by Pete Dexter
Charley watched him start up the hill. He went into a small stand of pines, then came out the other side. He walked east, across the hill, and then disappeared into more trees. He was higher already than any of the other shacks or tents, and Charley shuddered to think of the climb in the winter. He wondered that a preacher would choose such a place to live.
Charley waited another ten minutes, satisfying himself that the boy wasn't coming back down, and then returned to town, turned left on Wall Street, and climbed the hill to Mrs. Langrishe's house. He was preoccupied with the boy and did not remember the blood on his fingers until he was in her living room, shaking hands with a man named Solomon Star.
Solomon Star had soft, tiny hands and a flat sadness in his eyes. Charley had seen that sadness before, and knew it was not a temporary condition. There were some things that happened you could never get away from.
"I don't recall your business," Charley said, to be polite.
Solomon Star said, "I've got the brickworks," being polite too. There were half a hundred people in Mrs. Langrishe's living room, and more spilled out into the hallway and kitchen. The room was twenty degrees hotter than the afternoon, and filled with the smells of every kind of perfume and soap available in the Hills. It was a complaint among the town ladies that they were forced to buy the same perfumes and colognes as the whores.
Charley did not see Agnes. Solomon Star let go of his hand and walked away, into a corner, and stared out the window. Charley noted the heaviness in his moves, and wondered at the unlikely people chosen in this place to carry extra weight.
The thought was still in his mind when he felt Mrs. Langrishe's hand slip through his arm. Without looking he knew who it was. His peeder knew too.
"Mr. Utter," she said. "I was afraid you couldn't attend."
"I was occupied with unexpected business," he said, closing his hand to hide the blood.
She smiled at him and pressed herself into his arm until her breasts rose up to him, almost out of her dress. He was romanced by her freckles all over again. "What kind of business does a Christian man do on Sundays?" He felt a playfulness in her, but it didn't seem mean.
He thought of Malcolm, wondering if he'd stayed in the cabin. "Church business," he said. She smiled, bringing color into her chest. A Negro passed, carrying red wine. The glasses looked like they'd break if you sneezed.
She stopped the Negro, addressing him as "uncle," and took two of the drinks. She put one in Charley's hand and then sipped at the other while she looked into his eyes. He felt her playing with him; he wasn't sure now that it was playing.
She moved her hand off his sleeve and slid it into the middle of his back. His peeder jumped at the fresh touch. "I'm afraid I was unkind to you," she said. "I hope you'll forgive me."
"Oh, I'm used to it," he said. "I've been married."
Her hand pressed into his back, and he looked around to see if anyone was watching. The room had no focus, though, no one paid attention to anyone else. It was like a grazing. She said, "I'm afraid I was disappointed with the town's civilities and took it out on you." He smiled at her and she smiled back. "I hope you'll give me a chance to make it up."
"I get disappointed with the civilities myself," he said.
He felt himself sweating under her hand and took a drink of the wine. It had a vinegar taste that did not agree with him. He swallowed, but the taste stuck in his mouth like it was painted on.
She moved her hand then, and took his. "Would you care to see the rest of the house?" She pulled him out of the living room, into the hallway. He caught a glimpse of Agnes Lake as Mrs. Langrishe led him up the stairs. She was standing in a corner in a long dress that went from her neck to her feet. There was something in the dress, or in Agnes, that suggested its use was not decoration but to cover as much of her as it could. She was listening to the sheriff. Charley couldn't see his face, but the only other man in Deadwood of that size was Boone May, who was giving his own party.
She pulled at Charley's hand now, and he followed her off the stairs, watching Agnes until she was eclipsed by the angle of the ceiling. He wondered what the sheriff could be saying about Bill.
Mrs. Langrishe squeezed his hand.
There were four doors on the second floor, all of them closed. She walked him to the far end, opening doors as they went. The rooms had different colors and different smells. All of them were female except the first, which was white and smelled of cigar smoke. The next room was blue, the one after that was yellow.
The last one was purple, and Charley looked at the bedspread and imagined how his place in Lead would look with purple bedspreads. He imagined purple walls. The noise downstairs seemed a long ways off, and he stood in the door, thinking purple thoughts, noticing that he still had Mrs. Langrishe's hand.
"This is my room," she said, turning to face him in the door. He smiled at that. She said, "You're amused?"
"No."
She said, "You don't smile for no reason, Mr. Utter. You're not frivolous."
"I never thought of a man and wife with separate rooms." Separate parts of the country, yes; rooms, no.
She stared at him a long time, until the smile on his face was dead weight. "My husband has no interest in women," she said finally.
She was still looking into his eyes, and he felt himself getting wormy, waiting for something to come into his mind. "What is his interest?" he said. It came out of his mouth, he heard it, but something in him denied he said it.
She kept her eyes on his but let go of his hand. "Would you care to see the third floor?" she said.
She shut the door to the purple room and walked ahead of him up the stairs. The stairway here was narrow and dark, and the air turned dustier and warmer the further up they went. She stopped at the top and he bumped into her from behind, his nose touching her back just at the spot where the dress quit.
He felt satin with his lips and skin with his nose.
He heard her finding the lock with a key, and then a cut of light appeared overhead and grew, and she stepped into it, disappearing for a minute, and then he stepped into it too. The room was smaller than any of the bedrooms, and the ceiling dropped on one side all the way to the floor. The light came from a window, as big as the one the Bottle Fiend had come through on the way into Mrs. Langrishe's living room. The only piece of furniture was a davenport against the opposite wall. "This is my secret place," she said. She walked past him, brushing his arm, and closed the door. The sound was reminiscent of cocking a gun.
"What's a lady with a purple bedroom need with secret places?" he said.
She did not answer that question.
She walked to the window and looked out, holding herself as if she were cold. With the door closed, the noise from downstairs was like something past, that you heard in your head remembering it. Little specks of dust floated in the air around her shoulders. The room was full of motion, and nothing moved at all.
"It looks like a place you might keep a soft-brain that was the family secret," Charley said.
She smiled and he was relieved to see she wasn't going to cry. The room seemed ripe for that, he couldn't say why. "What is it you're doing with that man?" she said, meaning the Bottle Fiend.
Charley shrugged. "We're amigos," he said.
She laughed out loud. "You watch over him like your own child," she said.
He caught something hard in her face and suddenly thought she had probably had a child of her own once. "No," he said, " he isn't my child. He sleeps in his own house and runs his own business ..."
There was a yard between them and she closed that while he spoke. The room was warm, and her cheek felt damp when it touched him. She put her arms around his head and pushed herself into his peeder, which was still daydreaming purple. "You take care of people," she said. She kissed him and then pulled back, looking at him like it was a question.
He thought of Bill, and denied it. "It's not that," he said. "Amigos take care of each other."
And she
kissed him again. Her hands slid down off his head, over his back, and came to rest on his bottom. She pushed him into herself, and he helped her. He felt her chest and her stomach and her damp cheeks. Her perfume was all over him, and underneath she was as clean as ironed clothes.
Her mouth slid over his, trailing tongue. It went from one of his ears to the other, pushing itself as deep into his head as it could get. It was sloppier than Charley liked, he guessed she had let go of something and he was still holding on. She said, "Will you take care of me too?"
And he looked at her for a minute, holding her face in his hands, but he couldn't tell if she was real or acting. His peeder had no such reservations—he wondered sometimes if they were run by the same motor.
As he held her face, her hands moved from behind to the front and unfastened his buttons. Starting at the collar of his shirt and finishing at the fork in his pants. He couldn't help noticing how practiced she was at it. "That must of been twenty buttons," he said.
She had found his peeder, though, and held it in her fingers. Other fingers ran across his stomach and then down one of his legs. His pants fell in a pile around his feet, and he stepped out of them to follow her to the davenport. She sat down first and pulled him after her. Her fingers let go of his peeder and loosened her own clothes. Her buttons were on the side and in back, but they opened almost before she touched them. "You're a button-sharp woman, Mrs. Langrishe," he said.
She leaned closer and touched his lips with her finger. "Practice," she said. "Costume changes." Then she moved her finger and replaced it with one of her breasts, so fast Charley couldn't have said which one. He was sitting on the middle pillow of the davenport— it was a cool, smooth fabric on his bottom—and she moved herself up onto his lap, her legs folded underneath, one on each side, and reached again for his peeder.
"Will you take care of me too?" she said. Her weight seemed to rest on the spot where Steve had shot him.
And there was an entanglement at work that he hadn't considered. "I don't know," he said.
Mrs. Langrishe moved on his lap and he felt the smooth lining of her dress where it draped over his legs. Her hair fell over his neck and some of it lay on his shoulder. The sun came around her head, and as he stared up at her she seemed to glow.
She reached between their legs and found his peeder, and then slid herself forward until it was inside her. Then she threw her head back, away from him toward the ceiling, and pushed herself against him, up and back, and it came to him before long that she had probably forgotten who she was with. She spent herself in two minutes, crying out at the end, and then she sat still, his peeder still inside her, and smiled into his face and touched his cheeks with the tips of her fingers, as if he had pleased her. She asked it again, but in a different way. "Will you take care of me, Charley?"
And he told her the same thing. He didn't know.
It took Mrs. Langrishe less time to dress than Charley. Of course, her clothes were still on her. She buttoned her buttons and patted her hair, and then watched from the davenport with a peculiar smile while he climbed into his pants. Charley was slow with his buttons, and smoothed the front of his shirt as he dressed. He did not like a shirt to look like it had been found rolled up in a ditch with himself inside it.
"You're an unusual mart," she said.
He tucked his shirt in as deep as it would go, all the way around. His peeder felt wet against his pants. It was still enlarged; he was unsure if it had culminated or not. There had been no friction to speak of inside Mrs. Langrishe. The movement had all been outside, she'd rubbed herself against him, holding him inside her in one place. All in all, he felt more milked than loved.
He wondered what new style of fornication it was, or if it was somehow the old style, except Mrs. Langrishe and himself had reversed parts. She was an actress.
"What are you thinking?" she said.
He tightened his belt and checked his shirt. She stood up and walked to the door. "This might be how it feels to be the woman," he said.
She laughed at that without looking back and started down the stairs. Charley closed the door behind him and was suddenly blind.
It was cooler, though, and he could hear Mrs. Langrishe on the stairs below him, walking steady and sure, as if she could see in the dark. They might have been upstairs ten minutes.
He heard the party again when they were back on the second floor. She stopped at the bottom of the stairwell and waited for him, taking his arm to walk him down the hall to the first flight of stairs.
She seemed new all over again, and as they walked back down to the party there was something in her pose that established a distance between them, and by the time she let go of his arm at the bottom of the stairs, looking for guests to flatter, it was like they'd never been upstairs at all.
The first person Charley saw after Mrs. Langrishe let go of him was her husband. He was standing between the staircase and the front room with a woman Charley didn't know. He was holding a long-necked glass of wine in one hand and a cigar in the other, talking about the deplorable state of the arts in the Black Hills.
He met Charley's eye without interrupting himself. Charley returned the look, not as uncomfortable as he would have expected, still wet with Mrs. Langrishe's fluids. It changed the way he felt, knowing that Jack Langrishe had no interest in women. Whatever agreement he and his wife had, Charley hadn't broken any of it.
Langrishe took a long pull on his cigar and blew smoke around the woman's head. Then he stepped around her and offered Charley his hand. Charley allowed Langrishe to crush his fingers. "I trust you're enjoying yourself," Langrishe said. Charley couldn't read if that had meaning or not.
Behind Langrishe, the woman was smiling at him. Jack Langrishe's cigar smoke hung to her head like a swarm of summer bugs. "It's a kind thought," Charley said, "having a party for Mrs. Hickok."
"A charming lady," Langrishe said. He still had Charley's hand, pressing the knuckles into each other. From then on, for as long as he lived, Charley would wonder about any man who squeezed other men's hands.
"She's something of a performer herself," Langrishe said. "I was hoping to convince her to stay on long enough to appear in one of our productions."
"I don't think she favors acting," Charley said. He thought of her shyness. "Her talent runs a different way."
Langrishe let go of Charley's hand. "A performance is a performance, am I right?"
"I don't know," Charley said. The words sounded queerly familiar, and as he said them Mrs. Langrishe appeared, holding on to Solomon Star's arm, reminding him that he'd just said them to her.
She looked at him in a way that might have been friendly, but spoke only for Solomon Star. "I'm afraid I have to watch you every minute, Mr. Star," she said, "or you'll leave us. Here, have you met Mr. Tan? I saw him right over here . . . Some of our Chinese are very keen businessmen . . ."
Charley walked into the front room and took a long-necked glass of wine from the Negro. It tasted more familiar than the first glass, and he sat on a chair near the window and sipped it. When the Negro came past again, Charley stood up and traded glasses— empty for full—and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror between two of the front windows. It looked like it fit him, to have a wineglass in his hand. With the next glass, the wine got easier to swallow and his mouth accustomed itself to the taste.
He tried to remember what it had felt like, being with Mrs. Langrishe, and if he wanted to be with her again. He didn't know. He had another glass of wine and looked around the room to see where she was. He couldn't see her, or Agnes, or anyone else he recognized. He caught his reflection in the mirror again, and for a second he didn't recognize it either. He looked into his wineglass, and his reflection was there too.
He sat down on the davenport and closed his eyes against his reflections. And being in that posture, he did not see Solomon Star attempt to assassinate the Chinaman.
There was a voice—the sheriff's, when he considered it later— and then
a shot. When Charley opened his eyes, the Chinaman was running through the front room toward the door, holding his elbow. Sheriff Bullock was standing at the other end of the room, holding Solomon Star.
Solomon did not need to be held, though. He stood quietly, as agreeable as good weather, and watched the Chinaman run out the door. He did not object when the sheriff took the gun out of his hand.
The gun was a derringer with a barrel wide enough to accommodate a middle finger. It had gone off in a crowd and now, a minute later, there were already different stories about what had happened. Charley heard this from the couch: "The Chinese drew first."
Charley looked at the floor and saw spots of blood.
When he looked back at Solomon Star, the sheriff had changed his hold. He had his arm around his shoulder now, and he was smiling, squeezing Solomon against himself over and over, explaining that it was an accident.
Solomon did not argue, or pull himself away. There was a look on his face that wasn't far from a smile itself, as if he knew good news that nobody else had heard. Charley noticed the sheriff had put the derringer out of sight. He had not let go of Solomon's shoulders.
Mrs. Langrishe came into the front room then, looking for the source of the trouble. Her head moved from one place to another in a way that suggested a bat in the attic.
The sheriff stepped into her path, bringing Solomon with him. "I am afraid we have had a small accident in your absence," he said.
She smiled in a forgiving way, not knowing yet what she was forgiving.
Bullock said, "Mr. Star was showing the Chinese gentleman his pocket gun, and somehow it went off."
"Mr. Tan?"
The sheriff nodded. "It wasn't a serious wound," he said, "but Mr. Tan decided to have it attended to right away." Then he stared at his partner, who stood quietly, with no inclination to speak for himself.
"Mr. Star is mortified," the sheriff said, "that a firearm would go off in your home. And deeply upset."
