by Megan Chance
Truthfully, I didn't. I had grown used to her; the sound of her breathing, the warmth of her, as much a part of the room as the rickety bureau or the faded calico curtains. At the Palace, we were as separate as two women could be; I barely spoke to her there. I still hadn't told Johnny or Duncan that she was staying with me, and I tried to ignore her. Having favorites only made me vulnerable. But at night I felt myself drawn to that settledness in her, and though I never said it to her or anyone else, I found it hard in the morning to wake, to be separate again.
March had come in mild--the lamb instead of the lion--and the Mountain showed itself more often than not, as did the Olympics across the Sound--the mountain range standing stark and white and blue, craggier than the Cascades that Rainier belonged to, older still.
The first real sunny day after the long, gray winter had a restorative effect on everyone. When I went to the Palace that afternoon, my arms full of new gowns that had been altered by the seamstress, the girls were smiling and bright. My own mood was good as well, but it had little to do with the sun, and much more to do with the pile of dresses I carried.
Johnny was in his office, but Sally was lolling about at the bar, and when I said, "Time to get ready, Sally." She gave me one of the smug looks that had become more frequent, a look that said she didn't have to do anything I said because she was fucking Johnny.
"I'll be there in a bit," she said casually.
I smiled back at her. "You just take your time."
She frowned, but I kept walking, pushing open the door to the dressing room with my hip. The room was small and crowded, especially now, when all the girls were here and getting ready for the evening's entertainment. They sat about on the rough benches, powdering themselves and brushing their hair and rolling up their stockings, leaning over one another to see into the single, spotted old mirror. Today they were laughing and joking, which was rarely the case; another reason to thank the good weather.
"New dresses!" squealed Jenny as I came inside, and Lil and Annie spun around from the mirror to see. I glanced at Charlotte, pinning up her hair, and felt warm when she smiled.
I let the dresses fall onto a bench in a rustle of satin and cheap silk and lace and fringe, and the girls swarmed around me like bees. "No new ones until the old ones are in my hands," I directed as I disentangled the gowns. "I'm taking them to be cleaned and mended."
They surged away, grabbing up gowns and pantalettes from the benches, all trying to shove them into my hands at once, and I laughed.
"Here's a pink for Jenny," I said, taking her old green.
She snatched the pink from my hands, pressing it to her chemise-clad breasts. It made her cheeks look flushed and pretty, a good color for her. There had been some strain between us since the incident with her lover, and this was my way of making it up to her. When she looked up at me with shining eyes I knew she'd accepted my tacit apology. "Oh, thank you, Marguerite!"
"It will look good on you," I said, and then they were all crowding around again.
"Could I have the blue?"
"I'll take the purple!"
"Oh, Marguerite, thank you! Thank you!" As if the dresses were diamonds. Still, I smiled at how well they loved me at this moment. Benevolently, I handed out the others, including the one I'd had altered especially for Charlotte, a bronze silk with lace added to the sleeves to lengthen them so they covered her scar, and her nod of appreciation was worth the pains I'd taken.
They were all dressing in their new finery--if it could be called that--when Sally deigned to enter the dressing room. There was one gown left, one I'd bought with her in mind, and it had taken some effort to find a yellow in such an unappealing grayish mustard. I could not imagine who had created the color, because I could not imagine a complexion it would favor. There wasn't a girl in the Palace who would look good in that yellow, but Sally, with her pale skin and hair, would look especially horrible in it.
"This one's for you," I said, holding out the silk, trying not to smile when she drew back in dismay.
"Oh, not that! I'll just wear the old one."
I shrugged. "As you wish."
"I'd rather. Yellow makes me look sallow." She shuddered and went to her peg, lifting her gown from it.
I folded up the yellow very slowly.
Her gasp was loud enough that the other girls looked up. Sally held out her old dress. There was a huge, gaping rip in the bodice, a clean cut nearly severing the gown in two. "Look at this! Who did this? It's ruined!" Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me. "You did this, Marguerite, didn't you?"
I gave her my best innocent expression. "Why would I ruin a perfectly good gown?"
"Because you're jealous of me. You hate me with Johnny. Admit it, you do!"
"I don't have any claim on Johnny," I said coldly. "He can fuck who he likes. But I will say his taste has got worse over the years."
"You bitch!" She lunged at me, her eyes flashing.
Charlotte stepped in front of her, grabbing her arm. "Careful, Sally."
"Get out of her way," I snapped at Charlotte. "Let her try to hurt me. Then we'll see who Johnny really favors, won't we?"
The other girls went silent. Charlotte glanced at me, and then she dropped Sally's arm and stepped back. Sally was breathing hard, her face mottled with anger.
I held up the yellow. "I guess you have no choice, Sally, do you?"
She made a sound deep in her throat, a muffled, aborted scream, and threw the ripped gown on the floor. "I'm going to tell Johnny!"
"You do that," I said calmly.
She stormed from the room, letting the door slam behind her, and I looked at the other girls and said, "Hurry up. It's nearly four."
Then I followed Sally out. The bar was starting to fill; Jim Ryan and Lee Blotsky were already at their tables, shuffling their cards. Billy was leaning against the bar before he went upstairs to the piano--from the looks of it, he was already drunk. Johnny stood talking to Duncan. When Sally screamed, "Johnny! Johnny Langford!" he turned with an irritated expression.
"She's making me wear yellow!" Sally screamed.
Johnny frowned and looked past her to me. "Margie? What's this about?"
I stepped up to the bar. "Sally doesn't want to wear the new gown I bought her."
Impatiently, he said, "I don't got time for this, Sally. You do what Margie says."
"You always take her side!"
Johnny gave me a look. "Margie, take care of this."
"I'm trying," I said sweetly.
"I can't wear the yellow!" Sally threw herself at him. With little effort, he grabbed her by the shoulders to hold her away. "It's ugly! I won't wear it!"
"Then don't. And you can get the fuck out of here while you're at it." There wasn't a person in that bar who didn't hear the danger in Johnny's voice, and Sally was no exception.
She looked at him, and then she looked at me, and I saw the helplessness come into her face, and then the hatred, but I didn't care. When she said mulishly, "I'll wear the damn yellow," and marched past me, I had to hide my smile.
Johnny said, "Damn whores," and turned back to Duncan.
As I went back to the dressing room, Charlotte stood at the door, looking at me with an expression I couldn't fathom. When I passed her, she said, "She'll be lucky if anyone looks twice at her in that dress."
"Oh, I don't know. There's always someone too drunk to see straight."
"Christ, Marguerite, she was right: you are a bitch."
The word startled me coming from Charlotte, and the way she said it brought both shame and anger, and because I hated the shame, I let the anger swell. "Next time she'll think again before she crosses me."
"How'd she cross you? So she takes on airs once in a while because she's fucking Johnny. What do you care?"
I glared at her. "It's time Sally understood who's in charge around here. Do you need the same lesson?"
She didn't back down. "Didn't you ever learn to share? You got everything and she's got nothing. She
don't even got Johnny; everyone knows he belongs to you."
"I've got everything?" I laughed in disbelief. "Is that what you think?"
"Don't you?"
"Go to hell. You don't know anything about me."
"You're right, I don't. But that ain't for lack of trying. I never met anyone who keeps everything so close as you."
I noticed the curious looks from the nearest tables, and I turned back and leaned close to her, deliberately lowering my voice as I said angrily, "If you don't like it, you're free to go. See if you're treated so well at the brothel down the street."
"At least a brothel's not pretending to be something it ain't," she returned. She met my glare with an equally hot one of her own, and then she turned on her heel and went into the crowd.
I was still angry as I went back to the bar. Johnny came up to me just as Billy played a song that was completely different from the one Betsey was singing. She faltered and threw a panicked look in my direction, and then, thankfully, Billy passed out, and the violin and bass continued on without him.
Johnny winced. "Christ. Who's been giving him whiskey?"
"He was drunk when he came in. Didn't you see? We haven't given him a drop."
Johnny poured himself a drink. "This is what happens when a man tries to bring a little culture into a hellhole. No wonder I never get society down here for anything but a surreptitious fuck. I think I'd sell my soul for a real attraction, but no, Squire's gets Faust and I get Billy puking over the piano keys."
All I heard was Faust.
"Faust?" I repeated blankly.
"Yeah. Some opera company's decided to try their luck out here next week. We'll see if they can sell tickets enough for one show, much less five."
I forgot Charlotte and Sally and everything else. The music went through my head without my beckoning it: the hammer blows of the overture leading into the beautiful harp, the Jewel Song--"Ah! je ris de me voir"--the quartet, the duet with Faust, "O nuit d'amour".... To hear it again ... I was caught up in the daydream of it until all I saw were the gas footlights blaring in my eyes; all I smelled were the beloved scents of rouge pots and sweat and perfume--
"You want to see Faust, Margie?" Johnny's voice was quiet, sinuous, tempting as a serpent's. When I glanced up I saw how closely he was watching me. He reached into the pocket of his vest, pulling out two pieces of thick yellowish paper. "Yesterday the marshal gave me two tickets when I paid him his monthly 'license' fee. It seems he don't appreciate the opera."
"You're going?" My voice came out in a croak.
"Maybe. I'm thinking about it. God knows I need something to remind me what the hell music really sounds like."
He held out the tickets for me to see. The writing upon them was bold and black.
"I--I can hardly believe it," I managed.
He fluttered the tickets at me. "What d'you say? Want to go?"
A touring company of Faust in Seattle--there was a time when I would have laughed at the very idea, when to see it would have been unfathomable. But now it seemed to brighten a corner of the darkness I lived in, though I knew it was dangerous to go. The kind of people who would be at this opera were exactly the kind of people I should avoid. One could not get lost among respectable people. Someone like me could not stay hidden. They read the newspapers and went to operas and theaters and read reviews and gossiped at their soirees and their dinners. They were the kind of people who had loved me once, who might still love me well enough to recognize me even through my disguise.
But more than that, I'd kept my hunger asleep these last three years; I was afraid to waken it. And Johnny was clever. Who knew what he might see in me while I watched Faust?
Yet the desire to hear it again--to hear anything again--was overwhelming. I could not resist it, and I had never been good at denying myself. I would have done anything for those tickets, and I didn't care if Johnny knew it.
"Yes, I want to go," I told him. "Yes."
AFTER THAT, I could not stop hearing it. "Ah! je ris de me voir" rang in my head all through that night; I no longer heard Billy's obscene attempts at playing the piano, nor the singing. I could not have said how the hours passed or what happened within them. Later, as I lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, it was as if I watched the whole opera unfurl before my eyes.
"Look, I'm sorry for what I said. You can stop punishing me."
Charlotte's quiet voice broke into my thoughts; the visions scattered like rose petals across a stage. In my excitement over Faust, I'd forgotten all about our argument that afternoon, and now I realized she'd taken my preoccupation for anger.
"I'm not punishing you," I said.
"You ain't said a word to me all night."
"I've been thinking of something else, that's all."
"What? Or is it a secret?"
I winced at her bitterness. "It's no secret. Johnny said he'd take me to see Faust next week, and I've thought of nothing else since."
"Faust? What's that?"
"An opera. There's a company coming to Seattle to play at Squire's."
"I thought you said no opera ever played there."
"None ever has before now."
"You like opera then?" she asked. "You know this Faust?"
"Don't you?"
"I never saw it. What's it about?"
"Faust sells his soul to the devil in return for eternal youth and pleasure, because he wants to seduce a young woman he's come to fancy. She falls in love with him and then he abandons her. She has his child and in a fit of madness kills it, and she's hanged for the crime. Satan tries to damn her, but she begs forgiveness for her sins, and the angels redeem her and take her up to heaven."
"What happens to Faust?"
"Nothing, I suppose. The curtain falls."
"So she pays for loving him, and he don't pay at all." She made a cynical little laugh. "Ain't that the truth of it."
"Well, he did sell his soul to the devil, remember. He no doubt ends up in hell."
"Yeah, but he got to make the choice, didn't he? He knew what his reward would be. What choice did she have?"
"She had a choice," I said quietly. "She shouldn't have believed him. She was a fool to do so."
She was still for a moment. I heard her steady breathing in the darkness. "What woman believes the truth when she's told it?" she asked, and her voice had changed; there was suddenly something so unbearably sad in it. "I don't think I like the story much."
"But the music is wonderful," I said, and then, because it was late and I was tired, and our conversation had lulled me into sweetness, I hummed it for her; just a little bit, a measure or two of the ballad of the King of Thule that led into the Jewel Song, and the feel of the melody vibrating in my throat was both strange and so familiar it brought tears to my eyes. I felt her go still and silent; I felt the reverence of her listening, and I knew that too, I remembered it with a pang that made my voice catch and trail off.
She sighed. "That was lovely. Does Johnny know you can carry a tune like that?"
How stupid I was. "No! God, no. And you mustn't tell him. Promise you won't tell him." I grabbed her hand, squeezing her fingers hard.
"You're hurting me."
"Promise me. Promise you won't say anything to Johnny."
"All right, all right," she said, and when I released her fingers, she rubbed them angrily. "I don't understand you. Why should that be so damned secret?"
"I just ... I don't want him to know."
"Why the hell not?"
"He would ... he would put me onstage."
"It ain't so bad. Took me a while to get used to it, but now it's all right."
"I can't go up there," I whispered.
She turned to me, her eyes dark as pitch in the candlelight. "There's something more, ain't there?"
"It's late. We should go to sleep."
"You used to sing on a stage, didn't you?"
I said nothing.
"You did," she said. "And you said it was your idea to turn the P
alace into a boxhouse. Did you sing in one of them before you came here?"
I could have denied that I'd ever sung, but she would have known it for the lie it was, and she would be hurt, and I did not want to hurt her. "No. I've never sung in a boxhouse."
