Two-Gun & Sun (33 page)

I came here as soon as I could—what on earth happened to your camouflage suit? A printing mishap?

Yes.

My dear, there isn't much time. The midnight ship is cleared to leave, now.

And you plan to be on it?

I said it hotly and with no suggestion that I would miss him. I wouldn't.

But to my amazement he replied, Come with me.

Of all people—I began.

I threw my hands into the air, one still brandishing the blade, my hair sticking out in ten directions, if the prickling of my scalp was any indication. Of all the cheek, of all the bloody nerve.

And I blasted at him, Why would I?

He tossed his hat onto the counter and said matter-of-factly, Because I promised you an interview with our leader and you shall have it.

Hah! I was there when the opera boat left and I saw him on deck, dressed as a musician. I wasn't fooled like the rest. I saw him leave.

He ran his hands through his hair.

I need a drink, he concluded. What do you have?

I shoved the blade into the back of my belt and grabbed the bottle from under the counter. I needed one, as well. There were perhaps three inches left in it from that night of the mine explosion when
he
and I worked all night on the press. I polished two grimy glasses on my sleeve and poured. Two-Gun raised his glass to me and then downed it.

In different circumstances I might have asked him to sit, but I was furious. I left him shuffling from foot to foot. This meant I had to stand, too, and I was tired. I eased an elbow onto the counter for support.

That wasn't him, he said at last. Our leader.

What do you mean? I saw him. He took his hat off and lifted his face and I could see clearly that he was Chinese—

The air turned orange about the edges, and then black. I sat, hard, right down onto the shop floor, as though I had been expecting a chair and someone had pulled it out from under me.

Excellent, my dear. This is exactly the effect we were attempting with our ruse. I took him to the Lousetown barber and asked for a cut just like our leader's. He needed it tidied up anyway after cutting off that damn queue.

I thought I might be sick right there on the floor. He did indeed look like everyone else, now, even his leader. I had bid him a final farewell without knowing it.

Two-Gun reached for my hand but I pulled myself back up to the counter and asked, Where is he then, your leader?

What makes you think he was
ever
here?

Because I saw him with my own eyes. Heard him, too.

Again I ask, how do you know
that
was him?

Because he took me there, my printer—

Even though you had written about the leader, which warned everyone in town that he was coming—

The cruelty of the man, to add to my grief. I could blame myself well enough without his help.

What are you saying? I had his name in my headlines!

I'm saying my dear, that for all you know someone took on his identity once before, to protect him, knowing full well that there would be a raid.

But at the opera, you spoke to the leader yourself.

I met a man. We had a chat.

Oh, I don't believe you! Why not have the imposter ride off on the opera boat, then?

Perhaps he left right after the opera on the midnight ship. Dressed as one of the extras.

Two-Gun held out his glass but I poured the rest into mine. Dressed as an extra. It seemed too outrageous to be fabricated.

The raid that was meant to stop his speech, he said, turned the tide for the cause, and won the people's sympathy. The sight of the deputies storming their meeting! The instant those walls fell he had their support. Everyone is saying so.

The imposter had, you mean.

I drained the glass. I had heard his speech, recognized phrases from his writings. Any actor could memorize the lines, true. I asked Two-Gun, Did they know it wasn't really their leader?

Who's to say what one man knows and another believes? And does it matter? Look at them this very evening, my girl, running interference while his double sails away. They support the cause.

Once again we were thinking alike, but I was especially annoyed that this time I wouldn't be able to at least quote him, as I had when he suggested a hunt for fresh meat. I had no printer, no paper.

My dear, he said, taking my arm in that way of his, two hundred pounds of stubborn insistence, forcing me to walk with him. I have much to tell you. Come. We will transfer to a ship bound for Hawaii.

Not Shanghai?

Hawaii, first. Sandy beaches. Maidens in grass skirts.

The change of destination had only a temporary effect on my mood. I took back my arm and pulled out the notebook I had been scribbling in when he arrived, and shook it at him.

I've recorded the names of everyone you swindled. I've written down how much it cost them, how much you owe them.

Good, good, he said. I'm glad to hear that. I'm a changed man, my dearest. This damn foolery of mine. I'm getting too old for it. Our leader is promising change, a future. The events of these past days have put a spark in me, given me a cause worth following. I'm going to China.

You owe me money, first, I said. I'm not paying those people back by myself. You're responsible.

I stuffed the book back in my pocket.

I'm selling the horse.

Really.

I am ashamed to admit it was to be my means of escape, on a moment's notice. But my intentions, my whole purpose shifted when that gun fired at the opera. In that instant, as I leaped onto that beast, I became our leader's bodyguard.

To hear my thoughts parroted back at me yet again stretched my patience. I raised the glass and then dropped it down, annoyed. It was empty.

I'll have no need of the creature, now. Lila, my dear, why not come with me? What an adventure, the two of us on our way to China.

He had a point. It was the only reason I bothered to listen to him. I'd already come to the conclusion that, on my own, the best I could do was crank out single newssheets. Would they be enough to pay my expenses? Mr. Mooney would seize the business, otherwise. But leave with Two-Gun? I walked to the staircase. He followed, talking some more—my God, the man could talk—while I pondered the life of a woman who had lost her lover and was married to her business, reduced as it was.

I've been promising to introduce you to the leader. Allow me to do so, my dear, in China. It is my gift to you, my way of compensating for every wrong I've done to you.

I needed time to think, I told him, and slipped past. I grabbed the railing and left him at the bottom of the stairs.

He called up after me, I'll wait right here. But don't be long!

*

I paused by the globe to give it a spin, my fingers stopping it at China, the heel of my hand on Australia, all the marvellous places between them nestled under my palm: Malaya, Indonesia, Siam, the Philippines. And between there and here, Hawaii.

Perhaps I deserved this. Instead of
him
, it was Two-Gun, that wind-bag of a wheedler, cheat, liar and thief, reformed all of a sudden he said, as unpredictable and untrustworthy a travel companion as anyone could be cursed with, who waited patiently downstairs for my answer, on the very slimmest possibility, one that grew slimmer the longer he waited, and yet one that, having sprung from his offer and his willingness to wait, did, in its very act of simple decency, move me.

Oh, he could make me laugh. He could also make my eyeballs smoke in their sockets.

I considered my closet of clothes, all the items I might pack for a trip, the outfit I might step into right now, that would seal my decision one way or another.

The black dress was slit up the sides after the pig attack, the hem torn off. The blue flowered one, slit down the front this very night. I had few outfits left. The lavender-grey hung poorly but would travel well. I could imagine what he might say as I descended the steps in it.

My darling girl. I'll get the captain to perform the ceremony on the boat. It's your colour, well, yes, a bit grey, but with a diamond or two, here and there, perfect. When we get to Shanghai we will get you dresses for every occasion. They know fashion better than any of them in Paris. Until then, my lovely, why not pack your opera gown, my sentimental favourite. It will be perfect should the captain invite us to his table.

Or I could simply stay as I was, in my pinned coveralls.

I clomped down the stairs, depressed with my decision.

My dear girl, he said when I rounded the bottom of the staircase. I thought this might be your choice, but in truth I expected no less of you. Pride. It is your most endearing quality. Unless—No, no, don't say another word. I embrace your intentions as though they were my own. A perfect ruse. Take my arm. In this outfit no one would guess that you are not just walking me to the docks but are about to board the ship with me. On to Victoria, and then Seattle and then Honolulu. Plenty of dress shops along the way. Thank you, my darling. You are the only woman I know who could save me from certain moral decay on those flower boats of temptation that await in Shanghai. You trump a hundred Plum Blossoms and Lotus Buds. And I in turn will save you from this place. Give me that notebook of yours. I see it peeking from your pocket. Allow me. Enough business for one day. The hour approaches. Come with me—on the open seas, the wind in your hair, exactly as you like it. Rest assured I will become the leader's trusted bodyguard. I will introduce you. Tut, tut, not another word. Listen! I hear the ship's whistle. The future awaits, as do your hosts,
messieurs
Two-Gun
et
Sun.

I folded my arms.

No? Well then, I will say my
adieus
and hope that we will meet another time.

He took my hand and kissed the back of my wrist.

From the shop window I watched his white bulk fade into the mist.

Really, a horse was not enough to pay back the rest he owed the townspeople. What did he take me for? I had it all here. I reached for my notebook to look over the figures, and found my pocket empty. It took a moment to recall that Two-Gun had plucked the notebook from me, and failed to return it.

The thieving, scheming snake of a man.

I'd shoot him dead myself.

I'd have him arrested.

The ship's whistle sounded again. It was nearing three hours past midnight. The month had ended on its own without me noticing, without me scoring through that last number. It was all over. And what now?

I wrenched open the door and stood on the veranda. Motorbikes zoomed past, lifting strands of hair from my face and neck. A throng parted to let them through, then closed up again to surge down the street. I took in the dizzying sounds of roaring engines, shouting voices, crackling flames, all of it cloaked in a veil of grey. I understood in that chaotic moment that I had a choice, a choice very different from deciding to teach, to prove I could provide for myself and to thumb my nose at another's beliefs, or to take on a business that was someone else's creation, and inherit all its problems, or especially to take on a dubious deal intended to save such a business. No, this time it was a choice that was mine alone to make.

I could flag a taxi. Or I could walk. I checked my watch. Or run. Two-Gun would be approaching the pier. I would grab his sleeve and demand my notebook back. And then? I could leave with him. Or I could arrange to meet at some future time and place. I could head to another place entirely. Malaya, Bali, Siam. I could catch the next day's sailing, or the one after that. Because now or next day, it really didn't matter. Once you've contemplated leaving a place, there was no staying, not for long.

I slammed the door behind me and I called across to Parker, who was also locking up, Catch!

I tossed him the keys to my shop, and then, on further thought, my pocket watch. He caught the first but dropped the second.

No time to explain, I shouted to him. I'll send word!

I could send for my things, too, whatever things I deemed worth sending, broken watch included. I could put a note in the post to Meena, asking for her assistance. She would do that for me.

I stepped into the road to flag a taxi.

The driver pulled over long enough to plant a black leather boot on the ground and tell me what I could see for myself. He was full, with two deputies in the sidecar. But I could climb on behind him if I was desperate.

I was.

By the time he lifted his boot I was already walking around to the back of the bike.

Shove forward, I said.

I didn't wait for him to brake at the wharf. The ship had eased from the dock. I slid off the back and ran until my boots hit the boards. The women from
The Saloon
had arrived, belatedly as always, pulling at their clothes from recent assignations, and were gathered to see what was going on. They turned, still tugging and yawning, when they heard me, heels hammering the boards, and drew to the sides, forming a phalanx to let me through.

The wind was in my hair and my thoughts were racing. I stopped, hopped on one foot, seeing yet again those two notebooks in my desk, along with a rope of a man's hair, bristling where it was chopped, still raw with the anger of it. I dug a toe into a heel to peel the boot from my foot, no time to untie the laces, then switched to the other foot.

The third and last of my notebooks was on that ship, with several pages waiting to be filled. They were like three acts of an opera, swollen with my first moments in this town, and the month of moments that followed. A month in the late summer of my twenty-ninth year, a year that swung on the hinges of possibilities, a squawk of metal on rust that said, Now, or not at all.

I wriggled out of my coveralls, easy enough given the slit down the side, blade and belt clattering onto the boards. I jabbed the pin into one strap of my skivvies, slipped the silver hairpin onto the other, then continued to run, bare feet pounding along the pier.

All the while the ship steamed mightily away from the docks.