Wilde West (2 page)

The creature turned its back to him, its lifted skirt bunched in its right arm. Bending toward the wall, legs apart, head drooping, left forearm braced against the brick, it presented itself.

He reached into the topcoat and found the handle of the knife.

(
NOW NOW NOW!
)

The creature turned its head, slurred over its shoulder, “Do me, honey. Do me.”

(
NOW NOW NOW!
)

He stepped forward, left hand moving for its hair, right hand moving for its throat. And as he did, all the scattered shimmering brightnesses that swam within him—incandescent streamers of mist, fiery reeling stars and comets—merged at once into a single roaring flame that blazed with a hard white insuperable light.

The creature yelped as his fingers snared its hair, and its body stiffened, tried to arch away; and then the knife, a benediction, floated through its throat; and the white flame suddenly flared across the universe; and, scorched, blinded, he himself spurted at exactly the same moment that the creature spurted out the tumult of life it held within.

He caught the body as it slumped, quivering; he supported its limp heaviness as it spattered the ground with its saps. Then, murmuring, whispering, he lowered it gently, carefully, onto its rump. Reverently he drew back its dress and tenderly he laid the folds across its breast, its face.

Still murmuring and whispering, and cooing now, he set to work, his hands busy, the knife hissing.

His hands were no longer cold.

From the Grigsby Archives

February 15, 1882

DEAR BOB
,

Everyone here is well and the children send their love. Little Bob loved his birthday present but Bob I wish that you would not send him toys like that. I gave it to him against my better judgment. If you had not hinted at it in your last letter to him I would have thought seriously of keeping it hidden. I know you did that on purpose Bob. Very clever. I know how unhappy he would be if he did not receive a present from his father. I had my fill of guns while you and I were together Bob and now every time I try to read little Bob runs around the house waving that thing like he was a Comanche and shouting Bang Bang at the top of his lungs. It makes me worry about his future and it is also extremely annoying. And now Sarah wants one too. Do not send her one Bob. I am serious.

Last night I went with Molly Sebastian to Plan's Hall to listen to a lecture by Mr Oscar Wilde the famous English poet and esthete. It was his first visit to San Francisco. He was not like I expected. First of all he was young I guess about twenty five years old. Second he was very tall at least six feet four inches and good looking in a bulky way. Like an overgrown boy. His hair was long almost to his shoulders and he was very dandified in knee britches and stockings. He talked in that “refined” way that Englishmen have that makes you think they know every word that William Shakespeare ever wrote by heart. And maybe Mr Wilde really does.

He was very interesting as he talked about what made up an artistic type of house. Some of what he said made sense but you would need a lot of money to make all the changes he talked about. Wainscoting and such. Only rich people can afford to have good taste I guess. Molly was very taken with him. I think she has a bit of a “crush.” He is giving another lecture there tomorrow night and she wants to go to that one too. He is also going to Denver in March Bob so you will have a chance to see him yourself. I know you are very fond of poetry and art. Right Bob?

I am sorry. I do not want to be mean to you. I guess I am in a bad mood because of the news in all the newspapers today. There was a horrible murder here last night. Some poor woman was killed down by the docks and they say that the murderer must have been a maniac. They say that after he killed her he mutilated her terribly with a knife. Who would do such a thing? The police have no idea who was responsible. I suppose she was “a lady of the evening” but no one deserves to die like that.

I hope you are well. Are you drinking these days? I hope not. I know you are a decent man at heart when you are sober and I only wish for your sake that you would be sober a little more often. I know you do not believe me but maybe if you had been drunk a little bit less we would still be together today. And Bob you are getting to be of an age where you can no longer abuse your body like you have your whole life.

I can just see you reading this and grinning like an old fool while you pour yourself another drink. You are hopeless Bob.

Oh well there is no use crying over spilled milk. You are who you are and I am who I am. Sometimes love just is not enough. I guess we discovered that together.

Please take care of yourself and I hope you will write to me again. I always enjoy hearing from you.

Love,

Clara

S
TATELY AND PLUMP
,
OSCAR FINGAL
O'Flahertie Wills Wilde lightly with the pale tips of spatulate fingers pressed aside the wooden batwing doors and, regally blinking, sailed forward into the gaudy gaslight glare. Banners of blue smoke, cigarette and pipe and cigar, coiled and slowly uncoiled at the ceiling. The crowd droned. A tinny piano hammered. Somewhere, stage right, a woman shrieked: perhaps in laughter.

Along the dark sweep of cherrywood bar, and duplicated in the bright silver sweep of mirror beyond it, a row of Stetsons swiveled. Beneath their brims, eyes widened in surprise or narrowed in puzzlement.

Languidly plucking the cigarette from his lips and exhaling a billow of clove-scented smoke, Oscar paused for a moment, as much to savor the reaction of the crowd as to determine his own.

Pleased. Yes, he was pleased. The huge saloon was packed, a gratifying turnout, every table surrounded by a clutch of cowboys and miners and shopkeepers and giddy gaudy women, all of the men wearing hats and all of them (and some of the women, it seemed) sporting identical handlebar mustaches, like walruses. And at the moment, all of them, men and women both, were gaping at Oscar.

His clothes tonight were subdued, somewhat. No cape, no knee britches. He wore pale yellow patent leather boots, lime green twill trousers, a white silk shirt with a flowing Byronic collar loosely secured by a broad silk cravat whose yellow exactly matched the boots, and the three-quarter-length velveteen dinner jacket he had ordered shortly after he arrived in New York City. He had specified that the jacket be the shade of a lake beneath moonlight; but, as he admitted (although only to himself), its hue more closely resembled the dull gray of a field mouse's rump. Still, it was beautifully cut; and if perfection were in fact an impossible destination, then we must learn to enjoy the achievements which present themselves along the way.

In the boutonniere at the jacket's left lapel was a small red rose. This flower struck a bit of a false note—roses being after all rather vulgar—but Henry had told him that just now there were no lilies to be had in all of Denver. The entire town was lilyless. The undertakers had cornered the market, said Henry. A recent rash of hangings and gunfights. Although perhaps not in that order.

Really, the florists should have been better prepared. Hangings were reportedly a commonplace. And gunfights were evidently the local equivalent of cricket. Certainly, from what Oscar had heard, the earnestness of the players and the zeal of the audience were much the same. But cricket, of course, was far more deadly.

Oscar smiled. Not half bad. He must remember that.

He glanced around. The audience, his no longer, had returned to its cards and bottles and conversation. Time to move along.

He saw the Countess and O'Conner sitting with von Hesse at a small round table on the far side of the room. He took a puff of the cigarette and ambled across the hardwood floor, sauntering around the tables, carefully picking his way over the tawny drifts of sawdust and the occasional dark suspicious stain on the oak planking. (Not all the saloon's patrons understood the purpose of a spittoon, or had any interest in learning it.) Behind him he trailed a most satisfactory wake of murmurs and mutters.

O'Conner raised a glass of whiskey in salute as Oscar approached. Wearing his inevitable rumpled brown suit, an item which would have sent a shudder of horror rippling down Bond Street, the newspaperman sat slouched in one chair with his feet propped upon the rung of another, his left side and left elbow braced against the table. “Hail, O Poet,” he said, and leered. He was drunk, but he had been drunk since joining the lecture tour in San Francisco, over four weeks before; and probably for twenty or thirty years before that. Every day, slowly but relentlessly, he consumed at least a quart of bourbon whiskey. Amazingly, his hands never faltered; he never lost his lucidity, never slurred his words. Perhaps he became bumbling and incomprehensible only when sober. Unlikely that anyone would ever know.

Oscar nodded to him. “O'Conner.” It never hurt to be pleasant to a representative of the press. Particularly when the representative was covering this lecture tour for the
New York Sun
(circulation 220,000).

“Where's your protégé?” asked O'Conner.

“Young Ruddick, you mean?” said Oscar. “I've no idea.”

“Oscair,” breathed the Countess in her voice of smoke and honey, “how adorable you look tonight. I admire very much the cravat. Do you think I should look presentable in that shade of yellow?”

Oscar smiled. “I venture to say, madame, that you should look presentable in whatever you chose to wear.”

“Or chose not to,” said O'Conner, leering over his whiskey glass and interrupting before Oscar had a chance at cleverness himself.

O'Conner's remark was a trifle coarse, but it was apposite. (And also perhaps usable, sometime in the future.) The Countess was undeniably a handsome woman. A rosy complexion, only a few lines at the corners of her hooded blue eyes, thick tumbling ringlets of blond hair untouched by gray (but lightly touched, no doubt, by anoccasional application of cash). She was wearing a dress of black tulle, gathered at theshoulders, sleeveless, plunging dizzily in a décolletage which would have occasioned her arrest almost anywhere in England, and possibly in even a few remote corners of France.

O'Conner had been attempting to seduce her since the tour left San Francisco. The Countess's virtue, such as it was, had apparently remained intact. Oscar suspected that the Countess's virtue, like the mortgage on the chalet she owned in Plaisir, had been several times renegotiated over the years. Still, her sleek white arms demanded admiration, and the alabaster swell of those round white breasts …

Oscar's reverie was broken as von Hesse stood up from the table. His back straight, he made a small stiff formal nod. Somehow the dark gray suit he wore contrived to resemble a military uniform. The effect was heightened by his hair: shiny pink scalp gleamed beneath a close-cropped bristle of white. “Please, Mr. Wilde, you will join us?”

“Delighted,” said Oscar. He pulled back a chair and sat down. Von Hesse sat opposite him, his spine never once veering from the vertical.

Von Hesse smiled his small crisp smile and asked him, “You are, as they say, out on the town tonight? On your own, eh?”

Oscar nodded. “For a bit, yes.” He looked around for an ashtray, saw that the table held only a whiskey bottle and three glasses, and so tapped the ash from his cigarette onto the floor. When in Rome. “Later this evening I'm to pay court to the man who owns the Opera House here. A chap named Tabor. The good Mr. Vail arranged it. Evidently, Tabor's a man who's dug tons of silver out of the ground and converted them into tons of gold.” He inhaled on the cigarette. “Or perhaps it was the other way round. The intricacies of high finance have always escaped me.”

“Silver mines,” said O'Conner, sipping at his whiskey as quite openly he ogled the sweep of aristocratic breast offered by the Countess. “He owns the richest silver mines in Colorado.”

“Ah.”

“He is married?” asked the Countess.