Chapter 27
Boone
The Aces Suite has a proper bed, a private wood stove for heat, a washstand, and more red velvet than the Boston Theatre.
“Anything else I can fetch you boys?” Pearl asks, one hand resting on the brass knob. There is a girlish sweetness to her voice, soured a little by hearing it in a place like this.
“Baths,” Okee says.
She nods. “I’ll see them drawn. There ought to be a tub or two standing empty belowstairs. You want anything with it?”
Okee cuts in before I can. “I hesitate to ask.”
Pearl straightens a touch, as though setting herself to recite a lesson learned by heart.
“Plain bath is ten cents. Copper tub, clean hot water, fresh linen, and a room to yourself. Another dime gets you lavender oil.” Her eyes lift as if she is reading from a slate no one else can see.
“Shoulders worked over is twenty cents. Hair washed is twenty-five.” She hums, counting on her fingers, a small wrinkle worrying her forehead.
“And for two dollars, you can have the Gemini’s Bath of the Gods. ”
Okee raises an eyebrow. “...of the Gods?”
She shakes her head in earnest, red curls slipping loose from her neat little arrangement and bouncing against her cheek. “Oh, it ain’t wicked. It’s just all the things I said before, plus a bottle of whiskey.”
I grin. “Now that is a Christian arrangement.”
“Very well,” she says, solemn as a judge. “Two Baths of the Gods.”
She reaches into the satin purse at her hip, the same shade as her dress, and rustles about inside. Then she pauses, thinks a moment, and says, “Well. I reckon you’re friends of the house now. No charge. Follow me.”
Pearl leads us out and down, past the dark wood, heavy perfume, and lamps turned low into steam and copper.
Down here is hotter, plainer. Damp hangs in the air under the ceiling beams. The floor is scrubbed pine gone dark with wet.
Copper tubs sit in little rooms with a dainty curtain and stacks of towels.
It damn sure ain’t Paris. Ain’t even Wichita, but it’s the finest thing I’ve seen out in these parts.
A woman sits at the end of the hall in a clean white slip.
Her nose is in a book and she leans sleepily against a wall.
Pearl waves an arm at her as she brings us into a room with two tubs set side by side.
The woman jerks up and hides her book on the chair before rushing over to pour steaming hot water into each tub.
I watch her womanly shape in thin cotton underclothes, smell the cleanliness in the air, the whiskey as Pearl pours two glasses, and I can damn near purr.
Before I can crack a smile, a low rumble sounds from Okee’s chest, and he nods.
“Look at this glory,” he mutters. “I’ve been dreaming of hot water for miles.”
“The man upstairs might remember you yet,” I answer, expecting it to earn a smile. Hell, half a crack of one. A nod. At least a look in my direction, but I get nothing.
Pearl fusses around, stopping in front of a folding screen leaned up in the corner, roughly twice her size. She sets her fists on her hips and hums at it, before hugging around it and pulling it with a screech.
“Whoa,” I say, Okee and I both stalking toward her at once to catch her.
Her cheeks flush. “Privacy,” she says with a grunt, dragging it across the boards another few feet before stopping again.
“Please,” Okee says, stopping her.
“Ain’t a thing either of us got that the other one ain’t seen,” I say.
That’s enough to earn a small, nervous laugh from Pearl as he sweeps up the partition and sets it back in the corner. “Well then,” she says, dusting her hands on her dress. “Girls’ll be in directly for your shoulders.”
The door shuts behind her. For a second it is just me and him and the water dripping off the copper lip.
Okee strips first, starting at his collar and working down.
His shirt comes loose from his shoulders, damp where the road sweat set in it.
His braces hang. His belt drops heavy. I ought to be used to the sight.
Lord knows I have seen him in every state a man can get into and then some.
But there is something about the clean, hot room, the steam rolling over his skin, the low lamp throwing him half gold and half shadow, that makes me feel my own hide tighten over me.
I strip too, though less graceful. My shirt sticks.
My boots fight me. Bloody linen clings to my skin, and hairs yanking I ain’t known I had where Lula’s handiwork covered my wound.
Reckon I’d better not get it wet, so I discard it on the floor.
By the time I step into the tub, I am near ready to cuss.
Then the water takes hold of me.
Sweet Jesus.
Okee lowers himself into the tub with a slow sigh. He shuts his eyes and leans his head back against the rim, the ghost of a smile on his lips as he reaches for the whiskey. He hands mine across. His fingers brush mine, slick with the damp off the glass.
A knock sounds, then the door opens without waiting.
Two women come in carrying little bowls and cloths. One is the girl from the hall, dark-haired, quiet. The other is fair and broad in the hips, with sleeves rolled.
“Evening, gentlemen,” the fair one says.
“Such as it is,” Okee answers.
They move behind us and warm oil slicks over my shoulders. Fingers press into the knots there, and I near sink clean under.
There is a stretch of quiet then, broken only by the soft slap of water and the little catch in my breath each time the girl behind me finds another hard place in my back and kneads at it. I drink whiskey and try not to think too hard about Okee bare-chested beside me with his hair pulled back.
So hard I think on nothing else. My flesh starts to swell under the heat, every heartbeat pulsing on the surface.
Then he says, “You put on quite a performance last night.”
The woman’s hands don’t falter, but my lungs do.
I look down into my drink. “I wondered how long before you said something.”
My skin feels too tight. Too hot. I tip my head back and stare at the ceiling beams shining with damp. “I don’t know what come over me, Okee. It was out of my hands. It was animal. No sense in it.”
The girl behind me digs her thumbs in and I grunt.
“Beg pardon,” she says.
“You keep right on,” I tell her, and then to him, “I mean it. I don’t know what devil got loose in us when it started.”
Okee lifts his glass, watching me over the rim. “And you wanted me to hear.”
I swallow. “Hell.” My mouth has gone dry in spite of the whiskey, and I scrub a hand over my face. “Ain’t like I set out to but…once we started howlin’, lord have mercy.”
Okee’s girl glances once at him in the mirror, then goes back to her work like she has heard stranger things, which I expect she has.
Then he says, “That so.”
“That’s so,” I snap, because if he is going to make me drag it out of my own guts, he can have it bloody.
His eyes stay on me. “What made you so certain it wouldn’t wound me?”
I push out a breath through my mouth.
“Suppose I rolled the dice on that,” I say. “Was I wrong?”
The room goes so quiet I can hear the oil being worked into my skin.
“No.” He rubs a thumb once over the side of his glass, then sets it down on the floor beside the tub.
“Good,” I say to him. “Must have left an impression if you brought it up.”
“It did.”
“A mean one?”
His gaze don’t move.
“I permitted it, did I not?”
I laugh and gasp at the same time. “Permitted?”
“Yes.”
“And suppose I had done something you didn’t permit?”
“You wouldn’t have.”
The answer comes too quick. The bastard. “That’s an awful lot of faith to put in me.”
“No,” he says, careful. “It’s knowing what’s mine.”
That gets under my skin, which I reckon is the point. Heat crawls up my chest, and I love that he can put it there with his voice without a hand laid on me.
After that we go quiet.
The girls finish with us. Hands slicking over shoulders, thumbs finding sore places, cloths wrung out into bowls, scalps scrubbed clean.
One girl says something about us being soft as boiled rope, and the other laughs coyly behind her hand before offering, “Handjob’s fifty cents, tits pressed together’s seventy-five, blowjob’s eighty, straight fuck’s a dollar, ass fuck’s a dollar fifty. ”
She says it so sweet I can’t help but grin. “We’re all set in that department, thanks.”
They nod and shuffle out. By the time they leave, my head is loose on my neck and my blood is loose everywhere else.
Okee gets out first.
I look because I am weak and because he means me to.
There ain’t no other reason for the way he takes the towel.
Slow. Unbothered. Water running off him, lamplight caught on his ribs and shoulder and the long line of his stomach.
His cock hangs heavy and soft between his thighs, thick even at rest, swaying gently with each unhurried step out of the tub.
He lets it all show. Lets me look. The soft, generous weight of him is somehow more devastating than if he were hard.
I gulp like a boy caught stealing.
He glances over. “Something you need?”
There’s an edge in his voice. I rise from the water, the heat making my knees want to quit holding me up. “Reckon there might be,” I say, knowing full well I’d beg to be run through so deep King Arthur himself couldn’t draw Okee out of me with both hands.
Okee’s eyes move down over me. Slow enough to make my skin tighten. He takes the towel in both hands and drags it once across his chest, unhurried.
Just as I step out of the tub, a knock hits the door.
The door swings open and Pearl inches in by feel, head turned away from us, one hand shielding her eyes.
“Lord have mercy,” I bark, snatching for the nearest towel and damn near losing my footing on the wet boards.
“Gentlemen, I’m real sorry, but Goldie says you have to go straight to your room right this minute and you are not to come out under any circumstances. I’m supposed to take you the back way so nobody sees.”
Okee moves faster. One second he is standing there bare as birth, the next the towel is around his waist and knotted tight, his shoulders squared as if a cavalry officer had just stepped in instead of a fourteen-year-old girl with her eyes shut.
“Pearl,” he says, voice clipped. “You should have waited.”
“I was told it was urgent.” Her face stays turned hard toward the wall. “Mr. Everett is here,” she goes on.
“Who?”
“One of Hollister’s paper men.”
I reach for a robe. “What do you know about Hollister?”
“Me? Nothing. Only Goldie says any girl who breathes a word of you being here can sell herself down by the freight yard.”
Okee stills. “Why would she say that?”
Pearl swallows. “On account of Hollister wanting you dead, I expect. And Mr. Everett being the sort who’d know what to do with that, I suppose.”
The words drop heavy as lead shot. For a beat the only sound is water dripping from the copper tubs.
“Get dressed,” Okee says, voice flat.
I’m already moving, yanking on my damp shirt and trousers, fingers clumsy with haste. The room that was all heat a moment ago turns mean with cold. My skin prickles. My boots are still damp. My hair drips down the back of my neck as I shove my arms through my coat.
Pearl stands pressed against the wall like a dainty sentry, both hands clamped over her eyes.
When we are decent enough, she leads us through the room to a narrow door tucked behind a curtain and stacks of towels. She shifts things out of the way and pulls it open.
Beyond it is a steep stair.
She tiptoes up, and we trail behind her quiet as thieves. The cramped wooden passage smells of pine and mold. The sounds from the saloon filter through the walls—piano, men placing bets at card tables, women putting on ridiculous laughs to fool jokes that ain’t funny.
We keep climbing.
At the top, Pearl opens another door, and cold night air knifes through my wet clothes. Every bit of damp on me wants to turn to ice, the hair at the back of my neck chilling me down my spine.
“Where you takin’ us?” I whisper.
Pearl hurries out as if she might outrun the cold. “Shortcut,” she says.
We step after her into the dark.
From up here, you can see all of Fort Gibson spread out below, lamps winking through the mist like watchful eyes. She points a finger down the fire-lined thoroughfare.
“That fancy building down there? That one is Hollister’s.”
The fog shrouds it in haze, but I see it, set apart from the patchwork of shabby structures—a barber, an undertaker, an outfitter. Hollister can kill a man, trim him, dress him and bury him in one afternoon.
Pearl leads us across the roof to another door tucked into the far side. She lifts one hand, warning us still, then presses her ear to the wood.
No one moves.
The warm air hits us the second she cracks it open, thick with lamp oil and old smoke. She slips inside first, then waves us after her into a narrow hallway.
“Over there’s Goldie’s office,” she whispers, pointing to a closed door on the right. Her voice drops even lower. “And that one goes straight to your suite. We take it this way, nobody lays eyes on you.”
She moves ahead without a sound, opens the next door, and ushers us into our room on the second floor.
Pearl closes the door and lets out one hard breath, like she’s been holding it since the roof.
“There,” she says, pleased despite the nerves still riding her voice.
“Goldie says you’re to stay put and not come out under any circumstances.
She’ll come see you herself when it’s safe. ”
Okee scans the room once. His gaze marks the window, the door. Then he looks back at Pearl.
“Where’s Lula?”