“Easy,” Wallace said, brushing her away. “Like she says, I am in charge. I am your partner now, Avery, Bill. Is that so difficult to accept? Once, you were like uncles to me.”
“This is business, boy,” Avery said. “And it is not you we have a problem with. We always knew one day you would take over the business. It’s her. Who is she, anyway? Some ghost, drifting into town!”
“She is my advisor,” Wallace said, but his voice was somewhat embarrassed.
Alma floundered. How to correct this? But nothing came to mind.
“Very well, she’s your advisor,” Avery growled. “But must she sit in on these meetings? Must she ride with you, making a mockery of the men? Must the men endure a trouser-wearing woman staring down at them? I say – and I think Bill feels the same – she should be your advisor in private, and should wear dresses too!”
Alma kept her face impartial when Wallace turned to her, and – with a wave of his hand – said: “That will be all for today, Alma.”
Alma saw in his face that he would not budge and if she pressed, she would be more than momentarily dismissed. She swallowed, nodded, and left the room. When she left the building, instead of walking toward the hotel, she walked out of the town, into the Mojave until the town was a speck on the horizon, and fell to her knees. She clenched her fists and smacked the sand until her knuckles were red and raw.
“Goddam Avery!” she screamed, punching the sand. “Goddam Avery! Goddam him! Bill I can take care of! But him, the skeletal fuck!”
Once this outburst was over, she rose to her feet, rubbed her knuckles, and brushed her knees. She took a deep breath as she began the walk back toward town. Entering the hotel, she approached the front desk. “Where is Elise?”
Beryl lifted her hands. “With a client,” she said. “Is something wrong, Alma?”
“No,” Alma said. “Life is wonderful. Life is one wonderful moment after another. I have never experienced anything as wonderful as life!”
She marched up the stairs and into her room.
* * *
After around thirty minutes, a knock came at her door. “Enter!” Alma snapped.
Elise wobbled into the room, her legs as unsteady as ever. She wobbled to the side of the bed and crashed into the chair. “Beryl said you wanted to see me, Alma.”
“I do.” Alma sat up in bed and looked at the whore, at the leathery folds of skin and the hopeless eyes and wondered how far it would take for Alma to become that. Not far, she decided, and knew she had to fight all the harder. “You once mentioned that you knew Avery DeBell. Do you still know him? Do you still see him?”
“I do.” Elise’s hopeless eyes became a little less hopeless.
“And are you still interested in promoting yourself?”
Elise nodded eagerly. “I am.”
“Then, please, find out something about him, something that will bring him under my power.” Alma gripped Elise’s hands. “Find out something that will put him beneath me, and I will raise us both above him. Now, please, turn your back.”
“Turn my back?”
“I need to collect some money.”
Elise dutifully turned her back. Alma lifted her mattress and pulled out two months’ wages. “Here,” she said, and thrust one months’ wages into Elise’s hand. “You get half on top of that once the job is complete. Do you understand? Something serious, Elise. Something damning.”
Elise nodded and licked her lips with a snake’s flickering tongue. “I understand.” She waddled from the room and closed the door behind her.
After about an hour – in which time Alma did nothing but stare at the ceiling and fantasize about the myriad ways she could kill Avery – another knock came at her door. “Yes?”
“Mr. Saville to see you,” Beryl said.
“He can come in.” She stood from the bed and smoothed her clothes down.
Wallace walked in with that awful sheepish grin on his face which made him look simple. He seemed to be expecting something, some rage, perhaps. He had the stance of a man expecting blows. But Alma did not rage at him. She knew that would only harm her cause. Instead, she waited.
He walked to her, laid his hands on her shoulders. “They are laughing at me, Alma,” he said. “They think I am not my own man. They think you are my puppet master!”
“What have you agreed to?” Alma whispered. His voice hid little.
“You are no longer to ride with me round the mines,” he said. “I will keep you on as my adviser, but only in the office.”
“What am I to do when you are at the mines?” she said.
“Go over the accounts,” Wallace said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Organize the files. Anything. But I will not be laughed at.”
She could have said: You would not be in this position if it were not for me. You would not have this power if it were not for me. But that bullet could wait. She was not the kind of woman to fire too soon.
He looked like a pouting little boy. Alma had to resist the urge to slap him across the face. She had been talked down to by men her entire life, starting with dear deserted Father and never ending, really, all throughout her life: old men, young men, in-between men, trying to claim her just because she was born with a slit and not a cock. She would not let this man talk down to her; neither would she reveal herself too soon.
Swallowing something sickly, she rested her head on his shoulder. “I understand, my love,” she said. “How awful it must be for you. You are so, so much better than them. Oh, my love,” and here she wrapped her arms around him, stroked him, caressed him, “you are a god compared to them.” Inwardly, she cringed. How could he believe this?”
But he did, and they stayed like that, hugging, for a long time.
* * *
They met in the stables, as they always did. Alma paced up and down, wringing her hands, kicking the walls, every so often muttering a curse so vivid that Solomon shrunk away from her. “Who do they think I am?” she muttered, wishing the stables were bigger. They were no good for pacing. “Some whore? Some fool to be laughed at? Nobody knows me, Solomon. You don’t even know me.”
“I know you better than they do, anyway,” Solomon said quietly, picking his nails with his small knife. “I know that you’re not this – this – temping sort of woman you pretend to be.”
“Ha!” Alma sank down next to him in the hay. “A temptress, you mean. Oh, Solomon, I am a temptress. Just look at you. Instead of resting for your early rise tomorrow, here you are, in the hay with me. Why are you here, if I have not tempted you?”
“I am here because I want to be here.”
“Ha! Men never know what they want. They think they want something and then, magically, they want something different. You’ll discard me soon. Or else they want unnatural things, like Father, and they force the women around them to adapt. Do you imagine I was born this way, Solomon?” She took his hand, ran her thumb along the ridges, the calloused fingertips. “Do you imagine I was born with a bonfire in my belly? I was quiet, meek, womanly, once.”
“I can’t imagine that,” Solomon said, squeezing her hand. “If your fire disappeared I think I’d be mighty scared.”
“So would I, now,” Alma said. “But it wasn’t always like that.”
She took a deep breath and went on: “When I was younger my father tortured me. I tried to think of different words to describe it for a long time, but it was torture, Solomon. Rape, if you insist on being explicit. For a long time, I mean . . . for a hellishly long time. Day after day, and my mother knew, and she did nothing. Once, my mother tried to kill me with a broom handle. Out of jealousy, I think. She was an ugly woman. I ran away, and ran and ran, and seduced and yes – once – I killed a man, a man who tried to rape me. He was on top of me and fumbling at his britches and instead of just letting it happen I reached and I found a bottle and I smashed it on his head and he fell and I hit him over and over and he bled and he died.” She breathed through her teeth. “I met his wife, you k
now, and she thanked me. Thanked me! And now I am here. My name is Rebecca Hardy, but I have had many names since then. Today I am Alma.”
She knew she was ranting. She had no clue why she told Solomon. She thought he could be trusted, but she had thought the same before only to be betrayed. Something warm and wet was on her cheeks. She lifted her hand, brushed away tears. “Say something,” she urged.
Solomon kissed her on the lips. When they moved away from each other, he smiled softly. “Do you imagine this changes anything, Alma, Rebecca?” His smile grew wider. “I killed a man once, too. A white man who called me nigger and tried to make me shine his shoe. Out on the road, in the middle of nowhere, this man thought it was a good idea to stop and ask me to shine his boot. And when I said no he fought me—and I won.”
“Here we are, then, just two devils.”
“Here we are,” Solomon agreed.
“If I win, Solomon, I’m taking you with me.”
He nodded, and kissed her again.
Chapter 8
They had given Alma her own ‘office’ on the lower level of the building, at the back, in a room that smelled suspiciously of whisky.
Feeling like a spare part, she looked at the piles and piles of documents on the table before her. The Silver King Mining Corporation was woefully disorganized. Alma could not find any kind of order in the documents. They had just been thrown together, into a cupboard, ‘to be dealt with later’. Now, ‘later’ had come. For the first half of the morning Alma simply looked at them, fidgeted with her fingers, and wondered how in God’s name she would bring order to them. Wallace, she knew, was out there right now. Roach, she also knew, poor girl, was in the stables. And Alma was here, useless.
There was no reason for her to actually sort through the documents. This was, after all, just busy work. Nobody would care whether or not she did it. But there was something about their disorder that bothered her. How could rich men be so sloppy? she thought. How can they be allowed to be rich when this is how they treat their business?
She found she was gripping the edge of the desk, her fingernails digging into the wood. She started to think something along the lines of bad people get everything, whilst good people only suffer . . . but then reminded herself: I’m a bad person, and I’ve suffered plenty.
She sighed. Head down, she got on with the work.
* * *
A few hours later, Wallace marched into her office. He was grinning from ear to ear and when he entered, he stood over the desk and turned his grin at her. It was a paternal grin, a grin that said: How cute. Look how hard she is working for me! Alma plastered a smile onto her face and turned it up at him, like a sword riposting his smile. “Hello,” she said. “How was the ride?”
“Oh, good,” Wallace said. “Regular. The mines are operating as expected. The men – I have to say, if you will excuse me – seemed relieved at your absence.”
Insults, yes, how I have missed you. Kind face, kind face. Her smile did not falter. “I suppose it can be jarring for them, to be overseen by a woman.”
“Yes, yes.” He waved a hand at the documents. “How is this coming along? We businessmen hate this sort of thing, you know. We like the nature, and the struggle, not the paperwork. Just looking at it makes my eyes ache!”
“You are so right,” Alma said. “It is woman’s work, without a doubt.” Sometimes, the things she said were so opposite to what she felt she thought she might laugh aloud.
Wallace nodded like this was an absolute fact, which, for him, it was. “You must be hungry. Let’s go for dinner.”
Alma followed him to Beryl’s where, as another cosmic joke, Solomon served them. He kept his eyes averted from Alma. Alma had to clamp her hand on her knee, lest she reach and touch his chin and tell him that yes, he could look at her; he could more than look at her. Wallace referred to Solomon as boy, though Solomon and he were around the same age, and snapped his fingers at him when he didn’t hurry with the food and drinks. Alma could have kicked him in the groin.
“Finally!” Wallace exclaimed, when their food was brought out.
He shoveled his food down, bits of it sticking in his beard, and chugged his ale. Alma found herself becoming more and more repulsed by this man: this man with whom she had shared perfectly fine sex. But she could not let her repulsion affect her in any way. She had to be as brainless, as automated, as a train, steaming onward despite whatever lay at her sides. She smiled widely when he burped. Oh, how charming, her face said. What a lovely burp.
* * *
She and Wallace emerged from her hotel room, Alma wondering how she could still enjoy their rutting even when the man did not attract her any longer, Wallace adjusting his britches.
After he left, Alma sat in the bar. There were a few miners who drank too much and would regret it tomorrow, whores who moved between tables, and Beryl and Solomon. Beryl came over to her and they chatted for a while about this and that, mostly about Beryl’s bad knee, about which the woman could talk for hours if necessary. Solomon cast her glances every so often which Alma tried and failed to decipher. Somehow she thought they wouldn’t be meeting in the stables tonight.
Then somebody tapped her shoulder. Alma turned and saw Elise, serpentine tongue flickering over an almost toothless mouth. “Yes?” Alma said.
“Have you seen the night’s sky?” Elise said, all but winking.
“No, is it beautiful?”
“It is,” Elise said. “Come with me. We’ll look at it together.”
Under this pretense they left the bar and went out into the warm night air. They walked to the edge of the town, near the closed general store, down an alley where nobody could see them. They had to walk slowly because Elise limped and wobbled with each step. Finally, they came to the alleyway, Elise panting so hard Alma wondered how she performed her duties for DeBell, let alone extracted information from him.
“You have something for me?” Alma said.
Elise’s lips twisted into a gummy grin. “Oh, I have something,” she said. Her eyes seemed to shimmer in the darkness. “I have something sweet and ripe, I do. Let me tell you. So, we had just finished, and I was in his arms. Sometimes he likes to hold me, you know,” she added, proudly. “I got to talking about my past, this and that, my home, what I did before the war – before you were born, I reckon – with the aim of drawing him out. I talked about my first love. And he did the same.”
Alma gestured go on with her hand.
Elise nodded, rubbed her hands together. “He told me about his first love. Her name was Bethany Hanford, she was from New York, where he met her in ’71. He spoke for a long time – an awful long time – about how they had fallen in love and had lain together and had planned to marry, but this woman, this Bethany, liked other men, too. She had been with many other men, even when she and DeBell were together. DeBell found out, you see. He strangled the girl to death.”
“He told you this?” Alma said uncertainly.
“With a stern warning.” Elise nodded. “‘If you even tell anybody about this, I will do the same to you.’ I acted all scared, shivering, and he must have believed me.”
“That’s very interesting,” Alma said. “But how exactly am I supposed to use that? If he’s gotten away with it for so long, I highly doubt that—” Then the idea hit her. It was cruel, insane, and quite brilliant. “Wait,” she said. “Elise, here is what I want you to do. I want you to found out as much about their time together as you can. Where they went, what they ate, what she wore . . . all of it. Details, Elise. That’s what I need. Details, my good woman!”
* * *
When she returned to the bar, it was empty apart from Beryl and Solomon. Alma took a seat at the bar and waited for Beryl to go to bed. Beryl knew what was happening between Solomon and Alma – Alma was sure of that – but so far she had not said anything. Her eyes said: I don’t agree with this, but it’s not my business. But Alma was aware that one day her eyes could change to: It’s my business now. This was
perhaps reckless of Alma but she could not stop herself. Solomon was too attractive and interesting for her to ignore.
When they were alone, Alma approached him. “Solomon,” she whispered.
“‘Boy’, that’s what he calls me,” Solomon muttered under his breath. “‘Boy’, like I am some kind of dog. The problem is, people around here have never heard of Lincoln. That’s the problem. Don’t they know all that was supposed to have ended a long time ago? I thought it was over and here he comes and calls me ‘boy’ like them men called my Father ‘boy’ even though he was seventy years old, older than any of them.”
“Solomon,” Alma said, and placed her hand on his shoulder. It was hot. His rage and indignation seared into his skin.
“‘Boy’,” he laughed. “A man walks in with the woman I – I . . . and he calls me ‘boy’ and I have to serve him his supper and watch him drool all over the woman and after that I have to watch them go up those stairs together and make no mistake, I know what’s happening up there.”
Alma squeezed his shoulder and tried to turn him, but he wouldn’t be turned. He kept on muttering, raging quietly, and eventually Alma gave up and went upstairs to her room.
Her mind whirred. Sleep eluded her.
She thought about Solomon and his pain and humiliation, and something she rarely felt struck her so hard it was like a knife sinking into her flesh: shame. But there were other concerns, too, like DeBell and his dirty little secret. She had a plan for that, oh yes, but she needed details. She needed more – and more and more – to make her plan believable. And then there was Bill, who she still had to topple. Considering his substantial size, that would be a difficult task indeed.
Chapter 9
Sitting in the office, dusty beams of sunlight tempting her with the outdoors, Alma made a serious start on the documents. She would impress Wallace with her ability to sort, catalogue, and organize. Never mind that sorting, cataloging, and organizing had never been her forte. Alma was a quick learner. First she arranged them chronologically. It became clear that the men had not even bothered to do that much. She imagined Bill Gaston’s belly knocking over piles of paper and then hastily telling an employee to put them back together, who did it, but who did not care if they were in order.
Romance: Pummel Me: A Boxing Romance Page 84
