Forever and a Day (9 page)

“Get out!”
Lunging, John snapped out a clenched fist up toward his face.

Robinson vaulted aside as John’s white-knuckled fist smashed into the wall behind him, denting the plaster with a muffled thud that resounded within the room.

“John!”
Georgia grabbed John by the waist and dragged him back toward her. “Enough.
Enough!
”

Robinson held out a strained hand in warning, even though what he
really
wanted to do was smash the boy’s skull into pieces.

John swatted away Georgia’s hands from around his waist and veered back toward him, his lean chest rising and falling against impassioned breaths. “No one makes a whore out of Georgia. No one. Especially not some prick of a Brit.”

Holding the youth’s gaze, Robinson removed his coat and tossed it toward the chair, readying himself for whatever was about to happen. “The only one making a whore out of Georgia right now is you, John. I suggest you leave. Before she has to witness something she oughtn’t.”

Georgia grabbed the youth by the arm with both hands and yanked him back, using her own body to maneuver his. “As you can see, John, despite him bein’ a Brit, he’s a gent who knows how to control his own two fists. Unlike you.” Turning him back toward the door, she shoved him out into the corridor. “Now get back to your girl.”

“She’s not me girl,” he tossed back, turning back toward her. “I’m only fecking her to keep meself sane, because living next to you on the hour is like living next to the Garden of Eden. Snakes and all!”

“Don’t you worry, this
Eve
is movin’ the entire garden west and soon. Good night…
Adam
.” Slamming the door, she bolted all three locks.

“Georgia!”
The door rattled. “Georgia, please don’t do this. I’ve got two dollars and thirty-four cents saved up. ’Tis yours if you need it and I sure as hell won’t ask for spit, in turn. Just don’t…don’t feck him.”

Georgia hit the door with a hard, fast fist, rattling the door. “Is that all you think I’m good for? A bloody feck? Off with you, you knacker, before I tell Matthew to slice you up like custard pie and serve you to the locals!”

There was a mutter as footfalls faded. A door slammed.

“What a vile little maggot,” Robinson drawled. “Is
feck
what I think it is?”

Georgia turned and glared at him. “If that were Matthew or any other man, you would have been dead by now. Don’t think that because you stand well over six feet that you can talk back to these men. This isn’t Broadway where people settle things with a bit of conversation. People here settle for blood. I want you to remember that the next time you mouth off.”

He shifted his jaw. “He was disrespecting you and he was disrespecting me.”

“Get used to it. It’s called life. Sometimes, you’ve got to swallow your pride to ensure you don’t die.” She snatched up the lamp from off the table and disappeared into the adjoining room, momentarily leaving him in shadows.

Robinson swiped an exhausted hand across his face and winced as his fingers scraped against his scab. Seething out a breath, he leaned against the wall. “How old was that bastard, anyway? He looked rather young to be carrying on the way he did.”

“He’s one and twenty,” she called out from within the low closet. She unfolded yellowing linen and spread it onto the straw mattress, smoothing it out. “Not nearly as young as you think. I was eighteen when I became a wife.”

He stared at her. “You were rather young.”

“Young? Don’t be silly. Most girls marry younger to avoid fallin’ into the hands of a brothel, and unlike them, I actually married for love. And a fine love it was.” She half nodded and turned away, her voice fading as she breathed out, “Even if it didn’t last.”

Leaning over, she quietly arranged and rearranged the linen on the bed as if not at all pleased with the way it was laying. He sensed she was actually doing it to avoid any further discussion pertaining to her marriage.

He trailed a hand against the uneven plastered wall as he made his way toward her. “So John is one of the boys?”

“That he is. He can read and write now because of them.”

“Little good reading and writing has done him. He appears to be deranged.”

She glanced back toward him, straightening. “He serves his purpose, pays out his quota from his own weekly earnin’s and works on command durin’ political campaigns. That’s all the boys want and need. And though John sure as hell doesn’t show it, for fear other men would snicker, he has a rather soft heart and is always helpin’ others. He was initiated into the group barely a year ago, after one of our boys was stabbed to death over at the docks.” She huffed out a breath. “What a mess that was.”

His brows rose. “So you mean when one of them dies, they up and replace him with another? Don’t you find that infinitely disturbing?”

“’Tis no different than a gent’s club over on Broadway losin’ a member and needin’ a new one. I’ll have you know there’s actually a sizable waitin’ list. Half the ward is forever complainin’ to Matthew and Coleman that they ought to make the group accommodate more men. Those two thievin’ banshees, however, consider any number beyond forty not only financially unmanageable, but unlucky.”

“And why is that?”

“Because they’re known as the
Forty
Thieves. Not the fifty-six or the eighty-two thieves.”

A sensation of odd familiarity trickled through him. He blinked, wondering why he already knew something about these men.

Let us now leave Ali Baba to enjoy the commencement of his good fortune and return to the forty thieves.

Wait.

Wasn’t that a story?

One he knew and had read in youth?

In a certain town of Persia lived two brothers, one of whom was named Cassim, the other Ali Baba. As their father, at his death, left them but little property, which they divided equally between them, it might have been expected that their fortunes would be the same; chance, however, ordered it otherwise.

By God. It was indeed a story. Just as
Robinson Crusoe
had been. What the hell was wrong with him? “The Forty Thieves? As in…Ali Baba and the forty thieves?”

Her face brightened. “Yes. Do you know of it?”

“Oddly enough, I do. ’Tis known as
The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments
. I must have read it. Because I know of it. The moment you mentioned the Forty Thieves, almost the entire story placed itself into my head.”

She paused. “It did?”

He nodded. “This sort of thing happened to me at the hospital, too.”

She searched his face for a long moment. “
Robinson Crusoe
is a book. So is
The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments
. How very…odd. You appear to remember books. If you can remember some of the books you’ve read, I imagine you’d be able to remember other things, too. Don’t you think?”

He paused. “I suppose.”

“Dr. Carter mentioned you were confusin’ fiction for fact, which may mean that everythin’ you know about yourself isn’t necessarily missin’. It may be buried, is all.”

“Buried?”
he drawled. “Where?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Isn’t it odd you keep rememberin’ things that weren’t there before? I recommend you spend a bit more time diggin’ around in that head of yours. You might be able to remember somethin’ of worth.”

He leaned forward. “I have been digging, Georgia. Believe me, I have been digging for nine whole days, trying to make sense of it, but the shovel isn’t large enough and the dirt is piled rather high. I have
no
understanding as to why my mind can’t remember certain things.”

He drifted closer toward the doorway, blocking the entrance of the small room she was in. “Let us set aside this talk. It only agitates me. I do, however, want to know more about these men who call themselves the Forty Thieves. Are they dangerous? Do they quarter people and deliver them into a cave full of treasure after a bit of ‘Open, sesame’?”

She gave him a withered look. “There’s all sorts of black talk about who and what they are, and the boys merrily feed off it, but they’re not murderers, Brit. They’re rebels of a low status lookin’ to lead a better life by providin’ one another the sort of things our government has failed to provide, given they’re nothin’ but Irish and Negro men. When Matthew and Raymond first came to Orange Street, they were set about creatin’ a group to shake a fist at the government and reorganize the chaos on the street. Though Raymond died before the group was fully established, Matthew and the boys have been shakin’ their fists in his honor ever since. They’re all daft, if you ask me. Matthew thinks he can change the world, though he can barely feed himself.”

Rebels of low status rising against corrupted power? He didn’t know why, but they sounded like his sort of people. The sort who wanted to rise above what little they had been given. “Men who seek to change the world for the better ought to be admired, Georgia, not mocked.”

“Oh, I’m not mockin’ him or the others. I’m only mockin’ the way they go about it. Matthew forever steals in order to maintain the expense it brings and it’s leechin’ his morals dry. He’s what I call a saint without a name or a halo.”

“I’d like to meet this Matthew of yours. I’m rather intrigued by his agenda.”

Georgia captured his gaze. “
Intrigued?
What in the name of Beelzebub do you think this is? A penny and a show?” She made her way toward him, shaking her head. “You’ve
no
understandin’ of what it’s like to have your knuckles bleed in the name of poverty. You’ve never had your face spit at and called
black
even though your skin is
white
. Men in this ward, Brit, be they Negro, Jew, Italian or Irish, join in on thievin’, not because they want to, but because the world doesn’t give them a chance to earn a sliver of their dignity. And just because you don’t remember your pretty way of life over on Broadway, it doesn’t mean you’re suddenly one of us. You’d best remember that every time you get to talkin’ about bein’
intrigued
.”

Robinson leaned against the frame of the doorway and leveled her with a firm gaze. “Maybe my life wasn’t quite as pretty as you think. Maybe I don’t remember a goddamn thing about my life, Georgia, because there is absolutely
nothing
of worth to remember.”

She blinked rapidly. “Don’t say such things lest they come true.”

He glared at her, tensing. “Does it matter what I say when you appear to be so intent on insulting me and a life I cannot even remember?”

She lowered her gaze, fingering the edge of her apron. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be harsh, but Matthew and the boys are as Irish and Negro as they come, and I wanted to warn you of it before you go associatin’ with them. They’ll gladly take your money and the boots off your feet. That’s just how they are. And despite what you think, I’m not one of them.” She dropped her hand away from her apron and lifted her gaze to his. “I’m sorry I insulted you.”