"So," I said, still watching Captain Harper through the shot glass, "you think your sister just got out of the carriage herself?"
"I thought so, but..." Captain Harper broke off and stared at his gloved hands. "But finding Roffcale like that...I don't know, now."
"Why were you holding Roffcale if you didn't think he abducted your sister?"
"I thought she had run off with him." Captain Harper picked up my gin bottle and turned it slowly in his hands. "They were lovers when they were in Good Commons. Edward never knew about that. I wanted to save him from finding out." Captain Harper shook his head. "I figured that if I took Roffcale in, Joan would show up on her own."
"That doesn't seem to have been the case." I held my full shot glass out to Captain Harper.
Captain Harper stared at the glass in my hand, then took it. They say that blue gin can strip paint. He swallowed it like medicine. Then he poured out another shot and pushed the glass over to me. Briefly, the memory of Roffcale's delicate features and the filthy chasm of his belly came to my mind. I took my shot of gin and shoved the glass back to Captain Harper. He filled it slowly, with deliberate care.
"What was done to him was exactly what he'd written about to Joan. I think he really was trying to warn her." He closed his eyes. "God only knows what's happened to her."
"Drink up," I said.
Captain Harper frowned at the glass. "I don't usually drink the hard stuff, you know."
"It gets easier as you go," I assured him.
"I know," Captain Harper replied. "That's why I don't do it often. It gets too easy."
"I'd be the last man to criticize." I warmed to Captain Harper slightly at the thought that he had spent nights swilling drunk on blue gin.
"I suppose so," he replied.
Captain Harper tossed the shot back. Then he rolled the empty shot glass across the table to me.
"I think I might have gotten the wrong impression of you when we first met." I filled the shot glass.
"Oh?" Captain Harper asked.
"I expected that you'd be stiffer," I said.
Captain Harper smirked at my choice of words.
"Mr. Sykes." Captain Harper leaned in closer to me. I could smell the thick scent of ale on his lips. "Don't be taken in by a priest's collar. We in the Inquisition dance with devils more often than most whores in Hells Below."
"Well, if I ever need a partner, perhaps I should look you up, Captain Harper." I swallowed my shot and placed the glass in Harper's gloved hand. He filled the glass, drank, then poured another and placed it in front of me.
"We're already partners of a kind, aren't we, Mr. Sykes?" he asked.
"Of a kind," I agreed.
"Of a kind," he repeated, as if there were some other meaning in the words.
I matched him and he downed another. Steadily, we made our way through the entire bottle. We gave ourselves up to the act of going on. We drank shot after shot of searing gin. Sinking down into drunkenness, the constant rhythm of passing the glass and drinking became our purpose.
When you drink like that, it isn't for pleasure. It's because your thoughts have become diseases. You do it because it's the only easy cure you can find.
Captain Harper moved slowly and carefully, as if his body had become a mechanism that required all his concentration to navigate through the bar. His eyes were hardly open. He leaned against me and moved with my steps as I steadily lead him out of the dark solace of the bar and up into the city streets. The night was wearing thin. I could feel the golden light of the rising sun streaking the horizon with its heat.
Behind us the bar owner peered out between his doors, pretending that he was locking up. He watched to see what business there could be between a Prodigal like me and a man of the Inquisition.
"You know, Captain," I whispered, "staggering drunk down the street with me can't do much for your reputation."
"Fuck em," Captain Harper slurred softly into my ear, then pulled his cap off of my head.
I let him have it back. His breath brushed against the back of my neck. His lips just touched my skin for a moment as he sagged into me. It had been months since I had taken a lover, even for a night. It had been too long, I realized. I sank back into my temptations. Captain Harper didn't seem to care, and at the moment neither did I. By my nature, I am a creature caught in the grip of my desires. At times they make me unwise, but it has never been in me to deny them.
I led Captain Harper back to my rooms and peeled off his black coat and his priest's collar. Slowly, I worked his gloves off, exposing his long fingers. His nails were as pink and glossy as the insides of a seashell. Each was tipped with a perfect white crescent. I kissed the soft skin of his palm. His stainless body was everything my own would never be. I hungered for that perfection.
I slipped Captain Harper's pistol out of its holster and had all that I wanted of Harper that night. I did not worry over the next morning or the lies we muttered as our bodies twined together. For one evening, the gin had cured us of our thoughts—that was enough.
Chapter Four
Old Ink
Roffcale's letters smelled of dried blood and very cheap cologne. I pulled in his scent while my fingertips brushed over the clumsy lines of his reform school script. He was young and passionate. He poured himself into each word with absurd intensity. With every letter he set down, he fell in love and was overwhelmed with rage. His odes to Joan Talbott's beauty were terrible. Roffcale stacked cliche upon cliche until they achieved a staggering tower of artless adoration. Roffcale's miserable poetry acquired poignancy with its absolute conviction. He meant every word.
Roffcale's desperate warnings to Joan were just that: attempts to protect a woman he could not even approach in public. Joan Talbott was from good society and Peter Roffcale was an underage con man with nails as black as any demon's.
I leafed through the pages of his letters, touching the paper where Joan's hands had moved over Roffcale's words.
Roffcale had pressed his palms into the pages to hold them still as he wrote. He had run his fingers under difficult words, checking his spelling. Joan had carefully pulled pages close to hide the contents from anyone else. I felt the faded places where she had run her fingers over his words again and again. Every piece of paper had carried his touch to her. Many of his letters were stained with a pale pink tint where Joan had pressed her lips to his closing signature.
The sweetness of them both made me sick and slightly jealous. I searched ahead to the details that Harper had mentioned. Roffcale was more skilled at writing about murder than he was at love poetry. He was familiar with the sight of beaten corpses of whores and cum beggars. He described the bodies in the same simple way that he might have given directions to a bakery.
Her belly was slashed under the ribs and then down to her crotch. That was a mess. All sliced up and the inside pulled out. Lots of pieces of her were missing. Her guts were all spilled out of her. The bastard who did it rooted through her insides like he was looking for hidden treasure. Rose was the third one and I don't want to see it done again. It was ugly work just looking at it. Come back.
I'm begging now. Please come back.