Wilde West (4 page)

“Or that he,” said Oscar, “had a drink with Oscar Wilde.”

From the Grigsby Archives

February 25, 1882

DEAR BOB
,

How are you, you old bastard?

We been busy here in El Paso. We had a killing here night before last, one of the local hookers. Susie Morris, maybe you remember her, the redhead with the big honkers worked at Sadies place. Come to think, I believe you had her once yourself—that time you was here to pick up Sid Carver & we spent all of Saturday night & most of Sunday at Sadie's? I never drunk so much rotgut whiskey or dipped my wick so many times ever in my life. Its a wonder the two of us are still alive. Anyway, Susie isnt, shes dead as a doornail.

I never seen anything like it before. I still get sick just thinking about it, & you know how I got a pretty strong stomach. He used a knife on her, whoever it was did it. Doc Amundson figures on account of the blood that he cut her throat first & thats what killed her, but then its like he went crazy. He took a knife to her innards, filleted her like a catfish, & tossed everything out onto the ground. All her parts, I mean. Well, not all of them, because according to Doc, he walked off with her privates. Just cut them out & maybe stuck them in his pocket & sashayed out of there. This was in the alley around the corner from Sadie's place, by Buchanon's livery stable.

Did you ever hear of such a thing?

We dont got no idea at all who done it. Probably it was some hopped-up Mexican from across the river, which means well never get him. Makes me madder than hell that some loco bastard could do that to poor Susie & get away with it. I been in this law & order business too long, maybe.

Your friend Doc Holliday is in town this week, gambling over to the Longbranch. I had me a talk with him, warned him I didnt want no trouble, & he just nodded & looked right through me with them funny black eyes of his. He is one spooky son of a bitch, Bob. I wont be sorry to see him leave, Ill tell you.

We had another famous visitor this week, that English poetry fellow, Oscar Wilde. Maybe you heard of him. He gave a lecture on art at Hammersmiths. I didnt go myself, but Connie did, & she says he was smart as a whip. I met him at the Mayor's house & he looks like a pansy-boy to me, if you want the truth. He acts like one too, very lah di dah. But hes sure a big one—must be six foot four or five. I reckon pansy-boys can come in just about any size, though.

Well, time for me to mosey on. You take care of yourself. When are you heading down this way again? You let me & Connie know & well fix up the spare room. (Ill let Sadie know too, so she can warn the girls!) Are you writing to Clara these days? If you are, you send her our love & tell her from me & Connie that we hope the two of you can work things out & get yourselves back together. Youre too old & ornery to be on your own.

Sincerely,

Earl

I
NSIDE THE NARROW HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGE
, swaying an irritating beat or two behind the sway of the carriage itself, beginning to feel like a strand of seaweed tugged left and right by the rhythms of a relentless tide, Oscar Wilde was displeased.

“Look, Vail,” he said, “couldn't we just give all this a miss? There must be some more engaging way to pass the time. Peeling an orange, say.”

“Peeling an orange,” repeated Vail, and chuckled. In the dimness, magically, he would slowly disappear and then slowly reappear as bars of light, cast through the carriage windows by the streetlamps, slid obliquely across the interior. Business manager for the tour, he was a squat plump man who spoke in hearty gusts through snow-white dentures clenched around a squat plump, and now unlighted, cigar. His head was round and lumpy and it was topped with a gray toupee, flat and shiny and seamless, which curled upward at the sides and back, making it resemble a halibut in rigor mortis. At the moment, fortunately, this was entombed beneath a squat plump derby hat. “You kill me, Oscar. You really do. You think these things up ahead of time, or do they just come to you?”

“Henry invents them for me. He writes them down on my cuff.”

“‘On your cuff,'” Vail repeated, and chuckled again. “‘Henry invents them.'” He shook his head in admiration. “You kill me.”

“I mean, is this visit really necessary?” Oscar asked. The carriage swayed again, bypassing some obstacle in the road. A cadaver, no doubt. Another gunfight victim.

“You handle the Art, Oscar boy, and you let me handle the business. This Tabor guy is the big cheese around here. Richest guy in the state. Used to be lieutenant governor. Won't hurt to butter him up some.”

Oscar nodded. “Now there's an image to conjure with. A lieutenant governor dripping butter, like a scone.”

“Not
Left
-tenant,” Vail said. “
Loo
-tenant.”

“According to O'Conner,” Oscar said, “he was never elected to office. Some other fellow died and this Tabor bribed his way into the post.”

Vail shrugged. “A lieutenant governor's a lieutenant governor. Listen, Oscar boy, you got a real future on the circuit. You could go a long way. I mean it. You got class, you got wit. The way you wrap these yokels around your little finger, that's a real talent you got. So this guy wants to shoot the breeze with the famous poet. What's the problem? A little shoulder-rubbing never hurt anybody, right? You give him a couple minutes, you keep him happy. No big deal.”

Oscar smiled. “I appear to be dripping some butter myself.”

“Hey, I mean it. Sincerely.” A pale rectangle of light glided over and illuminated a pair of eyebrows knotted sincerely together below the derby's brim.

Oscar said, “There's a name, you know, for the sort of person who makes someone happy for a few minutes in exchange for cash.”

His sincerity evidently spent, Vail was looking out the window at the houses slipping past in the night. “Yeah? What's that?”

“Business manager.”

Vail looked at him, blinked, and then chuckled. “You kill me, Oscar.”

“How, exactly, do I address him?”

“Huh?”

“Tabor. What do I call him? Lieutenant?”

“You call him Governor.”

“Bit of a misnomer, isn't it? He was never actually a governor, and he was only the lieutenant thing for a few months.”

Vail shrugged. “Respect for the office.” He sat back and clasped his hands together atop his round stomach.

“Why not Your Highness? Or Your Majesty?”

Vail considered this for a moment. “Nah,” he said finally. “That's overdoing it some.”

Oscar laughed.

It was a genuine liveried butler, the first Oscar had seen since London, who opened the front door to Tabor's huge brick sprawl of a mansion. Tall and thin, middle-aged, he stood with stiff, typically butlerian arrogance; but when he spoke—“Yes, gentlemen?”—it was with the nasal twang of an American, and Oscar very nearly giggled.

Vail took the cigar from his mouth. “Jack Vail and Oscar Wilde, the poet, to see Mr. Tabor.”

“Yes. Mr. Tabor is expecting you. May I take your coats?”

“Long as we can get them back,” said Vail, and chuckled around his cigar. His elbow thumped merrily into Oscar's liver; he wasn't tall enough to reach Oscar's ribs.

At Vail's remark, the butler produced a smile whose wan politeness managed to convey bottomless depths of contempt; no British butler could have done it better. Vail, naturally, never noticed. He handed the man his topcoat, as did Oscar, and the butler draped them on a towering rack that could easily have held the coats of the entire House of Commons. Vail gave the man his derby; in the lamplight his toupee shone with a soft piscatorial glow.

As they followed the butler down the hallway, Oscar leaned to Vail and whispered, “Poet isn't a tradesman's title, you know, like plumber.”

“It pays to advertise,” said Vail from the side of his mouth.

The breeze outside had ruffled Oscar's shoulder-length hair. He ran a hand back over it—wouldn't do to meet His Royal Governorship in a state of dishevelment—and looked around him.

The house was obviously new—the smells of cut lumber and varnish still laced the air—but it had been designed to impersonate a Georgian manor.

They'd got it all wrong, of course. The scale was off, for a start; everything was overlarge. The entry way was too wide, the ceiling too high: the place was cavernous.

And the colors were not only dreadful in themselves, they defied probability and clashed with each other. The carpet that ran (for far too long) down the parquet floor was a dreary brown, like dead leaves in an autumn rain; the flocked wallpaper
(flocked
, no less!) was a particularly hideous green.

Past the entry way, across an expanse of foyer the starkness of whose white marble floor was somewhat softened by a few passable Oriental rugs, an enormous wooden stairway with ornately carved mahogany balusters and handrails climbed upward to meet a wide landing, then divided at right angles into two, one rising off to the right, one to the left. The carpeting that angled up the treads and risers was a red plush which would have been more appropriate in a bordello. The stairway, by itself, occupied as much space as most London houses.

At the bottom of the stairs, the butler turned right.

So, thought Oscar: too big, too gaudy. The home of an extravagant giant. An extravagant giant who lacked taste.

Mr. Horace Tabor may have lacked taste, may have been extravagant; but in person he was no giant. A short man running to fat, he sprang up almost greedily from a red leather wingback chair in the library. Grinning beneath a mustache that was a good deal wider than his egg-shaped face and that looked like a sparrow frozen at the moment of taking flight (and so provided an intriguing contrast to Vail's defunct halibut), he held out a plump eager arm to Oscar. “Mr. Wilde!
Good
to meet you.” Pumping Oscar's arm enthusiastically. “A real pleasure.”

He seemed atumble with nervous energy: wide darting eyes, busy hands, that ridiculous grin. Anxious to please, like a shopkeeper on the verge of bankruptcy. (Which, according to O'Conner, he had once been.)

“How do you do,” said Oscar. “You know Mr. Vail, of course.”

“Sure, sure. How are you, Vail.” He shook Vail's hand with the same exuberance. Like a child, really. American men remained adolescents until the age of sixty. (At which time they became toddlers.) “Listen,” said Tabor, “grab a seat, take a load off. Baby'll be down in just a minute.” With an expansive gesture, like a music hall conjurer, he indicated the two chairs opposite his, and identical to it, across a square of carpet that might have been a genuine Persian. Still grinning beneath that paralyzed black sparrow, he shook his head and said, “Women. Why do you figure they like to keep us waiting?”

Oscar said, “It's the revenge they take upon us for our insisting that they be beautiful.” He sat down and the taut new leather chirped beneath him.

“I get you,” said Tabor. The man's grin was capable of expressional nuance: all at once it became knowing, and, inexplicably, he winked.

Tabor turned to the butler, who stood off to one side, practicing his disdain. “That's okay, Peters. You can take off now. I'll pour.”

The butler nodded and padded silently away. The moment he disappeared, Oscar could no longer remember what he looked like. The mark of a first-rate butler, he decided. Good:
remember that.

“Get you a drink?” Tabor grinned at Oscar. “Whiskey? Brandy?” The man hadn't stopped grinning since his guests had arrived; any moment now his cheeks would cramp. And what had been the significance of that wink?

“The brandy's the real thing,” Tabor said. “Coniac. Direct from Paris, France.”

Pity the Countess wasn't here; she'd enjoy this little man. “By all means, then, the brandy.”

“Vail?”

“Same for me.” Vail sat back comfortably and crossed his legs. Nothing pleased him more, Oscar had noticed, than relaxing in the homes of the rich and powerful. Truth to tell, Oscar didn't at all mind it himself.