Gaffney, Patricia (7 page)

Sometimes on her Sunday afternoons she didn't do anything at all,
just sat here and gazed around the room. Even after two years, the fact that
she owned it and everything in it still amazed her. That was her brass bed and
blue-flowered quilt, for example; her two pillows with embroidered sayings on
the pillow slips. She owned this old wooden rocker. She owned that Wellington
phonograph and the four opera discs she'd played so often they barely sounded
like music anymore. This was her window, overlooking the live oak in her
postage stamp-size backyard, and her very own cedar-shingled outhouse.

Not that she'd done much to earn them. (She certainly hadn't done
what most people
thought
she'd done to earn them.) She'd been nice to a
dying old man, that was all. As a result, she now owned everything he'd owned.
Last week she'd passed by two ladies staring in the window of Jurgen's
Retail-Wholesale Furniture Co., and overheard one of them say to the other,
"That sofa's all right, but if s not really to my taste." She'd
thought about that all day, and on and off since then, fascinated by the
brand-new idea of "taste." Imagine picking out something like a
sofa—or a bed, or a rocking chair—according to whether or not it suited your
taste.
How did you know what your taste was? She'd been studying her room, or
rather Gus Shlegel's room, in a different light ever since, realizing how
masculine it was, and the little ways in which it didn't really suit her. The
lady's remark hadn't ruined her pleasure in the room, not at all. But it had
set her to thinking.

She jumped when a hard knock sounded at the back door.
"Ow." Boo, startled too, dug his claws into her thigh before jumping
out of her lap.
"Ow.
Damn it, Boo." She retied her
dressing-gown sash and went to the door. "Who is it?" No answer.
"Ham, is that you?" She opened the door a crack to peer out.
"Ham? Are you—"

"Why, if it ain't Miz Cady." Warren Turley leered at
her, at the same time he shoved the door open before she could get her foot in
front of it.

"Hey!"

"Hey? That how you greet old friends? Me and Clyde just came
by to pay our respects." She stood in his way, but he muscled past her,
jostling her aside, grinning the whole time, and sure enough, Clyde Gates was
right behind him.

"You two can just march yourselves right out of here. What do
you think you're doing? You want a drink, you go around to the front like
everybody else. Listen here, Turley—"

"Now, now, Cady, simmer down, we just wanna talk to you.
Ain't she looking pretty today, Clyde? And looky here—this what you're wearing
tonight? That is one fine—"

"Get your paws off that." She shoved him away from the
bed with her hip, slapping at his hands on her taffeta dress. "Wylie sent
you, didn't he?" She kept trying to herd him back toward the open door. It
wasn't easy without touching him. She was more mad than scared, but something
told her it would be dangerous to touch him.

"Mr. Wylie gave us a message for you, yeah," Clyde said.
He was a big, tall, dumb-looking cowboy from someplace like Texas or Oklahoma;
she liked him a little better than Warren Turley, which was to say she didn't
hate him like the bubonic plague. He worked for Wylie, though, same as Turley,
so in no way was he welcome in her bedroom.

"I'm telling you both to clear out right now."

"Or you'll what? Plug us with your peashooter? Where's it at,
anyway?" A light came into Turley's squinty little eyes. He had a mean
smile to begin with; it got downright diabolical when he started walking toward
her. How had Clyde gotten around behind her? "You wearing that peashooter
now, Miz Cady?" said Turley, pointy nose twitching. "Let's see if you
got it on now."

Cady knew a lot of curse words. She only got a few out before
Clyde clapped his hand over her mouth and Turley grabbed her, grinning like the
very devil.

****

"Keep your shirt on," the black-skinned bartender, whose
name was Levi, muttered under his breath to the cowboy at the end of the bar,
who kept yelling at him to hurry it up, step on it, get a move on.
"Impatience," Jesse could have sworn he added while he poured out a
glass of beer, "shows up the ego. Patience counteracts egocentricity,
because everything is impermanent and substanceless."

"Huh?" said Jesse when Levi moved back over to his side
of the bar. "Say what?"

Levi folded his big, bony-knuckled hands on the edge of the bar
and looked at him. Jesse stared back, a little unnerved by the bland,
half-smiling peace-fulness in his face. He looked like he had a secret,
something really good, and he might tell you about it or he might not.
"Everybody suffers," he said slowly, his voice soft and deep,
rumbling. "Suffering doubles when we resist it. You push against something
hard enough, your hand hurt. Put your hand
gentle
on a wall or a door,
you got no pain. Resisting and wanting—that's where all our suffering come
from." He smiled with his whole face, all the straight lines and sharp
angles turning up, and Jesse couldn't help smiling back.

"Is that right?"

"Yup."

"Where'd you learn that?"

"From the buddha."

"Bartender!" some drunk called out across the way.
"Gimme a whiskey! Move your sorry ass!"

Levi lifted his calm, dark gaze. His smile stayed on, but it
looked a little pained. "And sometime," he said even softer,
"you want to push your hand real hard on somebody
head,
and fuck
suffering."

Jesse chuckled. "Wait," he called, and Levi stopped
partway to the drunk, bottle in hand, looking at him questioningly. "Is
Miss McGill here tonight?"

"She here. She gettin' ready."

"Where is she? She have an office here or something? I'd like
to have a word with her."

"Bartender!"

Levi served the drunk, then came back over. "Why you want to
see her for?" No smiling now, no bland good humor; he looked like a
suspicious father, interrogating some questionable suitor for his daughter's
hand. Jesse thought about the time he'd seen Levi standing guard on the stairs
while Cady knocked on Gault's door. He'd been scared, but he hadn't budged from
his spot.

"It's personal. I just want to tell her one thing." That
she was right and he was wrong, he should never have let Ham play with his gun.
Just then it occurred to him that he probably owed Ham's father an apology,
too. Things were getting too damn complicated. Anyway, gunfighters didn't
apologize. Not in public, anyway.

Levi studied him, then came to a decision. "She in her room.
Through that do' over there, keep going. Knock on the office do' first—that's
the little room before you get to her room. She hear you, she might decide you
can come in."

"Thanks."

Levi nodded once, narrowing his eyes in a serious warning.
I'd
hate to come after you, because you'd surely kill me,
the look said.
But
I will if I have to.
You had to respect a man for that.

Edging through the gradually thickening crowd of drinkers and
gamblers, Jesse accidentally bumped into a man on his blind side. "Sorry,
didn't see you." God
damn
this eyepatch. The man threw up his hands
and said, "It's okay," about twenty times, backing out of his way.

A dark doorway he hadn't noticed before opened in the corner
behind the bar. He went through, noting an open door to his left, full of boxes
and furniture and miscellaneous junk, and a closed one to his right, probably
full of booze. The hallway ended at another door, closed. Miss Cady's office.

Jesse knocked. Nobody answered. He opened it and stuck his head
in.

Office? This hidey-hole was more of a closet, and a pretty small
one at that. As far as he could see in the windowless dark, she had a desk, a
chair, a half-assed file cabinet, and that was it. Somebody's picture in a
frame sat on the desk. He picked it up, held it toward the trickle of light
from the hallway. Nice old guy, chubby-cheeked, with a full beard. Her father?
If so, he didn't look a thing like her.

A voice sounded from the only other door, the one that must lead
to her room. A man's voice.

"Shit," Jesse swore out loud, softly, taken unawares by
a sinking feeling in his stomach. A
man.
In broad daylight, too. If she
was going to carry on like that, the least she could do was wait till dark.

He was silently pivoting when the man's voice suddenly barked out
something loud and angry. Jesse halted. Cady's voice next, saying something he
couldn't hear. She gave a yelp. "You goddamn polecat," he distinctly
heard her say. "Quit it!"

Racing across the small room, Jesse shoved the door open so hard,
it sounded like a gunshot when it hit the wall.

Bedroom. Striped wallpaper, red rug, big, sexy brass bed—he
registered the details in the instant before his eyes locked on Cady and two
men.

He knew them. Clyde, the reasonable one, he'd thought, had her
arms hooked through his behind her back. He was holding her still so Warren,
the little sawed-off peckerhead who'd wanted to shoot him this morning, could reach
inside her paisley dressing gown and touch her—gingerly, his hips cocked back
to avoid a kick in the groin from one of her bare, flashing legs.

Everybody froze. Jesse said, "Well, now, look at this,"
in an unsmiling whisper, and the eerie, pitiless sound made his own blood run a
little cooler. "You know what I hate to see, Warren? Grown men picking on
a woman."

Clyde let go and stepped back. Cady jerked away, twitching her
shoulders furiously, yanking the robe closed over her underwear. Her hair was
down and wild, dark, long, almost to her elbows. Around the edges of the anger
in her face, Jesse saw fear.

He was afraid, too, but he didn't have time to feel it. "That
and whipping on a horse—those are two things that make me feel mean. You know
what I do when I feel mean?"

"This ain't none o' your business," Warren, the
bandy-legged needle dick, rallied to point out. "Ow! Shit!" He bent
over to grab his knee—which Cady had just kicked as hard as she could with her
bare foot.

"Get out of here, Turley, and don't ever come back!" She
looked ready to murder him, her fists clenched, eyes flashing. "You don't
have to shoot him," she told Jesse. "Not that I care, but he's not
worth it. Clyde either."

"I'll take your hardware," Jesse told them softly.
"Both of you."

"You ain't getting my gun." Turley—Warren— pulled his
coat away from his .41, the same way he'd done this morning in the street.
"Now you're really asking for it."

"Wrong. I'm not asking. I'll shoot you through the heart.
You're alive now—in five seconds you'll be dead. That's a promise."

He never got over how words like that could pour out of his mouth
at the absolute scariest moments. Jesus God, he was born for this life.

Holding out his hand, he whispered, "Butt first."
Turley's ugly face reddened, but he obliged, cursing a blue streak.
"Shhhh," Jesse warned, and he shut up. "Now you." Clyde
handed over his shooter without a peep.

Cady had a goldfish bowl on top of her bureau. Turley almost
jumped him when he saw what Jesse meant to do; his knees flexed and his hands
started to reach out. But Jesse smiled the egging-on smile at him, like he
wanted him to do it,
hoped
he'd make a wrong move, and Turley chickened
out.

Splash. Splash.
Three little orange fishies
spurted out of the way just in time. Bubbles floated out of the barrels of the
two six-guns, swam to the top, and popped.

"Now, get out. Come around bothering this lady again, I'll
kill you both. And I'll do it slow."

Turley bared his teeth, impotent. If looks could kill, Jesse would
be lying on the floor dead as a doornail, with Cady right beside him. Turley
was too beaten down to swear again, though; he walked out the back door in a
sullen, furious silence, and Clyde scurried after him.

Cady couldn't get over it.
He never even drew his gun,
she
kept marveling, clutching her dressing gown, staring at Gault like he was the
Second Coming. But really—Warren Turley was a mean, rotten son of a bitch, but
you had to give him credit for one thing: guts. And Gault had taken his gun
away. Dumped it in the fish bowl. She looked at it now as one last bubble
popped out of the barrel and floated to the surface; Maude, Gracie, and Cecil
swam around it, nosing it with interest.

"Thank you," she started to say. Nothing came out but
the consonants and a puff of air. At the same moment, she realized her legs
were shaking. "Breath of air?" she managed; it would've sounded
nonchalant if it hadn't come out an octave higher than her usual register. Mr.
Gault put out his arm in the most gentlemanly way, like an usher helping an old
lady to her pew. Cady gave a shaky smile and waved it away, and somehow she
made it out to her back steps and dropped down on the top one without fainting
first.

"Well!" she said, while Gault stepped around her and sat
down on the stair below. He had long, long legs, hard-looking under the black
denim of his trousers; he bent one and threw his forearm across it, and
stretched the other one straight out. "Wasn't that interesting?" Her
robe touched his hip; she made a business of gathering it around her legs,
tucking it in just so, going all ladylike on him while she tried to get her
wits back. Her heart was still hammering. Today wasn't the first time Turley
had tried to strong-arm her on Wylie's orders, but before now he'd never gone
further than words. This new tactic scared her more than she wanted to admit.