by Chloe Garner
“That’s a pretty price for a bit of cloth.”
He shook his head.
“It’s about the design. The exclusivity of it, and being able to afford it for that one moment that you need it.”
“Then I’ll just wear my normal coastal clothes for the party,” she said, drifting away from him. He grabbed her arm and pulled her into line with him again.
“There are other retailers,” he said. “I have one in mind. You can even pick what you like best, there. But your clothes are very notably out of style, in Intec. In Preston, they care less, but here, it matters.”
“I don’t care,” she said.
“It matters,” he said again, turning sharply and pulling her through a pair of glass doors.
Sarah could hear Kayla’s squeal in the back of her head.
Color. Everywhere.
A woman bustled up to them, carrying a screen.
“How may I help you today?” she asked.
“You got a gun?” Sarah asked.
“For you or for me?” Jimmy murmured into her ear, then turned to face the woman. “She’s going to be very difficult to impress, but if you can find something she likes, the price attached to it doesn’t matter.”
The woman’s eyes lit up and just might have turned greener.
“Of course,” the woman said. “Please come in. Let’s find you a comfortable place to sit while I arrange options. Would you like refreshments?”
Sarah could have truthfully said that she’d had her fill at lunch, but the idea of running the woman a little harder pleased her, and she nodded, her mouth tight.
“Fine, fine,” the woman said, eying Sarah. “Yes. Right this way.”
--------
What Sarah remembered about clothing shopping in Oxala was how often the salespeople told her that they didn’t have it in her size. She’d more than once resorted to men’s clothing when the specifics of the item didn’t matter to her very much. She was only just a fraction shorter than Jimmy and she had a body that was built by a veritable lifetime of hauling, lifting, fighting, scrubbing, and riding. She had thick arms, thick legs, and a thick trunk, and she liked it just fine, but the ladies of the coastal cities were much more willowy. Built like any one of the Lawson wives, rather than Sarah. She saw, amongst the working class, plenty of women closer to her own physique, but the styles and qualities she held herself to - even then - weren’t a match for her build.
The shop that Jimmy had chosen had everything in her size.
She stood on a small platform in front of mirrors while a woman deftly changed the shape of a seam along the side of her waist, giving the shirt she was wearing a sleek shape across her chest and down her stomach.
It was black, and it matched to pants that had a seam that wandered any direction it felt like it, a thin line of bright red between the backward and frontward sides of the pants.
The shirt invoked the idea of a cape with a section of cloth that came down from between her shoulder blades and spread as it got to her knees, and the inside lining of that was also red.
“There now,” the saleswoman said. “What do you think of that?”
Sarah looked at Jimmy and raised an eyebrow.
“Anything you want,” he said. She pursed her lips and looked back at her reflection.
“This is the style?” she asked.
“It is,” Jimmy said. The saleswoman had been about to say something chirpy - it was in the tone of her breath - but she closed her mouth audibly and let Jimmy vouch for it.
“Fine,” Sarah said. She looked at him again. “Fine. Okay?”
He nodded, standing.
“All right. This will be it. If you could bag her clothes, there’s no reason she shouldn’t wear this home.”
The woman scurried away and Sarah stepped down.
“It’s not that different,” she said.
“It’s different enough that you stand out like you don’t know,” he answered.
“Or I don’t care,” she said.
“If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be that close,” he said, his eyebrows going up, inviting more fight but warning her that she was going to lose. She glowered, and his eyebrows dropped.
“It’s just a shirt and pants,” she said, following him toward where the woman had disappeared.
“You could have gotten a dress,” he murmured, taking the screen that the woman presented him and signing it. The screen dinged, and she took it back with a polite smile. She frowned, looking at it.
“You’re Jimmy Lawson?” she asked.
“I am,” Jimmy said. She looked up quickly.
Fear.
Inge had been happy to see them. This woman was afraid.
“I… I didn’t know.”
“We’ve paid for our purchase,” he said. “If you please.”
She handed over the bag as if she were trying not to touch him, and Sarah watched Jimmy for any sign of smug that she could pounce on.
There wasn’t any, but that didn’t stop her, once she got outside with him again.
“Scaring hapless salespeople,” she said. “You proud of yourself?”
“I told you Intec was good to us,” he said without looking at her. “Do you want to walk back to the car or do you want a taxi?”
“How long until the party?” she asked.
“The first people should start showing up in about an hour,” he said.
If they took a taxi, they’d get back to the house and just sit around until then. Sarah had no interest in spending any more time in that house than she had to.
“Walking is fine.”
He nodded, knowing perfectly well why, but not saying anything.
He walked next to her, not touching her, and not speaking to her all the way back to the car. The car he’d bought for her to make sure she knew that her way of life was dying.
She got in, feeling sour and used, facing forward the entire way back to the house.
--------
There was a pool in the back. As the sun went down, the lights came on over it, and many of the optimistic people milling around, talking and laughing and drinking, made their way outside. Sarah took an opportunity to go sit on a lounging chair next to the pool where people had a hard time talking to her without feeling awkward - the only way to do it was to talk down to her or to squat next to her, and no one wanted to do either one.
Jimmy had started out trying to introduce her to people, but he’d given up at that pretty quickly, and so she spent the greater portion of the party watching the so-called powerful men and women of Intec swirling around a house that Jimmy had thought of as home.
There were a few guns around.
She noted them, wishing she had hers, but all she had was her knives and her temper, and those would have to be sharp enough.
The laughing got louder as the average drunk level of the party went up, and Sarah shook her head, looking at the water of the pool moodily.
She’d never been on friendly terms with water. It kept her alive, it grew crops, she certainly wouldn’t say she resented it, but she’d grown up in a place where water tended to keep inching people along at the very edge of survival, and then try to destroy them all at once.
The domesticated blue of the pool was revolting to her, more so as women started stripping and diving in wearing as little as they dared.
She saw Jimmy looking out the window and she raised an eyebrow. His face didn’t register anything, the four mostly-naked women running around on the lawn between him and Sarah notwithstanding.
Hours were long in Lawrence, but they felt longer here, as full as they were. A few more men tried to talk to her, but she assumed that the news had gone through the party that she was Jimmy’s wife, and the more offensive advances stopped coming by late dusk.
Finally, the drunk women started dropping off, casting themselves here and there like corpses, and the men either took them away or left alone. Jimmy came to look down at her.
“You shouldn�
�t sleep out here,” he said. “The bats have been known to bite people while they’re asleep outside.”
“Bats,” she said. He nodded, looking at the women on the lawn.
“Are you going to do anything about them?” she asked him, and he shook his head.
“They call them party bites,” he said. “Something of a badge of honor to have them. Counts the number of parties you’ve been to, recently.”
“Then they aren’t important.”
He looked back at her, putting his hands into his pockets.
“You don’t think that important women act like that,” he said, and she shook her head. No, she didn’t. They were paid entertainment, like any other place.
There was a silence.
“So?” she asked.
“I’d like you to come upstairs with me,” he said.
“No.”
He nodded, looking at his feet for a moment and then looking up at her again without lifting his head.
“Good business tonight,” he said. She nodded.
“I’m glad.”
“Everyone’s heard about the mines. Waiting to see if they play out. If they pay…”
She shook her head.
“We’re going to get another rush.”
He nodded.
“There’s a rumor going around that laborers are going to be paid in absenta because there’s going to be so much of it around.”
She snorted.
“Because having lots of money has ever made people more generous.”
“Not miners,” he said, tipping his head to squint at the horizon. “But it’s going to be hard, balancing things, for a while.”
“Good luck,” she said. He tipped his head to look at her again, and she returned his gaze without flinching.
“Are you implying that you’re no longer invested?”
She looked away, just giving herself a moment to think.
She wasn’t sizzling angry any more. That was a waste of energy. But she was perfectly capable of carrying a hot ember for a long time. Years. She’d done it, even in the time he’d been gone, going after individuals who had hit homesteads without mercy, without profit. Just executed people for the sense of power. She’d killed them the same way, and it was the only way that the withdrawn sense of mandate ever went away.
She looked at him again, letting him see what he would in her eyes.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I belong in Lawrence so long as it’s Lawrence, but when you upend it the way you’re planning, I don’t know what’s left there for me, or anywhere.”
He nodded.
“Don’t sleep out here,” he said, leaving his hands in his pockets as he turned away and went back into the house.
--------
She’d found Kayla’s room by smell. There had been a couple in the bed and she’d kicked them out without any ceremony at all, then she’d dragged the heavy comforters off of the bed with one of the pillows and she’d slept on the floor.
It was going to look, in the morning, like she was feeling sorry for herself, but this was just the best she was going to do for tonight, outside of leaving the house and just… going.
She was comfortable enough - better than the night before on the carpet downstairs - and there weren’t any other rooms where she felt like she would sleep at all.
Had she made a mistake?
Was this idea that she and Jimmy could make it work a fool’s fantasy?
Was the wedding just a prediction of the marriage?
How had Elaine done it?
Sarah hadn’t known her mother. Her pa hadn’t ever talked about her, and Elaine - Babe’s best friend - hadn’t said much, either, because it hurt her to remember. Elaine was the only mother she’d ever known, and Jimmy’s ma had died in the damned tavern when Sarah was only eight. Sarah had grown up knowing how to deal with her pa and how to avoid Peter Lawson Sr. She had no idea how Elaine had shared a house and a life with that man.
Sarah was afraid.
There weren’t many times in her life that she’d felt real fear, but this was one of them, and it made her queasy and cold. Death didn’t scare her. Death was just a part of existence in Lawrence - the knowledge that the bullet that was going to kill you was probably already in town. If you were scared of that, you got the hell out.
What she’d said to Jimmy had been the truth, though, as much as she’d meant it as a threat. Without him and without Lawrence, all of her identity was obliterated. She had nothing in her life that drove her decisions, outside of survival, Lawrence, and Jimmy, and she wasn’t sure if she could stomach Lawrence or Jimmy anymore.
She slept, but it was an uneasy sleep.
She woke to find Jimmy standing in the doorway, watching her. She wanted to know how long he’d been there, but she didn’t want to betray curiosity.
“Get dressed,” he said.
She stood, and he frowned. She hadn’t changed out of her clothes the night before.
“Let’s go.”
She followed him downstairs and out to the car.
“Descartes moved up the meeting,” he said. “Inge is waiting for you.”
He drove all the way to the dressmaker’s shop, letting her out and driving away again. She went into the shop and Inge and two new Kayla lookalikes seized on her, helping her out of her clothes as Inge put up curtains across the front of the shop.
They brought out a brilliant blue dress with a high collar and Sarah put it on for something to wear, standing to look at her reflection.
The collar had a secretive feel to it, like a cape for her face, and everywhere as she moved, burgundy peeked through, at her sleeve, at a cut of the dress, in a fold down her arm. There was a wide burgundy front with blue buttons down both sides, and the skirt fell away in bunches from either side of the burgundy, forming a cascade to either side and a flat front as it reached the floor.
She could hide guns under that.
Sadly, all of her guns were back at the house.
Another time.
She drew a long breath and sighed.
“Kayla said that you weren’t impressed with either of her dresses,” Inge said, standing off to the side with her arms crossed. “It’s a good thing I take my satisfaction in the work, not the reaction.”
Sarah gave her an attempt at an apologetic smile, then looked at the clothes on the ground.
“We’ll get them to the Lawson house,” Inge said, but Sarah shook her head.
“Don’t bother.”
Inge gave her an even look, and Sarah started for the door.
“Unless you think I need to stay out of the wind and the sun in this get-up,” she said, pausing.
“Oh, no,” Inge said. “It’s tough fabric. Where it’s two or three layers thick, it’ll stop a knife.”
Sarah turned all the way around.
“And people just wear something like this once?”
Inge spread her hands.
“The secrets of exclusivity are odd, aren’t they?”
Sarah shook her head and went to stand on the sidewalk. A few minutes later, Jimmy pulled over and she let herself into the car. The dress collapsed around her knees surprisingly well.
“It’s a fancy party dress,” she said. “This isn’t a meeting dress.”
He was looking her up and down, slowly, and didn’t acknowledge her words, at first.
“Inge knows her work,” he said finally, taking his foot off the brake and letting the car roll back into traffic.
“She’s making a fool of me,” Sarah said, looking at the complexity of the gown in new detail.
“She’s making you into something that people will recognize and respect,” Jimmy said. “It’s the same thing as walking up and down the aisle on the train, making sure everyone sees your gun and your hat. They see that dress, they know you matter.”
“I’m ready to go home,” she said.
“You said that,” he answered, cool, distant. “After this, we will.”
Wha
t would happen then, she wondered.
They couldn’t make this work. Not with who he was and who she was. She should have let him marry Rhoda, as it were. She’d known better, and she’d gone against her better instincts because…
Because she’d loved him. She wasn’t even sure if she did, now, knowing what she did.
They followed a winding road back up into the hills, past the Lawson house and beyond, driveways or gates going past them at intervals, until finally these stopped. Jimmy drove on.
The city was still off to her right. She could see it in gaps through the trees, sometimes, and she could make out Intec bay more often than that, but there just weren’t any more houses.
And then they hit the drive. Four cars wide, easily, with a gate that opened up and out like a beetle’s wings as they got close.
“He’s expecting us,” Jimmy observed. They went on down the center of the pale gold drive, the tires silent now on the soft surface. They made a sweep past an overlook where she could see Intec once more, and then they were in between two well-tended lines of trees, only the center of the road lit directly under the long boughs of the trees.
The house came into view not much later, a city unto itself that sprawled in each direction, red roof glinting metallically in the sun.
“Welcome to the Descartes estate,” Jimmy said. “I warned you he’s competitive.”
He pulled the car up to the front entrance, twelve stairs up to a colonnade of iridescent white marble. Sarah got out, her preposterous dress feeling much more at home, now. Jimmy came around the car and offered her his elbow. She hesitated, and he gave her a hard look, and she put her arm through his.
It wasn’t intimate. It was formal. She wasn’t sure which she would have resented most, just now.
He escorted her to the top of the stairs, where a pair of matched men opened tall, arched doors to reveal a bejeweled entryway.
The floor was gold worked with rich, dark colors, and the walls were actual, physical gold to Sarah’s eye, columns supporting a second story walkway, walls covered with art, sculpture, and tactical lighting.
A man in a white suit met them at the end of the front lobby, where the floor went from baroque to white, and he held out a gloved hand, indicating direction.
“This way, please. Mr. Descartes is waiting for you.”
