The Best Bad Things

by Katrina Carrasco

  Enough play. Alma’s sore leg is shaking, her smallclothes damp. Nell undoes a few more buttons, hasty, before taking Alma’s face in her hands and kissing her again. Nell is a little sharper now, and it is good: she nips at Alma’s lower lip, at her tongue, and Alma growls low in her throat, hungry.

  Nell kicks her dress aside. Her chemise sticks to her hips, her thighs, calling Alma to touch, all that soft skin only a slip away from her own. She hitches up the cloth, slow, and Nell’s eyes go half-lidded and hazy. Then her palm is on skin, moving inward. Her thumb grazes damp hair. Nell shifts closer, parts her legs, tilts her hips. Her breaths edged with little blurs of sound. Alma drops one shoulder, ignoring the protests from the other, and curls her hand over Nell’s sex, her middle three fingers finding wet heat, pushing into it.

  “Jack, yes—”

  “Oh, honey.” Alma wants to pull Nell’s mouth to hers, but her left arm is stiff, useless from the elbow, so she leans into Nell instead, fingers crooking, licking the side of her neck and grinding into her hip. It’s not enough but it’s something, sweet pressure to pulse into. Sweat collects between her shoulder blades, under the binding cloth, and Nell’s hands are on the rise of her buttocks, circling around, hot at the front of her smallclothes, where her body is notched against Nell’s hip bone.

  “No.” She bats Nell’s fingers away, her clumsy left hand rougher than she intended.

  “I want to touch you,” Nell says, the words catching on a sharp inhale.

  Alma shakes her head. She takes one of Nell’s hands in the loose cage of her left. Pushes it to the corset ribbons dangling at the small of Nell’s back.

  “I can’t work the laces,” she says. “Take it off.”

  Nell hesitates, but Alma keeps her fingers moving, wet to the knuckles, and thumbs at the nub of flesh that crowns Nell’s sex. Nell’s eyes close. The sound she makes is good. Alma wants to hear it again.

  “Take it off, Nell.”

  Her hips are rocking into Alma’s touch. The pale ribbon whispers through each set of eyes. Nell unhooks the corset’s busks, and it falls open like a flower. She pulls off her chemise and is all bared to Alma, her skin pearly in the lamplight, silvery lines on the skin at her hips, on the skin under her navel, tracing toward the dark thatch of hair where Alma’s hand is still busy, still twisting. Alma walks her backward to the bed. Drops to her knees and replaces her thumb with her tongue. Nell moans. Hot musk in Alma’s nose, slickness on her tongue, oh, and it’s good, her mouth dripping spit, Nell’s fingers in her hair, holding her down. Her breaths come thick, fast, and god damn it, she can’t wait any longer. She kneels wider on the floor, the boards’ seams biting into her knees. Pulls her hand from the heat of Nell’s body and works it under the band of her smallclothes. Fingers wet with Nell’s juices, Alma’s tongue pulsing in time with her touch, oh, yeah, it won’t take much, her body is wound tight as a watch spring.

  “Let me see you,” Nell says, breath hitched. “Let me see your face.”

  No one has ever asked Alma for this. She doesn’t know what she looks like when she is mindless, pleasure-cleft. But she is close, too close to stop her stroking, jaw tight, nose full of Nell’s scent. So she presses her cheek to Nell’s thigh, and when the tremors hit she clenches inward, groaning, hot slick flesh against her face, and it’s good, it’s good, oh, God, it’s good.

  Nell is touching herself, fingers working inches from Alma’s face. Alma takes her hand from her smallclothes, works it back into Nell’s heat.

  “Fuck on me, honey,” she says, blinking away sweat to better see all that quivering skin, Nell’s eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open.

  For a long time after, they stay still, silent, bodies linked together, the quick beat of their breaths settling.

  “Come into the bed,” Nell says.

  Alma licks the inside of Nell’s thigh. Hoists herself up with her right hand on the bedpost, her knees scraped and stinging. Her shoulder burning fierce as it churns with fresh-stirred blood. She folds her body, slow, next to Nell’s. She is tired out. Grinning. Nell curls onto Alma’s good side, tracing her collarbone, the jut of her lower ribs. Her nails pale half-moons in the dimness.

  Alma doesn’t know when she falls asleep. She surfaces briefly to find the lamp out, the blanket pulled over them. Nell’s arm a warm weight across her bound chest and bare stomach. She leaves it. Liking the feel of skin on skin.

  25

  JANUARY 21, 1887

  Stepping through the back door of Nell’s house into the sunshine, into the empty long alley. Alma’s feet are heavy in her boots. Her whole body ballasted, yawing back to that warm bed, that lazy naked sprawling. But a fresh cloth binds her breasts. Her shirt is salted clean. Her left arm has come back to life, no more seeping bleeding, only a little slowness lingering in the pinkie finger, the outside of her wrist. Her right leg bruised but steadier. No excuses to stay, and lots of reasons to cleave back into the world.

  Her shoulder aches. The left sleeve of her jacket hangs empty: Nell fitted her with a sling to protect her stitches, the cloth looped over her neck and forearm. This is good because it makes her look slow, even though her right arm’s still fast. But it’s bad because it’s something to note about her body, and it’s safest to be unremarkable: a small man in plain clothing, able to blend into most any street, into most any waterfront scene. Alma wants the sling off. Good or bad, it makes her feel soft. But she can’t pick apart the knot one-handed.

  At the end of the alley, Taylor swerves into a full-fledged street. The cart wheels are too rattling, the noontime sun too glaring on the bay. But by Water Street Alma is shedding the sense of respite, the huddled warmth, that grew up around her in Nell’s house. She keeps the satisfaction, though—it makes her spine straight, tilts her chin up, edges her grin with teeth. Flashing the heat of the last day at every bucko who cares to look: I had a woman, and she was good.

  The post office has a line out the door. Sticking to habit, Alma collars a boy across the street and says she’ll give him two cents to collect her mail. She watches him from a notch between buildings, smoking, testing her shoulder. Rawness in the muscle, jagged pain, as if someone’s drawing a serrated blade across her arm. How bad does it look? She hasn’t unpeeled the bandage to see.

  The boy waits in line, tapping his foot to some unknown tune, doffing his checkered cap at two house girls who don’t even see him. Then he’s in the building. A sick tingle in her gut. Sweat rising with an itch between her shoulder blades. She lost a whole day at Nell’s when there aren’t more than a handful of days to play with. If the Denver office hasn’t confirmed her requested delay, there is real trouble. Not enough tar on Sloan’s hands, not enough time to clean up the dirty footprints leading to him. Deep drag on the cigarette and her hand still smells of Nell’s body; she was set to storm that castle for days but it just opened to her, open mouth, open thighs, god damn. They never did get around to the other cake.

  This is her first time working with men out of the Colorado office. It’s the Western headquarters. William Pinkerton makes a habit of frequenting the place. He is a stickler for the rules—not so much when he was younger, but now that he’s in charge, it’s everything by the letter: make a plan, run the plan, no cut corners. Boring. Men under his thumb might have the same philosophy. They might not like her last-minute scramble.

  The boy tears out of the post office. Papers in his hands. Alma steps out of the shadows, and he leaps over a puddle, darts behind a cart to run to her. He gives her a plain white envelope and a telegraph, then takes his pennies. Alma stuffs the envelope into an inner vest pocket. The telegraph is dated January 19, the same day she sent her request over the wire.

  Tacoma January 23 OK, it says. Further instructions post.

  Alma crumples the paper into a ball as her lungs expand. The Pinkerton’s agents will wait a few days, as she asked. Things might end up all right. Even her shoulder hurts a little less after that.

  “You got a problem with the po
st office?”

  Alma laughs. Drops her cigarette into the mud. Davy Benson is behind her—that deep, lazy drawl—and she takes her time turning around. She peers up at him, missing her cap, the brim that shades her eyes into inscrutability.

  “Just wary of close spaces after that Chain Locker scrap,” she says.

  “I heard about it.” Benson is holding a candy apple, caramel-glossed and bitten into, the inner flesh snowy white. “Hard luck.”

  “Not as hard as Driscoll’s.”

  Benson whistles, shaking his head.

  “He was just a pup,” he says. “McManus isn’t taking it so well. You seen him? Boss man’s having trouble keeping him down.”

  Up to no good is he, the thieving bastard. He’s had a whole day to cause new problems. Benson ought to be able to fill her in.

  “I’ve been sleeping off the blood loss,” Alma says. “I haven’t seen anybody but the devil.”

  “Huh.” Benson takes a huge bite of the apple, a crunch that leaves pale flecks of juice in his beard. “You know how to write?”

  “I can scratch out a letter,” Alma says. “Just sent one to a girl I know in Tacoma. Told her to get ready for me—I’ve been missing her.”

  “Might want to send something myself to a girl I know,” Benson says, his mouth full of fruit and dark sugar. “Could you spell it out?”

  “For a few dollars.”

  “I’ll make you a trade,” he says. “I’ll whittle you something.”

  “I’m not in much need of a wood carving. But I’ll trade for some talk.”

  Benson finishes the apple in two more bites. Shrugs.

  “Why’s McManus so interested in Seattle?” she says.

  “Aw, he wants to take some tail there.” Benson laughs. Chucks his wood-stuck apple core into the street, wipes his hand on his trousers. “Never did find out what poor girl he’s hounding.”

  So most of the crew know about Mary. Still, McManus could be using her as a convenient screen, hiding the real reason for his interest in the town across the Sound. And Mary doesn’t relate to which of Wheeler’s men tipped off Kopp—her next question.

  “A girl. Didn’t know about her,” she says. “McManus only mentioned a man called Kopp when I asked him about Seattle. Dom Kopp. Is he a partner of ours?”

  She watches Benson’s face closely for a flicker of anything—alarm, surprise, hesitation. His gray eyes are flat. His thick brows tilt together, but the expression seems pure perplexity.

  “The railroad man?” he says.

  “Don’t know.”

  “He’s not part of the business.” Benson hooks his thumbs into his belt. “He’s best known around here for spending money at the poker tables. Big bets, is the word. He’s fixing to get robbed with that fancy walking stick of his, all gem and no stick, just about.”

  “All right,” Alma says. “I’m obliged. Still trying to get my footing, with all these names and places.”

  Benson’s a dead end, and she is moving on already, thinking about getting to her boardinghouse and deciphering the Pinkerton’s agents’ letter. Thinking about Wheeler. How he tried to ruin her chances with Nell. How he will be different with Driscoll dead and after all the ways their bodies touched the night of the fight. Her arm aches, her neck. Nell filled her up and drained her. Still. The game she’s playing with Wheeler calls to her with all her names.

  “What about my letter?” Benson says.

  “I don’t have any paper,” she says. “Tell it to me next time you’re at the office.”

  “I’ll tell it to you now.”

  “You expect me to memorize it?”

  “You might,” he says. “Here goes. ‘Dearest—’”

  He leans down, his breath sugary.

  “‘—Rosales.’”

  Her name drawn out and muddied by his drawl. It takes everything she’s got to not flinch, to keep her face slack, listening. But her throat is locking. Her skin hot.

  “‘Don’t speak to me again about Dom Kopp.’”

  Her chest clenches.

  “‘Or I’ll tell Wheeler, and all the boys, what you’ve got under those trousers.’”

  How does he know? Not through Wheeler, if he thinks Wheeler is in the dark. That leaves three people who do: Joe Hong, Delphine, and Nell. Joe and Delphine make no kind of sense. Neither does Nell, but Alma was out for hours at Nell’s house, sleeping, bleeding. Time for Nell to do just about anything. The night past, after their sex, Nell left Alma in her bed and went to work at The Captain’s, which Benson frequents. By then she knew Alma’s body, knew her real name. But, Jesus. When they’d just been so close, drinking each other’s sweat.

  Focus.

  Benson is still hunched toward her, the meat of his gut spilling over his belt. Expecting a reaction. Expecting her to be afraid.

  “Don’t tell Wheeler,” she says, letting her voice crack a bit, seaming it with desperation. If Benson thinks this is a bargaining chip, it’s the best one she can use—fool’s gold, meaningless to her but shining in his eyes.

  He laughs, a low chuckle pitted with filth. She doesn’t flinch away from his breath on her face. It’s a fine line to walk: Camp, still tough, but letting some worry seep through. Some fear. Not the fear Benson must think he’s calling out; why is it men go for that first, the reminder of her sex, vulnerable, as though theirs is not? But other fears. Her promotion, perhaps endangered by the tear in her disguise. Nell turning on her. How? And why? And for what? Along with all this is the quick calculation of what Benson will reveal if strung along: who else he’ll name after outing Kopp as his partner.

  “I don’t know what he’d do with you if he found out,” Benson says. “He’s a cold-blooded son of a bitch.”

  She knows what Wheeler would do: he’d send Benson to knife her in her sleep. Luckily they’ve moved past that reaction, on to more interesting ones, but now is not the time.

  “What do you want?” she says.

  “I’ve got a pair of lading bills I need swapped,” he says.

  Damn it. McManus was right, all along. He wasn’t covering his own tracks—he was tracking Benson. He’d called this bastard out four days before and must have suspected sooner. McManus solved the puzzle before she could. That’s hard to swallow. Where the fuck is he, anyway? Another gripe in the gut: Benson might have gotten him. Not that Tom needs help digging his own grave, it sounds like, after Driscoll’s death. Alma almost admires that: McManus’s single-minded determination to not let anyone be his friend.

  “I don’t touch the bills,” she says.

  “I know.” Benson is scowling, getting impatient. “But the boss man wants you filling in while McManus isn’t around. So I’m going to give you the bills, and you’re going to fix them onto the new shipment that comes in tonight.”

  Keep him talking. He’s close to giving it all away—who he’s working with, how they’re siphoning off the business’s tar.

  “Fix them how?”

  “Simple swap,” he says. “Change the labels so they’re unloaded in Seattle instead of Tacoma.”

  Seattle. Things start sliding into place. Benson and Kopp, working together. Kopp must be trying to play both sides, making money off the stolen tar with one hand and hoping to make protection money off Wheeler with the other. Then there’s Sing Tai buying Delphine’s opium at auction in Seattle, and Benson routing more product to that same city, maybe to auction off again, or to sell another way. Who else is involved? An inside crewman? Someone who’s done the job that Benson wants her to do now, getting at the crates while they’re in the hold and swapping the lading bills. And then whoever’s in Seattle receiving the stolen tar.

  “Why Seattle?” Alma says, hoping for a name, though Benson’s not likely to be that stupid.

  “Because I said so.” He drops his bass drawl still lower. It’s clear enough so close to her ear. “I’ll tell you, I don’t knife women. But seeing as you’re dressed like that, I don’t think my rule signifies. I know you felt me once.�
��

  Get the papers, even though the urge to growl is rising. The urge to slide her knife into his throat, right under the Adam’s apple. Payback for the thin scab he left on her neck. But those papers are the first part of his death warrant.

  “Give me the bills,” she says, sneering at him.

  “Yes, ma—I mean, yes, sir.”

  She holds out her good hand for the envelope. Tucks it into the notch between her chest and arm sling, even that movement enough to wrench her wound.

  “You say one wrong word and the deal’s off,” she says once the papers are secure.

  “I’m not planning on saying a thing. But these kinds of secrets get expensive.” Benson grins. “You better start thinking about other things you can offer me. In the future.”

  She leaves him whistling on the corner. His eyes on the sun-dazzled bay, his fingers tapping time on his hips.

  Two blocks to her boardinghouse’s blackened sign. She needs to see Wheeler, catch him up. But if Benson’s blackmailing her into cooperation, he’s not going to move just yet—he won’t be an evolving threat until at least tomorrow, after the diverted opium reaches its destination. There is time to stop and decipher the letter. See what the Pinkerton’s agents have in store.

  Swerve into the smoky lobby. The manager in his cubicle, dressed in a dark felt suit that looks cut from an undertaker’s tablecloth. His cataracts magnified behind thick glasses that are more for show than use, given how calcified his eyes are. The underfed child on a stool beside him. Alma drops coins into the kid’s grit-laced palm.

  “Four more days in number thirteen,” she says.

  “One dollar,” the child tells the man, who nods.

  Up the stairs. Each step jars pain into her shoulder. At the third-floor landing a new splatter on the wall that might be blood or shit, but she’s not inclined to sniff and find out. She unlocks her room. Freezing cold and slop-bucket stink—Nell described it just right. Alma could have healed in here, but not as easy. Too easy, if Nell’s the one who gave her up to Benson. She makes her usual sweep of the space, kneeling to check the lock’s mechanism for scratches, for sloppy tampering. Clean. Nell’s name calls up an echoed low-belly pulse, remembered pleasure, though it’s marred by the sting of being sold out. She runs her hand over the stack of books to check their order. Clean. Benson came right to her and handed her leverage while thinking he bought some for himself. That is some satisfaction, warm in her gut as she crouches to pull out her gear and check the double tie. It’s wrong.