He waited. Sary looked down her nose. “Well?” Tommy nudged her nearly off the bench. “We have need of a dogsbody, some baud to help wash up, clean costumes, do the odd walk-on—no spoken lines, mind you—”
“See the world from the rear end of a horse!” Sary snapped back. Tired, hungry, she couldn’t get the stew’s gristle down. She shivered with damp. Couldn’t they see she had the ague? Her head thudded with hammer blows, and the man rambled on.
“Does it matter?” Tommy asked. “Back end of the horse…and me? All of me? Back end…front end?”
“I’ll manage!” Sary snapped.
I’m going to lose even the gristle if he doesn’t stop. And where’s Ratchet? Outside?
Tommy dug into another plate of stew. “Got a better offer, Duchess?”
“Anything.” She wanted to hurt him. She’d be on the ship by now if they hadn’t waylaid her. That glorious…
Sary stopped, arrested by the troupe’s fallen faces, and mumbled, “No offense.”
Chapter 30
An endless evening. Too much song, crude jest, greasy food, sour beer, and harsh tobacco scoured her throat and clouded her brain. At last, the promise of a bed. Tommy led an almost tearfully grateful Sary past cheap doors over the bar. In one: a half-dressed woman unhooked a chemise, breasts nearly spilling out. The man there cupped them and scowled at Sary. Sary flushed, half-wistful. Then Tommy reached past her to open a door to a low-ceiling room.
“Perks of the manager.” Tommy jabbed at the troupe entering a similar room down the hall. “We don’t bunk with that lot.”
“We?”
He flashed his charming crooked grin that deepened a cleft near his mouth and one in his chin as he thrust fingers through the famously floppy hair.
Sary entered, scrutinizing the limp bed and tattered quilts. Had anything looked so heavenly? She checked the window—rotting wharfs, canneries, rooming houses, and bars fronted the bay, stretching both ways, but nothing else. And what was more important, no Ratchet.
“I’ll take the bed.”
“By your most excellent leave.” He cocked a brow and tossed her a playbook. “Earn your rest. We haul our own cart here.” He flopped on the floor, bunching his cape under his head. “You can read?”
Sary slapped the playbook down and blew out the candle.
Tommy called in the dark. “You’re welcome here with us, Sary. We won’t bother you. You are safe.” A silence. “Long as you—want—or need.” Then, “You looked trampled by a herd of buffalo—or my numerous fans.” Silence. “What happened?” Disgusted. “Yeah, well. And the horse they rode in on…”
Tears wet Sary’s face in the dark. She bit her lip. I don’t care, I don’t care.
Chapter 31
Sailors and a rough bar crowd gaped, bemused. Tommy and the troupe danced with broad humor across a stage of yet another venue.
Sary, in a blonde wig and tattered velvet, fanned herself in the wings, awaiting her cue. Days somehow sped into weeks—different bars, once a small theater, a girl’s school, a whirl of rehearsal—for Tommy took his troupe seriously—with color, laughing faces, and pugnacious drunks, and chores mundane as mending costumes.
In an odd way, Sary infused the traveling show with fresh blood, she being the new audience to conquer. The skits were more spontaneous, and the troupe reveled in audiences more robust than usual. Managers paid less grudgingly and meals improved.
She flinched as Lear, now awaiting his cue, brushed her shoulder. She checked the seeping wound—an underlying infection, healed but like a good patch over a worn quilt, made foolhardy any plan other than this easy confluence of days.
Fever was her constant companion now, with flushing cheeks and lips, lending her eyes a certain irresistible madness.
Her gaiety was hysteria, but the mob wasn’t in on it, so Sary earned her keep, hiding her bad arm by holding things in the crook of it, and if the troupe noticed, they kindly left it alone. Sary scratched her side where a knob had formed, with aching as fresh as if the fracture were green, but at least her ribs healed. The redhead said kindly one night, “Fleas, is it? I have somethin for that, darlin’.”
Sary thought she might find she enjoyed all this and be sucked down the rabbit hole of casual warmth, zeal, and camaraderie. She wished she could…
A little more time. Jasmine and laces and long skinny boats. Castles and…and maybe little Jude… She whispered her mantra. Her mind shied from the noisome saloon and Handi and diseases, and Julian and his putrid cough. Does Jude yet live?
“Sary!” Tommy hissed.
She started. Tommy, on stage, edged awkwardly toward the wings, glaring at her. The audience was restless, and so Sary barged on as shrewish Katherina one more night, snarling, “If I be waspish, best beware my sting!”
Sary was not bad as an actress, yet she seemed to take personal delight in stinging Tommy beyond the waspish Taming of the Shrew dialogue.
Now Katharina/Sary, in bedraggled velvet cut daringly low, swatted Tommy extra hard, venting frustration beyond stage direction with each blow. Swat!
Petruchio/Tommy hissed, “A tad harsh! Sweet Katherina!” and pinched her in turn. “Have a care!” He chased her, pincering his fingers. “My remedy is then to pluck it out.” Tommy leered at the titillated audience.
Sary looked daggers and, as Katherina, sashaying before the mob, smirked back. “Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.”
The crowd sniggered, goading her on. They were in an actual theater for once, and the gallery roared approval.
Petruchio: “Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.” Tommy performed a crude bump and grind. He whispered, “Give ’em what they want. A bit more bosom, sweet Katherina. An ankle perhaps. Eh?”
Katharina swirled. “In his tongue!”
Petruchio pranced across stage, broadly posturing. “Whose tongue?”
Katharina’s foot darted from under her gown. Tommy stumbled into a stool, skittering it into the audience. They tossed it back. Tommy raised the stool, threatening.
Sary, her hips swaying, tittered behind her hand.
“Yours, if you talk of tails, and so farewell.” Sary trod on his foot and swivel-hipped away.
Tommy kicked at her backside, missing. “What, with my tongue in your tail?” And he roughly swung her back. “Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.”
Ribald snickers from the mob as Tommy thoroughly kissed Sary, then dropped her. Sary staggered, swinging her arm wide.
Suddenly Tommy sank to his knees under the swing, mugging to the audience. “Marry, so I mean, sweet Katherina, in thy bed…” Tommy leered blatantly, tried for another kiss, and jumped back holding his lip and his groin, to the mob’s raunchy delight. He strutted the stage with effort, as if it were all act and his privates didn’t hurt.
Sary looked contrite. Sort of.
Chapter 32
A scruffy Ratchet tossed Sary’s drawing, so creased it was almost quartered, at the desk sergeant. He shunted it back as if Ratchet smelled.
Cursing, digging into his pockets for an orange, Ratchet left the station. He huddled in a ’Frisco downpour at the tram stop, still cursing the eternal San Francisco penchant for moisture. Fog, rain, mist, drizzle, drool, gully-washers. Oh, for the sere heat and dry chill of Big Bear City.
Behind him, frayed soggy posters plastered brick walls higgledy-piggledy. He had little patience for them. One, however…
The peculiar yellow of some long ago stock from a forgotten printer snagged his attention, darkened by rain and one day from sluicing off to join gutter flotsam gushing to a cistern. Tommy had reams of them, dated but cheap. They still depicted Tommy in tights, with the troupe, and read:
“Sleight of Hand! Jugglers. Fire Eaters!
Feats of Strength!
Rousing Recreations of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet!
Starring Headliners of All Europe!
Seen by Royalty!”
Ratchet did a doubl
e-take, snapping lantern jaws closed. More wolflike than ever, his gray-yellow eyes narrowed as he inwardly recalled that blasted clot of gypsy actors at that first saloon. Damn! And the puddle of water. They did seem familiar. His mind flashed to Big Bear and Delacorte and—Sary.
“Rained that day, too,” Ratchet snarled savagely, with long, bared teeth. He ripped down the wet poster.
****
Pots and jars jumped as Tommy pounded the table of a makeshift space jammed with wigs and costumes. The troupe was buttock to buttock, cramming on costumes, elbowing for makeup.
“Have a care!” Lear fretted. A black line of grease pencil shot to his forehead.
“You owe us!” Tommy raged at Sary’s image.
Sary smeared orange cream across cheeks, stippling on greasy rouge. She enjoyed the new range of freedom in her shoulder. At last the wound had healed properly, with a shiny scar to show it was better, and she was anxious to try her wings no matter where they took her. Enough bolted meals and greasy stew and smelly backrooms…enough of Tommy goading and chiding and—oh, damnation. Look what I’ve done. She’d wiped a line of carmine past the boundaries of her lip.
The troupe ignored Tommy’s raging at Sary as if it were commonplace.
“Every night. I’m practically—advertising,” she mumbled finally.
“Bloody hell! What? What do you advertise? Not sainthood! Under three pounds of paint and wigs, you belong in a bloody music hall burlesque. Not a prestigious traveling Shakespeare exhibition, lending erudition to the masses…”
Sary tightened her lips.
“Moreover, you’re not concentrating! Last night you—”
“Bother last night! I…think…I think…I saw someone,” Sary blurted.
Nevertheless, Tommy rolled on. “I had to strangle you twice! Far as I recall, Desdemona does not study the audience after she expires. Who’s the phantom lover? Someone we know?”
Sary dived under a bench for a slipper, showing her backside. “You wouldn’t want to.”
Tommy eyed her bottom with interest as he continued, “We never meddle in affairs, Sary.” The troupe nodded vigorously, although they were not much listening, except Malcolm, who always perked his ears for gossip.
“Who chases you? The Hounds of Hell? You a pickpocket? Murder some poor wretch?”
She sucked in a breath, rubbed her still stiff arm, and muttered, “It’s all wrong, that’s all. I feel it.”
“Stuff and nonsense!”
Tommy slammed more lip grease in front of her.
“Tomorrow’s opening night! You rehearsed—not Becky, you! No matter what, if we’re sick or bloody bleeding dead, we theater folk have a tradition called dependability. Gratitude! Loyalty! We need the money, Sary.”
****
Ratchet trekked office to office, thrusting the poster at theater managers. One bored manager finally tapped it, shrugged, nodded, and checked a ledger.
****
Julian dealt cards for a strapping eighteen-month-old Jude, while Handi hovered in the background. She edged forward with a winning smile, holding a tiny velvet, fur-trimmed coat for the sturdy toddler with the tousle of glossy curls and clear green eyes above plump, freckled cheeks.
Julian twitched, petulant. “What’s in your craw?”
“Air. He needs out, Julian. The new pony?” Handi wheedled.
“And have my boy thrown and his neck broke? Jealous cow! You’d like that.”
Jude giggled. Then he said, “Pony, Grampa? Where pony?”
“In yer grandma’s bustle. Ain’t no pony! Just a crazy old woman. Don’t need pay her no mind.”
Handi flinched and watched Baby Jude pick up his messy spread of cards, inexpertly fanning them in imitation. Julian poured whiskey into his milk, and Jude greedily reached for it.
“That’ll grow hair on your chest.” Julian thumped his chest, added a tiny drop of milk in his own glass, and tinked Jude’s glass. Jude giggled and coughed from the blast of smoke from Julian’s cigar.
Handi drooped and left.
****
Sary shut her eyes, blotting out the garish image in the cloudy traveling mirror. “A little longer then, Tommy.” She rubbed her head and picked up the tube, slashing more carmine across her mouth, making herself unrecognizable, unless she were a Jack the Ripper victim, she fancied.
As she daubed shadow above each eye, Sary wondered, gazing in the mirror, who that woman was in the red wig and green, heavily mascaraed eyes staring from a bleak face. Perhaps someone as scattered as the false parts she shed each night, one part yearning to revel in the fabled glories of Europe, another darkly pondering the fate of one ill-favored little boy, innocent as a spring dandelion and forever, as dandelion fluff, blown away. On the other hand, should she sink into the day-to-day bawdy geniality and shelter of the troupe—and Tommy—until the other life faded with wear and time? But would that be real or merely happenstance?
She was so weary of life just happening to her. Sary desperately wanted to pick up the reins herself and gallop hell-for-leather in a direction she herself chose. She blotted more face rouge. She must make a decision regarding Tommy. If she had to decide. It wasn’t really a choice. Deep down, she feared his touch would be the touch that might bind her to him forever—her body betrayed her and yearned for that touch—
“Katherina!” Tommy’s voice broke in—he always called her by the name of the character she played. “You going to moon over yourself all night? The audience cares little if one has a pound or a half pound of grease paint on your face. Really, Kate!”
And so a red-cheeked female named Sary, in a stained purple gown and red wig, bounced on a makeshift stage.
****
“Peeka-boo! Where’s my sweet sugarboy? Where’s he hidin’ at?”
Jude giggled, covering his broad freckled face under widespread chubby fingers. One green eye peeked through them, while Pearl lounged on a pillowed bed, dividing her attentions between satisfying a red-faced customer and amusing the curly-headed little boy.
As she toddled little Jude to a potty, she cooed, “Does my little man need to go winky-wink…?”
The customer flopped on his back and groaned.
****
Ratchet sucked oranges, inwardly groaning at the sign across the street, a sign all tarted up in blue and gold: Anchor’s Rest
Flowers in boxes. Sparkling glass. He checked the names on the slip of paper. Another saloon, but the perverted band of gypsies might have come up in the world. He hoped they hadn’t moved on. He’d swear they knew, by God, how much he was in a fever to be back in Big Bear, where folks didn’t knock you down without a fare-ye-well, and a man knows without yankin’ down a fella’s BVDs if a fella’s a man and not a woman—and the bona fide females here, were so unwomanly.
Aware of how he looked, Ratchet had practiced till one look was as good as a knife to the gizzard. Men quaked and women quailed. But females here just laughed and made faces back.
He pushed from the wall, his long yellow teeth exposed, lupine, as cheers, clapping, and banging of tankards came from within. He would make her pay.
Spilling out the door came the pansy actor, a slatternly redhead towering over the men, a perversion of God’s plan in the depraved shape of a dwarf, the old fart with the long beard, and—Christ! that murdering slut, cowering just like she done before.
Not this time. Not this time. Murdering whore! First, I’ll carve the gold outa her.
He quickened as the troupe scattered, leaving Sary arguing with the same nancy boy in velvet bloomers.
“Never mind sugary words! You deliberately trod on my hem…!” Ratchet heard Sary yelling like a fishwife. “You wished me mortified. I’m leaving, Tommy. I swear I will!”
The catamite waved his arms like a semaphore. “Sary! You were on fire tonight. Blazing! Incendiary! How can you even entertain—?”
“If I were on fire, it’s because I wished that damnable play over!” They were walking away. He would follow a m
ite. This was better than a tent show.
“I received a pourboire tonight,” he heard the catamite say, like he was all proud. ‘Poor bwore’ he heard—more fancy words, nailing him for certain sure as a nancy boy, a fairy lad. Eyes narrowed, the one she called Tommy showed the witch a coin. Ratchet would relieve him of it later. A little molasses for his efforts. He critically assessed Sary. One arm was kinked, and she held it close to her side. She was plumper, kind of toothsome, as females go. Her hair, Ratchet grudgingly conceded, was fetching, hanging down like that. A female Lazarus rising from the dead could do no worse, he supposed, savoring these few seconds before the kill.
****
Sary looked about, uneasy. Ghost fingers surrounded her neck.
“Are you even listening?”
“Yes, Tommy.”
“We deserve a slap-up meal.”
Sary looked over her shoulder.
“No one pursues you, your highness! You’re not that illustrious.”
Ratchet grinned, ducking.
“Suit yourself!” Tommy sulked, pocketing the tip.
Ratchet nodded approval—Fairy-boy might have brass in him yet—and stepped out clapping. “Excellent day for a hanging, Swinford.” She spun, wide-eyed. Looks ready to run. Ratchet spat pips, pocketed them, and sauntered over, grinning. Fairy-boy frowned, until Ratchet’s long hand flashed his knife. The bitch tried to tug the boy off.
“My wrangle’s not with fellers in purple bloomers, sugarplum. Wait your turn.”
“Tommy!” Sary tried to yank him, but he waded in with fists cocked like an English gentleman. “Tommy! You can’t fight him that way!” This isn’t a play, Sary wanted to yell, as Ratchet slammed him, one-armed, against brick.
“Don’t piss with me, boy!”
Tommy doubled. “Ooooph! Run, Sary!” he managed and rushed back in, awkwardly flailing, as Ratchet’s knife sang. Tommy didn’t care for the tune after all, falling back while Sary looked about for a weapon, any weapon, and snatched up a broken brick, raising it high. This is all too familiar. Ratchet seemed to sense her and reached back and grabbed her wrist, twisting the brick out of her hand and yanking Sary to him. She dragged her weight, clawing with her other hand, as Ratchet advanced on Tommy. “You wanna save sugarplum fairy here, move, dammit, or I’ll cut you here!” Sary had hope when she noticed a crowd of stragglers appearing in the gap. She didn’t notice the animated looks on their faces. Ratchet threw Tommy, the beautiful Tommy, off.
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