Ed Gorman - Showdown

"Not even for two pieces of apple pie with ice cream, Bob?" Prine said.

"Hell, Tom," Daly said, "if you was nicer to her, you'd get free pie, too."

Prine couldn't take any more matchmaking. He left.

Lucy Killane was having one of her bad days, days that were even more damaging to body and soul than her monthly visitor.

She had walked past the sheriff's office five times today, in hopes of glimpsing Tom Prine. Five times. Today the pain was as fresh as if they'd just broken up last night. Panic—fury—self-pity—confusion—panic again. This was the course of her day. She waited on people at the café, she sat out back and ate lunch with three other café workers, she even went to the hospital just now to get her instructions. But it was as if somebody else had done all these things.

Now she was walking past the sheriff's office for the sixth time and—

—there he was. Coming out of the door. A letter—her letter, she was sure—in his hand.

He saw her and nodded hello.

Her instinct was to run away, flee. It would be humiliating to see him after writing him such a mushy and forlorn letter, a letter that basically begged him to ask her to stay in town. Not leave.

He didn't wait for her to walk up to him. He walked up to her.

"Haven't had time to read it," he said, holding the letter up.

She could be pretty damned bold sometimes. And right now was a good example. She tore the letter from his fingers.

"Hey," he said, "that's mine."

"No, it isn't," she said. "It's just a silly, stupid letter that belongs to the silly, stupid girl who wrote it."

She froze in place. All street sounds faded—clatter of wagons; shouts of day's end children; corner conversations of loafers and idlers and riffraff; neigh of horse, cry of infant, laughter of flirty young girls. All of it faded and there she stood on some plane of her own making—some plane that displayed her to all as the fool she was.

Prine must have sensed this, because he took her arm and said, "Where you headed?"

"Madame Missy's," she managed to say.

"I'll walk with you."

She didn't object. Couldn't. Needed his strength now. Had none of her own.

Oh my God Tom why did you quit loving me?

Walking. Him saying, "You're doing the whole town a favor. Checking those prostitutes the way you do."

One of the jobs she had as a hospital volunteer was to visit the two cribs each week and see if any of the girls had rashes, discharges, pain, runny noses and eyes that were bothering them. Syphilis flourished in many—too many—western towns. Her girls liked Lucy and her high spirits and her sympathetic eyes even if the madams didn't. The madams found her an imposition. The only reason they allowed her in was that Sheriff Daly demanded weekly talks with somebody from the hospital. At first doctors and nurses came. But there was something so cold and official and disapproving about them that neither the madams nor the girls would cooperate with them.

Lucy was a compromise. She didn't examine the girls physically, and that helped. And she certainly didn't make moral judgments about the girls. She liked many of them and felt sorry for all of them.

She was gradually beginning to breathe normally, becoming aware again of her surroundings, feeling less embarrassed about having been so open with Tom.

"I think I'll try Denver."

"Denver's a good place for a young woman, Lucy. No doubt about that."

"Or maybe Cheyenne."

"That'd be good, too."

"One of the girls at the café thinks I should try California."

"Heard lots of interesting things about California."

"Then there's always the East."

"There sure is, Lucy. I'd like to see New York myself someday. Stand down on the street and look up at all those tall buildings."

"Another girl said I could get a lot of New York things in Chicago and I wouldn't have to travel as far."

"That's true. And they're planning to have the world's fair there in a few years."

"The world's fair," Lucy said, "imagine that." Then: "Of course, you don't have to even leave the town limits here to see mansions and things. The Nevilles' place—"

"Well, technically that isn't in the town limits, but I see your point." He pressed her arm gently, and they stopped walking for a moment. "So you heard."

"Heard?" All innocence.

"That Cassie Neville invited me out to her place last night."

"Oh, yes—I guess I do sort of remember hearing about that. But it skipped my mind."

"Uh-huh." He smiled and then did the thing she least wanted him to do and the thing she most wanted him to do. Kissed her. Only briefly. Only briefly. But kissed her nonetheless.

"I take it that's what your letter was all about. Me going to the Neville place."

"I guess I did mention it in passing."

"Given that temper of yours," he laughed, "I'll bet it was more than 'in passing.'"

"You know, when I finally get out of here, wherever I go—Chicago or New York or Denver or California—I won't give things like the Nevilles a second thought. I'll be a different person."

She thought—hoped—that he would kiss her again. But he didn't. He just started walking again, taking her along with him.

She said, "You think you'll see her again?"

"Oh, Lucy, please don't ask me things like that."

"I guess you plan to, then."

"We'll just have to see what happens."

Madame Missy's was melancholy in the purple shadows of the growing autumn dusk. A player piano sounded ridiculously merry given Lucy's mood. And Madame Missy herself, who knew everything about everybody who was anybody in Claybank, peeked her Pekingese face between the parted curtains in the front window and took a gander at them.

Lucy knew she'd come undone if she stayed here. She slid her arm from Tom's and said, "Well, I appreciate you walking with me."

"Lucy, I—This is hard for both of us, but—" He stopped himself.

"But what?"

"It's just a selfish thought I have."

"What sort of selfish thought, Tom?"

"I—I just don't want you to leave town. But I can't make any promises if you stay."

So finally it wasn't Lucy who broke away but Tom himself. He said, "You're a fine woman, Lucy. In all respects. Never forget that."

And then he was gone.

Chapter Eight

Prine didn't sleep well. His dreams alternated between Cassie and Lucy. A man could get confused.

Around three, he became fully awake and there was hell to pay. The nocturnal orchestra of the hotel where he boarded was performing a full symphony. You had your snoring, you had your hawking, you had your rolling, you had your tossing, you had your headboard creaking, you had your amorous sex dream moans, you had your muffled-scream nightmares, you had coughing, scratching, muttering, snorting, and gasping.

What you had, in other words, was just about every kind of prohibition against getting back to sleep you could think of.

Up and down the hall the symphony played, fading, then full again, unceasing.

He sat up and smoked. He lay back down and scratched. He thought. He tried not to think. And then he repeated the entire sequence all over again.

Dawn came haughty and gray, taunting him with the fact that he wasn't ready for this day. Flesh and bone and blood and sinew were not strong and eager. His mind was dulled, unable to focus sharply.

He didn't need to see Lucy at the café. There was another one a block away. The food wasn't as good, but coffee was what he really wanted anyway.

He'd seen a cartoon once of a man pulling his lower eyelid out and pouring a cup of coffee directly into the eye pouch. He remembered this as he sat in the café, bringing the first cup of coffee to his lips. On the table in front of him were four cigarettes. Last night, unable to sleep, nothing else to do, he went ahead and rolled himself twenty cigarettes.