Railroad Read online

  She stared at him as he abandoned the search for his underwear and went instead to the armchair, where his black evening coat was hanging, and took out a leather case of cheroots. He drew one out, bit off the end, and then sat naked on the end of the bed, his right ankle crossed over his left knee, and lit up. He puffed smoke, spat a shred of tobacco from the tip of his tongue, coughed, and then turned back to the girl.

  ‘You’re cruel,’ she said. ‘That’s a cruel thing to say.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You should know that it is. We can’t help the way we’re made. Didn’t your parents ever teach you that?’

  ‘All my parents ever taught me was that the value of the dollar exceeds the value of any and all human principles, and that women who don’t wear bonnets are anybody’s for the asking.’

  The girl sat up in bed revealing breasts that were small and white and chubby. ‘You told me last night you loved me.’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You said you loved me, and that you’d marry me as soon as you were able.’

  He sucked at his cheroot and grinned. ‘Under the influence of fifteen stone fences, a man would say anything. Mind you, I’ve drunk more. But then, on the other hand, I’ve said worse things.’

  He stood up and put his hands on his hips. ‘What I really want to know about last night is where I flung down my long johns.’

  She was silent for a moment. Outside, the summer rain lashed against the window and gurgled along the gutters of the parapet. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked him, as he bent over to explore under the bureau.

  ‘Collis,’ he told her. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Kathleen Mary.’

  ‘I might have guessed.’ Collis reappeared, red-faced but triumphantly holding up his combinations. ‘There,’ he said. ‘The finest suit of French Bon-Bon underwear that ever strode the streets. Guaranteed, in times of emergency or pressing lust, to open in a flash.’

  Kathleen Mary dropped her eyes. Even in her profession she considered it indelicate to spend too much time admiring a gentleman’s undergarments. She kept her eyes lowered while Collis, his cheroot clenched between his teeth, climbed into the Bon-Bon outfit and buttoned himself up. When he was finished, he looked as if he were about to enter a velocipede race, or swim the Hudson blindfolded. He sat down on the bed again and looked into Kathleen’s eyes with that dark, worried expression that may have been worry but was more likely to be pained impatience.

  ‘My dear,’ he said, laying a hairy, long-fingered hand over her pale plump hand. ‘I am only twenty-five, am more than moderately wealthy, and have most of my life ahead of me. There are wagers to be wagered, drinks to be drunk, ladies to be courted, dances to be danced. There are scores of saloons in New York in which I have yet to fall over. There are dozens of whorehouses whose ill repute I have yet to put to the test. There are oysters to be tasted, champagne to be poured, races to be run. When all these things are done, I shall probably think about taking a wife, but not before, and certainly not you.’

  Kathleen Mary reached out and stroked his forehead, pushing the dark curls away from his eyes. She said, in her sorrowful Irish lilt, ‘You never meant a word then. What you said about loving me, and wanting to take me away from the streets, you never meant a word of it.’

  ‘It was meant at the time,’ Collis put in. ‘But you know what it’s like when you’re … happy.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t. Happy’s just a word as far as I’m concerned. Happy is what other people feel.’

  He turned away, discomfited. ‘I’m sure nobody’s life is that bad. You must have some happy times.’

  ‘In two rooms, in a building on Delancey Street they should have burned down years ago, with a father who drinks anything from whisky to lavender water, and a brother of thirty who can’t even tie his own shoelaces?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Kathleen Mary knelt up in bed, a pale fat Aphrodite rising from a seagreen comforter. ‘You’re sorry,’ she wailed, her breath all herrings and brandy. ‘Well, think how sorry I feel.’

  Collis grimaced. He tried to get up from the bed, but Kathleen Mary forced him to sit down again, and he was uncomfortably aware that she was as strong as she was large, and determined, too. He was already beginning to have visions of climbing out of the hotel window in his Bon-Bons, his arm raised against the whipping rain, in a futile attempt to escape from her clutches.

  ‘You lay in my arms last night, and those were your very words. “I love you,” you said. “I want you to be my bride,” you said. And now it’s morning, you’re treating me cruel and offhand as can be.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Collis, in a tight, strained voice. ‘But I really don’t think it’s any use your going on about it.’

  Kathleen Mary was visibly saddened, and hurt, and she turned away when she saw how much he really disliked her, and stood by the half-open drapes, staring out at the dribbling raindrops that clung to the window.

  ‘I’ve no right to press you,’ she said. ‘It isn’t your fault, what I have to suffer.’

  He sat up again, rubbing his arms. He had lost his cheroot among the bedclothes, and he spent a minute or two trying to find it. When he looked up again, he was surprised to see that Kathleen Mary was weeping.

  He got up from the bed, went to the window, and put his arm around her. She sniffed, and attempted to smile bravely through her tears. For a moment or two, they stood without speaking, while she continued to sniff and he looked at her with those concerned eyes of his, and outside the clouds must have begun to clear, because the window was suddenly suffused with bright mother-of-pearl light, and the raindrops shivered and sparkled on the glass.

  ‘I didn’t intend to hurt your feelings,’ he said huskily. ‘I’ve gotten too hard-shelled of late, I guess, what with my family nagging so much. Why don’t you get yourself dressed, and I’ll buy you some breakfast. We can have chicken capitolade down at Sweeney’s.’

  She wiped her nose with the back of her wrist. ‘You don’t have to feel obliged.’

  Collis shrugged, and took down his pants from where they had been hanging like a Christmas stocking from the end of the bed. As he pulled them on, he said, ‘I do feel obliged, as a matter of fact. I think you’re most likely right, and it’s time that I started paying more attention to the feelings of my fellow men and women. Apart from that, it’s such damned hard work being as much of a sour-faced bastard as my father, and as much of a tyrant as my mother, and as much of an unctuous hypocrite as my sister Maude, all rolled up into one. I think it’s probably easier, and less of a strain on the liver, to be pleasant.’

  He reached into his pocket and took out a handful of silver dollars.

  Kathleen Mary coloured and looked back at him with uncertainty. ‘That’s all right,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s two dollars the night, all night, and I don’t ask for any more.’

  Collis picked out three dollars and handed them to her. ‘There’s an extra dollar by way of recompense for rudeness.’

  She dropped the money into her cheap black leather reticule. Then she took her corsets from the arm of the chair, wrapped them around herself, and proceeded to lace them up, inch by inch, with increasing tightness, until her small-breasted chest was puffed out like a pigeon’s, and her hips and thighs swelled out below.

  ‘That’s the worst of it over,’ she said breathlessly.

  Collis pulled his shirt over his head and tucked its voluminous tails into his pants. Then he went to the mirror again to tie up his floppy black necktie. His chin was unshaven and prickly, but shaving would have to wait until he got home. He raked his fingers through his hair and decided he didn’t look any worse than most. Kathleen Mary meanwhile was buttoning up her corset cover and struggling into her full-skirted bottle-green dress with the small lace collar.

  ‘Can you wait while I braid my hair?’ she asked. ‘I won’t take more than a few minutes.’

  Collis was lacing up his square-toed shoe
s. ‘Take as long as you must. I’m in no hurry.’

  Kathleen Mary took out her comb and started to twist her greasy red hair into ringlets. ‘You must lose a terrible deal of money,’ she said. ‘That was a couple of hundred or so I saw you lose last night.’

  ‘I didn’t lose it. I spent it. I gambled it.’

  ‘But when you wagered how many bald men would walk through the door in the next ten minutes, for fifty dollars, that was hardly gambling at all. That was just throwing your money away.’

  ‘I don’t see that it matters to you,’ said Collis. ‘And if you really want to know, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s not my money. It’s the price my dear father pays me to stay out of his business and out of his life. I can’t throw it away fast enough.’

  ‘But to bet on how many bald men might walk through a door, when there are families who could pay off all of their debts, and buy food like they’ve never eaten before, and find happiness at last, for the same amount of money, well, don’t you think that’s wicked?’

  Collis laughed. ‘You – a whore – you’re talking to me of wickedness?’

  Kathleen Mary stopped braiding her hair and stood straight. He could see her square, mannish face in the dim oval frame of the mirror on top of the bureau, as if a photographic portrait had come to life and was staring at him accusingly.

  ‘Is whoring a sin when there’s no other choice?’ she demanded. ‘How else can I feed my father? How else can I pay for the doctors my brother needs? Sin is only sin when a person has a chance to live better.’

  ‘Is that the rationale of the streets?’ asked Collis, raising a sarcastic eyebrow.

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ she said. ‘When I was ten years old, I was washing carboys for the Brooklyn Chemical Company. My eyes stung and my hands burned and I earned myself just enough to bring home bread and beer every day to my father and brother, and maybe some cabbage and ribs at the end of the week. Then, when I was twelve, my father took me into his bed one morning, not because he lusted after me, but because he knew what I was going to have to do, and wanted the first time to be gentle. I walked the streets from that day forward, just as I did last night, and just as I will tomorrow.’

  Collis said, ‘When I promised to marry you –’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry.’ She smiled. ‘It happens all the time. Drunken cabbies, drunken policemen, drunken gentlemen. Perhaps I just took a shine to you, and thought that it might be true.’

  He looked at the tip of his cheroot. ‘I’m afraid that it can’t be. I’m sorry. I must seem like a real bastard.’

  ‘You’re not really,’ she told him, with that twisted little smile. ‘But I still believe you’re wasting yourself. You’re rich, and your brains are good, and yet here you are with nothing to do but drink and gamble. Don’t you know how my father sits by the grate and frets for work? He’s a labourer, and he longs to be out in the West, building railroads, which is his own particular calling. He longs to swing a pick, and lay down ties and rails, and yet there’s no work to be had. You, though, with all of your money and all of your style, you could go out West and make yourself a fortune.’

  Collis affected an expression that was even more worried than usual. ‘Out West? Do you know what’s out there?’

  ‘It always sounds romantic to me,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘Romantic? Do you know what Daniel Webster called it?’

  ‘Daniel Webster? He was almost a traitor, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He was the greatest doughface who ever lived, but he wasn’t stupid. He said the West was nothing but savages and wild beasts, cactus and prairie dogs. You couldn’t even find yourself a fresh Maine lobster out in the West, and a life without fresh Maine lobsters doesn’t bear thinking about!’

  He set his foot on the bed and polished the toe of his shoe with the sheet. ‘No thank you,’ he said. ‘Your father may feel the calling to live in log cabins and eat buffalo meat and work the whole day through till the sweat pops off his brow, but that’s not for me. Maybe I lost fifty dollars last night betting on how many bald men would walk into the room, but last week I won seventy dollars betting on how many ladies at dinner would eat their asparagus with their fingers, and how many would not, for fear of lewdness. So it all evens itself out.’

  ‘I’m sorry for you,’ she said, quietly.

  He finished his shoes and stood tall, tugging his vest straight. But then he saw that the look in her eyes was really sorrow after all, and he felt strangely unsettled.

  ‘You don’t have to feel sorry for me,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘I’ve got everything I could possibly want.’

  ‘That’s exactly the trouble.’ She smiled. ‘When you’ve got everything, you’ve got everything to lose.’

  ‘May God preserve us from tub-thumping tarts,’ he said, trying to sound flippant. ‘I paid the extra dollar out of courtesy, not to hear an evangelical address.’

  She sighed, shrugged, and picked up her reticule. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she told him. ‘And anyway, it’s time for breakfast.’

  Collis felt oddly disturbed, as if Kathleen Mary had intruded on the privacy of his life, as if she had walked into the closed house of his head, into the fug of cigar smoke and perfume and midnight gambling clubs, and opened up a dim high skylight.

  He sucked hard at his cheroot. ‘I could give up gambling tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Give up drinking, give up going with whores. But where would that lead me? What would I do? I have a good education, I’ll grant you. But success depends on ambition, and opportunity. A few people are lucky enough to have both. But I don’t think I have either. I would rather pass my days amusing myself, and keeping out of mischief’s way, than by trying to tempt disaster by striking out into business. I’m not cut out for it. I’m a man who wagers on bald heads and asparagus, and cats and horses and ladies’ underwear besides, and nothing will change me.’

  Kathleen Mary listened to these words and then gave Collis a faint smile. ‘That’s why I’m sorry for you, do you see?’

  At that moment, there was the clatter of footsteps along the bare-board corridor outside, and someone hammered heavily on their door. ‘Who is it?’ cried Collis, without taking his cheroot out of his mouth or his hands out of his pockets.

  ‘You should know who it is!’ exclaimed a high, annoyed voice. ‘I should think you should damn well know!’

  Kathleen Mary glanced at Collis worriedly, but he simply called back, ‘I haven’t the faintest notion! Is it Arnold Douglas? Is it General Tom Thumb?’

  ‘Open up this door and you’ll soon see!’ shouted the voice.

  ‘I can’t!’ responded Collis.

  ‘The devil you can’t!’ the voice called back.

  ‘My hands are in my pockets,’ said Collis, ‘and they will only come out to pay my debts or shake hands with my friends. Opening hotel doors for bears with sore heads is not one of their duties.’

  ‘Will you open this door or shall I tear it down?’ demanded the voice.

  Collis took his cheroot out of his mouth. ‘If your stature is as short as your temper, you should be able to walk under it,’ he said.

  The doorhandle was rattled furiously for a while, and then they heard more footsteps outside, and muffled conversation. It sounded as if the hotel manager had been called, because after a while they heard the jangling of keys.

  ‘Can’t a fellow get some sleep?’ called Collis. ‘This must be the noisiest hotel in New York! Why don’t you drive a coach and horses down the corridor, and have done with it?’

  There was a gentler rapping, and then Collis heard the manager.

  ‘Mr Edmonds, sir, I’m sorry to disturb you.’

  ‘I should think so. Is this a hotel or a circus?’

  There was an uncomfortable pause. Collis could imagine the manager, who was a small, punctilious, sensitive man, with highly polished shoes and a shock of brown brilliantined hair, grimacing with displeasure, as if he had just swallowed the slippery black neck of a steamed clam. But
then the manager rapped again and said, ‘There’s a gentleman here who insists on seeing you, Mr Edmonds. He says he will continue to create a disturbance until you do.’

  ‘Then let him. I haven’t any wish to see anyone at this moment, particularly a hooligan who bangs on my door and shouts.’

  ‘Mr Edmonds, it might be easier if you were to open the door for just a moment.’

  ‘It might be easier if you all went off and left me alone.’

  There was a further pause. Collis and Kathleen Mary could hear a hurried, intense, whispered conversation. Then the manager came back to the door.

  ‘This gentleman says he is the proprietor of the Madison Saloon, sir. He says that last night, while you were visiting his establishment, you managed to break a considerable amount of glassware and bottles, sir. He says, sir, that you were dancing on his tables.’

  Collis winked at Kathleen Mary. ‘He says that, does he? Well, let him say what dance I was doing.’

  More muffled conversation. Then: ‘The polka, sir.’

  ‘The polka? What does he think I am, a damned foreign revolutionary? He is lying in his teeth, if he has any. He is simply trying to make me pay for his own clumsiness. It was not a polka at all. It was a waltz, and a waltz never hurt anybody.’

  While he was saying this, Collis was signalling to Kathleen Mary that she should open the sashed window. She didn’t understand his frantic mime at first, but when he hissed at her, ‘The window!’ she nodded, and went across to unfasten it. A fine drizzle was still falling, and the parapet outside was glossy and wet.

  ‘Can’t you just pay for the damage?’ Kathleen Mary whispered. ‘It can’t be very much.’

  ‘Of course I can,’ Collis retorted. ‘But it’s much more entertaining to slip out from under their noses, and leave them unpaid.’

  The doorhandle was rattled again, and this time it was the proprietor of the Madison who spoke. ‘I’m not alone out here!’ he called, in his contralto voice. ‘I’ve brought two bruisers to make sure I’m paid!’