't answer them. One hundred dollars, if you please."

Vail reached into his jacket pocket, slid out his billfold, counted out the money. He handed it to Oscar. "You keep spending money like this and you're not gonna have any left when we finish the tour."

"But I shall have some lovely memories."

"Memories and a nickel will get you a ride on the streetcar."

Oscar smiled. "A gentleman," he said, "never rides the streetcar."

A ring was out of the question; he didn't know what size she wore, and he refused to turn their time together into farce by presenting her with one that didn't fit. "What do you have," he asked, "in the way of lockets?"

Behind the counter, the short, elderly German proprietor looked Oscar up and down from over the rims of his spectacles. Oscar wore this morning his dark purple velvet coat and a pale green shirt wrapped at the neck with a rakishly fluffed paisley foulard, and he thought that on balance he looked smashing. The jeweler said, "Dis vould be for yourself?"

"For a young woman," Oscar said in German.

In English, evidently unimpressed by Oscar's fluid German: "Sister, cousin, friend, sveetheart?"

"The latter." How very annoying: he was blushing.

"Sveetheart," said the jeweler.

Oscar cleared his throat. "Yes."

"So a sveetheart, she gets a heart."

Oscar frowned. "Haven't you anything else?"

The jeweler shrugged. "You vant to give her, vot, a liver? A kidney, maybe?"

"Ah." Oscar smiled. "A comic jeweler. Extraordinary. Are there many of you here in Denver?"

"The other vun, he died. Vot's de matter mit a heart?"

"It's fairly ... ordinary, don't you think?"

"It's nice, is vot I tink. A heart is nice. A kidney, not so nice."

"What I want is something unique, something extravagant."

"You vant a Faberge egg."

"Something like, yes. What do you have along the lines of a Faberge egg?"

"Hearts."

"Yes. Of course. Let's have a look at these hearts."

"Hearts ve got." The jeweler bent forward, slid open a panel at the rear of the counter, and brought up a tray. He set it atop the counter. "All sizes."

Oscar studied the lockets. He said, "None of them speak to me."

The jeweler shrugged. "You vant it to talk, ve can't do business."

"What's that over there?"

"Vot?"

"Behind you there, on the shelf."

"Dis? Dis is a brooch. Nice, a very nice piece, but a locket it's not."

"May I see it?"

He handed the brooch to Oscar. "Dot's Indian. The Zuni tribe. From Arizona. A very nice piece. Vun of a kind."

"Expensive, in other words."

"Dot I could let you haff for eighty-five dollars."

"These Zunis of yours. Do they by any chance own Arizona?"

"Look at dot inlay vork. A lot of craft goes into making a piece like dot."

"Into selling it, as well."

The jeweler shrugged. "Ve could go back to hearts."

"Do you have something attractive to present it in?"

"I got a box."

"Metal? Lined with velvet?"

"Cardboard. Lined with cardboard."

"The jeweler who died. It was a natural death?"

"Something he ate, I heard."

"Not a bullet, then?"

"Who vould eat a bullet?"

"Indeed. Do you have a box in, say, violet?"

"In white, I got vun."

"Fine. Done."

"You vant ribbon, I got ribbon. Red."

Oscar smiled. "A ribbon then, by all means."

Although the train to Manitou Springs and Leadville wouldn't be leaving for another hour and a half, the platform was crowded with people. There were cowboys in long canvas dusters, miners in canvas capes, businessmen in suits and topcoats, entire families in homespun and gingham. Children, giddy with candy and antic.i.p.ation, scampered up and down the steps, scurried along the planking, dipped and disappeared behind adult legs. Vendors hawked popcorn and roasted peanuts. The sunlight slanting below the wooden canopy was thin but clear, and the air seemed festive, expectant, pulsing with possibilities.

How thoughtful it was of the universe, once again, to mirror Oscar's mood.

He strolled down the platform. People were drifting in and out of the carriages, smiling and laughing, chattering at each other through cheeks plump with peanuts.

Oscar saw that the carriages were smaller-lower and shorter and more narrow-than those with which he was familiar. But they were exquisitely built and beautifully painted, the bodies a rich emerald green, the trim around the windows a bright cheerful crimson. If any vehicles could ferry pilgrims to the promised land in comfort and style, these could. A pity that poor Moses hadn't been able to hire a railroad train.

He found Henry at the baggage carriage, being harangued by a fat man in an ill-fitting pair of gray overalls beneath an opened gray wool coat.

Oscar asked Henry, "What seems to be the trouble?"

Henry's expression was, as always, noncommittal, but his face was a bit drawn today and his dark skin glistened with a thin sheen of perspiration. Perhaps he had picked up a chill yesterday, when the two of them had plunged through the torrent.

"It's your coat, Mistuh Oscar," Henry said. "The gennaman says it got to go inside the trunk."

"Sorry, friend," said the fat man, who seemed neither particularly sorry nor particularly friendly. His face was closed and k.n.o.bby, like a fist. "I already tole the n.i.g.g.e.r here. All items of clothing gotta go inside the luggage. That's the rules."

"But the coat is still damp," Oscar explained. "It got soaked yesterday. If it's packed away, it'll become horribly wrinkled."

"Tough luck, but that's the rules."

Oscar turned to Henry. "Well, then, bring it along to the carriage."

"Uh-uh," said the man. "No good. No coat rack in the carriages."

Oscar told him, "We'll lay it over one of the seats."

"Only paying pa.s.sengers allowed in the seats." The man was clearly beginning to warm to the exchange. Each refusal was an additional token of his power and further proof of his skill at debate.