We Five (30 page)

“More than pickled watermelon rinds, I think.”

Cain laughed. “Today you are being adventurous, whether you like it or not.” To the waiter: “And the dried almonds. Thank you very much.”

As the waiter receded from the room, two young Occidental men retreated on his heel. They had just emerged from one of the curtained rooms. Both were dressed in bright and unconventional colors, the more pavonine of the two fumbling with the tying off of a large purple cravat, which had apparently been removed and was now being restored to his ensemble.

Ruth arched an eyebrow. “Do you come here often?”

“Not as often as some.”

“Well, Mr. Pardlow, your secret is safe with me, as is anything else you may wish to tell me this afternoon—including whatever it is that has necessitated our coming to your hideaway in the first place.”

Cain, who had been distracted by the sudden emergence of the two young men, now purposefully returned his gaze to the woman seated across from him. “I've made a decision, Miss Thrasher—one which obviates the need for the two of us to do or
pretend
to do anything.”

“Have you arranged with a few of your Barbary Coast associates to have certain individuals we know
shanghaied
? I hear there's a lot of that going on these days, and it could prove very advantageous in our present situation.”

Cain hooted with laughter. “Now just what do
you
know about shanghaiing?”

“I
read
, Mr. Pardlow.”

“
That
, Miss Thrasher, is undeniable fact.” Cain settled back in his chair and laced his fingers. “My decision has to do with
me
, Miss Thrasher. I'm leaving San Francisco—moving to New York. I've come to the conclusion that it's only been my fondness for Pat Harrison that's kept me here for so long. But it's sheer lunacy for me to continue to maintain a professional and fraternal association with three men who utterly repel me, all for the, the, the tenuous privilege of sustaining a friendship with Mr. Harrison that is—if I may be honest—one-sided and totally unfulfilling. So I will fly, Miss Thrasher, and I will start my life anew. And you'll be happy to know that I require nothing from you but your valedictory good wishes.”

“Which I'm most happy to give you. But what about Will Holborne's threats to expose you if you don't play out that diabolical game of theirs?”

“If he should follow up with those threats out of some diseased form of vindictiveness—if he, to be more specific, intends to divulge certain of my proclivities to my father's opponents in his race for state senate—then so be it. Dad's given me nothing in all these years that I couldn't have just as easily received in one of the city's most miserly orphanages. ‘Everyone by his own bootstraps!' That's been the precept his four children were expected to live by. So what I now do with my own bootstraps should be of no relevance to him whatsoever. I can't believe it's taken me this long to come to such a simple conclusion.”

“So just as we're becoming good friends, you take yourself three thousand miles away.” Ruth made a comical moue with her mouth. “What arrant inconstancy!”

“Then come with me.”

Ruth's eyes grew big.

“
You
want to write,” he elaborated. “
I
want to write. So let's the two of us move to New York City and see if we can make a go of it.”

Ruth didn't respond. She was thinking the proposition over. She was, in fact, giving it very serious thought while trying with all her might to tame the feeling of sudden, bursting euphoria that accompanied it.

She was thinking of it still when, after saying good-bye to Cain and upon her walk home, she spied her friend Jane and the advertising man named Katz headed in the direction of Higgins' Emporium. Both seemed drunk, and Ruth didn't like at all the way he was touching her in the bright light of day. Not wishing to face the situation by herself, Ruth quickly turned herself around and headed in the opposite direction—hurrying in a near trot to nearby St. Francis Hospital, where Carrie could be found attending her mother.

“Now this place is the real goods!” pronounced Tom as he followed Jane into the Higgins' back parlor. “Homey, but with a personal stamp.
Say
, nice touch: that floor vase with the what's-it grass and the gilded cattails.”

“It's pampas grass. Thank you. My mother was very fond of cattails.”

Tom resumed his impromptu appraisal of the room: “The only thing missing is a wheezy old parlor organ and a lumpy old easy chair for Papa Bear to smoke his pipe and browse the
Examiner.
”

“We
had
an easy chair—
Dad's
easy chair, but we decided to sell it after he died.” Jane trailed her finger through the layer of dust that had collected on the surface of a side table. “Lyle and I don't come into this room very often. There are just too many memories of him in here.”

Tom, ignoring the opening Jane had created for him to say something appositely consolatory about her late father, threw himself with bodily irreverence upon the plush rose-colored upholstery of the sofa that was Jane and her brother's pride—a Victorian construction of beautiful, unblemished mahogany, marked by delicately carved swirls and scrolls. The sofa easily dominated the cramped little room. If Tom had shown even a passing nod of respect for it, Jane would have shared that it had also been her father's pride; indeed, he had bought it at an estate sale and could have slapped a high price tag on it, but preferred, instead, to keep it in the family parlor and out of the showroom altogether.

Tom stretched out his arms expansively to each side and began to trace the carved curls with lazy fingertips. Then his fingers flexed themselves into an unambiguous “come hither” gesture. Though she felt flattered to be so keenly beckoned, Jane didn't budge from her spot. Because this was the most advantageous place from which to fully absorb the picture put before her: the handsome Tom Katz, guest in her very own home, laughing and lounging in complacent manhood, his expression of desire for her careless and unambiguous, his legs spread ridiculously apart as men are prone to do when they wish to make statements about themselves which cannot be said aloud.

“Should I put on the percolator?” asked Jane. “My head is spinning from the wine. Yours is too, I'm sure.”

“Damn the coffee! It isn't coffee I want. It's you. Come sit in my lap.”

Jane sniggered in an unintended parody of a coquette. This response to Tom's request made her seem both girlish and absolutely ridiculous, for she
wasn't
a girl, nor was she some blushing geisha. “Your lap? No, Mr. Katz, I think not.”

“Then come sit
next
to me.” Tom patted the cushion and slid to one side to make a little more room for her.

“I'll do
that
, but only if you promise to be a gentleman.”

“What a bughouse proposition!” remonstrated Katz. “I will do no such thing! Because it isn't a gentleman you want right now, Jane. It's
me.
And I want
you
, so let's end all the pussyfooting and get down to cases.”

Jane took a tentative step toward the sofa. “I wouldn't know how to get down to cases if I tried.”

“Have you never even been kissed?”

Jane shook her head.

“Then let me redress that egregious wrong right at the outset.” Katz reached out in a move that was both imperiously demanding and somewhat suggestive of the clawing “gimme-gimme” of a spoiled, importunate child.

Jane, overcome by his hungry attention, took the necessary steps to place herself directly before him. He responded by depositing her ham-handedly into his lap.

“I will not—” Jane squirmed, scarcely able to get out the words. “I will
not
let you take the kind of brazen ad—advantage of me that your friend Mr. Castle took with Miss Barton last week.”

Tom looked up at Jane, stretching his neck to meet her eyes because of how tall she sat upon his thighs. “What the deuce are you talking about? At Golden Gate Park?”

“Yes, at Golden Gate Park. In the Japanese gardens.”

“None of this rings a bell.”

“He didn't tell you? I'd assumed he would have bragged about it all over town.”

“Honest, I don't know a thing about it,” lied Tom with a look of feigned conviction.

Jane rolled her eyes, her own look one of feigned petulance. “Well, I'm certainly not going to give you all the contemptible details. Suffice it to say, your friend Jerry Castle was an absolute orangutan, and that isn't being very kind to orangutans.”

“Well, that does sum the duck up perfectly.” Tom pointed to the space next to him, and Jane took her cue to remove herself from his lap.

However, once detached from him, reattachment in a different manner was quickly achieved, as Tom pushed her backward into the curve of the sofa. To anyone in casual, slightly squinting observance of this picture it would look as if the two were being devoured by a great puckered roseate mouth. Jane could feel his weight upon her, his hot breath upon her neck.

“When I look at you,” he cooed softly, his lips close to her ear, “I see a woman unlike any I've ever met.”

“In what way do you mean?” said Jane, pushing the heels of her palms ever so slightly against his chest to signal her need for breathing room.

“So many
different
ways.”

Jane reached up and, surprising herself with her boldness, began to thread her fingers through his tousled hair.

“But one way most especially. You're a woman who is needful of something she's never experienced before, or more than likely will ever experience again.”

Jane now permitted her maundering fingers to move down his temples to his cheeks, to caress each with lambent fingertips. Then after pronating her wrists with the balletic litheness of the sylphic romance-novel heroine whom she imagined herself at this moment to be, she tenderly stroked his face with the backs of her hands. “You've misspoken, Tom. You mean ‘more than likely experience' with any other man but
you
.” She smiled at the thought that was forming inside her still cloudy head. “Because once you are mine and I am yours, I intend to be faithful and true—to never seek intimacy with anyone else.”

“Nicely put, Jane, but that isn't what I meant at all.” Tom caught Jane's right hand and brought it to his lips.

He kissed her knuckles. She closed her eyes in silent rapture, but then just as suddenly opened them and asked him point-blank: “What
do
you mean?” Her look now registered undisguised confusion.

“That I have no intention of spending the rest of my life with you.”

“I don't understand.”

“It isn't difficult. You are, as I've often said, a very bright girl. Probably the smartest of your set. Smart enough to know there'd be nothing dottier for me to do than to be married to you for even ten minutes, let alone for the remainder of my days. Posi
tor
ily bug-house.”

Jane wanted up. Tom released his hold on her. She slipped out from under him and sat straight up and patted her pompadour back into place and made adjustments to her calico skirt and blue linen blouse (both purchased from Pemberton, Day & Co. with her shopgirl discount, though it still took a bite out of her small salary). Finally, she said between pursed, angry lips, “Is this the person you become when you drink, Mr. Katz? A repellent one-night roué?”

“I sobered up a good while ago.”

“Then you'll have no trouble understanding me clearly when I say that it's time for you to go. If your pursuit of me has only been for the purpose of a single night of debauched conquest, which you'll either conveniently deny any memory of to your friends or, or blame on all those Manhattan cocktails we had at the Fatted Pig, then let me serve notice here and now: I won't go along with even a minute more of it.”

Calmly: “You'll go along with it.”

“What did I just say?”

Tom got up from the sofa. “Get up.”

Jane remained seated on the sofa.

“Get up. I want to show you something.” Jane rose slowly, warily. Tom reached out and took Jane—not by the hand, but by the wrist, as one leads a recalcitrant child who will not come otherwise—over to the mirror on the wall. He positioned her before it. “Take a good look at yourself. What do you see?”

Jane looked at her reflection in the glass. The gaslight was low. She hadn't bothered to turn up the flame when they'd first entered the room, thinking that Tom would appreciate the romantic mood created by the muted lighting. Now he did the unthinkable. He reached over and turned up the jet himself—all the way to its limit. It flared obscenely, flooding the room with harsh bright light. In that unforgiving illumination, every flawed feature which lived upon Jane's face stood out in exaggerated relief: the “horsey” nose, eye sockets set so deeply into her face that the dark brown of her globes seemed to disappear almost entirely in their retreat, a chin that jutted protuberantly like a witch's in a children's fairy story.

“That's what I look like,” said Jane to herself, mesmerized by the starkness of the image before her. “A witch.”

Yet Tom was not content with her only
thinking
about the way she looked. “Say what you see,” he said, his voice steely, cold. “It's just you and me. No one but us is listening.”

“I see a—a hideous woman.”

Tom shook his head. “I wouldn't use the word ‘hideous.' That's not being very kind to yourself, now, is it? I would use the less punishing word, ‘unattractive.' But hideous, or unattractive, or just plain ugly or just plain
plain
, it's all the same, isn't it?” Tom gestured with a casual hand toward the image in the mirror. “No man wants to make love to a woman who looks like this.”