"Eighty-five dollar pair of shoes...?" I whispered, and the hand at my elbow tightened, maybe in shock.
"Still on the shoes, huh?" Everett shook his head. "Yeah, honeybuns. That was me. I usually look a lot more Wall Street-meets-GQ, that's all. So who's the Marlboro Man?" Now he was sizing Garrison up. "Goddamn. I knew you'd hook up with someone. You feministas talk a good game, but you couldn't make it three days without a man. You remember me telling you that?"
Calm. Present a calm, unaffected face. Someone had taught me that just this morning, forever ago—although I had to reach back a hand to touch my protector's arm when I sensed him shifting impatiently behind me. He was probably just aching to correct this man's language. But this was my fight, this time.
"I don't remember anything...Everett," I said soothingly, and the name sounded right. "I'm hoping you can help me fill in the blanks."
"So it's 'Everett' now, eh Ms. Rhinehart? Pretty damn late for informality, if you ask me. Pretty fuckin' late—"
"That's enough." The Boss's interruption, dangerously low, sounded more soothingly familiar than did Everett's voice...but nowhere near as familiar as the name.
Rhinehart. Miz Rhinehart. It was my name. I could sense it, could hear it, and the rest was so close now!
"Injured or not, you'll stop that language 'round the lady," Garrison warned. But the language, like Belle and Dixie's profession, didn't bother me that much. I used language like that myself. I'd used it on the Boss.
"Ooooh! Don't call her a lady, Marshal Dillon! She might slap a discrimination suit on you!"
Dillon, again.
"See," I heard the doctor murmur to the Boss. "No sense. One minute he's fine, the next...."
But it made sense to me!
"If you just hadn't gone all PMS on me," sighed Everett. "But nooo. You and your petty complaints. Didn't you realize they would shut you up? What was the big deal anyway?"
We're supposed to be working close on this project, aren't we? So let's get close....
"What...?" My voice shook. I heard a wooden scrape, then felt a chair being gently nudged against the back of my legs, and I gratefully sank onto it. "What happened?"
"You ruined our lives, that's all."
Funny, how some of his words felt so right, but some of them... "I don't think I did."
"You wouldn't." His eyes, so bright with tiny pupils, focused behind me again. "Didn't take you long to latch onto someone, even here, huh? I'd probably be a lot healthier too, if I could've crooked my finger and fetched the Lone Ranger. Funny how you don't call it harassment when you want something."
"What's my name?"
His voice was hoarse. "They had to shut me up too, don't you see? That's your fault."
I heard Garrison's breathing get rougher behind me, and I extended a hand, reticule-purse dangling from my wrist, to forbid him to go by. Damn it, this was my life we were talking about now. "What's my name?" I repeated shakily.
"But I didn't realize how far they'd go. You can't blame that one on me...and I guess I can't blame it on you either. I never guessed they'd try it on either of us."
I stood up, stepped close, grabbed a handful of his shirt collar, and leaned into his ugly, ravaged face. "Tell me my name, you son of a—"
"Rhinehart! Elizabeth Rhinehart." He drew a shaky breath, and I could smell the liquor on him, but it wasn't half as strong as the wave of recognition that hit me. "Sheesh! Don't go postal on me now. I think your middle name is Katherine or something."
I straightened slowly, letting him go, and shakily said, "Kathleen. Elizabeth Kathleen Rhinehart."
I knew. That was it, sure as I had brown hair, sure as I was standing in Dodge City, Kansas. Lillabit. 'Lizabeth. Everything didn't come rushing back, damn it. But at least I could recognize the truth, and that name was it.
I glanced back at the Boss...and I couldn't read his shuttered expression at all. "I'm Elizabeth," I told him, hushed. I had a name!
He nodded, solemn.
When I turned to look back at Everett, my skirts brushed against the chair that the Boss had pulled up for me. These skirts felt completely unnatural, wrong even.
Something awful had happened.
"Where are we from?" I demanded.
"Chicago." His slow smile warned me not to trust him, and yet—that was right too.
"Who are you to me? I mean...are we related?" Please don't let us be married!
He snorted. "We were colleagues, Miz Rhinehart. We worked for the same company, remember? Emphasis on worke-D. You managed to screw that one up for both of us."
Okay, now the scary one. "What kind of work did we do?"
He slowly shook his head, bright eyes still. "You really don't know?"
"Would I be asking you if I knew? Come on, Everett!"
He glanced from me to the men behind me. "Ah...look, Rhinehart. Not that I owe you jack, but you might want to lose ol' Yosemite Sam for this part. He, uh, might not understand."
I hesitated, torn. Unfortunately, Satan's gimpy spawn had a point. If my past was as wicked as my ease with swear words indicated, then I probably wanted to hear it myself before facing Garrison with the bad news. Especially after he'd been seen around town with me all day. And if Everett lied to me—don't think I hadn't considered that possibility—I wanted the chance to sort fact from fiction before asking the Boss to deal with any of it. It wasn't like Everett was in any shape to hurt me....
...to grab my leg—my bare leg—so that I stumbled in pulling away from him, so startled I'm unsure how to react properly, breaking the heel of my shoe....
But I hated to lose the Boss's protection.
Everett smiled, smarmy as ever. "Let's just say we're in the entertainment biz, honeybuns." And the minute he said it, I knew that was true too, and it was more than I wanted anyone else to hear. I spun around to ask, beg, for some privacy....
...and found myself already alone in the room with the spawn. The door remained cracked behind Doc McCarty and the Boss as they left. I almost panicked—was the Boss just leaving the room, or was he leaving for good? Had he already heard too much?
It didn't matter. He was heading out for Wyoming tomorrow anyway. It hurt, to tell myself those things, but it also gave me the strength to step forward, push the door the rest of the way shut, then turn back to Everett.
"The entertainment business? But what did I do?"
He took a small sip out of the bottle by his bed, and sighed happily. "Client relations."
More euphemisms, always more friggin' euphemisms! But they were the right euphemisms. I knew those words. Client relations. "Are you—are you telling me I was a prostitute?"
Everett blinked at me, considering that, then settled himself more comfortably on his pillow like someone with a purpose. "You would never deign to use that particular job title, Ms. Rhinehart, but as a matter of fact, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what you were. The high-priced kind."
Everything kind of spun around me, and I sank weakly onto the chair Garrison had left for me. Part of me still didn't believe, and yet my fear made it all the more likely, didn't it? I did not want to believe this man, and yet I hadn't heard anything to challenge....
"You make sure the clients have a good time," prompted Everett. "Fulfill their every need...isn't any of this sounding familiar to you?"
Horribly, it was. It was sounding too damned familiar. "I'm afraid you'll have to convince me," I said, downright prim, still fighting it.
So he did.
Maybe I could have resisted, if Everett had just fed me information and left it up to me to believe him or not believe him. Not that I didn't believe that we were from Chicago, that we were co-workers, that I was "too damned selective" and had turned down his advances. I also believed that the fuss I'd raised over his advances attracted too much publicity and prompted "management" to rid themselves of us. That sounded somehow on-target. But I could have denied it if I'd wanted to, just because he was the one saying it. What Everett did with the rest, t
he really damning part, was that he let me provide my own information.
"Come on, Rhinehart, are you really comfortable in that granny gown you've got on? Your work clothes are a hell of a lot skimpier than that, remember? You don't wax your legs just to cover them."
And I did remember—sleeveless blouses, open necklines, skirts that hit me above the knee, sheer stockings, slipper-like shoes with heels and no buttons. Slut slippers, I thought. Fuck-me pumps. At his urging, I did glimpse memories of how scandalously I liked to dress—just like how comfortable I'd been in my underclothes, in the back room at Morris Collar's General Store. And my legs were hairless—which, after a week, had to mean I'd done something extra to slow down re-growth.
"What about makeup?" he urged. "This is the first time I've ever seen you without foundation, eye shadow, mascara, lipstick. I can't believe you let yourself go out in public like this!"
That was familiar too. Put on moisturizer first, I thought vaguely. Use warm colors....
It got worse.
He challenged, "Can you not name at least three forms of birth control?"—and though I didn't say it out loud, they rushed through my head. Pills, condoms, diaphragms, sponges…. He asked, "You know what syphilis and herpes are, right? You do know what STD stands for?" Sexually transmitted disease. I knew. "How about the term 'blow job?'" he continued, getting uglier the longer I fought admitting it to myself. "'Hand job?' 'Missionary position?' 'Doggie style?' How about pulling a 69?"
Okay, so it took me a minute to figure out 69, until I realized how the numbers fit together, one upside-down and one right-side up, at which point the probable erotic meaning clicked. That wasn't the sort of thing an innocent would figure out so fast, unless she already knew what it referred to, right?
Everett sighed. "Come on, Rhinehart. You think Cowboy Joe out there knows stuff like this? I don't think Doc McCarty knows it, and he's a man of science! This is the Victorian Era, here!"
Him mentioning Garrison—I assumed Cowboy Joe meant Garrison—startled me to my feet, but when I tried to stand, I stepped on the ruffled hem of my wrapper and stumbled, catching myself dizzily against the wall. I wasn't used to proper dresses. My own memories, what I could access of them, didn't put me in petticoats or corsets. Garrison thought I was improper to comb my hair in front of men, and here I was, defining "blow job"—and on my own! Everett was feeding me the terms, but I was the one recognizing them.
I really was a slut, wasn't I?
"And what about," he started.
But—propping myself against the wall—I held up my hand as if I could bat away the next words before they got to me. "No more," I said, shaken.
He blinked at me, all innocence, which I so didn't trust. He wasn't innocent. He'd enjoyed this. "Geez, you're taking this a little hard, aren't you?"
I glared at him. "A little hard? A little hard? I thought maybe I was proper, maybe I was...." And I stupidly gave myself away by glancing at the door.
Everett laughed. "Goddamn! You lost your memory and got sweet on Clint Eastwood out there, didn't you? Now this is proof that I'm a decent guy. I should have kept my mouth shut and let you think you were some sort of schoolmarm or something. You, hooked up with an old timey cowboy, trying to be prim and proper. You'd go crazy in a week."
"Not necessarily," I argued. Futilely, since I wasn't sweet on Clint Eastwood—Eastwood?—out there, and I wouldn't hook up with some cowboy anyway.
"You're acting like you didn't enjoy your job! Wake up and smell the Starbucks, Rhinehart. You loved it! You loved the glamour, you loved proving what a smart, sophisticated bitch you can be, you loved running your own life. You earned more in a fucking week than your cowboy could earn in a year!"
I'd earned enough to wear $85 shoes—shoes that cost over half a year's worth of lunches at Beatty and Kelley's. Damn Everett, he was still telling the truth, recognizable to me on a deep, instinctive level. His mudslide of truth was choking me. "No more," I insisted, and he sat back, shrugged.
"Fine," he said. "You asked me."
"I've got to think," I insisted, pacing and resenting how the skirt tangled awkwardly around my ankles. "I've got to sort some of this out."
"Suit yourself. We're not going anywhere."
It was too damned hot in here, hotter than the indoors should ever be. My head hurt, as if from trying to keep the cascade of ugly memories—memories I'd worked so hard to revive—from flooding over me. Everything looked unreal. Where the hell was I?
But I took a deep breath and I knew where I was. Dodge City, Kansas. It was where I'd come from that couldn't be trusted, the dreams, the confusions...the truths.
Oh my God, something truly awful had happened to me. But had I maybe deserved it?
I had to escape this fetid room, had to escape the warring memories. Either I was a delusional, amnesiac courtesan—just as the Boss had seemingly suspected, just as the Army Major had assumed—or I was something that couldn't exist, from somewhere that....
No! I had to get out, had to think—almost as desperately as I had to avoid Garrison to do it. He might yet leave in disgust, but he was so damned steady that, even if he'd given up on me, he would probably let me know before he left. And after everything, that was one confrontation too many. Like a thief, I cracked the door to the drug store and peeked out. For a minute I thought the coast was clear, but then I saw, through the window, past the front of the store, where Garrison stood watch on the front sidewalk. His arms were folded as he stared down the street in angry thought. Even from this distance I could see that he had that coiled, dangerous look about him again, the one that scared me.
I couldn't face him, not now, not yet. It made me a miserable coward—but after what I'd learned about myself, did a dollop of cowardice really matter?
"There's a back door into the side street," offered Everett helpfully. "I think it's so the worst patients don't drip blood all over the drugstore. You know, I've only been here maybe three days, and there's been two gunshot wounds? This is not a happy fun-time place—"
But that's all I heard, because I used the back door for my escape.
Chapter 14: Misbehaving
Had I really spent all week whining to remember? Be careful what you wish for, Lilla—Elizabeth. Remembering was worse, far worse, than blissful ignorance. My memories weren't simply gliding open like a blooming flower. Oh no; they came like falling rocks, incomplete, out of sequence, and incomprehensible. Paying for my own drinks. Dancing with strange men to throbbing music, bare armed and....
I barely noticed where I was walking, except that it was away from anyplace Garrison had taken me. I was too busy trying not to let the damned, overlong skirts and petticoats trip me—and too busy mentally dodging falling, fragmented memories. At some point I crossed the huge, rutted dirt street and the railroad track, outran a team of at least eight mules, and almost choked on the dust it raised. This place seemed increasingly like a nightmare that didn't make sense and couldn't be escaped.
I found myself in a grassy "alley" behind the saloons I'd seen from Front Street—the Lady Gay, the "Commie-Cue." Even in the mid-afternoon I could hear whooping men and jangly piano music, nothing classical like from the Long Branch.
More falling memories: I can play piano. I can sing. Sometimes I sing in front of strangers. A word that I couldn't place, karaoke, crashed past me and vanished.
Now I was almost running, holding my skirts up enough to not fall over the damned things, still fighting them and the grass too—three petticoats? Why hadn't I kept my damned pants? I crossed another dirt road and vaguely noticed how it turned into a bridge over the Arkansas River, past which grazed far too many cows. Thousands—maybe tens of thousands. Cows were part of the nightmare, too, and even from here they smelled bad. Kansas in June was too hot, stifling even—and why was I wearing so much clothing?
By the time I reached an uneven row of seven or eight little sod shacks, on the south end of town, I could barely breathe. I couldn't seem to inhale enough
to make a difference. My chest hurt. My steps were starting to falter. I had to stop and rest, whether the memories were chasing me or not.
Shaggy huts bricked out of dirt and grass, like the Peaveses' place. The soddies clustered evenly between the back of the saloons and the river across which grazed all those cattle. They had their own little dusty road, something between a path and a real street, which looked capable of turning into a mud bath with the smallest amount of rain. Some of the shacks sported wooden signs over their doors: "Star." "Rose." "Georgia."
The kind of names cowboys would like.
I knew then what these were, and laughed a sobbing laugh at my unerring homing instinct. These were the prostitutes' cribs.
This time I recognized what the three women, chatting and fanning themselves and glancing surreptitiously at me, really were. For one thing, they wore makeup—and maybe because they were closer to my age, and not all that attractive even with that help, this time I really noticed their makeup. For another thing, one woman wore a faded dress with half sleeves and a collar cut so low it almost showed her collarbone, the slut. It looked like a marvelously comfortable dress, compared to mine. Melting in the heat, I wanted one just like it, stains or no stains.
Yet another brief, disorienting memory attacked me—putting on a special bra so that my boosted cleavage would peek out the low, low neckline of a party dress. No wonder I hadn't fit in here. I couldn't go back to the herd, back to the Army post, or even back to... Chicago? Or could I? An inexplicable horror swamped me, sickened me, begged me not to remember. But if this was a nightmare, why couldn't I wake up?
Because it wasn't a nightmare. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't.
One of the hookers, a pockmarked woman with hair a decidedly fake shade of red, ambled over to me. "You lost?" she challenged.
Desperate for anyone, anywhere that might accept me, I accessed what little information I had. "I'm looking for some...some women. Their names are Dixie and Belle."
OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) Page 20
