The Man Game (44 page)

Listening to the men talk, it seemed as if no matter where he went RH Alexander couldn't shake yesterday. Men might conversate for a few days, but the
issue
of the man game's longterm future was, he believed, resolved, so long as his discussion with the mayor bent to his influence. He checked his reflection in a convex mirror. The narrow staircase coiled
up to the women's bedrooms. As he inspected his face, he thought about his plans. Along the intricate carpet of his thoughts he hit a lump where something unswept remained in his strategies with the mayor. If nothing else RH was meticulous. What was kinking up his strategy? Enough thinking like that, he told himself. He would put an end to it, that's all there was to say.

FIGURE 10.1
Cherry Tree Clutch, alternative sketch

He mounted the staircase. The hall on the second floor was papered with a design of red roses. The hall smelled of years of perfumes, skin, and today's exhaustion. The candlelight was borne in flowery sconces, and the unsteady light was accompanied by all the muffled and murderous noises of coitus. Six doors, three on either side led into private rooms where it happened. On the other end of the upstairs hall was a sacred room. Behind its door lived The Whore Without A Face. Her only companion was that singing canary. She was feared and desired in equal bouts. The Indians said she was cursed. Her allure for Whitemans was her invisibility. In her studied drawl, Peggy always said: If I let you all go inside her walls I'd be out a business. One fuck you're done. She's a manslaughterer.

I'd like to slaughter her, Alexander thought toughly. After years of coming to Wood's—since before there
was
an upstairs—, that sacred door to her room still made Alexander's heart quaver. The Whore Without A Face. Rumour was she was Snauq.

Six more doors, each assigned to a woman, each presenting her
origin of the world
, as it were, and he'd visited them all. Except her. He was not a man who fell for whores, but Peggy was a delicacy, a truffle among yams. She lived behind the door marked P in gold filigree at the end of the hall, right beside the sacred room. He expected her to be in bed waiting for him to arrive. He took off his hat and pressed his ear to
her
door—not Peggy's, but the one adjacent. The Whore Without A Face. Quiet, not even the bird. Strange. He backed away. He took one last look at the door, and saw it shudder and start to open.

At that he froze. From the shadows of the room he saw a man's profile emerge, and in an anxious hurry RH turned
the brass knob and swung open Peggy's door to hide. He shut the door and heard the other door shut just as fast. Now both men were hiding. What folly. But as he caught his breath, he realized he'd just seen the face of his crippled accountant, Samuel Erwagen. An impossibility. The man was a total cripple. Impossible. This golem, standing and walking, some flight of the imagination, thought RH. Bah, he thought. A trick of the mind. I thought of Sammy only a moment ago, that's what caused me to see him just now, yes.

What are you doing? The voice startled him. He'd forgotten where he was. He was safely inside Peggy's room. He looked over at the door that connected hers to the sacred room. Locked in there with her was an able-bodied double and in bed with—. His eyes bulged. He was seeing spooks. He feared the door would open.

Honey, said Peggy. You're scaring me.

What? Peggy. I—nothing, I—it's nothing. Indeed, he saw that the door was locked.

What if I was with a customer? Then what?

Yes, I'm sorr—

Come here, you, she said.

Yes, but—I saw, I think I saw—

You saw nothing. Peggy squeezed his cheeks in her hands. My crazy opium addict, she teased. What did you think you saw?

Nothing, nothing.

Did you take care a your little problem? she said.

I insisted the mayor outlaw the man game.

Outl
aw?

Yes, why do you say it like that, like you disagree?

Nothing, I just wonder if—. Nothing.

What is it?

No, I see why outlawing it is the only way.

A course it is, dearie. It can't con
tin
ue.

How much did you lose?

Two dollars, he said, knowing he'd have to tell his wife it was six to include the forthcoming cost of Peggy's routine.

Two dollars? She shook her head. Wasting your money. You're the worst gambler in the world. Why do you do it?

To relax.

Actually, I must admit, what I meant when I asked if you'd taken care a your little problem was if you saw the snakehead.

Ah.

You did, I trust?

I did. Yesterday. A fine afternoon, a terrible evening. I had him in my pocket. Then we stumbled upon the man game.

You resolved …

I resolved nothing. Please, I don't visit you to talk business.

Baby, sweet thing, who, then, if not me, is your confidante? Do you talk to your bookkeeper aboot strategy? Certainly you don't speak with a cripple. You consult with no one. You think you can take it all on alone. You know I'm not just a mink. I'm a businesswoman. My profits exceed yours.

Doubtful. Now shush, come here and put your hot breasts on my face.

Shush yourself. Your costs are higher. My margins are better.

I love your margins.

You buy me, but I could buy you.

How dare you speak to me this way, Peggy.

It's just that I'm so terrified for you, sweet RHA. That snakehead … if he ever visits again, I believe your life,
our
lives are on the line. We won't survive without his help.

I'm fine, we're safe. I took care a things as quickly as—. Now don't move a muscle, unless it's to undress. I need to use the head.

Go then. Quietly.

For the second time, Dunbar Erwagen was a shoe into the hallway at Wood's when he startled again at the sound of the next door opening. Instinct told him to shut his door, and
the other man—RH Alexander's instincts told him the same. What a shameful sound: two doors slamming in a whorehouse, both wanting the same thing, to micturate. Why should I be shy, thought Dunbar, when no one in Vancouver knows who I am? I have no one to hide from here. He was about to step back into the hallway with his anonymity but remembered his brother, Sammy, and their disgraceful similarity. This put him in a spot. Meanwhile, he heard the other door creak open again and a man's footsteps walk down the hallway and open the door to the very facility Dunbar so badly needed to use.

He turned around to find his lover had disappeared. The Whore Without A Face: where was she? A moment ago she'd been on the bed clutching the serpent of blankets twisted between her pale candlestick legs. Her sweetly tapered legs wrapped around this veined rope of linens. His own manhood had never touched such bliss as this. They'd spent hours enjoying the crests and surges of euphoria that marked their style of love. He'd kissed her on the collarbone and neck. She seemed to like it. If not her face then he wanted to kiss the hood. If not the sight, he wanted to feel. He'd grown to adore her black silk hood. But on his first attempt to kiss above the neck she'd pushed him away with a strict hand.

One of the other girls had brought her a dozen Calabi&Yaus, which were sitting on the dressertop with her other perfumes. Before going to the door, he'd brought the box to the bed and suggested she eat a few while he went for his break, but to save him the one with chocolate and goat's cheese. She undid the knot and clapped gaily when she saw the pastries. They looked imaginary and they smelled amazing. Knowing how delicious they were, he craved them even more now than when he'd first had one with Toronto. She poked off a baked scallop stuck to the sugar on a sweet one.

What variety do you have there, my sweet?

You want taste? she asked.

She wore a slip that suited her figure from every angle. The hood itself was brutally sexy. He loved to watch her breath push and pull the silk around her mouth.

When I return from my lordly duties, he'd said to her. He'd turned to the door, opened it, shut it in embarrassment, turned around, and she was gone.

Da-arling? he said now.

Wa, she said from behind the wardrobe. Scared me. I think you left—

No, not yet. What are you doing? He tried to see her between the slats of the wardrobe.

Eating, she said. Please, no look at me.

A-a course, he said, and nosed in for a snoop. It was impossible not to be curious. He could smell the pastries and hear her eat them. Through the slats he saw a little of her head where the skin was a paler complexion than her body. Perhaps that was all he could really say for sure. It wasn't even possible to see her chew. How serious was the deformity? Actually, he didn't really want to learn the reason she hid all day in a room in a whorehouse and wore a black silk hood locked around her neck with a leather collar. Some horrors were best left unseen. So he turned around and walked out the door, crept down the hall to the piss-pot.

Indoor plumbing, he said to himself. Not bad. He shook off and stared into the empty porcelain, unsure if he was actually finished. There was a framed crocheting of a King James verse hanging on the wall. In a bright floral arrangement, it read:
Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him. ~ Matthew 21:31, 32.

Dunbar didn't know that this toilet was a local secret among a cadre of sinners. Wood's was the first house in Vancouver with indoor plumbing. No doubt Dunbar appreciated it this minute going on two. No such luxury on the farm in Wyoming with the heavyset wife. Every day he looked at her, she looked more like his mother. Invalid. Skin like encaustic. Sand in her hair. He never wanted to go back
there. The outhouse was twenty-five steps in the frigid silent cold. He heard the wolves howl. His wife howled. His stomach howled. Wyoming was the worst place on God's crumbling earth. His family home in Toronto had had indoor plumbing all along. That's comfort.

He chalked up the sudden upspike in his sexual activity as the reason why the piss was not flowing proper. Months and months of nothing and then all this fucking, a little stammer of the bladder was to be expected. Squeezing out jot after jot of urine, Dunbar thought a little about The Whore Without A Face. Peggy had been a true visionary to recommend this mystery to him. When he first arrived at Wood's, Dunbar had been all eyes for a couple of the squaws in the smoking parlour.

I know she's a girl for you, Peggy had said. Peggy's fingernails were always fixing up the pins in her mungo hairstyle. When I see a man come into Wood's I know what girl is just for you, she said. Some men get this or that because anything will satisfy them tastes. Not you, I can tell aboot you. She changes your whole life, honey. I see a brave man, ain't I right? she said. Dunbar nodded. It was true, he'd helped capture a dangerous criminal only moments ago. Honey, she said, not just any man gets to visit my Whore Without A Face. I protect her and I protect her and I keep her safe from all them out there, right? She's my flower. My little broken wildflower. They're all my little flowers, but I love her too much. More than my own daughters. Oh, I keep her safe. I can only trust certain men with her, right? Men who deserve what she got. Men who
need
to appreciate her and what she got. A spiritual man. I think you're a man like that, don't you? She unlocked the door to the sacred room and guided Dunbar through.

Dearest Huldah
(his wife), wrote Dunbar the next morning,
I hope you remembered to slaughter the chickens before the cold. The news said it hit Wyoming in the night. I'm concerned that the meat will go to waste if they die of exposure, placing me in the unfortunate position of once again crediting that against your monthly allowance. We did agree the chickens were your
responsibility. Take care. I must return to Toronto again to tell Father and Mother how far Samuel has fallen since he left the nest. I mustn't go into the details of his predicament now for fear that it might provoke another of your debilitating phantasies. Your husband in eternity, Mister D. Erwagen
.