Chapter Five #4
“Like the parakeet Ma Slocum keeps in her parlor?” Gray mused, remembering the amorous bird that everyone who visited Ma Slocum’s café always laughed about.
“I never thought of that!” he said, as though really startled.
“You mean I can never have a blonde again without it meaning I’m loving myself?
I just wish it was as easy and cheap as that, even it if meant I’d go blind and my hands would fall off, like they said in Sunday school,” he muttered, making Royal laugh again.
“But now you’ve gone and scared me,” Gray said.
“Yeah. Could be something in that. I might be better off looking for someone completely different. Uh-huh. Why, there’s sense in that.
Say, someone dark and sultry—someone with white skin and soot-black hair, and big brown eyes?
And smooth, plump, plush lips too, maybe? ”
“Okay.” Royal sighed, “Harper’s Golden Circuit Touring Company it is then.”
No one in the audience could guess that the members of the troupe they were seeing had been raging and fighting only hours earlier.
Greasepaint covered tearstains, and cucumber slices mended puffy eyes, and anyway the lighting in the makeshift theater was so bad, they had a hard time making out the exact features of any of the performers.
Even if they could have seen them through the thick haze of tobacco smoke.
And no one could guess that the troupe was three persons short tonight—two singers and a dancer having packed and left, in a rage, only an hour before the performance.
But as the singers were men and the dancer rather squatty, just as Kyle Harper had said, the crowd in the saloon theater missed them not at all.
They were too busy laughing at the comedian’s antics.
He was very funny tonight, even to the members of the audience who were soberer than he was, because he had to work off his anger some way, and after liquor, humor was always his way.
It seemed nothing short of a fire in the theater could have stirred the audience after that…
until Little Polly came on the stage and had them all crying as hard as they’d been laughing, because her “Little Eva” died so lingering and blissfully.
None of them had sharp enough eyes to see that she’d been crying long before she knew she had to die.
She’d started before the curtain rose, in fact, like so many others in the troupe.
Because if White’s Hotel was not precisely a dump, as the kindest members of the troupe said, it looked like one after the Windsor.
And after they’d stowed their bags, they’d gone out to set up the theater for the night’s performance.
And watched as their horsecar took them right up to the magnificent Tabor Opera House…
and right on past it. But the blowup hadn’t come until they’d actually got to The Denver Grand Opera Palace and Dance Hall and discovered that was where they were expected to actually perform.
Three hotheads had quit on the spot, not even waiting to hear Kyle’s explanation. The others wished they hadn’t heard it when they did.
“I misrepresent? Me? I never said you were to play at the Denver Tabor, did I?” Kyle asked in an awful voice. “Did I? No, never. I remember what I said exactly. I said, ‘in Denver’ did I not?”
He’d looked around for a denial, but try as they might, not one of them could remember exactly what he’d said, and he began to lose some of his pallor—for though he’d never lost his superior attitude, it seemed there were some things even he couldn’t control—and he’d been shaken by their outcries.
As had everyone within hearing range. They’d sounded, as one old fellow who’d been making his way down the street near the backstage alley where they’d had their confrontation said, as he flattened himself against a wall, “Jes’ like them painted heathens when they made their raid near the Platte, back in ‘65. Only,” he added, when he stopped shaking, “the Sioux wuz a lot quieter.”
“However,” Kyle had commanded, holding up his hand for silence, “I beg you to look at the bill on the door at the Tabor, when you’ve a chance.
Do. Do you know who’s playing there tonight?
Otis Skinner, in Hamlet. Yes. He. Next week?
William Gibson, in The Virginian. My friends, in truth, do you think we belong there?
No,” he said into the sudden silence. “Not now! But we shall! How many houses have we played so far? Three, four? Five? Did you know most tours encompass forty to fifty venues? We shall not do that, no,” he said on a weary smile.
“That I would not do. But we must pay our dues. Be reasonable. Mustn’t we? ”
They’d nodded and filed into the saloon theater in silence.
But it was a diminished troupe, in many ways, that finally took the stage that night.
And tearstained and beaten, they were then staggered to hear how they were received.
Enough so that they, being true performers, became better and better as the night wore on.
By the time the singers did, “Sweet Violets,” the audience was rocking along in their seats to the tune.
They did sweet old songs like “Silver Threads Among the Gold” to quiet them after “Frankie and Johnny” set them to cheering, and tried saucy new ones like “What’s in a Kiss?
” to pick them up again. “Clementine” had them on their feet when it was done, but “Drill, Ye Tarriers Drill,” almost literally brought down the house, the audience was clapping and stomping its feet so madly.
It was a triumph. And, though the company could not know it, a very select audience.
Over three quarters men, and three quarters drunk, they were mostly hardworking miners from the outside of town, in for a night of carousing.
After the show, they’d stagger to The Row, Denver’s famous streets of prostitution, and end their night with a girl—or someone of the female sex who was loosely—and on The Row it would be extremely so—within that category.
The remaining members of the audience were drifters and tourists in from the wilderness.
There were a few prosperous whores, or lucky ones, whose protectors or customers took them to the show.
And a few more who found business in the back of the theater, in several constructions of the word.
The audience also contained two men who were, even though they were casually dressed, so much better dressed than the others that it was only their size, faces, and the suggestion of guns somewhere beneath their fancy vests and frock coats, that ensured the rest of the audience leaving them in the peace and plenty that they’d obviously arrived in.
“Very cultural,” Royal commented, as they waited for the theater to empty. “Never thought I’d have to wear side arms to the theater in Denver.”
“Didn’t have to,” Gray said. “Could have been robbed, if you wanted.”
“True,” Royal said. When they finally reached the aisle, he added, “You want to go backstage?”
“Certainly,” Gray said, though he looked more abstracted than anxious to go there.
“Even though it turned out that your dark…yeah, ‘plump-lipped’ lady ain’t a member of the troupe at all?”
“There’s always one that gets away,” Gray answered lightly.
“Sometimes it’s even better that way. How often does inspiration equal reality?
Maybe some things are better left to the imagination.
Just look at Dante and Laura. Or don’t. Anyway,” he said, smiling again, shrugging off a curious pang of disappointment, “one out of two ain’t bad. And I’ll just bet she’s got a friend.”
Their appearance and the amount of money that changed hands, got them backstage.
A few more coins got them to Miss Lottie’s door.
Then Gray’s smile won her answering one, and his softly voiced request gained her confidence, and the name of the restaurant he invited her to got her instant acceptance.
One way or the other, she thought with pleasure, she would dine at the Windsor hotel tonight.
And maybe, she decided, looking at the fair-haired westerner’s remarkable face and athletic form—just maybe, she decided when she heard he was staying on there, too, she’d stay there herself tonight.
Finding a friend for his long-faced friend was no problem.
Lottie quickly recommended they invite Miss Bliss, from the depleted ranks of the dancers.
She was always ripe for a spree, and fortunately not half as good-looking as Miss Lottie.
Then, the rangy friend of her own escort having secured Miss Bliss’s company, they were all ready to go at last.
Lottie put on her best plumed hat, let the gentleman wrap her crimson silk cape over her white shoulders, and taking his arm, picked up her parasol, her handbag, her gloves, and her skirt’s hem, so she could step out with him into the night.
She needed only one more thing to make her outfit complete. And then turning, she found it.
Hannah’s shocked face was just what Lottie had been looking for. She picked up her head, smiled, and spoke to her disapproving tutor.
“Ta-ta, we’re off to the Windsor hotel for dinner, Hannah, dear,” she trilled in her best, recently learned accents. Then she added, “And don’t wait up fer us, neither!” and then promenaded out the door without a backward glance.
Which was just as well. Because if she had looked back, she’d have seen her escort’s face, as he did.