Roslyn wasn’t sure how to end things with Quake. She had come to resent him. This made her sad. They’d had fun together, and he’d helped her pull herself from her guilt-ridden stagnation—the days when she could do nothing but walk and regret. He’d given her, one way or another, the power to move on. What to do with a man like that? She argued with herself.
Quake, he’s just like Barton, she thought.
Then, No, Quake is my friend. He abhors Barton. He would never do what Barton did.
No, not in such a way.
But in some other ways.
He wants you in his life on his terms. Only his terms.
I don’t want that.
Well then, make it your terms. There’s some use for him yet.
This voice was her voice, but she pretended it was her father’s. Sometimes when she tried to make decisions, she imagined what her father would say. Not that she ever actually wanted the man’s advice; he’d made such a mess of his own affairs, what use could he be to hers? It was just an exercise in loneliness. The same thing everyone is always doing with the dead people in their lives. Holding on in some way.
Were he alive, her father would have had much kinder words about Quake. He would have been charmed by him. Though Roslyn wished her father would have wanted better for her than dating a con man, she knew that wasn’t the case. He rarely drew lines between honest and dishonest. Only likable and not, fun and not. It was part of what had made him a terrible criminal himself. He’d never bothered to see anyone for who they were. He would have liked to show Quake his magic tricks, taught him the words to his dirty song.
Roslyn had long thought that if her father had been a better blacksmith, he would not have been compelled toward grifting. And if he’d not been a drunk, he would have been a better blacksmith. But probably none of these things were related in the slightest. Her wish for him now, she realized, was only that he could have been a better con man.
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can get you pretty damn close is what his actual voice would have said.
And This is the westernmost city in the world. There’s nothing past us but the edge.
And You’re more than the apple of my eye, Ros. You’re the peach of it.
And Never pull the same scheme twice. Except this last one wasn’t her father. That was Quake.
Her father, lazy happy sweet grifter that he was, would absolutely have pulled the same scheme twice. Perhaps, Roslyn thought, this was what she ought to do after all: stay true to her roots. It was what her own voice meant when it said there was use for Quake yet.
Though Roslyn had not traveled widely, she believed every city had a Trent Alley. This was because every city had drunks and gamblers and people living on the edge of society who needed one another in such a way, who could not survive alone in the wider well-lit streets, and so instead cloistered themselves and preyed on the vices of those who came from other neighborhoods seeking things they didn’t want to find close to home even if they could.
She asked at the front desk of the hotel first, as though she were inquiring about a recommendation for a restaurant, and was treated to a look of such shock from the clerk that she almost laughed in the poor fellow’s face. Imagine, being a grown man and so easily scandalized, she thought.
So she walked in the direction of the harbor, and when she spotted a sailor who looked like he knew where he was going, she stopped him and asked, “Excuse me, where can I go to buy opium?”
“Oh no,” the young man said, “you don’t want nothing to do with that trouble, ma’am. It’ll kill you.”
“I’m not going to smoke it. I just want to know where it’s sold.”
The sailor gave her directions. They led her to an alley, not far from the harbor, with little shops tucked into the facades of larger buildings, the sun on that bright day nearly blocked from view. She hummed as she walked—a funny little ditty about a woman on the Mississippi River.
Where there was opium, there was Mud Drink. They were cousins in indulgence, substances that could separate you from the world. Mud Drink in Portland looked just like it did in Spokane Falls—gray in mason jars on a shelf. Though when she asked the store’s proprietor what he called the substance, he said, “Angel Piss,” which Roslyn found crude. She preferred the name Mud Drink and would always refer to it as such.
She took the streetcar to Quake’s neighborhood and visited a grocer and then a butcher shop. It was dark by the time she got to his apartment, the days getting shorter, but still warm. The leaves had not yet changed color. Would birds migrate? Roslyn wondered. Would squirrels be caught unprepared with no winter nuts when the cold finally did come? What about the bears? Would they hibernate, or stay up all winter?
She knocked on Quake’s door. When he answered, he was smiling.
“It’s good to see you,” he said, and it seemed so earnest, Roslyn felt the whole of herself waver. What if she just gave in and said Yes I’ll be with you I’ll go with you I love you too okay?
Instead, she said, “I brought food. I thought I would cook for us.”
“I didn’t know you could cook.”
“Well, maybe there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
He chuckled like he thought she was being coy. But then he said, “Yes, I’m aware.”
She prepared the meal—a whole trout with carrots and potatoes. They ate at Quake’s grand dining table, sitting at opposite ends like rich people, like how Barton and his mother had.
“I’ve brought something else for us as well,” Roslyn said.
“Wonderful,” Quake said. “Keep the delights coming.”
She went to retrieve the Mud Drink from her bag and when she showed it to him, she watched his face, but could not parse the reaction.
“I thought we could drink this together,” she said.
“You told me you didn’t do that anymore,” he said. “You used to, and then you stopped, and it meant a lot to you—to have stopped.”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“I want you to know what it was like for me. This was a big part of my life for so long. The biggest part, actually. If you want to know me, I think you have to know this drink. That’s all. To know me better. Who I used to be, at least.”
His damned inscrutable face with those eyes so deep in their sockets.
“Okay. If it’s important to you. Gladly.”
He went to the kitchen but returned with only one glass.
“How about if I just drink it? You don’t have to. I’ll tell you what I’m experiencing and we can talk about if it’s like what you used to feel.”
“That’s a kind thing to do,” Roslyn said, and meant it.
He opened the jar, poured a little into his glass, and sipped. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said. “Sort of piney.”
Roslyn picked the glass from his hand and set it on the table. She took Quake by the arm and led him to his bedroom.
“I didn’t know if we were still doing that,” he said after, when he was still naked and pressed up against her like a caterpillar too long for its log.
“You were going to buy me a ticket to San Francisco even if I wasn’t sleeping with you anymore?”
“I don’t know. I guess I figured we’d sort ourselves out eventually.”
She stood up and went to get the Mud Drink and his glass, which she handed to him. She repositioned herself by his side. He drank dutifully.
She wasn’t going to let him drink the whole jar. She’d been planning to split it with him. And even once he said he’d drink without her, she had still thought, Half’s enough. But she wasn’t paying attention and when she realized what he’d been up to, the Mud Drink was nearly gone.
“How do you feel?” she asked, pointing to the jar.
“Amazing. I see the appeal.”
“It’s strong.”
“Very. I feel just like you. I know your whole being now, inside and out. This experience has been very illuminating.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He laughed. “I don’t believe myself. I wish there was something from my life I could give you to let you see inside of me too.”
“I tried to do that on my own,” she reminded him.
“Yes. Did it work?”
“I suppose not. What should I have done instead?”
“I don’t know. What lets you turn into a lonely boy with a pet mule? What turns you into a cowardly man who can’t protect anyone, not even the woman he loves?”
Roslyn shook her head. “You think you’re not brave. You think that’s your problem. But you’re wrong.”
“Thank you. That’s worth a lot, to hear you say it.”
“No, what I mean is, you’ve got other, bigger problems instead.”
“See now there, I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
“Do you have to stand up for any reason?” Roslyn asked.
“Not as such right now, no.”
“Good. Probably best not to for a while.”
Quake licked the last of the Mud Drink out of the jar. “I see what you mean. I will heed this advice.”
He closed his eyes, his head tipping back to meet the pillow. Roslyn counted to one hundred, listening to him breathe. Then she counted again. He was snoring, but lightly. His face looked very, very young. She hoped he wouldn’t let this experience make him bitter, or keep him from pursuing love again in another place and time.
He didn’t move when she stood from the bed. She picked up one of her shoes and dropped it, just to be sure. She had lost so much of her adult life to Mud Drink. Half days at a time gone to dead sleep. Quake now, a mirror of the worst of her. She didn’t envy him.
The key was in the top drawer of the desk. She opened the lockboxes one by one and put the money in her bag, then put the boxes back and the key back and closed all the drawers. Not that it mattered. Not that he wouldn’t know immediately what she’d done when he woke and found her gone.
In the morning, she would book passage on the next steamer to San Francisco, any ship and any room available. She doubted Quake would follow. He didn’t need the money she’d taken and, really, he didn’t need her either. His plan for San Francisco was no good, never had been. He’d realize it once she was gone and figure out something else.
The streetcars were still running when she left Quake’s apartment; she didn’t have to wait long. She was the only one in the car. She wished at first for company. She wanted the presence of others who would think nothing of her—the purifying anonymity of a crowd. Instead, there was only the sound of the machine wobbling on its tracks and the sight of Roslyn’s reflection grinning back at her in the darkened window.
Quake had asked her once, on one of their sunny-day park walks, how she had felt when she stole Barton’s money. She made some answer of saying she’d felt justified and brave, having gotten the better of a crooked man. Quake smiled at this and asked if it really mattered that Barton was unscrupulous.
“Remove Heydale from the equation,” he’d pressed her. “You didn’t take the money because you should. You took it because you could. How did it feel?”
Finally she’d acquiesced. “It was the first thing I think I’ve ever really done for myself. For me and no one else.”
She had thought it might be different this time. She didn’t need every remaining cent from the First Bank of Spokane Falls all for herself. This was for others, whom she had not yet met, and who she was trusting—hoping—could benefit from it. But she felt the same, regardless.
Inside the empty streetcar on that November night, she was shrewd, powerful, and rich. Just like the men Quake and Barton and her father had all wanted to be.
Before she left Portland, she levitated again. First, she went to visit Mrs. Heydale. Was Barton dead yet? Roslyn didn’t know. She wondered if she could help the older woman, even in some small way. She had thought of her often, living in the decaying house, kept company only by her deceased husband’s vast wardrobe. She levitated to the Heydale home and found Mrs. Heydale alone and sad, unoccupied. Find your sewing machine, Roslyn said enough times until the woman went to exhume the apparatus from under a pile of bric-a-brac. Get your magazines. Get one of his jackets. When Mrs. Heydale had all her supplies laid out in front of her, Roslyn left. She’d thought maybe the woman could remake herself as a seamstress, refashioning old clothes and selling them. Or she could just fix up Mr. Heydale’s suits and donate them to younger men in need. More likely, she’d make some repairs and put them right back in the closet. But it would give her something to do, and wasn’t that a good thing? Roslyn acknowledged she could not control the outcomes of her power. She would have to learn to be okay with that if she was going to continue to use it, as was her intention.
Then she went to see Quake. He too was easily found, alone in his apartment. She took no pains to hide her levitating form. If he saw her, fine; if not, also fine. She had not come to say she was sorry, or to say goodbye. Just to look. But almost as soon as she entered the room, he locked onto her and she had to say something. Peekaboo, Dan Kite, I see you. She watched his dark eyes flare with anger, which then turned quickly to delight. So the man could still take a joke. She left before anything else could transpire between them.
Then she went to see the bears in the bear pit. Climb the walls and leave, she said. She did not know if her power extended to animals. But Quake had given her the idea and she felt it was worth a try.