The Gilda Stories (9 page)

Before she could speak Sorel said, “I know that Anthony would be more than pleased to accompany you this evening. To show you some of our city by night. He's a most knowledgeable guide. And he's eager to know more of you, New Orleans, and the path between there and here.”

Gilda was relieved to have been handed a direction. “Yes, that would be wonderful.”

Anthony appeared beside the table and said, “I will meet you outside your door in ten minutes, then.”

Pride returned to Sorel's smile as Anthony made his way through the room and spoke a few instructions to the bartender. “Later, when you return, Anthony will show you to our parlor. We can talk more there. You've spent a few difficult years of adjustment and growth. It's unfortunate that Bird's departure had to come when it did. But none of us chooses our destiny or it wouldn't be called destiny, would it?” He laughed lightly before he continued.

“Now is the time for healing, for resting. Laying claim to the things you know but aren't yet certain of. Yerba Buena is just the place for this.”

“I would say thank you only because that's the propriety I've been taught,” Gilda responded, “but I know it is inadequate.”

“On the contrary, it's ostentatious between us.” Sorel rose and took Gilda's hand as she stood. She hurried from the room, a tension gripping her shoulders and stomach, one she couldn't remember ever having before.

Anthony stood on the stairs below the thick wood outer door of Gilda's room. He seemed surprised at the change in her appearance: she wore a dark, heavily knit sweater and a man's cap. Gilda was comfortable returning to the guise of boyhood that had cloaked her during her travels west, releasing her from the pretenses and constrictions of womanhood.

“Quite a transformation.” Anthony said. “I wondered how you were able to travel unmolested. Let's walk toward the water.”

“I realized before I left home there would be no place for me on the road, alone. Even with my advantages I'd be fair game for every male passerby. It seemed easier to simply keep to myself and let people make presumptions. A funny thing though…,” Gilda began to chuckle softly, “at least four times—four times—on the road, even in a small town just east of here… four times I met others just like me. I mean women dressed like boys. Just going around from place to place trying to live free. I didn't dare say too much, but we recognized each other so easily. Four times!”

Gilda and Anthony laughed out loud together. “One ‘fellow' and I had a great talk. He said he had a friend in California who married a woman and had been living with her for ten years. Said the only thing she missed was wearing perfume. Gave her wife an expensive bottle every birthday!”

Anthony laughed uproariously, grabbed Gilda's hand, and began to run. They moved quickly, leaving their laughter behind hanging in the empty air. When they stopped they stood near the dark docks of the bay. The fog rolled around them, clinging to the warmth of their clothes. They walked silently down streets and through alleys until Anthony saw one with whom he would share. Gilda was unused to searching so openly, among so many people, but followed Anthony's lead, hanging back when he indicated.

A young man stood near the entrance to a lodging house about to light a cigar. Gilda stepped into the shadows; Anthony walked up to him with a match in hand. As he struck the match his gaze caught the man and he walked him backward out of the lamplight. There was no sound, but Gilda was able to peer into the darkness and see through it, observing Anthony in the secret moment of exchange. She looked away toward the lights that sprayed up the hills behind them and waited. Quickly it was done. She heard Anthony speak softly to the man leaning weakly against the wall. Then he lit the match and held it to the dark cheroot still in the man's hand.

The man said “thank you” in a rather thin voice and took a deep inhalation of the smoke. Anthony returned to Gilda's side. Together they walked in silence further along the docks.

“There are many here who enjoy the terror we can bring to others. They live as much for that as for the blood,” he said abruptly.

“Yes, I've heard this but I don't understand it.”

“Human nature remains with us, I'm afraid,” Anthony said. “And if you've really no grounding in this world, no understanding of its wonders and that we are simply one of those mysterious wonders you… some feel they must be gods—or devils.”

“Anthony, you sound so ominous. Like those who told stories of us in New Orleans. To hear some of the tradesmen talk we were ha'nts, or vodun priestesses, or ghouls.”

“Ghouls, perhaps. Some here are certainly that. What else can we call one who thrives on ripping out another's throat, or on deceiving people into ruin or servitude. I would say they are ghouls.”

“Among us? You mean here in this town?” As her question erupted she felt the years of sheltering at Woodard's were in glaring evidence.

“Yes. They can even be found some evenings in the salon sipping champagne with Sorel.”

Gilda gave a start but held back her questions. “On the road I met many more beasts on two legs than on four. My fears were not of wolves or mountain cats. They have an understanding of the reasoning of nature. I found it comforting to share that reasoning that needs no words. But with men there is no reasoning at all sometimes.”

“Then you will understand what I say about human nature being twisted to unreasoning.” Anthony's voice became taut. “There are those who burn like small fires waiting to engulf, to consume whatever comes near them.”

Gilda sensed an urgency in Anthony's words but was distracted by a man sitting alone atop the driver's seat of a carriage. He held the reins of the horses absently, accustomed to hours of waiting for his passengers. She laid her hand on Anthony's arm lightly, then sprinted ahead and silently ascended to the seat beside the nodding man. She listened for his thoughts a moment, catching them up in her own.

She felt reassured. Unlike the man whose blood she had taken earlier, this one was full of thoughts and dreams. The dominant one now was a hope that his master would end his evening early so he could go home to his own wife and children.

Gilda almost beamed with joy at such a simple yet wholly fulfilling desire. She held him in her thoughts and leaned forward, moving his muffler from his neck, and lanced the flesh gently. She took her share of the blood and read his thoughts of his family. She was particularly pleased at the warmth this man held in his heart after the chilling conversation with Anthony. She made the exchange, reinforcing this man's simple pleasure and using another part of her mind to reach out to his master. Gilda found him inside the crowded gambling rooms behind the carriage and implanted in him the sudden need to go home and be with his family. She sealed the opening and gazed at the dozing face. It had a mildly contented smile.

She and Anthony continued their walk, flushed with the warmth of life. They turned northward toward Sorel's and were almost mounting the final hill when Gilda asked, “How long have you known Sorel?”

Anthony was surprised at the directness of the question. Because of the nature of their history, most left the exposition of their lives to be inferred from conversations among themselves rather than inquiry. Few of them would ever ask such a direct question of another, of personal things such as one's last name or birthplace. Such questions made it feel as if one had to, suddenly, be accountable for one's past life.

“Many years.” He felt the deliberately vague response surface involuntarily. He started again. “We have been together for one hundred years. We met in France. They were difficult times. Not unlike those that have just passed here. He brought me into the family, although he had to be cajoled to do so. That is a story for another time. We've lived in many homes in Europe, but it is only here that we've been happy—for fifty years. He talks of going east, but I've convinced him we've much to do here. The east seems steeped in a truly insidious atmosphere just now. To shoot a president—in the back no less!” Anthony shivered as if remembering other atrocities as well before going on. “Bankers and politicians conspire over every dinner table to mortgage farmers into submission. There is a smugness that I'm sure would do nothing but enrage him. And me. I'm afraid we much prefer the rough directness of the ambition we find here.” Anthony took a deep breath, exhilarated by sharing his personal thoughts so openly.

Gilda had not heard such talk of politics since the nights around the kitchen table with the women at Woodard's. In her travels she had spent little time with others and certainly was never in one place long enough to encourage that type of discussion. She understood again how much she had missed the company of others like herself. She was eager as she asked, “Are there many others here of Sorel's family?”

“No, he has been rather cautious in that respect. Which some say is foolish. Many create new family members as if gathering an army around themselves. This is not what we mean by family.”

Gilda thought again of Eleanor but was uncertain what she might ask about her. Anthony sensed her confusion and continued to speak, giving her time to make up her mind.

“Sorel is correct, I think, in believing that to choose someone for your family is a great responsibility. It must be done not simply out of your own need or desire but rather because of a mutual need. We must search ourselves and the other to know if it is really essential. To do otherwise is a grave error, the result of which can only be tragedy. You will meet those who've been brought into this life mistakenly. An impulsive moment of self-interest or vindictiveness or….” He trailed off for a moment. “These are not the families that bring solace or that last in harmony.”

“Do you think you and Sorel will be together forever?”

“Of course. Either in each other's company, as we are now, or separate and in each other's world. One takes on others as family and continually reshapes that meaning—family—but you do not break blood ties. We may not wish to live together at all times, but we will always be with each other.”

“This sounds too sweet, a false comfort to me right now. There have been too many losses, too many broken ties.”

“I know,” Anthony said gravely, “but it is true that the passage of time can bring clarity if we remain open to it. Think of us standing here in the fog now.” He stopped and again took Gilda's hand, looking into her eyes. “If I love Sorel, that is true here standing with you, or back in the salon, or in the past, or in some future time when he and I are side by side, or in the future when we are not side by side. There is nothing to change that. If I'm not by his side and need him, I call out and he is there. If I speak to him now he comes to me. You do it.”

Gilda didn't know what to say. She felt foolish but called out in her mind to Sorel, saying only,
I feel alone.

In return she felt Sorel reach out to her, the warmth of his affection washing over her as if he stood at her side. She heard his answer.
How can this be? I've given you my best man
…
in fact my only man!
Anthony and she laughed again and turned toward home.

Gilda begged off her meeting with Sorel, feeling too full of thoughts. She decided to leave her questions until the next evening after her shopping trip with Eleanor. She lay quietly in her bed, plunged in the solid darkness that was natural to her now. She saw the green eyes with flecks of orange and realized that the hunger she had seen in Eleanor's eyes had not been for the blood. She tried to push the face away from her and think of what she wanted to ask about Bird, but could not. Instead she looked only into the blackness and let it take her in until she slept.

When she awoke the next afternoon she could feel the activity of workers around her preparing for the evening's events. It reminded her of many afternoons at Woodard's. She listened to her body for a bit to see what the hour was, then rose and lit the lamps. Outside she saw the sun stretching west, so she opened the shutters and thick dark-red curtains, letting in the soft light of afternoon. She was just beginning to move about the room and decide what to wear for this adventure when Anthony knocked at her door. “We've prepared a bath in Sorel's parlor and some fresh clothes.”

Gilda luxuriated in the tub but felt uneasy. She was uncertain if it was the discomfort their kind often felt when submerged in water, or the proximity of the bay, but the bath was not as enjoyable as she'd expected. Again she heard the light tap on the door that she'd come to recognize as Anthony's. “Yes?”

“Shall I come and wash your back?” he asked timidly.

Gilda hesitated a moment, not sure what the mix of feelings was.

“Yes.”

He entered shyly and took the large sponge she handed him. “To be alone can be very frightening in a strange place. I didn't want you to be frightened.”

“I was, Anthony. I didn't realize it until you knocked at the door. It reminded me of past times when I've been completely open and uncertain which direction was my true way. And there was no one here to say the soothing things.”

“Then that is why I've come.” He hummed softly as he rubbed the soft oily soap over her back and breasts, down her dark legs and arms. He washed the thickness of her hair as if it were a task he'd done all of his life, rinsing out the soap with fresh water from a bucket more easily then she could have done herself. She stood when the bath was finished, and they laughed like children when Anthony poured another bucket of water over her head. He held open a large towel, and Gilda relaxed comfortably as his arms encircled her and his large hands rubbed the dampness from her body. He seemed to be brother and sister to her at the same time.

“Here are some light things to wear.” There was some hesitation before he continued. “You plan a shopping venture today… with Eleanor.” It stood as a statement rather than a question.