The Altonevers (13 page)

“
Does it have two beds?”
Anna asks.

“
Two beds?” a lady for
sure, I say.”

“
Hey I wouldn't, she’s
filthy,” he says.

“
What? you're filthy....Oh
that's right we are,” she says with sudden nostalgia of her last
hot bath.

“
Thanks Maggy,” he says,
then pouring ale into his mouth waving to the barmaid for
more.

“
More please,” she
says.

“
Say another and slam the
counter,” Cider says wailing his fist to the counter to
demonstrate.

“
Another!” Anna yells
slamming her fist to the wood hard enough to make peanut shells
leap.

“
Yeah yeah, take the tired
lady to bed will ya, before she gets all liquored up,” she says
swiping her rag at him.

“
Nice to meet you Anna,”
Maggy winks to bid both off to bed. He grabs the key without a
care, though his smile leaves his face to a vacant gaze, and she
looks to the ceiling intently though for nothing in particular as
they make to their way to the room still sipping. Tripping up the
slanted wooden stairs, that creek with even the lightest touch of
dust.
Peering through the window again,
out her window sill perch to a massive mash of intermingling eras
looking to her like a time mosaic metropolitan garden. The row
houses seem as hedges, the town squares as stone grass patches, the
steeples as colored flower and bushes. To the northeast, outside
the civilized side is where the locals call the Soots, where what
the smokestacks spew are the only clouds the sweeps, who live
there, ever know. The streets are coated with dour colored soot
falling like heavy snow, gradually shifting like sand off their
pitched roofs, to fill the narrow alley's they use as
streets.
She listens to the Johns passing
through the halls of the cathouse, to and from their paid
pleasures, and the girls returning to their posts and pouring
catcalls to the men passing down the street. She relates this to
the people passing from shop to shop to purchase things they like,
like a hat or shoes. She starts seeing the sameness of different
places by the differences of how they deal with their similarities.
Using her standard measure to measure the new realities she finds
herself in.

Edward did come by, though while she
was sleeping off the brew of the night before. He and Cider‘ve been
habitually missing on days long drinking binges, and doing god
knows what else. She’s been spending time with full mugs and Maggy.
Sometimes picking a place from her perch that she wonders about and
goes to see what it’s like. Always returning to her room and
sinking into the boiling water of the biggest bathtub she's ever
seen. Recounting the time scrambled scenes she's seen in her hours
of wandering through the always rainy, time mosaic
metropolis.

Cider’s been bringing all
sorts of things back to the room, to her, like a squirrel filling a
nest with nuts and berries. If nuts were empty liquor bottles,
pearls and jewels, monies, and a half eaten swine on pewter
platters. She’s been playing dress up in the jeweled trinkets and
dresses that don't fit, having fun in front of a smudged Victorian
vanity mirror that dominates the otherwise shabby green room. Not
really wanting to wear them out at all, especially not out in the
hall, thinking it will draw the ire of the working girls, and eye’s
of desperate men.
The main floor and
hallways are grumbling with big band and ska music at all hours of
the day or night. She takes a liking to the more animated ones,
that sound to her like a cartoon’s marching band music playing as
she takes her now familiar stool.

“
Mornin' Maggy,” she says
glumly as Maggy walks over with a decanter of dark liquor, whose
tongue stinging taste of peach has become like water to
Anna.

“
I might as well just leave
it for you.”

“
Can I take it with
me?”

“
Don't be so low eyed dear.
Worrying yourself for what? He hasn't tried ta trick ya out has he?
he’s an alright sort if you’re not on the other side. They’re right
old friends the two of em are, boys will be boys. Another pint?”
almost every sentence since she’s been here ends with, “another
pint?”

“
No, I've got that,” she
says.

“
Didn't stop you
yesterday.”

“
It's stopping me now, I’d
rather have breakfast. Please.”

“
Breakfast, it's a quarter
to seven.”

“
I know that's why I want
some breakfast.”

“
Bangers and mash?” Maggy
asks not telling Anna it's nearly seven at night.

“
Bangers and mash,” she
repeats laying her head on her arms folded on the
counter.

“
Peanuts,” a patron shouts.
Startling her to sit up straight, then enjoying her
breakfast.
An hour later Cider and Edward
march through the doors among a mass of slurring men, women and
children. All swooning around Edward and dispersing as he
approaches Anna and stretches his hand to shake hers. The first
time she's seeing him as a person and not just a name. A balding
fat man with a gullet of a hanging chin. The light touching his
eyes highlights the lack of life in them, the two are completely
inebriated standing for almost a minute without saying a
word.

“
Is this her, the girl
here?” Edward speaks slowly, though every word spoken strongly,
formed by habit by working as a public speaker.

“
I am,” she
says.

“
Right then, I thought so.
Anyhow, my name is Edward Watertop. The! Prime Minister Edward
Watertop. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Anna,” says the
gluttonous looking gray skinned monster of a man grinning between
gelatinous cheeks. He shakes her hand as gently as a child. She’s
overwhelmed, not by his obtuseness or his power in presence of a
politician, but at how he so definitively dominates the rest of the
room. His every notion having a domino effect spread through
everyone around him. He has a wandering eye when in conversation,
where he looks all the eyes in the room follow and when he gestures
or shifts the crowd does the same. Their faces are all looking to
Anna, like a flock of birds turning back and forth at his
whim.

“
Well, a, Prime Minister
amongst others of many different times and that,” Edward
says.

“
Well nice to meet you, a
friend of Cider's,” she says.

“
Right. Well, how's it been
for ya? Maggy 's been lookin' after you well I suppose.”

“
Yes very well, thank you,”
Anna says nodding.

“
She don't need me she
doesn't,” says Maggy, “you should've seen this one the other
night.”

“
Oh, and what's the other
night,” Cider asks.

“
A good time I bet,” says
Edward.

“
A good time for sure
Minister, this little lady here was like a rabid raccoon she
was.”

“
And how's it that she
was?” Edward asks with intrigue. Anna blushes a bit and looks away
to hide her winning grin. Cider wonders with red faced envy of what
she ‘d done.

“
She beat this girl, this
prissy little stray. Thrashed her proper she did, very well I’d
say,” Maggy says.

Cider releases his lungs, relieved
that it’s not another thing, and happy she held her own, and is
making good impressions on his friends.

“
It’s good you won, but you
seem like such a sweet girl. Why are you going on and bothering
with these wenches,” Edward asks with eyebrows bridged in
bemusement.

“
She attacked me, it was
self defense,” she says feigning humility in defense of
herself.

“
Why? for what?” asks
Cider.

“
She thought I was like
her, for sale and that you were my pimp, and that I was stupid to
think you cared, that I'll never get out of this rag house,” the
two catch each other’s glare, reminded of their circumstance, of
her trusting him and of him supposed to be leading her. The shared
glare is interrupted by Maggy continuing her recount of the last
night’s events.”

“
Anna called her a sloppy
left over back alley stray, and the wench swiped for her
head.”

“
So then?” asks
Edward.

“
They tussled like alley
cats then she swung for her head and grabbed the tramps hair, swung
her up off her feet then dropped the girl belly first onto a
table.”

“
Who swung who?” Cider
asks.

“
Anna grabbed the
other.”

“
And then what?” Edward
asks, the rest of the house is listening intently to the
tale.

“
Then what? the girl
flopped to the ground gasping like a fish out of water,” Maggy says
laughing and slapping the mahogany counter.

“
A good one she is, I can
tell these sorts of things,” Edward says, then leans in to continue
“On your way home are you? a bit of a girl lost in the woods I
hear. Sticking around with this one you'll end up always looking
for the right porridge, you will.”

“
Though I’m neither of
those,” she replies.

“
Sure you’re not, of
course. Of course not, it's an inaccurate analogy of your
predicament you see,” Edward says.

“
She's doing fine, taking
to traveling the ambers better than most,” Cider says.

“
Here's to Carrots. Here!
here! Cheers!” Edward hails.

“
Carrots!” The mob roars
then breaks back to unabashed alcoholism. His interaction with Anna
is that of intrigue to him, having never seen a person treat Cider
as anything but a viper, let alone an actual person.

“
But can she shoot?” Asks
the Minister “Running with this lad you'll do well to know how to
shoot.”

“
Sure she can, right Anna?”
Cider says with an insistent eye.

“
A hundred gallons for the
lovely Anna to hit a bottle in the pub, any bottle anywhere in the
whole of the pub,” the prime minister wagers aloud. The whole place
breaks into shouting numbers like a full room of stock brokers. She
pauses recalling what happened when she last held a revolver. She
moves to meet chests with Cider, turning her face away from his
while sliding the gun from his waist. Taking aim at a few bottles
on a table thirty feet away. Focused until the steadiness of her
breath is all she can think of, then snaps off one shot that
shatters the glass of a passing servers tray forty feet away.
Painting the petrified waitress' face white with whole
milk.

“
Ha, like a pie on the
face,” Edward says leading the crowd in a swell of
laughter.

“
But can she shoot a man?”
a court jester dressed man shouts with a prancing bow falling to
the ground.

“
She has,” says Cider,
almost boastfully. Though she's embarrassed of it, and holds him
scornfully in her mind while trying not to show that sort of
feeling to the bantering pub of banshees and bandits.

“
Oh, has she then, she may
be in proper company,” Edward says slowly and the crowd again erupt
into boisterous laughter. The thought seeps into her conscience
like lemon juice dripping into a flesh wound. She struggles to hide
her empathy, knowing the tune of the room, that emotion will be
weakness in this haven of lunatics, not wanting to make him look
bad in front of his friends. She joins the mob with hours more of
bottoms up of every bottle, trying to keep up with the rest. The
drinking days here never end, the only escape from the smell of
booze here is to sleep or slip.

“
Well the bad news is this,
I’m sad to say,” says Edward.

“
What is it?” Cider
asks.

“
That the rail men are on
labor strike, and there is no way out that way, and anyway, aside
from that I'm due at the courthouse for trial, shortly might I
add.”

“
Who's on trial,” she
asks.

“
Well I am of course,”
Edward says with pride.

“
But you’re the Prime
Minister.”

“
What kind of Prime
Minister would I be if I weren't on trial. No worries though dear,
I‘m guilty as sin.”

“
How shortly?” he
asks.

“
When we get there I
suppose, and don't worry about this fella here. Your feisty enough
for em, I think you'll be fine. Well then, follow me,” Edward says,
turns and walks out of the pub into a big black whale of a
limousine waiting. The two follow him to their seats, his large
cigar lights their three faces as the door slams shut and the limo
pulls away.

“
Here it is alright,”
Edward says sharply.

“
What is it already?” Cider
snaps.

“
Being that the train
laborers are on strike, rightfully so I may say, you must take
another route.”

“
When's all this gonna
clear up?”

“
Who knows? I don't anyway,
and I tend to know too much.”

“
So what's the plan?” She
asks.

“
Oh right, the best I could
do is drop you two as close to the Soots as I can manage. Now I'll
put in a good word for you through town, but that is only as good
as the word will go. Those sweeps are bit unruly and very, very
homicidal, little buggers. Packs of hungry murderous orphans that
will steal the gold from your teeth unnoticed when talking to
you.”