“I’M NOT A MAN,” she said as we reached my door. Her voice held neither apology nor bravado.
“I know,” I answered. Looking down the dim hallway I called to Aaron, one of Otis’s kin. “Hot bath, please.” The request was acknowledged with a wave.
“Thank you,” the cowboy said. “I haven’t seen one for a month of Sundays.”
“‘Out, damned spot, out, I say,’” I quoted. I paused to light a rush from the lamp outside my door, then led the cowboy into the room.
The small space wasn’t close to the best Cherry had to offer. I’d had a better room when I’d first arrived. Young, unused, and fully developed, my customers had been eager, and the room had reflected my value.
I did not miss my former grandeur in the house because none of the other girls envied me my tiny space. No one schemed to take anything from me; it’s the reward for having so little.
As I quickly lit the lamp, I prided myself that my room was at least clean. The window was small but faced the street instead of the general store’s wall or a cattle pen. On a sunny morning I could look past the church and the mud of trampled earth and see where the tall grass began, then on as far as the horizon. The view was my one luxury, as was the relatively sweet-smelling air in warm months like this one.
Otherwise, the small room was taken up mostly by the bed. My linens I changed twice a week when once was the house rule. There was enough floor space left for the bathing tub when it was needed. An old drapery covered the small alcove where I kept all that mattered to me, obscuring it from the bed. I turned the lamp flame as high as it would go, but the tint of the aging wallpaper drained the room of light.
From behind me the cowboy said, “Not many of your kind know the Bard.”
“Not many of your kind do either,” I replied, my tone not nearly so flattering as what Angel would have no doubt managed.
Her only answer was to hang her well-creased hat on the bedpost, then sling her gun belt, whip, and saddlebags on the chair. The dust-choked vest fell to the ground.
“The boy can clean your clothes, if you want.” I busied myself helping with buttons and ties. The stench of horse, cow, and woman was powerful, and I pledged a small amount of my carefully hoarded dandelion oil to the cause of a more pleasant evening and sheets I’d not regret sleeping on later.
“That would be welcome.”
Aaron knocked, then entered noisily with the bath, still wet from its last occupant.
“I’ll be wanting enough water to fill it twice before I’m done,” the cowboy told Aaron, who nodded respectfully and ducked out.
“He doesn’t speak,” I told her. “So, what am I to call you?”
The deep brown eyes sparkled. “Orsino?”
“Alas, I don’t think I can play Viola.” She was far too joyful and pure for the life I lived.
“Then I shall be Falstaff, and you a merry wife.”
I smiled, grateful she’d not used the other word that began with W. Most of the guests used it affectionately, but the respectable women and the preacher used it like a knife, with little jabs. “If you want to hear yourself called Falstaff long into the night —”
“Connor,” she said quickly. “Everybody calls me Connor.”
“Family name?”
She shrugged. “Just a name.”
There was no point in asking further. Nobody this far out on the prairie had any name but the one they called you. “I’m Darlin’,” I told her. “Just Darlin’.”
I continued to help remove the trappings of a cowboy. The scars of her trade were evident in the two fingers on her left hand that had mended crookedly from a break, and a burn on her right shoulder that suggested a calf had objected to the branding iron. A bump on her nose spoke of brawls, but not too many, and the washboard ribs of just enough food to support hard work.
“Where’d you stable your horse?”
“Argo’s at the one with the foul-tempered owner.”
“You’ve described both. North or south of town?”
“North.”
“Ingle’s got two good hands who know their horseflesh,” I said, repeating what numerous guests had told many of us. “The tanner’s apprentices are excellent with cleaning and fixing saddles too.”
I felt her relax. Cowboys and their horses — neither would rest happy if the other wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t know why I cared but I wanted to make sure Connor slept well. She’d bought me for the night which gave me a break from Cherry’s scowls. Given her weariness, the night would not be filled only with shivering cries. Sleep would follow, after she discovered her bed mate knew enough about pleasing a woman to make that part of the evening as enjoyable as the bath — and perhaps a mite more memorable.
Once her clothes were scattered on my floor, I offered her my dressing gown just as Aaron and Otis knocked and lugged in large buckets of warm water. After I let them out of my room, I caught sight of Connor and had to stifle a giggle.
She frowned. “Go ahead, say it.”
“Your horse would likely look better in my dressing gown than you do.” I tipped my head to assess her. “You look more like a woman in men’s breeches than in my clothes.”
“I get taken for a man often enough, but I don’t care. It’s not like there’s any other choice of clothing that makes sense. Some fool women do their branding and riding in skirts, but I can’t rope a calf sitting side saddle in a corset.”
I sprinkled bath oil into the water, then stood back as Aaron and Otis appeared again with more buckets to empty into the bath. “Most goods from Mr. Ward’s catalog don’t make sense for life in Long Grass, let alone on the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail.”
“Where are you from originally?”
I shrugged. “Does it matter? Everybody out here is from somewhere else, except the Pawnee and Cheyenne. I’m told the native women get along fine without corsets and bustles. They even ride horses astride.” I knew little of their lives, and the woodcut illustrations in the newspaper didn’t resemble any of the native traders I’d rarely glimpsed from my window.
“Most ride better than I ever will. I’m going to guess you’re from up Boston way? Otherwise I’d say you were from ‘round here.”
“You’re not wrong,” I hedged. My family had cast me out, and I had no desire to identify them.
“Lots of people in a city like that. No sky, no air. No real horses.”
“I’m not sure the horses would agree.”
“They don’t know what it is to run. A life spent pulling a cart is like living in a cage.” She shook off a shudder.
I might have said something about cages and living in them. Milla had discovered the vast cage of the prairie, hadn’t she? The sky went on forever, but she hadn’t been able to escape.
I said none of that, because in spite of the near-unheard of rarity of a woman customer, she was just that — a customer. Other than the specifics of my talents I would later put to use, I would treat her like any man who’d bought me for the night. Most customers don’t like it when they feel as if they’ve bought something that wasn’t willingly for sale. It’s a necessary lie for the purpose of commerce, that we were all here by choice.
A choice between living or dying was not a choice.
New girls wanted to believe they had a choice, though, until they came up short in their earnings or needed the doctor’s scraping. Then their lack of options became painfully clear. Milla had once upon a time called herself lucky to make money on her back instead of as a slave to a crop or a herd of cows. She must have felt differently after the doctor, all that blood for days, then the…party.
“Sounds to me like you’re from farther south than I am.”
“Yes ma’am.” She sketched a bow. “I’ve spent some time back and forth on the Chisholm Trail, but originally I’m from Charleston, then San Antonio.”
“Why you’re just a southern belle, then.”
“Like none my mama ever did see.” The humor of our banter was in her eyes but something else flitted over her face. She was perhaps thirty — she may well have been in the south when Sherman cut his bloody swath across it nearly a decade past. Half the town was folks who’d run from the south and kept running until this place claimed them.
White and black alike, if you could survive and figure a way to make coin, you were free to stay and build a new life. Some found, as the natives had, that keeping their land or product of their labor was another thing entirely — especially if what they had was desired by someone more powerful, be it hard-scrabble land for cattle, or, as I knew so well, merely a room with a better view.
Until the preacher had shown up a year ago, no one had cared how anyone managed to live. It may not be godly, but at least there had been no confusion. You presumed your neighbor had no thought but himself and you were never disappointed. If I never forgot that Cherry’s first concern was money, I would survive much longer in this house than Milla had.
Aaron and Otis clattered in with the last buckets. Connor flipped them both a coin on their way out, saying, “In about twenty minutes bring another round.”
The door no sooner closed than she slipped off my dressing gown and sank gratefully into the water. It turned black seconds after she curled up enough to submerge.
She wasn’t tall, not even as tall as I was, and her skin was leather dark where the sun had touched it, and pale but for grime where it hadn’t. Her back and hips were also marked with scars of her work — rope burns, nicks, and the jagged tears of bull horns. There was no doubt that she worked a herd.
The gun said she was a cowboy, not merely a drover. What amazed me was that she was small for the work. Light on horseback, I figured. Maybe that was a good trait, time to time. But even on a trained horse a bull would be a formidable weight to master.
With a splutter she sat up in the water. “That’s a piece of heaven.”
Taking my gentlest soap from next to my ewer, I positioned myself behind her. Running the bar over the breadth of her shoulders, I appreciated the muscles that corded her arms. I slowly soaped from neck to elbow, but when I moved the bar over her stomach, she took it from me and washed her front herself.
My hands were sudsy enough to rub into her hair. After a few minutes of scrubbing, she passed the bar back to me and I lathered her hair more carefully. It was short, shorter than I’d ever seen on a woman, but it didn’t put me in mind of a man either. Nothing about her had me thinking about men. I felt an unusual twinge of anticipation. I did not know what she might like, but as she relaxed under my hands, I knew she would not be cruel.
“What else of Shakespeare do you know?” With a sigh she slipped lower into the filthy but still warm water.
“‘Shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh,’” I quoted as I scrubbed her shoulders again.
She turned in the tub and our gazes locked, and something there in her depths stole my breath. Her voice like the memory of a smoky fire, she added, “‘Eyes, look your last. Arms, take your last embrace.’”
I didn’t recall the rest of Romeo’s speech, except the end. “‘Thus with a kiss I die.’”
Her lips parted enough for her to say, “Oh, surely there won’t be death in your kisses, Darlin’.”
The half-smile of promise, the flutter in my lashes — flirtation suddenly came to me easily. “I had quite the opposite in mind.”
She leaned toward me with a now open grin, but a knock at the door brought me to my feet. “Fresh bath water.”
While Connor waited again in my dressing gown, Aaron and Otis emptied the bath with their buckets, flinging the water from my window to the yard below. When the tub was empty enough, they poured the remaining contents out in a single slosh, then repeated their multiple trips with fresh water. Connor stood quietly throughout, then tossed each another coin. I locked my door behind them and turned to her, my heart beating in a long-forgotten rhythm.
She slipped off the dressing gown again and, hell fire be damned, nothing about her put me in mind of a man. Her shoulders were broad and strong, yes, but her breasts were full and tipped with roses. Some of Cherry’s girls would envy their weight and shape. “Join me, Darlin’?”
“The tub’s not that big.”
“I think if we’re very close it could be a good fit.”
My fingers were trembling. She wanted me bare and of course she could have what she wanted, but there was something in her eyes that confused me. I wasn’t used to taking all my clothes off, either. She had bought me for the night, I reminded myself, not the half-hour.
She sank into the water with a deep sigh and closed her eyes. “I feel nearly human.”
“You’re less horse, that’s for certain.” I turned my back to undo my bodice, feeling unaccountably modest. You’re not a lady, I told myself. You’re a whore and you should be stripping for her. That’s what she wants.
I turned around again, my practiced smile ready, but her eyes were still closed. I finished with my laces, skirts, and chemise. Only when my hand stirred the water did she open her eyes to look at me.
“Glory be,” she said softly. “You are all woman, aren’t you?”
I blushed. “So are you.”
“Not the same way.” She shifted in the water as I stepped in.
We fit in the bath, barely, and some water slopped onto the floor. My head was on her chest as I rested on one hip between her legs. I could not ignore what pressed against me there. It had been a long time since I’d loved a woman. Connor was the first as a customer. Some of the other girls were occasionally interested in learning more about our bodies, and such explorations were freely given, and about our own desire. Even then I could not show the depth of my pleasure and relief to feel moments of tenderness with another woman.
It was even longer since more than lust had found me in a woman’s bed. More than lust had been my downfall, after all. I was here because of my youthful ardor, that I’d dared to name my feelings, which was even worse than being caught in intimate embrace with another girl. My parents put me on a coach with a one-way ticket, inconvenient in my affections for my family’s sense of place. I did not know what they told my brothers or other kin. Sent west for my health, then somehow simply lost to them all?
I could have stayed had I said I did not love that girl — I no longer remembered her name. God didn’t like liars and didn’t like perversion, leaving me betwixt and between. Truthful, but damned anyway.
I shifted my hip against her and felt her move in response as we steeped in the water, trading lines from Shakespeare. When fingertips ran lazily from my shoulder to the tip of my breast I watched in amazement as it hardened to her touch. It almost felt like it was happening to a girl I wasn’t anymore.
Connor was my customer. I was there to please her. I turned my head to see that she too was watching my nipple.
“You don’t find me strange?” Her fingers closed around the swelling point.
“No stranger than I am.” Part of me wanted to hide that her touch was penetrating past all my false smiles and pretenses. Customers were supposed to think we were whores who liked our work, but it was my falsity, the pretending, that was my shield. It allowed me not to care what happened. I sold the only thing I had and though no preacher would ever agree, it was an honest trade. I didn’t have to like it, though. I only had to fool the customer into thinking that I did.
But I liked this. I liked her touch, the soft tug on my nipple. I couldn’t say no to her, true — she was a customer. But I still liked it, and that further confused me.
“Oh Darlin’,” she breathed. “Does the rest of you respond this way?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then I’m a lucky woman tonight.”
“I hope that you think so by the morrow.”
She said the strangest thing and I did not believe, then, that I had heard her rightly. “Let me please you tonight, and I will be very lucky.”