Chapter Three #4
“You look like you was born in Mrs. Astor’s backyard,” Royal commented.
“Or lived there, and you would’ve if your brother had his way.
But this is a damned uncomfortable getup for me.
No wonder you came home after school back East. When I think those poor folks have got to wear suchlike everyday…
You sure this is a good idea? I’m not so mad on seeing The Corsairs anyhow. Never heard of it.”
“It’s got costumes and girls in tights, what more do you want, Shakespeare?” Gray answered absently, looking around the ornate theater with something very like love.
It was an enormous place, as big as any of the playhouses he’d been to in the East. It had a raked orchestra made up of ornate plush seats, two gilded boxes at either end of the great stage, and a series of vivid murals of the muses on every high and gilt-edged wall; great golden pillars with paint-embroidered margins upheld the horseshoe balcony, and the closed curtains were rich and voluminous swags of cream and gold, the kind that promised to open up on a wonderland that would fit such a theater.
“Well, yeah, Shakespeare wouldn’t be too poor a notion,” Royal said, putting his finger inside his collar again in the hopes that it would save at least what remained of the tender skin on his neck from being scraped off.
“Too bad,” Gray said without a trace of sympathy. “Nothing like that’s playing tonight. Come on, we’ll get you seated in the box and you’ll feel better.”
“Feel better?” Royal asked incredulously once he’d taken his seat and discovered that he could be looked on by the audience as well as those onstage. “Damn, Gray, this is…this is…”
“Excellent,” Gray said, his eyes sparkling in the reflected footlights.
“Or at least it will be when the lights go down. You can see everything onstage clear from here. No chance of thinking some girl’s a beauty and then finding out, once you’ve arranged to buy her dinner—and everything else she’s offering—that the face you loved is back in her dressing room. ”
“Now lookie here,” Royal said, forgetting, in his chagrin, his self-consciousness at being in new clothes and on plain view in front of hundreds of strangers, “I think I’ve about had it.
Gray. I allowed I could use a break from work.
I came to Denver and to that fancy hotel, and put these dude clothes on because I like a good play, and if you said a man’s got to dress like a fool to get in, well, I could. And I did, didn’t I?”
Gray smiled at his companion. There was nothing wrong with Royal’s new clothes; his tight black frock coat and trousers were in the latest style, his shirt was white, and his waistcoat nicely embroidered with gold leaves.
His hair was combed back and ruthlessly subdued with macassar oil.
He looked very well, in fact. But even so, he looked out of place, and Gray had to admit his long-boned body looked even better in his usual flannel shirt and denims.
“But if you’re trying to make me think I can just take my pick of the actresses I’m going to see tonight,” Royal went on, “well, I think you been out riding without a hat too long, friend.”
“That’s what I said the first time I was taken to the theater by someone who knew the ropes.
And that someone was my brother,” Gray said with a reminiscent smile.
“But that’s just the plain truth. Of course, times have changed.
Not every girl is willing anymore. Some are married and some have other gentlemen, and one in a million has other ways to have some extra fun and make some extra cash.
And one in two million, as my brother found out,” he said with a quirked smile, “hasn’t got the inclination.
But that’s the way of it, Royal. You’ll see.
So far as the clothes go—well, they go a long way, because there’s not an actress here who’d stop to so much as have a chat with a cow-puncher, and that’s another fact. ”
“You’re talking about more than a chat,” Royal said on a sigh, discovering that if he leaned back and sat on the edge of his spine, he could stretch his long legs out far enough for something close to comfort.
“If that’s it, I don’t see why we just don’t go to a parlor house, and skip this whole show.
The theater’s for watching, and a…well. Lucky said there’s some beauties in Mattie Silk’s parlor house here in town,” Royal said in a low gruff voice, his color rising.
“Pretty ones and with good manners, too. And Jennie Rogers has got a house of mirrors, he said. Not that I’m keen on seeing myself, but, damn.
Gray, the girls there are supposed to be like real ladies, too.
So why fool around pretending to court a girl, taking her to dinner and all, when all you want’s down the street for less trouble and more honest, at that. ”
Gray’s clear blue eyes grew dark. “Because,” he said, “the play’s the thing.
Fantasy makes it better. Listen, Royal, if you want to go to Mattie Silk’s or Jennie Rogers’, fine.
But I won’t go with you. Because no matter how ‘ladylike’ the girls are there, they’re only whores.
You’d be doing just the same thing you’d be doing with one of the girls from a hog ranch. ”
Royal winced. The hog ranches were houses set up outside of remote army camps, where the oldest, ugliest, washed-up prostitutes plied their trade, because the men they serviced hadn’t any other choice.
But Gray frowned for a different reason, it was a fair question and deserved a more thoughtful answer than the one he’d given.
He considered it. The first actress he’d known had also been the first woman he’d known, for all his fantasies, he’d been uncomfortably chaste until he’d come to New York when he was eighteen.
Although he’d been considered a handsome youth, women were scarce at home, good ones were unobtainable, except in marriage, and bad ones too obviously available to any man willing to wait in line at their cribs and parlor houses.
He’d been a great romantic, as well as a fantasist, then.
Ada had been an actress, and a jolly girl, as easygoing in bed as she’d seemed on the stage, and being his age, they’d seemed to have a lot in common aside from their sport.
She’d been a good teacher, never commenting on his inexperience, and he’d liked her as much for that as for the experience she’d given him.
There’d been other actresses after her, but none he remembered—not only with such fondness—but at all.
But he’d finally come to know the other kind of woman a man could buy, as well.
When he’d come back home to Wyoming Territory on school vacation, he’d been restless.
Now that he knew what he was missing, it was harder than when he’d only dreamed of it through illustrations in his Police Gazette.
One night his need had sent him to a parlor house in town.
He’d been astonished to find the experience better than pleasant, much more than he’d expected.
And all because he’d found a shy, dark-haired little beauty named Lita.
She’d been so quiet and gentle, he’d have been content to merely hold her hand, but he’d paid for a great deal more.
And she had supplied it. For the rest of the summer, he’d come to town once a week, always to see her, only her.
He refused to think of how she passed the week without him, he passed his, thinking of her: of the pleasures she offered so shyly, of her sweet smiles, of her sudden, helpless look of rapture when she was in his arms. She confessed her father had sold her into her trade.
Gray had lavish fantasies of taking her away from it, at first. At last, he’d decided that he had to.
Even if it meant defying his brother and not finishing school, he couldn’t leave her to her cruel fate.
He confided in old Rusty, a ranch hand he’d known for years.
Rusty didn’t even try to discourage him, so afterward, he decided it was Rusty who’d arranged it.
It hardly mattered, he’d needed his eyes opened, however painful the surgery.
Because when he came to visit Lita the following week, the madam told him to go on up, she was waiting for him.
And when he opened the door, he saw her at work with two strange drifters.
Both of them at the same time. And the worst part of it, and there were so many bad parts he couldn’t sort them out for months after, was that she’d been wearing that same helpless look of rapture he’d loved, for them.
“The difference is…” Gray said softly now, speaking again at last, “I guess the biggest difference is that an actress can say no if she wants to. And you know it.”
“Oh,” Royal said, considering it, learning almost as much from Gray’s grave face as he did from his words. “Then okay. You’re right. I’m just a simple man, Gray. Not like you. But it’s a big difference all right.”
“Well,” Gray said a little sadly, “not really big enough. But it’ll have to do.”