The Best Bad Things

by Katrina Carrasco

  “Yes, ma’am, I would,” she says.

  “I’m Emma.”

  “Jack,” Alma says. “You as thirsty as you are pretty, Emma?”

  The woman’s laugh is gurgling, catchy.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “A whiskey,” Emma says.

  She knocks back the drink like it’s dyed water, which it likely is. Alma buys her two more and sips at her gin while a new song is played and applauded. They haven’t even gotten to dancing but the woman starts leaning into her anyhow, telling her about the new band and its magic fiddlers, her warm, soft body pressing into Alma’s ribs, floral scent rising from her braided hair. Alma puts an arm around Emma’s bare shoulders. Her skin is dewy with sweat.

  “We ought to dance eventually,” Alma says, “but I’m happy just to conversate.”

  “Did you come in from a lumber camp?” Emma asks. “It gets lonely out there, I imagine.”

  “Do I look like a logger?”

  Alma likes to know what people make of her. What pictures they construct from her presentation, her mannerisms. It’s a trick she picked up from Hannah, practiced for so long it’s now a habit. In a safe spot, get at the cracks, Hannah said; have someone else tell you what is missing, or too visible. That was in the Chicago house where the Women’s Bureau agents gathered, and though she was speaking of disguise in general, she spent much of the time looking at Alma. Only the two of them knew the binding cloth, the roughened voice, the thrill and terror of slipping into a male shape.

  Emma wiggles out from under Alma’s arm. Makes a show of looking her up and down. Alma’s side is chilled. She wants the woman to come back—wants that body connection, that orange-blossom perfume in her mouth.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Emma says. “You do look strong enough. And your arm’s about as solid as a rock. Not that I mind!”

  “I’m not a logger. Can you guess what it is I do? From back over here.” Alma holds her arm out, and Emma nestles into her obligingly.

  “A stevedore.”

  “No.”

  “A lawman.” Those dimples blooming into view.

  “Hah! Close,” Alma says. “I spent some time as a lawman.”

  “Something at the ironworks?”

  All strongman jobs, steeped in sweat and blood and muscle. Alma pulls the other woman nearer, pleased.

  “I was gonna buy you another drink if you guessed right, but I think I want that dance instead.” Bending a little ways down—Emma is only a few inches shorter—Alma whispers in her ear, “You smell like summertime.”

  Emma laughs, pinkening in the cheeks. Heat pools in Alma’s belly. The woman’s hitting her just right, all soft and sweet eyed and cuddling. Alma could ask her back to the boardinghouse. Something every man tries, most likely, but there’s the chance Emma might say yes. The thirty dollars in gold coin Alma’s got in her pockets ought to help her cause.

  “Why, if it isn’t Mr. Camp.”

  Ah. Alma was having such a good time she forgot this part of the plan. She grins, while under her arm, Emma’s smile is wilting. She wheels the woman around with her.

  Nell Roberts is poured into a deep-blue dress. Her hair piled into curls. Her breasts rising against the taffeta trim of her bodice with each breath.

  “Miss Roberts,” Alma says, dipping a bow.

  Nell taps her fan under the painted curve of her mouth, which ticks upward at one corner. She did not give Alma her name at Wheeler’s office, so she must know she was asked after.

  “I don’t think we’ve seen you at The Captain’s before,” Nell says. “Perhaps you’d like to join me at a private table?”

  “I’m all yours.”

  Alma hasn’t let go of her little dancer. Nell looks at the other woman and raises an eyebrow.

  “You’re beautiful,” Alma tells Emma, quiet, and slips a ten-dollar coin into one hot palm. “I want that dance later.”

  Emma nods, not really smiling, but after she glances at the money, her face brightens.

  “Shall we?” Alma says, offering Nell her arm.

  Nell’s fan flicks open in a flash of gold lace.

  “I know how to walk just fine, Mr. Camp.”

  “Oh, no doubt,” Alma says, and tucks her elbow back against her side.

  Nell leads the way through the hall, along the edge of the dance floor. Men take off their hats, call good-evenings. Alma lets her gait take on a swagger. Across the polished floor, at a small table, Wheeler’s man Benson is set down before a bottle. A clean checkered shirt strains over his thick shoulders. Alma nods at him, and he tips his glass toward her in response. At the back, a velvet rope cordons off three tables, each hung with curtains to keep it separate from the others. A woman and a man sit at the right-hand table, the woman’s lacy dress shimmering as she pours the man a glass of wine. Nell gestures to the table on the left.

  Alma hands her onto the cushioned bench, then sits across from her. The music is muted—the band plays facing the door—but the smells of the place are stronger, bottled up and oversweet. Nell peels off her gloves. Twists each wrist as she bares it to reveal the milky skin of her inner arms. She’s used belladonna again, and her eyes are liquid and huge.

  “I thought you were a bad man,” she says, setting the gloves aside.

  “I am,” Alma says.

  Nell has remembered her words from their brief encounter in Wheeler’s hallway. It comes back to Alma, too. Carmine on Wheeler’s earlobe. Musk on Nell’s gloves as she left his office. The electric, filthy look he gave Alma when she leaned into the other woman against his blue-papered wall.

  “Bad men don’t give a girl ten dollars just for smiling at them,” Nell says.

  “I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

  “You didn’t want to hurt your chances.” Nell is good at this, delivering a jab of truth while at the same time fingering an earring, calling attention to her neck, the thick curl bobbing at her jawline. “Believe me, I know you men are all the same.”

  “Miss Roberts, honey, I’d like to buy you a drink.” Alma twitches her eyebrows up into a plaintive shape. “Get on your good side.”

  “All right.” Nell leans back on the bench in an artful slump that deepens the shadows of her bosom. “Champagne. We keep it special.”

  She waves and a boy scurries over from his place beside the ropes. His piped jacket is tight in the shoulders and far too short in the cuffs, coming up two inches past his oversize, knobby wrists. He takes Nell’s order and is off again.

  “What brings you to town, Mr. Camp?”

  “Jack,” Alma says. She toys with the idea of a past that will rile Nell up, corrupter of schoolgirls or some other tawdry nonsense. But if Wheeler’s drawn a party line with his clerk explanation, she’ll stick to it. “I’ve been hired as a clerk.”

  “A clerk.” Nell’s laugh is high, breathy. “I don’t believe that for a second. What’s your excuse for those bruises—you got into a scuffle over the inkpot?”

  “It may seem unlikely”—Alma tugs at the bandage under her collar—“but I think I’m up to the task.”

  “A capable man.”

  “You said it.”

  “I say a lot of things, Mr. Camp.”

  The boy returns with the champagne. Alma gives him five dollars—highway robbery, but not unexpected—then takes the bottle, the glasses.

  “Jack,” she says again, as the cork exits with a weak pop. She fills Nell’s fizzing glass to the brim.

  “I heard you the first time,” Nell says, taking a sip. “We’re not yet on a first-name basis.”

  Alma could do this dance all night. She spreads her arms over the back of the bench, taking up her whole side of the table. Sprawls her thighs wide. Trouser seam tight against the knob of cloth tucked into her smallclothes, a nudge of lust. Her eyes mapping the curves of Nell’s breasts with no attempt to disguise her staring.

  “Why were you in Nathaniel Wheeler’s hall yesterday?” Nell lowers her voice to a whisper, almost lost
in the music. “From the way he spoke to you, I half expected to never see you again.”

  Alma lets her eyes drift up. Nell’s lips are parted, a delicate furrow between her dark blond eyebrows.

  “That’s business,” she says, the champagne’s syrupy sweetness coating her tongue. “I’d rather stick to pleasure.”

  The band wraps up another contra dance, floor and table shaking with the last whirled steps. There are whistles, laughter, a momentary lull. Then a single fiddle sends up a high note. The others join in on a waltz made up of long, wistful ribbons of sound.

  “Would you dance with me?” Alma says.

  “Because you asked nicely.”

  The slow music calls for a matching sway, which suits Alma just fine. She slides one hand down Nell’s bare arm and interlaces their fingers. Draws her close. Her other hand on Nell’s waist, curving corset bones warmed by body heat. Honeysuckle scent wafting off Nell’s neck. The shelf of her corset lifting her breasts full and soft between them.

  “I guess I ought to come clean,” Alma says in an undertone. She keeps them near the corner booth with slight pressure at Nell’s waist, so they are dancing in the shadows, ten feet of empty space all around them.

  “I’m not a clerk,” she says, mouth so close to the shell of Nell’s ear that her lips just brush its edge. “I work for Delphine.”

  Nell stiffens, but she doesn’t lose the thread of the dance. Her hips swaying, her skirts brushing the tops of Alma’s boots. She bends her head away from Alma so they are face-to-face, blinks up through thick lashes—an expert at dancing gracefully with men of any height, flirting at any angle.

  “Oh, my,” she says.

  “I hear you’re our paperhanger.” Alma walks her fingers from Nell’s waist to her low back, drawing tighter the space between their bodies. “Sure would like to see some of your work. I bet you make a pretty banknote.”

  “I don’t do money,” Nell says. “Not anymore.”

  “Can you get her a message for me?” Alma says, coming to the point—the reason for her visit. Not that she’s minded the distractions.

  Nell’s hazel eyes narrow.

  “Why don’t you tell her yourself,” she says.

  “I’m not supposed to visit her fancy house. I don’t know where the hell Joe got off to, and Wheeler’s not happy with me,” Alma says, laying out the inner circle’s names as currency. “Now, I’m not trying to make him happy with me. But that does put me in a fix when I need a favor.”

  “You think I’ll do you a favor?”

  “Honey, I came here to see you,” Alma says. “You’re doing me a favor just dancing with me.”

  Nell purses her lips. Lets Alma pull her closer.

  “I heard you saw her today, and I was jealous.” Alma nuzzles the little golden hairs that curl behind Nell’s ear. “I wanted to see you again as soon as you left that hallway.”

  “You might not be a bad man, Mr. Camp, but you are a dangerous one,” Nell says, a trace of color blushing along her throat. “Silver-tongued as a snake.”

  “I promise I won’t bite.”

  The waltz is swirling to a close. Nell leans in. Warm breath on Alma’s ear, on the bruised skin of her jaw. Her nipples tighten against the binding cloth.

  “I keep a tailor’s shop,” Nell says, under the last wavering note. “And make her dresses. She comes to see me there. You should stop by sometime.”

  “Oh, I will.” Alma unlatches their bodies. Sweeps a bow. It’s not a meeting with Delphine, but it’s halfway there—a safe place, and a willing liaison. A golden-eyed liaison, who smells like night-blooming flowers. Full hips, soft upper arms. Her whole body ripe as a peach.

  “I’ve shamefully ignored the other gentlemen.” Nell drains the last of her champagne, chin tipping to display the long column of her neck. “Stay awhile. Have another dance or two. Emma’s waiting for you.”

  “Good night, Miss Roberts.”

  “Good night, Jack,” Nell says.

  * * *

  Alma triple-checks her letter by candlelight, flipping through Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon as she scans for the encoded words. She writes, Moving two tons per month via small boats, fallen girls. “Fallen girls” is obtuse, but it’s the best she can do with Verne’s source text, which has a regrettable lack of words like brothel or prostitute.

  Midnight wind howls outside the boardinghouse. Alma’s sweaty shirt and trousers have chilled and cling to her in clammy discomfort.

  Need some weeks more for setup, she writes. Emergency contact only.

  She rubs her eyes. Rolls her neck to get at the tension there, but nothing pops or loosens. As she is tucking the letter into a blank envelope, something ticks against the window. In the cot Emma stirs. Sighs. The sound an echo of the last hour: Alma’s excuses—Sorry, honey, I had too much to drink, but I can do you good another way—hot fingers in Alma’s hair, at the back of her skull, holding her down. And after, letting Emma stay when it was better otherwise. Leaning against the wall with one hand in her trousers, staring at the sleeping woman’s freckled breasts and sucking musk off her own fingers.

  Alma puts the book away among the stack of others she keeps. Wedges the letter into the notch she’s carved on the underside of her writing desk. Puff of breath, candle smoke, darkness. She eases onto the cot, still fully clothed. Curls her body around Emma’s and inhales the salt-sweetness of the woman’s skin.

  15

  JANUARY 16, 1887

  Just inside Wheeler’s door, Alma shakes rain off her cap. Dark patters to the carpet. Smoky air warms her wet skin as she shrugs out of her jacket, the cotton of her shirt letting off a waft of orange-blossom scent.

  “Don’t bother,” Wheeler says.

  He stands from behind the desk. His clothes are impeccably neat: cuffs buttoned and linked, smooth silk tie speared with a gleaming stickpin, silver belt buckle. He is arrayed against her, after their collision the day before. She takes this as a compliment. And as a challenge.

  “We’re going out,” he says.

  Behind him the fire pops and seethes as rain trickles down the chimney. Alma tugs her jacket back on, her cap, the cloth band cold against her forehead and the tops of her ears.

  “Where to, boss?”

  “An errand.”

  “Could you be more specific?” she says.

  “Specifically, I regret that Sloan failed to kill you.” He approaches, shoulders up, chin up, to collect his scarf and overcoat from the rack beside her. “But seeing as that’s the case, you’re still my problem, and I will do as I’ve been asked and show you around.”

  “Your boys couldn’t have pulled off that deal.” Alma leans against the door, its knob digging into the small of her back. “Sloan’s got it out for McManus, and Benson wouldn’t be quick enough to dance. You ought to be thanking me.”

  “Get out of the way.”

  “Say thank you.”

  Wheeler pauses, his hands midway through tying his bright blue scarf. He glares at her. Three feet between them, but he comes no closer.

  “God give me patience.” He finishes knotting his scarf with a snap of his wrist.

  “What is she giving you?”

  He cocks his head, silver hairs at his temples glinting in the lamplight.

  “You’re rolling over and taking things pretty easy,” Alma says. “Showing a lot of patience. What is she giving you? What did you talk about, in that little room, before I showed up?”

  “I’m to train you to be my replacement.”

  He pulls down his hat, slaps it against his thigh—an impatient gesture. Alma doesn’t move from the door.

  “What’s in it for you?” she says.

  “A promotion of my own.”

  Alma frowns and doesn’t bother to hide it. This isn’t supposed to be a win-win situation. She is supposed to be getting the better end of the deal. Wheeler is supposed to be demoted, once he falters, so he’s working for her. And where is there for him to ascend? He already runs
everything in Port Townsend. A jealous twinge, sourness at the back of her throat: Delphine is presenting herself as a widow. Delphine wouldn’t take Wheeler as a husband. It would draw far too much attention. But she could. If it was beneficial enough.

  Now Wheeler is the one grinning, a nasty, sharp-toothed lift of his upper lip.

  “Did you think you were going to fuck me over?” he says.

  “I was planning on it.”

  “Here’s something else to keep in mind.”

  He crowds into her, finally, but she is too put out, too resentful, to snap at him and start a brawl. The doorknob grinds against her tailbone.

  “If I don’t move up, you don’t move up.” His breath hot, tobacco scented, on her face. “Those are my orders—straight from the source. So I’d put a fucking leash on your antics. I don’t know what it is you’re after, but making me angry won’t do you a scrap of good.”

  God damn it. Yet this is not a trick on Delphine’s part, not exactly. Alma made her own assumptions about the move from San Francisco and the competition for Wheeler’s post. Delphine merely refrained from correcting them. Alma has to admit it was nicely done, the kind of neat maneuvering that’s brought Delphine to the top. And Alma will still get what she wants: a position closer to Delphine, Wheeler’s desk, control of the Port Townsend operations.

  “It goes the other way, too.” She sees the benefit of confirmation this time—though she’ll make sure of the situation when she meets with Delphine, at Nell’s. “If I don’t move up, neither can you.”

  “That does seem to be the case. So we’re both disappointed.” Wheeler points at the door with his hat. “Move.”

  She steps aside. He opens the door and calls down to Driscoll that they’re away. Then they are threading through the office, through Clyde Imports’ chill dimness. Outside, hard rain hisses down. Mud slops onto her shins as they walk toward the waterfront. She watches the streets in a constant sweep, sidewalk to sidewalk, Wheeler’s gray-coated shoulders centering each swath of vision. She’s not yet sure what to do with him. How to ingest their new partnership, the knotting together of their fortunes. Clever, Delphine. Guaranteed cooperation. Yet while it won’t serve Alma’s ends in the organization to shake him up anymore, it has been fun. She’s not sure she wants that game over.