by Megan Chance
CHAPTER 9
J ohnny reached into his pocket for a cigar and a match, which he struck against the rough outside wall of a barbershop. He paused to light his cigar, and I waited as he puffed it to life, wrinkling my nose at the smoke that clouded before my face. The night was full of the sound of carriage wheels thudding over the streets, distant whoops and hollers, a dogfight.
When he began to walk again, I fell into step beside him. Johnny said, "You always surprise me, honey."
"Really? I would have said I was anything but surprising."
He inhaled and let the smoke out in a cloud. "Take the opera, for example. You know Faust like someone who's seen it more than once."
"No, I--"
"You were keeping time."
"I was what?"
"Keeping time. You know that music inside and out, Margie. Don't lie to me about that, at least. I don't doubt my own eyes."
"I ... have a good ear. That's all."
"I don't dispute that." He flicked off the ash from his cigar. "So how'd you develop this 'ear'?"
"I don't know. I've always had it."
"That's how you know Verdi."
"Yes."
He was quiet. His footsteps--and mine--seemed too loud on the boardwalk, thudding and echoing in a night already heavy with sound.
"It occurs to me that we don't know each other very well," he said finally.
"Does it matter?"
He went on as if I hadn't spoken. "Now, there're some things.... I know you like it a little rough, and hell, I ain't averse to a little pain myself if it makes the pleasure better. But there ain't much that you let yourself enjoy, honey. I always figured you were punishing yourself for something. Am I right?"
I was startled into silence.
"Suppose you tell me what that is."
Still I was mute; I had no idea what to say.
"Does it have something to do with him?"
"With who?" I whispered.
"Whoever it is you got in your head. The one I can't dislodge."
"Oh, Johnny ..."
He held up his hand to quiet me. "You enjoyed tonight. At least at the start. That's what surprised me. I don't think I've ever seen that in you. Hell, you looked like you were staring into heaven, and I found myself thinking: now, if she looked at me like that when I was fucking her, I would give her anything she wanted." He laughed ruefully. "I suppose we all got our vanities, don't we?"
I could not answer him. I should never have let him take me to the opera. I should never have gone. I'd known I was taking a risk, and now the two things I'd been most afraid of had happened: my longing for the music was so strong I didn't know how I would live without it again, and Johnny's curiosity about me had sharpened. I should have listened to my instincts; I should have denied myself the pleasure.
Johnny said, "Three years we been together, Margie, and I know hardly more about you than I did at the start. I thought I stopped wondering about you a long time ago, but tonight's been ... a revelation."
"The past is the past," I said softly. "I never ask you about yours."
"Because you don't care--that's the difference. What you want from me ain't what I want from you."
I looked away. How stupid I'd been.
Johnny laughed shortly. "You see? You don't even ask: 'What is it you want from me, Johnny?'"
"I know what you want."
"Do you?" He stopped walking for a moment to look at me. The cigar lit his eyes weirdly; I found myself taking a step back. "Were you like the Marguerite in Faust? Is that why you took her name?"
"It is my name," I said, but my voice quavered, and I knew he heard it.
"Where'd the scar come from? Did he give it to you?"
"That's none of your business." I walked on. In two steps, he was beside me, his hand on my arm, gentle enough that I could have kept going, but I stopped.
"Did you never think to move on, honey?" His voice was unbearably tender. "You say the past is the past, but I don't think you left it behind. How long you planning to wait before you start living again?"
His comment pricked. I found myself saying meanly, "Why don't you admit what it is that bothers you, Johnny? I don't love you--that's what this is about. That isn't going to change; we both know it. What's so wrong with the way things are now?"
"Because I'm your partner, and you're keeping secrets."
"You have your own secrets."
He went quiet, and I was grateful until he said, "Tonight got me thinking. Maybe it's time to do what I intended in the first place and make the Palace a real theater."
"Just because an opera company managed to fill Squire's one night doesn't mean Seattle's ready for anything else."
"Hmmm. Maybe. Or maybe it is. Maybe we should take a trip down to San Francisco, see if we can't convince a couple troupes to make the trip north."
"It would be a waste of time. Who would come here?"
He tapped off a growing ash. "You know, I'm starting to think you don't want me to make the Palace legitimate. Why is that?"
"I'm only being cautious. We have a good thing now--"
"It could be better."
"Are you so certain? It couldn't hurt to wait a little longer--"
"We were the first boxhouse in Seattle. We're the most successful because we took a risk. Who's to say this wouldn't pay off the same way?"
"It's too soon. We can't afford it. What about our regular customers?"
"What about them?"
"We'd lose them."
He shook his head thoughtfully. "I don't think we would. Not all of them anyway, and we'd have a whole new crowd to take their place. It'd take--what?--a few months, maybe, until the profits came up again. We could survive it. I'm ready to do this, Margie."
"Johnny--"
"We could add footlights to the stage, get rid of the chaises in the boxes. Turn the bar into a salon. There'd be no more whores, no more temper tantrums over yellow fucking dresses." His voice had gone low and vibrant; he gestured with his cigar, the lit end glowing brightly in the darkness. "We'd run a melodrama or two, maybe even an opera of our own. Can't you see it, Margie? You and me, proprietors of the best damn theater in the city."
His words were seductive. I could not help picturing it. A theater the equal of Squire's or better. Singers who could sing. Musicians who could play. The ambitions that I'd forced dormant shivered and stretched. In my ears rang Faust, tempting, cajoling....
But then I remembered what Prosch had said about people who still searched for Sabine Conrad, reporters who meant to find her, and I knew I could not keep hidden here, not if the Palace were a theater. There were so many people I'd left behind, players, singers, managers. Sooner or later, someone who'd known me well enough to recognize me would arrive. And then what? How could I escape myself then? How could I keep myself safe from everything I was?
I swallowed hard and shook my head. "I don't think it's a good idea."
He gave me a sidelong glance. "You afraid?"
"Of course I'm afraid. Of losing money."
"You sure it ain't more than that?"
"What else could it be?"
"I don't know." He made a little laugh. "I wish to hell I did."
He threw his cigar into the middle of the street and took my arm, pulling me close, putting his hand to my chin so I could not look away. "I want to do this, Margie, and I want you to help me. I could go ahead without you, but I'm likely to make a mess of it. I need you beside me. I don't know why, but you understand this business like no one I've ever seen."
Everything felt dangerous, unbalanced. I did not want to think about this. I wanted things to remain as they were. And so I did what I had always done. I curled my arms around his neck, and when he stiffened a little, I rose on my toes and kissed him. He didn't respond at first, but I did not relent; I knew what he liked, and soon his mouth moved on mine; his hands crept to the small of my back and then lower. I drew back, teasing, pressing my lips against his throat, above the unfam
iliar high collar, the smooth cold silk of his necktie. I unknotted it, looking about for a place, a corner, a shadowed alley. I slid my hand down his chest and pressed my hips to his. "Over there," I murmured. "No one would see--"
Johnny curled his fingers tight about mine, stopping me. "No, Margie."
I let my other hand fall to his trousers. "Come on, Johnny. Let me thank you for taking me to the opera."
He smiled. "Oh, you can thank me all right, but it don't distract me, honey, if that's what you mean to do. I'll fuck you if you want, but when we're done, we're coming right back around to this. It's time for you and me to move into something new. You know it as well as I do. It's time to turn the Palace."
I jerked away, surprised and angry.
He raised a brow. "Oh, don't tell me you changed your mind. What a pity. And here you got me all excited."
"Go on home to Sally, then," I snapped.
"I think I just might do that," he said. "But you and me, we ain't finished with the rest of it." He took my arm; when I tried to pull away, he tsked at me. There was a smile in his voice when he said, "You put me in mind of a little girl who didn't get a treat. Come on now, let's go home. We'll talk about this tomorrow. Just now you got 'til McGraw's to change your mind about taking me to bed."
THE CANDLE WAS lit, and I watched its shadow against the walls while in the next room, Tessa and her partner's rhythmic gruntings kept time to the duet between Faust and Marguerite that repeated itself unendingly in my head. How many times I'd sung that duet. How often in these last years I'd tried to forget it, to forget everything. I'd closed my heart to it, and I had not realized until tonight how much that had cost me, not until Johnny had uttered his proposition. Faust had raised my hunger again, and now I heard Mephistopheles's terrible, derisive laugh, calling me a fool, calling me worse than that.
I was relieved when Charlotte came home--anything that robbed me of my thoughts was something to be grateful for. She came inside and sent a frown in the direction of Tessa's room before she looked at me in surprise. "I thought you'd be asleep."
"I couldn't sleep."
Charlotte sat on the edge of the bed and bent to unfasten her boots. "Was the opera good?"
"As I expected."
She slipped off one boot and then the other and rose, going to the basin. On the other side of the wall, Tessa screamed out and went still. In the silence after was the smooth gurgling splash of water as Charlotte poured it. "Thank God that's over. You'd think she got enough of it at the Bijou."
"You never wish to bring someone back with you?" I asked.
"No."
"Do you ever ... enjoy it?"
She shook her head. "It's a job. D'you enjoy running whores?"
I didn't think she expected an answer, and I didn't give one.
She dipped her hands in the water and brought them to her face, tilting her head so the water dripped from her jaw, her chin. The dim light against her skin made her scar look like a deep purple shadow. She hesitated, and then she splashed her face again and reached for the ragged towel. "Something happen between you and Johnny tonight?"
"Why do you ask?"
"He was in a bear of a mood when he got back."
"Faust inspired him. He wants to turn the Palace legitimate."
"You said he's wanted that a long time."
"He has."
She sat again on the edge of the bed. "So what's stopping him?"
"I don't think it's the right time."
She sighed and lay down beside me. Her hair straggled into her face, and I rose onto my elbow and smoothed it back. Her skin was soft and warm. Once I'd touched her, I couldn't stop. I found myself stroking her hair the way I would a child's, and she let me, and I had the odd sense she knew it soothed me better than it soothed her. "What did he say to that?" she asked softly.
I was distressed enough that I found myself confiding in her. "He said I was afraid. That I was holding on to the past."
"D'you think he's right?"
"I don't know."
She laughed a little. "What is it you want, Marguerite?"
A hundred things, I thought, and that troubled me, that the thought came so easily, that upon its heels rushed everything I'd had once, everything I could not have again. Music. Adulation. Footlights. I saw myself dancing across a stage, admiring the paste jewels sparkling around my wrist--a gift from the devil and from Faust--falling easily into a seduction that could only end with death, unredeemed....
I shook the thoughts away. Her hair was fine, but thick too. It gave and sprang back beneath my fingertips. "I have everything I need."
She closed her eyes and sighed. We were quiet for a moment, and then she said, "It wasn't an accident, you know. Not like I said."
"What wasn't?"
"My scar." She raised her arm for me to see as if I might have forgotten it. "He pushed me into the fire. He meant to do it. He said he was sorry after, but he meant to do it all the same."
"Who did?"
"My husband."
She was so matter-of-fact, so unemotional. It was as if she were talking about someone else. "Why?"
"He was a mean son of a bitch. I didn't see it at first, you know. He was handsome, and when I married him I thought it was just about the best thing that ever happened to me. And then one night he came home drunk and threw me against the wall. My fault ... I burned the stew. And he was so nice after ... well, you can guess what happened after that. Only the stew wasn't to blame the other times."
"Some men are--"
"Yeah, I know. Some men are just like that. But I never saw it until it was too late. And you know the real hell of it was that I loved him. He said I brought out the worst in him, and I believed it."
I stopped stroking, though my fingers lingered in her hair. That familiarity again, though I couldn't quite grab on to it, I didn't know why.
"And then"--she took a deep breath--"and then one night he came home and he was pretty rough, but I got pregnant so I guessed it was worth it. I thought it would change everything."
"Did it?"
She shook her head. "I knew I had to get away or he'd kill me, and maybe the kid too. So I went to this man I'd met. He'd said he was a traveling peddler and I believed him, though I never saw him selling shit. He told me he'd take me out of town and to pack a bag. So I did. But then Tracy came home from the camps and found the bag and ... well, he threw me into the fire."
She lifted her arm, twisting it so the scar stood out in bright relief in the candlelight. "I went into a fever. When I woke up, the doctor said I'd never have another baby again. So I went to the peddler and asked him to take me out of town."
"Oh, Charlotte--"
"I ain't finished," she said abruptly. "He took me out of town, all right. And I was so grateful to him that when he said I had to pay him back for my expenses, I said I'd do whatever he wanted. So he fucked me there in the wagon. And then he took me up to a mining camp and sold me to whoever could pay, and I was still so damn grateful, because he said he'd protect me and take care of me...." She made a little sound of disbelief. "But it wasn't more than six months before I got sick and he left me to die, and when I found out he was gone, I wished I had. I didn't see how I could go on without him. That son of a bitch. I think if I saw him now I'd stab him through. At least I hope I would."
I didn't know what to say. "I--I'm sorry."
She shrugged. "It don't matter. I don't think about it much."
"How can you not think about it?"
She met my gaze. "It's behind me now. Thinking about the past only fucks things up. What can I do about it but go on anyway?"
Slowly, I said, "You think I should help Johnny turn the Palace."
"I think you should do what makes you happy. Whatever that is. You mean to live in the past forever?"
"It's just that ... it's not what I'd hoped for."
She laughed shortly. "Christ, Marguerite, ain't no one gets exactly what they want. I never meant to be a whore, but at le
ast now I don't got to go with anyone I don't want to go with. I got a roof over my head and plenty to eat."
"It doesn't seem enough," I said bitterly.
"What are you waiting for?"
"What makes you think I'm waiting?"
"Ain't you?"
"I--"
