Partly sunny. Absolutely numbing cold.
The next morning Steiner saunters into the café, his filthy oilskin dragging the floor. He plods to the counter and scans the baked goods. Today Eliza features glazed doughnuts, Miner’s Snickerdoodles, and small loaves of currant bread. Steiner’s hands, always impeccably clean at Doe Bay, are now grimed with filth. Eliza keeps her distance, does not make eye contact.
If only Rose was back.
Without a helper Eliza cannot excuse herself to go out for a breath of fresh air or to use the privy. Her heart pounds inside her chest. She reaches for her baking cap that dangles from her neck and places it hastily over her hair.
What if he recognizes me?
Conflicting feelings engulf her, and she wraps her apron tighter around her body.
And what of his supposed engagement, she thinks. And what of Old Steiner?
Horrified to think that Pearly will spot him on the street, Eliza catches her breath in an audible short inhale. But Steiner’s appearance is much changed as well. After all, Pearly has not seen Steiner in more than thirty years. Eliza wills Steiner to leave the café and hurry to board the next ship south.
It would be better that way, she thinks. If only he would just get out of town, and leave all the unanswered questions unanswered and unspoken conversations unspoken.
Steiner approaches the counter and leaves a dime on the counter for coffee. His hollow eyes belie the life he embodied only a year ago. Eliza does not meet his eye, and Steiner takes his steaming coffee to a table less than ten yards away, his back to her. She wonders what she would say if he recognized her. But he won’t. For all Steiner knows, Eliza left Cypress for Seattle, or returned to a loveless Missouri. And this handsome woman behind the counter of The Moonstone Café does not resemble the Eliza he knew on Cypress.
How would I explain to Pearly that I know Steiner, and intimately? If I’ve misled Pearly, that’s tantamount to compromising our friendship. No, I will not talk to him.
Steiner finishes his coffee and leaves the café without looking back. Eliza braces herself at the counter. A deep flush creeps up to color her décolletage and neck, and adds rose to her cheeks.
Rose bursts into the café before noon, Baby Thomas wrapped in shawls.
“Why, it’s Mrs. Phillips!”
“I’ve got a letter for you, Eliza. From Mr. Burns. He gave it to Alfred yesterday morning, just before he left on the Excalibur.”
Eliza realizes she doesn’t know Dr. Phillips’s Christian name. Alfred. Magical counsel, little elf.
Eliza cannot contain her pleasure, and grabs the letter from Rose. Of course Rose knows Mr. Burns had not returned to the Phillips’s home the night before last. Rose, of all people, knows her secret. Eliza blushes again, and hopes Rose thinks her high color the result of the hot ovens. Eliza slips the letter in her apron pocket.
“And what’s your pleasure this morning, dear Rose? A cinnamon bun for you and the good doctor?”
Eliza shutters the shop at four o’clock and hurries up the back stairs to her small apartment. She yearns to read Burns’s letter in solitude. Eliza’s hand shakes as she dislodges the white vellum from its envelope. She puts a hand to her forehead. She does not have a fever. Instead she feels cold, very cold. She looks for her leather gloves, a new pair lined with the thinnest shearling. She pulls the gloves up to her elbows, wraps her blanket around her shoulders, and peers out the window facing the street. She can see her breath inside the apartment, little wisps of white. She considers putting on her hat.
Large flakes swirl outside the window, cotton balls floating against the pin-dotted darkness. An almost full moon illumines the street below. Men swarm up and down Broadway, like ants. She peers out the front window and squints. From her vantage point, all the men in the throng look the same, their dirty hats pulled low on their heads, and their ill-fitting coats swinging behind them. Try as she might, Eliza cannot make out a familiar face anywhere in the crowd.
When her shaking disappears, she sinks into the armchair slowly and reaches for the vellum. She turns the letter over in her palm and studies the masculine handwriting on the front of the message. She unfolds the letter. She reads the words over and over again.
The next Sunday, Pearly and Eliza sit side by side in the parlor of Mrs. Brown’s. Pearly nurses a long cigarette and Eliza sips her usual stiff aperitif. The antiphon of Do I? Or don’t I? swirls in Eliza’s head.
Should I reveal the last shred of secrecy that stands between us?
On one hand, Eliza knows the confession will act as an ablution. But try as she might, she decides she cannot bridge the divide and will not divulge the fact that she knows Steiner. More imperatively, she will not tell Pearly that Steiner walks the streets just outside the parlor door.
“Cilla out again?”
“The Pack Train. Gotta love her. She’s got clients dripping off of her wherever she goes. Even on a Sunday.
“I had a stern talk with her the day after Christmas, though. Did you see the way she cavorted with Lester Edwards at our little soirée? Acting like his wife, she was. Told her it’s my house and her stepping out hadn’t gone unnoticed. If she wants to be one of my girls, there’ll be no more Mr. Edwards. Slime, he is. If she stays here, she’s got to earn her keep. And if she has other ideas, well, she’d better get them out in the open.”
A slow trickle indicates that Lou luxuriates in the bath. A familiar whoosh signals new, warmer water being added to the tub. Eliza considers sharing her news of Mr. Burns, but the subject lurks just at the outskirts of their conversation. Their topics range from the unfamiliar to the almost familiar, but still Eliza does not take the bait.
Just after nine o’clock, Shorty pushes into the parlor, wide-eyed and bloodied. Pearly gasps and rises.
“What in heaven’s name happened to you?”
Images of the night of Soapy Smith’s murder resurface on the faces of the women. Eliza puts her hand to her throat, and notices a swelling palpitation at the crevice of her neck and her collarbone.
“Big fight over at The Pack Train. Goddamned man nearly killed Charlie Granger. With a broken bottle, no less. Took three of us to wrestle him down. Must’ve caught a piece of the glass right here.”
Shorty holds a bloodied handkerchief to his forehead, and a red streak oozes down the right side of his face.
“Si Tanner’s got him now, the bastard.”
Eliza stares at Shorty. Her blood runs cold as a wave of adrenaline enters her bloodstream.
Pearly takes the handkerchief from Shorty and continues to press the cloth to his forehead. Shorty winces, but lets Pearly tend to his wound.
Figwort, Eliza thinks. Indian John would use figwort.
Pearly stands on her tiptoes in her sleek black buttoned boots and reaches as high as she can. Shorty bends down toward Pearly and looks out from his blackened and swelling eye.
“You’re going to have a mighty scar on your forehead,” Pearly says. “Make you even uglier than you already are. Now tell us exactly what happened. Every detail, you hear me?”
“Right oddest thing, as the bastard was lying on the floor, he kept pleading for Cilla. Now why would he do that? Cilla was standing right there, just talking to Charlie Granger.”
“Cilla! Is Cilla hurt?” Pearly gasps. “And did you recognize the man?”
“Can’t rightly say as I know his Christian name, but the barkeep thought his name was Stein, maybe Steiner, couldn’t be sure, there was lots of confusion. Cilla’s fine, no worries there. She left The Pack Train right away with the others tending to Granger. They’re headed over to Bishop Rowe straightaway.”
“Stein—Steiner—you say? Are you sure that is what you heard?”
Pearly springs up and walks to her desk underneath the stairwell. She flips back in the daybook. Pearly’s eyes rest on a large, flowery scrawl: A. X. Steiner. It’s right there, written in the daybook dated December the twenty-sixth. Day before yesterday. She draws in a sharp breath and looks at Eliza, eyes wide and eyebrows arched.
“It’s Steiner.”
Eliza registers the name and tries to process the sequence of events.
“You know him?” Shorty asks. “Has he been to see Cilla?”
Pearly covers her shock and emerges from behind the desk.
“Yes, love, he’s been to see Cilla. And from what I gather, he’s been here three times in the past three days. Wouldn’t you know I missed him? Otherwise, I might have recognized the name right away.”
Pearly puts her arm through Shorty’s.
“Now come upstairs and let’s see to that head of yours.”
“But first I need to walk Mrs. Waite home.”
Shorty glances back over the stair rail toward Eliza.
“Never mind about that, Mr. Richardson. I can make it home by myself. I certainly know the way. Please, not to worry.”
Eliza remains amazed at Pearly’s poise. Shorty would never know about Pearly and Steiner. And Pearly would never know Eliza’s connection to her long-ago lover.
“What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,” her aunt used to say.
A woman’s secrets are buried deep, Eliza thinks. They’re as deep as the gold that waits underground in the frozen Klondike.
As she walks home alone near midnight, Eliza sees a dim light emanating from the city jail, housed in a corner of Skagway City Hall, a well-built brick structure on the corner of Fifth and State streets. Steiner sits shackled in a tiny jail cell less than fifty yards away. He would never know Eliza walks right by.
Not in a million years, she thinks. But Skagway’s too small for too many secrets.
Eliza walks as far away from the building as she can, as if getting too close to Steiner would taint her, or, by some force of black magic, draw her into his lair.
A thin skin of circumstance and a matter of days might bring them face to face.
Eliza blanches at the thought.