The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (24 page)

So I stood and let him undress me, only a little self-conscious about breasts that weren’t as firm and round as they’d once been, skin no longer as smooth and unmarked by the signs of childbirth. If Jesse noticed any of these flaws, he never said, instead lavishing attention on me with eyes and hands and mouth. “Sometimes I think I’m the luckiest man on earth, to have you as my wife,” he said.

I swallowed a knot in my throat and looked away, blinking hard, struck by the understanding that he really meant the words.

Naked at last, I crawled backwards into the bed. Jesse stripped off his trousers, shirt, wool vest and underpants and joined me beneath the sheets. Sun streamed across the room from a window beside the bed, and the rattle of carriage wheels and the shouts of drivers drifted up from the street below. “It feels odd, being in bed in the middle of the day,” I said.

“No one knows we’re here.” He kissed my shoulder and smoothed his hand around the curve of my hip.

“Y
. . .
you don’t think anyone will hear, do you?”

I felt his mouth curve in a smile. “What if they do? We’re a man and wife.” He moved his mouth to the top of my breast. “Nothing we do here is illegal or immoral.” He sucked my nipple into his mouth and I gasped and closed my eyes, surrendering to the pleasure of the moment. Jesse knew my body so well, but today he seemed determined to learn it anew. He took his time exploring every inch of my torso, touching and tasting, gauging my response.

All the tension and worry of the preceding months and weeks melted away in those moments. There were no lawmen hunting Jesse, no angry mobs intent on lynching him, no aliases to remember or lies to keep straight. We were simply a man and a woman in love, taking pleasure in being together.

I ran my hand up and down his back, reveling in the solid reality of him. He was still thin from his ordeal after Northfield, but there was nothing weak about him, the muscles hard beneath taut flesh. He wore a full beard these days, and I liked the way it felt against my bare skin, soft as washed linen, yet tantalizingly masculine.

We came together with heat and fervor, joyous and playful, without the guilt we’d fought as children or the weight of our responsibilities as adults to hamper our pleasure. I shrieked my delight as my climax overtook me, unmindful of being overheard by strangers in neighboring rooms. Jesse shouted his own satisfaction, and we grinned at each other and laughed, collapsing into each other’s arms, still locked together, “two become one” in a way that felt new and whole all over again.

We slept the rest of the afternoon, then changed and went downstairs and around the corner to a restaurant where we dined on broiled steaks and creamed potatoes and delicate white cake with strawberries. Jesse insisted on taking me to an opulent gambling hall, where I sipped mint tea and watched while he played faro. He won and called me his good luck charm. When we returned to the hotel, we made love again, and I fell asleep smiling.

We made our way to the exhibit for Mr. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. “With this astounding invention, a person can be standing in one location and converse with a person hundreds of miles away,” a handsome young man in a blue suit informed the crowd. He picked up the bellflower-shaped earpiece and spoke into the speaking tube. “Hello? Would you please connect me to Mr. Bell’s laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey?”

A moment later, a thin voice sounded from the phone. “Mr. Bell’s laboratory.”

“How do we know that’s really Alexander Bell?” a man in the back of the crowd demanded.

“You can believe me or not, sir,” the young man replied. “But one day, everyone will have one of these in their home. You’ll be able to call your mother across the country or your wife from across town.”

“What if I don’t want to talk to either of them?” the man retorted, and was awarded with a laugh.

“The telephone is important not just as a matter of convenience,” the young man continued. “It will be an invaluable aid to law enforcement agencies and fire departments everywhere. One phone call will send fire brigades rushing to stamp out a blaze before it becomes an inferno. And robberies will be reported before the outlaws responsible have reached the edge of town.”

Jesse turned away, frowning.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as we moved away from the exhibit.

“You heard the man. An instrument like that will make it harder to slip past the sheriff’s deputies and police. It looks simple enough even the most incompetent bank employee could use it.”

I squeezed his arm, but said nothing. I didn’t want to think about bank robberies or lawmen or any of those things ever again. Mr. Howard was an honest citizen, who raced horses and speculated on wheat and corn and never did anything to put himself and his family in danger.

That morning, we also saw the Remington Typographic Machine, which printed words on paper at the touch of a button, and a working ten-foot long model of a steamship produced by the Hamburg-American Packet Company. We listened to mechanical canaries sing as sweetly as any live bird, and enjoyed a concert played on a Steinway Grand piano.

We lunched at the Restaurant of the South, on black-eyed peas that were over-cooked and greens that weren’t cooked enough. “About what I expected of Southern food cooked by Yankees,” Jesse said.

“Never mind,” I said. “Let’s buy ice cream from one of the booths I saw near the fountain.”

We found the ice cream vendor and purchased two dishes. “This may be the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten,” I said as we strolled around the massive Bartholdi Fountain.

“It’s pretty good,” Jesse agreed. “What should we do now?”

“There’s so much to see, it’s a little overwhelming,” I said. “But my feet are tired.”

“Then madam, you should rest.” He took my arm and steered me down the walkway.

“I won’t ride in one of those wheeled chairs,” I protested. “I refuse to be pushed around like an invalid.” The Fair offered wheeled chairs for rent for those who didn’t want to walk the long distances required to see everything.

Jesse didn’t lead me to the chair rentals, but to the depot for the West End Railway, a narrow-gauge train that circumnavigated the park. From our car we had a wonderful view of all the buildings, from the Japanese temple to the Moorish Hall that housed the agricultural exhibit. “No express car on this train,” Jesse observed. “Though I wonder how they transport the payroll, and all the money from the various exhibits.”

I nudged him with my elbow. “What do you care?” I asked. “You’re here on
vacation.
”

He laughed, and I was happy his good mood returned. We left the train at Machinery Hall, and proceeded to an exhibit of 14-inch and 10-inch guns manufactured by the Krupp Company of Germany. My head could have fit inside the barrel of the first gun, and the ball it fired was the size of an apple. “I don’t like it,” Jesse said, backing away from the weapon as if he expected it to swing around at any moment and fix on him. “A bullet in a pistol or rifle kills one man at a time. A weapon like this could take out a dozen in one blow.”

“This is the future of war,” a stern-looking man with a thick accent informed him.

“Then I don’t like your picture of the future,” Jesse barked.

From here we moved to a display that cheered him some: Tiffany and Company Jewelers had a booth filled with glittering diamonds, shining platinum and gleaming gold. Jesse studied a case full of men’s signet rings and women’s wedding bands. A gentleman in formal dress, noticing our interest, approached. “All of the items on display are for sale,” he said. “If you would like to examine something more closely, I could open the case for you.”

Jesse studied the case a moment longer, then glanced at the armed guards stationed nearby. “No thanks,” he said. “I don’t see anything here that’s worth my time.”

We ate supper at a café near the fairgrounds, and returned to the hotel, where Jesse spent several hours in the billiard room while I wrote letters to “Ben and Fanny” and to Zerelda.

We had saved the foreign exhibits
for the following day. We marveled at the Egyptian mummy and carved ivory from China, and stood amazed in front of a four-thousand-pound block of silver from Mexico. “I’d have hated to be in charge of getting that thing here,” Jesse observed.

We admired stacks of coffee bricks from Liberia, and an intricately carved vase from Japan that towered over both of us.

“We should travel more,” Jesse declared. “Maybe take a ship overseas and tour Europe.”

“I might like that,” I said. “As long as Tim could go with us.”

“I wonder what Buck would think of the idea? I bet they’ve never heard of bank robbers over in France and Italy.”

Though I wanted to believe he meant he and Frank could easily go unrecognized in Europe, I half feared he was toying with the idea of introducing the rest of the world to the James brothers’ brand of outlawry.

I stifled a sigh. No matter how much I wanted to believe that here, in this crowd of people, Jesse was like any other tourist, I knew that was impossible. Jesse James, by any name, would never be ordinary. Outside forces and his very nature had shaped a man who saw the world from a different point of view from the rest of us.

And wasn’t that one of the reasons I loved him—because he wasn’t an ordinary man? As his wife, I could imagine myself exceptional also, if only by association.

“What’s that over there?” I directed his attention to a line of people stretching out from an exhibit near the fountain.

“It looks like a giant hand,” he said.

It was indeed a hand, holding a torch, attached to a giant arm. A sign explained this would one day be part of a gigantic statue, depicting Lady Liberty, that would be erected in the harbor of New York City, a gift to the United States from France.

We paid fifty cents to climb up the inside of the massive arm. Emerging on the balcony around the torch, we could see far across the fairgrounds, past the elevated railway and the turrets of the British Building, all the way to the spire of Independence Hall.