Coming Up Roses (15 page)

She was as prickly as a poison-ivy rash, and
he didn’t dare leap into anything with her. It had been hard enough
getting her to visit the fair with him in the first place.

Then again . . . H.L.’s frown tipped up into
a self-satisfied smirk. He’d really done a pretty good job in
softening her up, he told himself. She was so interested in the
Exposition now, she probably wouldn’t balk at talking to him about
other things as well.

God, he was good at his job. He was
right up there at the top, in fact. And this series of articles
about Rose Ellen Gilhooley was going to make him a household name
across the entire nation. H.L. envisioned his Columbian Exposition
articles being picked up by newspapers from Maine to California.
The
New York Times
,
even!

With visions of fame and fortune
dancing in his head, and mental images of himself covering
earth-shaking events—wars, famines, floods, and fires sprang to
mind—H.L. lifted his feet from his desk, stood up, stretched, bade
his few remaining colleagues a cheery good-night, and sauntered out
of the
Globe
’s
offices.

# # #

“
I’m not sure,” Annie told
Rose.

The Wild West was over for the night. Both
women had been cheered and applauded lustily by a
standing-room-only crowd. Rose didn’t know about Annie, but she was
bushed. It had been a busy day, and an exciting one. As soon as
H.L. May had walked her back to the Wild West encampment after
their daylight Ferris Wheel ride, Rose had written down the words
for which she wanted definitions, wishing as she did so that she
knew how to spell them.

“
I have a dictionary packed in one of
my trunks.” Annie, still garbed in her costume, the bosom of which
bristled with award medals, ribbons, rosettes, and all manner of
prizes won in sharpshooting competitions, stood in the middle of
the tent she shared with Frank and tapped her chin with a
finger.

“
I’ll be happy to get it, if you know
which one it’s in,” Rose offered. George snoozed peacefully on the
blanket Annie had embroidered for him. Sometimes Rose wished she
were a pampered poodle. Life was much easier for pets than for
their owners. She didn’t want to face H.L. May again until she knew
for sure what he’d said to her today. She had a fairly good memory,
and had stored sentences in her head rather the way she’d seen
books stored on library shelves in some of the big cities she’d
visited.

The one she was most curious about
was
euphemism
, and why “Would
you like to powder your nose?” could be considered one. It seemed
like a straightforward-enough question to her, yet H.L. May claimed
it hadn’t been. Rose, who loved stories and would dearly like to be
able to read them better by herself, didn’t like not understanding
things.

“
Oh, no, you needn’t do that,” Annie
said. “I’m only trying to recollect which trunk it might be in.”
She snapped her fingers. “Oh, yes! I remember now

Rose watched her dart over to a corner of the
roomy tent, where two trunks were stacked in order to provide the
Butlers with a writing surface. Annie flung the top trunk down with
a clunk, and opened the bottom one. Glancing over her shoulder at
Rose, she said, “We put the empty one on top for this very
purpose.”

For the purpose of flinging it aside? Rose,
tired after a full day, didn’t ask. “Is it in there?”

“
Yes!” Annie lifted a heavy
leather-bound volume. “As you know, I’ve tried hard to better my
reading skills, too, just as you’re doing now.”

Rose nodded. Yes, indeed, she did know
that. It’s one of the many things about Annie that made them such
good friends. “I’m not sure how to spell the first word,” she
admitted. “It’s
euphemism
.
Maybe it starts with a
U
?”

“
Let me see.” Sitting on the trunk
she’d tossed on the floor, Annie thumbed through the well-used
book. “Would it be a
U
and
an
F
? Or a
U
and a
P-H
?”

“
You’re asking me?” Rose walked over
and sat beside Annie. She was beginning to feel stupid again.
Or—Maybe stupid wasn’t it. Maybe she was only feeling as though she
were at a disadvantage. Both conditions were uncomfortable, but
being at a disadvantage didn’t sound so permanent as did being
stupid. It also felt a tiny bit better to think of herself as
disadvantaged rather than stupid. Besides that, it was the
truth.

“
I don’t see anything that
begins
U-F
,” Annie muttered,
following the words in the book with her forefinger. “Here’s
Ugrian
.”

“
What?”

“
Ugrian
. It’s
some kind of Hungarian, it says here. Or a Hungarian is some kind
of Ugrian.”

“
Well, that doesn’t help us with
euphemism
.”

“
No. Let me look up
U-P-H
and see what happens.” She flipped some
more pages. “Hmmm.
Upheaval, uphill,
uphold, upholster
. No
euphemism
.”

Rose sighed, feeling discouraged. “Why does
he use words like that, I wonder?”

With a shrug, Annie shuffled back through a
big hunk of the dictionary. “Probably because he can, I reckon.
People who like words use them a lot. Look at the colonel.”

“
That’s true. But I usually understand
the words he uses.”

“
But that’s only because you and he
live and work in the same environment. Don’t forget that words are
Mr. May’s livelihood. He probably knows a whole lot of
them.”

“
True.” Rose dropped her chin into her
cupped hands, resting her elbows on her thighs. “Are there any more
choices. If it doesn’t start with a
U-F
or a
U-P-H
, what’s left?”

“
Let me think.”

Annie thought as Rose ruminated on how
uncomfortable it could be to hang out with someone who had a grand
education when she had no education at all. She suspected she
wouldn’t mind so much if she didn’t care so much, but she did care.
And she didn’t even know why. After all, H.L. May was so far out of
her orbit as to belong to another solar system. She sniffed,
thinking at least she knew what the solar system was. Thanks to
Annie and a book she’d had her read aloud to her a couple of years
ago.

It was depressing to know that if Rose hadn’t
met Annie, she’d be even more of an uneducated blockhead than she
was. She wondered if H.L. May would have wanted to interview her
six years ago, when she first joined the Wild West. The mere
thought of having him see her as she was then made her shudder.

“
I have it!”

Startled, Rose cried out, “What? What do you
have?”

Annie began flipping quickly through the
dictionary. “I remember when I first met Frank. He’s Irish, you
know, and a Catholic, and it’s the first time I’d ever heard of the
holy Eucharist.”

“
The what?” Rose had never heard of it
until this minute.

“
Never mind. But the point is that it
begins
E-U
. Maybe
euphemism
begins with an
E-U
, too, and doesn’t have an
F
in it at all.”

Rose blinked at her friend. “Why would
a word that sounds like it begins with a
U
begin with an
E
, though?”

“
I don’t know. It’s just the way these
things work sometimes. Language is strange. Ours comes from all
sorts of other, older, antique languages.”

“
It does?” It didn’t seem sportsmanlike
to Rose that the more she learned, the less she knew, but that’s
the way her education seemed to be going at the moment. She clung
to the hope that any education at all was better than none,
however, and didn’t run screaming from the tent.

“
Ah, yes, here we are.” Annie stabbed a
finger at the page. “Oh, here’s
euchre
. I think the colonel and Frank play
euchre sometimes.”

“
I’ve heard of euchre.” This faintly
surprised Rose, who hadn’t believed she had anything at all in
common with those strange words in the English language that began
with
E-U
. “It’s a card game,
isn’t it?”

“
Yes. Oh, look. And here’s a
euphonium
. I knew a gentleman who
played the euphonium once.”

From which statement, Rose presumed a
euphonium was either a musical instrument or another card game. She
didn’t say anything, although she was slightly curious. Most of her
energy was being expended on wondering about
euphemism
at the moment, though. Euphoniums
could just take care of themselves.

Preoccupied, Annie didn’t expound on the
definition of euphonium. After another few seconds, she lifted her
head and beamed at Rose.

“
It’s here!”

“
It is?” Rose beamed back, her heart
swelling as if it had been she who’d discovered Dr. Livingston in
deepest Africa rather than Mr. Stanley. She hoped the rest of the
words she wanted to look up wouldn’t be as difficult to find as
euphemism.

“
Ah,” said Annie, satisfaction lacing
her voice. “I understand now.”

She looked at Rose. “You told me he asked if
you wanted to powder your nose when he really wanted to know if you
needed to use the privy?”

“
Yes, only he called it the comfort
station.”

Annie’s smile was wide.
“
That’s
a euphemism, too, my
dear.”

“
It is?”

“
Yes. Look. It says right here that a
euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive word
for another one. So, when a gentleman wants to know if a lady needs
to use the privy, he’s being polite when he asks if she wants to
powder her nose.”

“
For heaven’s sake.” Rose’s mouth
dropped open at the notion of H.L. May trying to be polite.
“Goodness gracious. I’ll be hanged.”

Annie nodded. “All of those things.” Her
smile faded. “When I met

Mr. May, he didn’t appear to be the type to
mince words—so to speak. Do you suppose he has ulterior motives,
Rose?” Reading the shock on Rose’s face, she took her arm. “I don’t
want to alarm you, Rose, but he is a man, after all, and you know
what men are.”

“
Well . . . Actually, I’m not sure I
do.” Rose shrugged self-deprecatingly. “I don’t have much
experience, you know.”

“
I know, dear.” Annie patted her knee.
“Just be careful. He’s a handsome devil, and there aren’t too many
honorable men in the world anymore, particularly not handsome
ones.”

Rose lifted her chin. “The colonel is an
honorable man, Annie, and he’s good looking.”

“
Yes,” her friend said dryly. “But it
isn’t the colonel who’s taking you out gallivanting all over the
fair every day, is it?”

“
No. I guess not.”

“
You guess not, indeed. Just watch
yourself, Rose. I’d hate to see you get hurt by a sophisticated
big-city reporter who’s only out for a bit of sport.”

Rose felt herself flush. “Annie!” she
exclaimed in a mortified voice.

“
Please, I know how to take care of
myself.”

Annie heaved a huge sigh. “Yes, yes. I know.
You’ve been taking care of yourself for far too many years already.
But you haven’t been wined and dined by a cultivated scoundrel,
either.” With a gasp, Rose goggled at Annie. “Oh, Annie! Is that
what he is? Do you really think so?”

Apparently recognizing that she’d gone too
far, Annie again patted Rose’s knee. “I’m sorry, dear. I don’t know
that’s what he is. How can I? All I’m saying is that you must guard
yourself. Your feelings, most of all. I know you can keep any man
from taking advantage of you physically, but no matter how
well-known you are in show business, you’re still a very young
woman with little experience of men.”

Seeing the logic in Annie’s worries, Rose
expelled a gust of breath, wishing her best friend wasn’t so right
about her. “I understand, Annie. Truly, I do.”

“
I’m sure of it, Rose.”

Annie gave Rose a sweet smile, and Rose
almost succumbed to the urge to hug her. She missed her mother so
much sometimes. And her brother Freddie. She’d been able to talk to
her mother about almost anything, and the things she didn’t dare
talk to her mother about, she could always talk to Freddie about.
Freddie had protected her, although Rose had always pretended she
didn’t need his help. Still, she knew she could have been in big
trouble a few times if Freddie hadn’t warded off drunken cowboys,
outlaws, gamblers, and other forms of low life often found in and
around Deadwood.

Sometimes, even with Annie and Frank Butler
standing in for her family, she missed her real kin dreadfully.
Often, in fact, if she’d been able to wish herself back home to
Kansas, she’d have done it.

But that wouldn’t be fair to her family. They
needed Rose to be doing exactly what she was doing. One day, Rose
hoped to live with her mother again, whether in Kansas or somewhere
else. Every time she thought about her poor, tired mother, Rose’s
heart ached. She’d given up so many years of her life on the
frontier. According to Freddie and her mother herself, Mrs.
Gilhooley was healthier and stronger these days, thanks to
Rose.