‘It will be scorching,’ she said. Tucking the pillow under her arm, she turned to fulfill her duties. As she ducked behind the beaded curtain separating the lobby from the kitchen and boilers, I noticed a sliver of her dress was stuck between her buttocks. She removed this with a single dainty tug—a thoughtless, automatic action on her part, but I felt a great fortune to have witnessed it and began whistling a wild, snappy tune.
I left the hotel, searching distractedly for a chemist’s or a doctor’s, but found myself focusing mainly on the subject of women, and love. I had never been with a woman for longer than a night, and they had always been whores. And while throughout each of these speedy encounters I tried to maintain a friendliness with the women, I knew in my heart it was false, and afterward always felt remote and caved in. I had in the last year or so given up whores entirely, thinking it best to go without rather than pantomime human closeness; and though it was unrealistic for a man in my position to be thinking such thoughts, I could not help myself: I saw my bulky person in the windows of the passing storefronts and wondered, When will that man there find himself to be loved?
I located the chemist’s and purchased a small bottle of morphine. Returning to the hotel, I met with the woman clomping down the stairs. She held a tin tub under her arm and her side was damp with bathwater. She paused a moment; I thought she wished to greet me and I took off my hat, offering my version of a smile. But now I saw she was breathing heavily and harboring some bitterness or unhappy feelings. When I asked her what was the matter she declared, and loudly, that my brother was a heathen, and that the hottest waters of hell would not cleanse him. I asked what he had done but she did not answer, she only pushed past me into the lobby. I heard the sound of her beaded curtains, and the crash of the tub hitting a wall. Now I stood awhile on the stairs, listening to the hotel sounds floating all around, the invisible footsteps and creakings, doors opening and closing, muffled laughter and talking, a baby crying. I noticed an unlit candle on the stairwell wall before me. I lit it, then blew out the match, propping this against the candle. Looking to the top of the stairs, I saw that my and Charlie’s door was ajar; as I approached I was surprised to find him speaking, and speaking to me, though for all he knew I was not there. He was speaking aloud in the bathtub, a habit he had picked up in childhood. I snuck to the door and listened:
‘But I am the lead man. Yes. Well, I am. You? You cannot lead your horse without assistance. Also you are sickly. Yes, you are. You invite sickness and worry. If you were not a blood relative I would have kept you back a long time ago. In fact the Commodore asked me to do just this, but I said no. He admired my faithfulness. It seems I cannot lose with him. “Faith will be repaid with faith,” he said. He has faith in me. Yes, he does, brother. There you go, laugh. You laugh at everything. But I ask you this question, and it is a serious one. Who do you know that has faith in you?’
He paused to dunk and scrub his body. I knocked upon the door as I opened it, stamping my feet ridiculously and clearing my throat. ‘Charlie,’ I called out. ‘I have your medicine with me.’ I puffed myself up to make my voice sound natural but my tone reflected the hurt I had suffered by the unkind words of my brother. When I entered the bathroom he was leaning halfway out of the tub, his body bright red from the waist down as though he were wearing pants. He was retching into a spittoon and I watched his sides spasming as he pushed out his poison bile. Holding up a finger and gasping, he said, ‘Don’t go anywhere.’ He continued his retching and I pulled up a chair to sit beside him. My knees were shaking and I wished, impossibly, I had never heard his speech. Finally I decided I could not stay in the room with him. I stood and laid the morphine on the chair, pointing to the door as though some pressing task awaited me on the other side. He did not notice my leaving, I do not think, preoccupied as he was with his vomiting and unwellness.
Chapter 16
I had nowhere to go, and did not wish to be seen by anyone for fear they would recognize my sadness, and so for several minutes I simply stood in the hall, shifting my weight and breathing and attempting to clear my mind of every recognizable thought. I noticed the candle I had lit was once again out. I assumed a draft had snuffed the flame but on closer inspection I saw my match was gone; I repeated my previous action of lighting the wick and propping the spent match against the candle in its black metal holder. I had the sensation of conversing, with whom I did not know, likely the hotel woman. Might I leave her a secret note? But I had no paper or ink and at any rate what would I say to her? Dear Miss, I wish you would wash your face and be nice to me. I have money. Do you want it? I never know what to do with it.
I sat on the stairs for twenty more minutes before returning to the room. Charlie was sitting on his bed, wearing his new shirt but no pants. He held one of his new boots in his hands, patting and admiring it. He had drunk a third of the morphine and its powers had taken hold; his eyes were sagging at their edges and he looked pleased as a pig on holiday.
‘Headache’s gone, brother?’
‘No, she’s still there, but the medicine makes it so I don’t mind her.’ Flipping the boot to study its interior he said solemnly, ‘The skill and patience involved with the making of this boot humbles me.’
I felt repulsed by Charlie then. ‘You make for a pretty picture.’
His lids were rising and falling like a pair of blinds being lifted and dropped. He shrugged and said, ‘Some days we are stronger . . . than others.’
‘When do you want to get moving?’
Now he spoke with his eyes closed: ‘I cannot travel in this state. Another day in town won’t matter. The woman mentioned a duel in the morning. We will leave just after that.’
‘Whatever you say.’
He opened his eyes to slits. ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re acting differently.’
‘I feel the same as before.’
‘You were listening to me in the bathtub, weren’t you?’ I did not reply and his eyes fully opened: ‘I thought I heard you out there. Here is the fate of the sneak and the eavesdropper.’ Suddenly he doubled over, and a thin column of yellow bile poured from his mouth and onto the floor. His face was dripping when he raised it, his wet lips arched in a devilish smile. ‘I almost vomited in the boot! I was just about to vomit in the boot! Can you imagine how upset I would have been?’
‘I will see you later on,’ I told him.
‘What?’ he said. ‘No, stay here with me. I am not feeling well. I’m sorry if I made you feel badly before. They were just some thoughtless words.’
‘No, I would like to be alone. You drink your morphine and go to sleep.’
I turned for the door but he, either not noticing this or pretending it was not happening, continued to speak to me. ‘There was some type of poison in that brandy, I think.’ He retched in his own mouth. ‘This is the worst I’ve ever felt from alcohol.’
‘I drank the same brandy and I am not poisoned.’
‘You did not drink as much as I did.’
‘There’s no percentage in arguing with a drunkard as per whom should be blamed.’
‘So I’m a drunkard, now.’
‘I’m through with you for the day. I must attend to my stitches and wounds. I will see you later on, brother. I advise you to stay away from the saloon in the meantime.’