Husband on Credit

by Lucy Evanson

  Her eye was drawn to two things in the window as she approached: one, a new day dress that did nothing for her. With its long sleeves and sky-high neckline, it looked perfect for any one of the thousands of married women around. And now I’m one of them. Guess it’s perfect for me, she thought as she sighed. The only redeeming feature of the dress was the vibrant green color, like the surrounding hills on summer day.

  The other item that caught her eye was a small sign in the corner of the glass. It read ROOM TO LET, and although it may have been there the first time Cora had visited the shop, she hadn’t had any reason to notice it at the time.

  Becky greeted her with a wide smile as she entered. “Morning, Miss Rice,” she said.

  “Good morning. I know it hasn’t been exactly one week yet—”

  “I’ve got them right over here,” Becky interrupted, going to the rack along the wall. She slid the other dresses aside to reveal a pair tagged with Cora’s name. Becky took them from the rack and led Cora to a back room, where she helped her try them on.

  They fit perfectly. It would take some getting used to, Cora realized; she wasn’t accustomed to the feel of the fabric against her throat, but she couldn’t deny that Becky had done a splendid job as she looked at herself in the mirror.

  “Well, what do you think?” Becky asked.

  “It looks fine,” Cora said. “It’s just odd to see myself wearing something like this.” She turned back and forth a bit. “Thank you, Becky. Say, before I forget, I saw that you have a room for rent.”

  “Sure do,” Becky said as she helped Cora out of the new dress. “Would you like to see it?”

  “I’d love to.” She changed into her old dress again and Becky brought her outside to the back entrance of the shop.

  “This building used to be a house, and they left the upstairs as an apartment,” Becky said as she unlocked the door and showed Cora inside. “My husband and I actually stayed here for a while, but in the end we decided we liked being out on the farm better than here in town.” They climbed the stairs to the interior door, which Becky unlocked and opened to reveal a neat, clean, furnished apartment.

  “Now, it’s not the biggest place you’ve ever seen, I’m sure,” Becky said as she showed Cora around, “but it should be more than enough room for a woman like yourself.”

  Cora had to agree that it would be suitable, even for her and Nathan together. In addition to the kitchen and a sitting room, there were two bedrooms, so there wouldn’t be any questions about sleeping arrangements.

  “Actually it will be for me and my husband.”

  Becky’s eyes grew wide. “You’re married?!”

  Cora felt her cheeks grow warm for some reason. “Yes, I am,” she said. “Just recently, in fact.”

  “Congratulations!” Becky said with a warm smile. “That’s wonderful. And all this time I’ve been calling you Miss Rice. What’s your name now?”

  “It’s Booker,” she said. “But how about you just call me Cora?”

  “Cora it is, then,” Becky said. “So what do you think?”

  She took another look around the place. It would be a real change, moving in with a man, regardless of the fact that their names were bound together under stamp and seal on a fancy piece of paper. But if they were going to make it look like they were a real married couple, then they didn’t have much choice in the matter.

  “It’s perfect,” Cora said as she stepped to the window and pulled the curtain aside, letting in the sunlight. “When can we move in?”

  “Whenever you like.”

  Cora glanced down into the street. There, up the block, was the now-familiar carriage with Drake’s bulk hunched down on the seat like a sack of potatoes about to burst open.

  “How about tonight?” she asked.

  Becky laughed. “Wow, you really are newlyweds, aren’t you?”

  Cora’s cheeks warmed again and she forced a smile. “How much is the rent?”

  “Oh, we were thinking twenty-five dollars a month.”

  The color drained from Cora’s cheeks. The price was fair—certainly fair, of course—but twenty-five dollars was just about all she had left in her emergency savings. With Nathan just starting his job, she couldn’t really count on him right now, and they would still need to eat somehow. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be perfect after all.

  “But…you don’t need to pay all at once,” Becky said quietly as she watched Cora. “You could go week by week or something.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Becky said, giving her another smile. “It’s not like we had any rent coming in before anyway.”

  A flood of relief coursed through her veins. “Well, then I’ll pay you the first week’s rent this evening.”

  “Terrific,” Becky said. “But don’t you want your husband to see the place too before you decide?”

  Cora looked out again at Drake in his carriage. “I’ve already decided,” she said. “He’ll either like it or lump it.”

  Becky laughed. “You learn quick for a newlywed,” she said, and briefly squeezed Cora’s arm. “You might as well take the key right now, then. Would you all like some help moving your things over? I can have my husband bring over a wagon.”

  “No, I don’t think we’ll need any help,” Cora said. “But thanks. That’s a nice offer.”

  “Not at all,” Becky said. “It’s exciting, isn’t it? Starting a life together, I mean.”

  Cora took a deep breath. “It’s like nothing I ever expected,” she said.

  “Nathan here will show you up to your room,” Gates said as he slid the key across the counter.

  “Right this way, folks.” Nathan grabbed both bags and started up the stairs, followed by the elderly couple. He went up to the second floor and opened room 214, letting the guests enter before he brought in their bags. In exchange for the room key, the man gave him a couple of coins, and Nathan mentally updated his tally while he went downstairs.

  So far, so good, he thought, quickly doing figures in his head. His tips were small but frequent, and added to his salary, he’d top sixty dollars a month on average. Not bad at all. The thought would have put a spring in his step, but his legs were exhausted. Mr. Gates hadn’t been kidding when he’d said that the bellhops climbed the stairs a hundred times a day.

  “Nathan, can you go out and sweep the steps before you leave?” Gates asked when he returned to the lobby.

  “Sure thing.” Nathan stepped into the office for his coat and retrieved the broom from the closet. The brisk wind outside had delivered a fresh selection of crunchy dry leaves to the hotel’s front step, just as it did every evening, and it had become something of a ritual for Nathan to sweep them away as his last task every night.

  While he swept, a shout from down the street caught his attention, and he turned in time to see a couple of men laughing and shoving each other as they departed the saloon. For a moment—only a moment—he felt a flash of jealousy, but he almost immediately brushed the thought from his mind. His days of carousing in taverns were over, at least for now, and he wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

  It was still hard to believe how much his life had changed in only a couple of weeks—going from a single man, drinking away what little money he had and too proud to take a job he’d been offered, to a married man, employed, with a beautiful wife waiting for him at home. It may not have been all it appeared on the surface, but it sure looked good from the outside.

  He quickly finished sweeping the steps, returned the broom to the closet and said goodnight to his coworkers before returning to the street. He turned up his collar and jammed his hands in his pockets as he walked. Winter was here, no doubt about it. He made a few more calculations in his head. With their rent and food, it would take a little while to save the money, but he’d have to get Cora a new cloak. She made a show of not minding the cold, but he could see that she was freezing more often than not.

  He picked up the pace a bit, both
to stay warm and to arrive home more quickly. Their marriage may not have been based on anything more than a business arrangement, but he enjoyed spending time with her regardless. Before they had moved in together, Cora had seemed to be on edge and nervous more often than not, and even now she still seemed tense. It wouldn’t surprise him if that cousin of hers was causing trouble somehow, but Cora denied that anything was wrong. Still, he often found her glued to the window, keeping an eye on the street below as if on the lookout for something. Or someone.

  Climbing the stairs to their apartment, he was greeted with a wonderful aroma that reminded him of freshly baked bread, and when he entered the apartment he saw Cora bent over, looking into the oven.

  “Evening, Cora,” he called.

  She jumped a bit at the sound of his voice. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, closing the oven door.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “What’s in the oven?”

  “You’ll find out in a little while,” she said. “I just got so bored sitting around here that I decided to do a little baking. Are you hungry?”

  “Starved,” he said. “But I didn’t expect you’d be doing any baking, though.” He went to the kitchen table and sat down. “What did you do today?”

  “Aside from this?” she asked, pointing to the stove. “Nothing.”

  “You didn’t go out at all?”

  “No.”

  He watched as she poured water into a basin and began to wash some potatoes. Now that he thought about it, it didn’t seem that she had even left the apartment since they’d moved in three days earlier. “Cora, you need to get out more. You need some fresh air once in a while.”

  She shrugged. “It’s been too cold.”

  He eyed the thin shawl that was hanging on the back of the door. He couldn’t argue with her; it probably had been too cold to go out except when absolutely necessary. Maybe his tips would improve over the weekend and he’d be able to buy her the new cloak sooner than he’d thought.

  He stood up and grabbed a knife and cutting board, then went to her side.

  “What are you doing?” She couldn’t contain a confused smile as he reached for the clean potatoes.

  “Helping,” he said. “What does it look like?”

  “I wasn’t sure,” she said, still giving him an odd look. “It’s something I’ve never seen before.”

  He grinned at her. “You want these sliced or cubed?”

  “Cubed will be fine. Just so you know, I’m not making anything fancy. Just fried potatoes.”

  “Sounds fine to me,” he said. He started cutting, sliding the pieces to the side with the edge of the knife.

  “It’s been a long while since I did any cooking,” she said as she poured a splash of oil into a frying pan and set it on the stove. “Not since I left my mom’s house, and that was almost ten years ago.” Cora leaned over and opened the oven door a crack to peer inside. “Since then I’ve pretty much just eaten at boarding houses or at the café.”

  “That can get expensive in a hurry,” he said. “How’d a girl like you afford that?”

  He could see her back stiffen, and she only gradually stood up straight and eased the oven door closed.

  “I, uh…I used to do some work once in a while.”

  “What did you do?”

  She turned to face him, and for the first time, he saw an old woman’s eyes, tired and worn. “I did whatever I had to do,” she said. “I went through some real hard times and I’d rather not talk about it. Is that all right with you?”

  He couldn’t bear the way she was looking at him, and his gaze fell to the cutting board. “Of course,” he said quietly. He picked up another potato and began to cut. “So you left home ten years ago, huh? You must have been just a girl.”

  “No, not really,” she said. “I was sixteen. As soon as I could get out of there, I took my chance.”

  A silence settled over them for a minute until Nathan cleared his throat and spoke. “I’m sorry to hear you had a rough time before,” he said. He finished dividing the potato and slid the pieces into the bowl. “Now, what else can I do?”

  Her eyes had softened again as she looked closely at him. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. Finally she nodded toward the kitchen table. “Just have a seat and relax for now,” she said. “If you want to, you can help me clean up later.”

  Nathan sat down and watched her cut up an onion before throwing everything into the pan to fry. It was going to be a real shame when their time together was up. Cora may have been a little tense sometimes, but he couldn’t blame her; this was turning into a stressful time all around. But when she was distracted from her worries—like now, when she was keeping an eye on her cooking, or when he managed to pull her into a conversation—she blossomed back into the beautiful young woman he’d first seen only a few weeks earlier. It was only after several minutes that he realized how much he liked just being there with her; when he watched her, time seemed to fly by without being noticed at all.

  “Nathan, would you mind getting me a couple of plates?”

  He stood up and brought two plates over to the stove, where she portioned out the fried potatoes. He took a deep breath of the steam rising from the food, and his stomach growled as if that would hurry things up.

  Cora reached into the oven with a hot pad and pulled out a muffin tin filled with perfectly golden domes.

  “You made cornbread muffins?”

  “It’s just about the only thing I can bake,” she said.

  While they ate—the potatoes were simple but savory, and the cornbread was so sweet and moist he had to restrain himself from wolfing down all of them—Nathan told her about his day, trying to find any way to make climbing stairs for eight hours sound interesting. In the end, he supposed it didn’t matter what they talked about; he just enjoyed the sound of her voice and watching the way she lifted her chin when she laughed, her eyes shining in the lamplight.

  When they had finished dinner, cleaned up, and each gone to bed, he lay awake for a long time, remembering the soft skin of her neck and the golden strands of hair that she had tucked behind her ear. Four months, and half of that nearly gone already, he thought. It sometimes seemed that he should have held out not for more money, but more time.

  Nathan had resigned himself to the fact that no matter how carefully he shined the brass handrail that ran up the steps from the lobby, his work would be undone in a matter of hours, if not much sooner than that. He took great care to make it pristine and bright, only to have the guests muck it up with fingerprints in no time at all.

  He had just washed the brass polish off his hands and returned to the lobby when the doors opened and a cold breeze flowed across the floor. He turned to see who had come in and saw a large man nearly filling the doorway.

  The guests at the Point Plaza were usually the type of people who could appreciate the thickness of the Oriental rugs in the sitting rooms and the hand-cut crystal wall sconces. They were well-to-do, to put it mildly, and they looked like it. This man did not.

  He was a big fellow—not tall, but very large around the middle—and as he walked across the lobby, his arms swung out to take up even more room than the rest of him did. He was wearing a jacket tailored to fit a much smaller man, and his cheeks were covered with a week’s worth of scruff.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” Gates said as the man reached the front desk. “Are you checking in?”

  “I want to see a room,” the man said. “I might stay here, but I want to see the place first.”

  “Certainly,” Gates said. “Allow me to give you a tour.” He had already started out from behind the desk when the man shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Have your boy here do it.” He raised a beefy hand and pointed directly at Nathan.

  “Of course,” Gates said. He reached for a key hanging on the peg board behind the desk. “Nathan, please give this gentleman the tour and show him room 219.”

 
“Sure thing,” Nathan said, taking the key. “Right this way.”

  He led the man through the lobby and toward the stairs, narrating their steps with an explanation of the same details he’d heard Gates describe a hundred times. As they began to climb to the second floor, he tried to ignore the greasy smudges that the man was leaving all the way up the freshly-shined brass.

  “Nice place,” the man grunted as they arrived at the second-floor landing.

  “It’s the best hotel in the whole county,” Nathan said. He didn’t know that for sure, of course, but he’d heard Gates say that a hundred times as well. “What brings you to town?”

  “Business,” he said. “Your name’s Nathan? That’s what your boss said, right?”

  “Yes, sir. Now if we just go down this way, I’ll show you the room.” Nathan turned to the left and led him down past several doors. He could hear the man’s breath close behind him, ragged after climbing the stairs. He sounded almost like a steam engine chugging down the hall.

  “So how long have you been working here, Nathan?”

  “Not long. Only a few weeks, in fact.” He dug into his pocket and retrieved the key to open the room.

  “What were you doing before you started working here, then?”

  Nathan snorted. “Not much,” he said. “Took a while for me to find a job. I almost called it quits and went back home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “Plainfield,” he said. “Ever been up that way?”

  “Nope,” the man said. “Not yet.”

  Nathan opened the door wide and stepped aside for the man to enter. He went in and quickly looked around, barely bothering to inspect things at all before he turned back to Nathan.

  “So what’s your last name?”

  It seemed like a mighty odd question. In the weeks he’d been working there, countless guests had asked Nathan’s first name, but not one had ever wanted to know his last name.