Authors: Chanse Lowell
She had already taken him in her mouth once before.
But when Lenora sang, there was a perceptible shift in Clarissa. She went rigid.
He was uncertain why she was suddenly bristling over there, and then he realized why.
Lenora was butchering the song that Cherry girl had presented that one time he’d thrust her onto the stage. It was Clarissa’s own song she’d created.
Before he realized it, Clarissa had snuck out a back entrance and was gone.
Fuck! She knew that he’d wanted to rut inside Lenora before he’d become fixated with the little cherry girl now running from him.
He went after her, but she was off the street.
“Clarissa!” he called out, but no answer came.
Without a word to the crew inside or Lenora or Allen, the director, he raced down the street in search of Clarissa, but she was gone.
He drove up and down every street within a twenty mile radius, coming up with nothing but his hot breath and his aching heart.
Why had he been such a cad for so long?
He had been abominably rude to Cherry girl from the first, but she was so alluring, it incensed him to want someone so lowly.
Now he knew the opposite to be true. He was unworthy of her, and that was what truly stung.
He spent the rest of the afternoon at home, pacing, hoping she would come to him as he sent off anyone he could spare to take out his carriages and motorcars to find her.
She would be returned to him safely, or else he would see to it that all of New York was dismantled.
He got on the phone and called every theater in town—giving them explicit instructions of what to do if she graced their presence with her own.
* * *
It was finally Friday—free women’s wash day.
Clarissa doubled her pace to get a good spot in line. She was tired of sponge bathing.
“Hey, how did you get here before me?” Elizabeth tugged on her ponytail.
“I ran most of the way,” Clarissa said, out of breath.
“Eager to wash? Yeah, me, too. It’s been two weeks since I had a full bath. I smell awful!” Elizabeth poked through Clarissa’s basket filled with soap, shampoo, aromatic lavender and lilac water. She lacked a towel.
“Where is your comb? I forgot mine,” Elizabeth asked.
“Oh . . . I do not have one anymore. I left it with Leo. I figured he needed it more than I. For now, I just use my fingers.”
“Doesn’t that mean your hair is curlier and harder to pin up?”
Clarissa frowned. “Yes, it does.” She shrugged and shuffled forward as the line began to filter in.
“There are a lot of children today,” Elizabeth observed.
“Yes, there are, indeed.” Clarissa smiled. “Do you remember how we met here?”
Elizabeth yanked on Clarissa’s ponytail once more and stepped in front of her. “I cut you off just like this, if you recall,” she said, tossing the words over her shoulder.
“Yes, and I raised a fuss about it.”
“I’ve never seen anyone make such a din about something so silly.” Elizabeth laughed.
“Well, at that time, I had lice, and I wanted to wash it out immediately!” Clarissa laughed, too.
“I know. You made me pick out the nits for you as penance for cutting in line. How old were you again? Oh, yes, twelve years old, and such a bossy little woman.” Elizabeth looped her arms in Clarissa’s.
“You know I had to sneak out of the orphanage to bathe, so I had limited time to deal with such matters. Plus, I had started my monthly course already, and there wasn’t really a good way to wash in the kitchen there without prying eyes. I was not about to lift my skirts with other boys around so I could wash my loins.”
“Such modesty.” Elizabeth shook her head. “Wasn’t Leo there? Didn’t he help you?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t going to ask him to keep watch while I bathed.” Clarissa stuck out her tongue. There were some things she would
not
do.
“You were always nice to me after that, though. You even taught me how to read and write. Who taught
you
?”
“My mother did before she passed away. She taught me how to sing, dance and act as well,” Clarissa said, getting choked up.
Elizabeth leaned her head on Clarissa’s shoulder. “I know—I miss me ma, too.”
Clarissa ignored the tears tickling at her lashes.
In some ways, as she stood there with her closest female friend, she wished she was a chameleon like Elizabeth. She could speak like everyone else in the lower east side, sound like she was one of them, and then speak more properly if she really needed to or if she was speaking to Clarissa one-on-one. Elizabeth always adjusted her speech patterns based on who she was conversing with.
What a great skill to possess.
Not Clarissa. She could never speak like the people in the lower east side. Her mother would’ve taken a strap to her behind if she spoke with such slang, so she never could allow herself to do it, even if her mother had been gone for ten years now.
“Oh, yes! We are next,” Clarissa said as they approached the gates.
They both were admitted with a tiny wave inside.
Elizabeth pushed aside some elderly, heavyset woman, found a corner and stripped down without the least degree of shyness.
She jumped into the water, without her soap or anything at all.
Clarissa smiled at her brazen friend.
It was all women in attendance here today, with a few small boys in tow, but still . . .
Clarissa went down to her knickers and undershirt and grabbed her soap.
She stepped to the end of the wooden slatted platform, dipped her toe in and shivered.
It was frightfully cold as usual.
Oh, how she wished for a warm bath.
William probably had those daily.
God—William.
She could feel her cheeks heating, so she dropped her head and then plunged into the water with soap in-hand.
“Ohhhhhh God! This is arctic!” Clarissa swam over to Elizabeth, playing with some little boys in the water.
“Scrub my back, please,” Clarissa said, “and then you can use my soap as I wash my hair since you failed to bring yours.”
“Don’t have none. Couldn’t afford it,” Elizabeth responded.
They swam over to the edge. With one hand holding to the wooden planking, and the other lifting Clarissa’s hair off her neck, Elizabeth scrubbed her neck, her back and shoulders, but then paused when she went to rinse off her neck.
“Did the bed bugs get ya? Dammit! I gave you the newest of the feather beds,” Elizabeth groused.
Oh no! Clarissa dropped her hair quickly.
William had marked her there, hadn’t he?
He spent an inordinate amount of time sucking at the back of her neck, directly below her hairline.
“Yes, well, I shall deal with that today. I’ll take apart the mattress and pick through it thoroughly.” Clarissa used the wooden bars to pull herself out and grab her shampoo.
Elizabeth was busy soaping up her underarms and breasts.
Clarissa created a great lather in her hair. For some reason that part on her body held the most of William’s scent, and it lingered all day long around her face.
God help her—she would die if she had to spend one more day with his haunting scent on her.
When she had suds all over her head, she jumped back in.
“Gaaaah!” she gasped as she came back up for air.
Would this water temperature ever agree with her body?
She shivered and could scarcely breathe. It was worse than wearing a corset.
“Can I borrow your shampoo as well?” Elizabeth asked.
Clarissa nodded and took the soap back.
While Elizabeth was busy washing her hair, Clarissa washed her most private areas thoroughly by reaching inside her knickers.
Most of the tenderness was gone, but the excited feeling she got when she remembered what it felt like having his hands, mouth and cock down there made her tingle.
It was amazing she could differentiate her arousal from the chilliness of the water pricking at her skin.
She soaped up the rest of her body quickly and all but launched herself out of the water.
Elizabeth shouldered her on her way back over to the water. “Tell Leo I said hi next time you see him.” She winked, then jumped back in.
When she came up for air, Clarissa replied, “I figured you’d see him first. I rarely see him now that he is no longer my roommate.”
“No—he likes educated women, and he discovered fairly quickly I am not one of them.” Elizabeth swam away, obviously hiding a deep frown.
“I know how you feel . . .”
Clarissa grabbed her belongings, found a way to get dressed discreetly in a corner behind a large queen palm fanning out across a portion of the deck and then left, allowing her hair to drip dry on her way back home.
* * *
For days Clarissa showed up at auditions, and without fail, she never heard back.
She had abandoned her job at Bial’s since William had flirted with Lenora right in front of her directly after telling her to come home with him. What kind of woman did he think Clarissa was that she would share him like that?
It disgusted her to the point of nausea to think he considered her that much of a whore that she wouldn’t mind.
Her stomach growled.
She was down to the amount of two dollars. She had already given Elizabeth her portion of the rent—two dollars and fifty cents.
Where could she turn now for work? She really needed to get something to eat, but she might need this little bit of money for next month’s rent.
She dragged her feet down the street, considering maybe asking for work at the Vanderbilts’ estate.
It would show William how foolish they both had been—that this was her place in society.
How would he snub her at their parties if she was the one serving him champagne?
Better for them to realize their folly now than later when they had been deceiving themselves for a much longer period of time.
If he cared for her like he said, why did he not mention her on stage as a part of their future plans?
Did he think her talentless like Lenora?
Had he been the one playacting, pretending to enjoy her singing as a way to lure her to his trap?
That man was so sensual and seductive and so good at playacting, she should take lessons from him to get on stage.
Wasn’t that what it required? Loose morals and a good false representation of a woman in the throes?
Only she hadn’t falsified that part with him.
It was too easy to melt at his touch and fall apart in his hands. He had such command over her faculties that her body blindly followed along.
But of course it is easy for him, you simpering girl. He’s had many women in those hands to practice with.
The jealous pangs she felt frequently struck once again at her heart, and she walked faster to get home.
She walked past Rinaldo’s father—the man she still hadn’t been able to befriend and discover his name—and went inside, bracing herself for the barrage of questions from Elizabeth about the status of her employment.
Only the house was silent.
And the door was shut to their bedroom.
It was always open.
She stepped up to the door and could hear someone breathing hard on the other side.
Was it a burglar?
She tossed the door open, only to find what must have been Rinaldo—because he looked like a younger version of the fruit peddler outside their front stoop—and he was having sexual relations with Suzie on Elizabeth’s bed.
“Ahhhhh!” Suzie screamed when she saw her.
“Oh Christ!” Clarissa shrieked right back.
The front door to their tenement flung open, and in bounded Rinaldo’s father.
He pushed Clarissa roughly out of the way, tore his son out of Suzie’s clutches and began pummeling him over and over with his fists, until Suzie launched herself at them.
The older man spat on her, then dragged his son out the front of the tenement, completely naked and hollering at his father about how he loved that woman and intended to marry her.
Suzie lay in a heap on the floor, and all Clarissa could do was run to the front door and bolt it shut, though now it barely hung on its hinges with the way that man had battered it down.
She went back to find Suzie tucked up in the covers in her own bed, weeping hysterically.
“’Twill be all right,” Clarissa said.
“No it won’t—you wretched whore! Just because you ain’t got your man, you ruin mine!”
“That’s not—”
“Leave!” Suzie roared.
Clarissa froze for a second, all feeling having gone out of her hands and feet. Could she walk if she couldn’t feel her toes? Was her heart even beating?