The Juliet (21 page)

He pushed the door closed behind her, leaving dark trails from his fingertips behind. “Lily,” he said.

“Lily is retired, my love.”

“Why did you leave me?” he rasped. He’d lost a front tooth since she last saw him.

“You lost a tooth,” she said, placing her pristine hand on the side of his face. “I left the life, not you.” And that was the truth she had not even shared with her husband. In the year that she had worked at the Ophelia she saw how the men who visited slowly became ghosts of themselves as their despair in the mines outpaced the delights of the body. It was only a matter of time before the brothel became a squalid dope den like the ones in Ballarat. Marcus’ report would only hasten that decline.

He took her hand from his face, completely enclosing it in his. Then he reached out and placed his other hand around her waist. She could feel the vibrating power just under his pretense of his tenderness.

“I’m a married woman, Arthur.”

“I’ll kill Skinner for you.”

It wasn’t a terrible thought. Becky often wondered if she should kill Marcus and run off with The Juliet, but that would take effort. Now Arthur Goud was offering to do it for her, but that would leave her with Arthur—the perfect example of the despair she’d hoped to leave behind.

“You read too many dime novels,” she said, hoping to flatter him.

He pulled her close in a rancid embrace, the greasy soot transferring to her dress and skin. His kiss was foul and deep, and as she struggled he simply held her still until she understood the truth of the situation.

Only one of them would survive.

* * *

Back east, an establishment with a French name meant a guarantee that the proprietors would make an effort, but in the desert such flourishes were mostly nostalgic and sometimes even apologetic. The watering hole called Le Bonsoir was little more than a shelter over plank tables and benches, but these days Marcus Skinner preferred its raw shabbiness to the fading elegance of the public houses on High Street. He was about to stop in for a beer when he nearly collided with a rank, stumbling prospector he almost did not recognize. Arthur Goud.

Goud attempted to stand his ground but he was shaking hard. He was a sick man.

He said to Skinner, “Used to have my fortune told by yours.”

Marcus nodded. “You could try to get your money back, I suppose.”

Goud gave the attorney a wild look, but Marcus was unimpressed. The once-savvy miner was nothing more than a burned-out drunk. He should have left when his brothers did, more than a year before, having packed up their tent homes one by one, each of them leaving by night. Only Arthur stayed. He kept digging and digging, and only God knew why.

Goud swung a satchel over his shoulder, and Marcus stepped back to avoid being hit by it. He watched as the wrecked prospector climbed up to High Street. Those he passed gave him a wide berth.

Eventually, Goud paused in front of the stock exchange. He placed his satchel in the street. He reached in and extracted a small bottle.

“Arthur, stop!” Marcus yelled, but he was too far away to prevent the inevitable.

Goud drank from the bottle and almost immediately collapsed. A cloud of dust burst around him.

By the time Marcus Skinner reached High Street, a crowd had gathered. Goud had swallowed several ounces of carbolic acid, the corrosive effects of which were rapid and irreversible. The miner shuddered as his insides burned away.

Bankers and school children came out in the noonday sun to watch him die. It was the least they could do. Arthur Goud had made his choice. When he finally stilled, his dirty face was burned red around the mouth, nose, and jawline as if he’d been beaten with a fiery club. Someone had already fetched an old horse rug, and a couple of the bankers began to roll the corpse onto it.

Marcus hoped the children would remember this part of the day, when men in expensive suits, starched collars, and gold watch chains raised up Arthur Goud on a rug to transfer him to the deadhouse.

* * *

The bottle house was still. The fire was out, no lamp burned, and supper wasn’t waiting. Becky waited in the dark, a quilt over her lap. She heard someone enter the house, and she was ready. If it was Arthur, he was there to finish her off. Her neck burned where he’d tried to strangle her. If it was Marcus, he would assume she had finally run away from him, especially if he checked the strong box first and saw that The Juliet was no longer inside it. Would he even look for her?

“Becky?”

“Marcus,” she whispered. The relief brought tears to her eyes. When Marcus found her the bedroom, he lit the lantern but halted when she produced a Colt revolver from underneath the quilt.

Becky said, “Thank you for showing me how to use this.” She had meant only to hand the weapon back to him, but when she saw that Marcus misunderstood her intention—he was frozen in place, fearing for his life—she realized that this was one of those moments upon which everything in her life depended. She could leave and become someone new again, or she could stay and remain Becky Skinner for the rest of her life.

She began to laugh, and that frightened Marcus even more. She was probably quite a sight, with her hair mussed and her dress torn at the shoulder. “You’d better take this back,” she said, when she recovered. “So how was your day, darling?”

Marcus would be justified in thinking that his young bride had lost her mind. “You’ve been attacked,” he said. He accepted the Colt from her and examined it. “You haven’t shot this.”

“Not yet, but it’s a comfort nonetheless.”

“It was Goud, wasn’t it?” Marcus asked. There was a note of fatality in his voice. “How’d you fight him off, then?”

“I didn’t,” she replied darkly. “How did you know it was him?”

Again, Marcus had taken her meaning wrong. He returned the Colt to the night table and said, “I’ll fetch the doctor, if you need him.”

“I don’t.” Becky touched her neck. “Marcus, I tried to pay Arthur off. He’s insane. He nearly killed me, so I gave him The Juliet.”

Marcus stiffened. “You gave him The Juliet? You should have just shot him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Becky said, throwing aside the quilt completely. There in her lap lay the emeralds, nestled in a satin handkerchief. “He wouldn’t take them. I’m telling you, the man is mad.”

Now Marcus was offended. “He wouldn’t take them? Why the hell not?”

“It’s all that mumbo jumbo, my dear. The cards, the omens. Arthur was a believer.” Becky selected one of the stones and held it in the palm of her hand as if it were a truly mystical object. “He said they were cursed. That I was cursed by owning them.”

Marcus took the emerald from her. It was the smaller half, but it shone brilliantly by the light of the lantern. He returned it to Becky’s lap, next to its twin. “And he just left you alone, then?”

“You sound skeptical, Marcus. That’s unkind.”

Marcus Skinner sat on the edge of the bed, weary of so much emotion. Becky leaned forward and tucked her hand inside his. He brought it to his lips for a kiss.

“‘Who can find a virtuous woman,’” he said. “‘For her price is far above rubies.’”

* * *

March 1922: Centenary, NV

Mollina Grease was flat as a board, and if she were in Philly or New York or Chicago, she would have fit right in with the flappers in their spangly beaded gowns designed to show all even when there was nothing much to show. But she was in Death Valley, stuck inside an old-timey bustle and corset affair padded to suggest a womanly figure Mollina herself did not have. In fact, as the only female stunt actor for National Pictures, nearly all of her costumes were designed to be worn by men.

No one had heard of National Pictures. The company was an upstart, and Mollina, not pretty enough for face acting, had been hired on to do the rough stuff. The president of the company brought her on as a kind of good luck charm because she was the only child of Gabe Grease, a famous trick rider in traveling “Old West” shows. Gabe Grease was notorious for showing up the drunkard headliners who acted like heroes because they’d massacred so many Indians. He had passed on the performing itch to Mollina, and she was lucky to find work getting tossed around. Directors liked her because she knew how to fall like a woman and survive like a man.

She’d just finished a scene where her character was dragged away from a burning train car by a horse. Now she was seated on a prop barrel stenciled with
BLACK POWDER XXX
, catching her breath and massaging her hyperextended ankles. The sweat poured down her neck and was absorbed by the bosom-shaped pillows sewn into the bodice of her farmer’s wife costume. She watched the crew reposition the equipment so they could shoot the rail tracks from another angle. Not too far away, the carpenter was finishing work on the Opera House façade, transforming it from a mission to a casino. Otherwise Centenary was a ruined place, littered with the ragged cement foundations of once-grand buildings. Mollina was especially intrigued by the disintegrating schoolhouse. Its second story window casements framed a backdrop of vacant blue skies where there should have been rooms of desks and chalkboards.

The Mayor’s wife brought Mollina a tin cup of cool water. Mollina said, “Thank you,” and drank so fast that she could feel hiccups coming on. The Mayor’s wife sold sandwiches and told fortunes, too. She was pretty enough to be in the pictures herself, with deep red hair and a great shape. The director had been talking to her earlier, and Mollina remembered the way the woman just smiled him away, as if he were a fool. The director played cards at night with her husband, so she could treat him any way she wanted, apparently.

The Mayor’s wife asked, “How do you do that?”

Mollina was startled by the question. “The bit? There’s no trick to it, if that’s what you mean.”

“Really?”

Mollina nodded. When you’re not a looker, you develop skills. Mollina’s main talents were bloody mindedness and a high tolerance for pain. Sometimes, to be a success, all you had to do was show up.

“But you’re just a girl.”

“I’m twenty ma’am. Old enough.”

The Mayor’s wife smiled. “Well said.”

Mollina could tell the woman was thinking about her own youth and what she may or may not have accomplished by the age of twenty. “You’re Mrs. Skinner, right? You own this town. I’m Moll.” She held out her hand.

Rebekah Skinner flushed a little. “We don’t own the town, but my husband is the Mayor.”

“But you live here, in a ghost town.”

“Don’t let the Mayor hear you say that. He’ll write a letter. Centenary isn’t much older than you are, you know. It just looks ancient and empty. It’s still our home,” said Mrs. Skinner. “We weren’t tied to the mine the way others were. He was an attorney.”

“And now he’s the Mayor.”

“Yes,” Becky sighed. “That’s what it says above the door of his office.”

The women watched the carpenter pry away S-A-L-O-O-N from above the arched doorway of the Opera House. The chipped gilt letters were growing shabbier with each film. He tossed them into his wheelbarrow, and then sorted through a selection of crucifixes and statuettes painted with high contrast colors.

Mollina asked, “Doesn’t it get lonesome, ma’am? Out here all alone?”

“Not at all,” said Becky. “The Valley is full of spirits.”

The girl actor knew what the lady meant. It seemed like everybody was talking with the dead lately. She made her apologies and hopped off the barrel, explaining that she had another scene coming up, ironically as the farmer’s wife’s ghost. The director wanted a spectacular finale in which the ghost would visit the villain while he prayed in church. Mollina would be strung up so it looked like she was floating in air, but that wasn’t the dangerous part. The dangerous part was that the hems of her skirt and petticoat would be on fire.

Mrs. Skinner asked, “Don’t they ever let you wear anything pretty?”

Mollina Grease laughed out loud. “Wouldn’t matter if they did.”

* * *

Over the next three days, young Mollina was dragged, shot, and beaten. She was also conveyed by every means of transport plausible within the historical margin of the film, provided that margin allowed for thirty years on either side of the Spanish American War. She drove a car, a tractor, and a German motorbike. She also rode several horses, a drunk cow, and a burro. Then for good measure, she was subjected to the elements—drowned, dangled, burned, and buried alive. It would seem that the farmer’s wife was the most unfortunate woman in the Old West. Sometime during the last day of filming, the director decided he was making a comedy, so he ordered up a dancing dress for Mollina to wear. The farmer’s wife was to succumb to temptation; she would become a sporting gal.

Becky Skinner found Mollina inside the converted Opera House, standing amongst cables and planks and arc lights while another woman measured her boyish dimensions and shook her head with dismay every time she jotted down a number. Mollina was in her underwear for everyone to see, but no one seemed to care. Becky had heard this was common among show folk, that the conditions under which they worked did not allow for modesty of any kind. Still, the girl actor looked very vulnerable in her dingy pantalets and camisole.

The inside of the Opera House had been partially stripped of its furnishings before Marcus saved it from further vandalism, but when the motion picture crews arrived they removed the rest of its interior fixtures, leaving only the stage intact. Two men from the crew rolled in a monstrous piece of furniture that made the floor vibrate; it was a kind of sideboard with golden feathers and leaves painted along the sides. When they situated it in front of an equally long mirror, Becky understood that it was supposed to be the saloon bar. Ridiculous. It looked more like the Pope’s coffin.

She approached Mollina. The girl was almost naked in front of people who didn’t care. Mollina crossed her arms over her chest, and the seamstress pulled them back down again. She made the girl step inside a corset and pull it up for size. It could have wrapped around her twice. The seamstress clucked.