Weeping Angel (5 page)

Other women approached as she passed the baptismal font. Students were popping up like spring daffodils.

By the time she reached the narthex, she'd added ten new pupils. Every boy's mother who'd turned her down before had a sudden change of heart. They were being so nice, even though some of her lady friends had obviously voted against her. Amelia knew from
attending the Thursday Afternoon Fine Ladies Society canasta games, these women did nothing without gain. If Frank Brody had been anything but a novelty, they would have snubbed him and his stale saloon.

The closeness of people, the stares, and the heat were all overwhelming Amelia, and she sidestepped her way out of the flowing crowd to rest by the coatracks and cold radiator to catch her breath. She pretended to be engrossed with the visitor's register sitting on a small pedestal. Rigidly holding her tears in check, she would not cry.

Amelia felt a light touch on the small of her back, felt the presence of someone standing so close behind her a book of sheet music couldn't fit between them. The air suddenly smelled faintly of tobacco and . . . peach. She rapidly blinked the moisture from her eyes as he spoke. “I know you wanted the vote to go the other way.” Frank's voice held a quiet note of apology she found odd. Even though he'd made a gesture of compromise, surely he'd done so to look considerate in front of the others.

She didn't dare turn around and face him. She couldn't. Not without dying.

“I meant what I said. You can use the piano. I'm open from four in the afternoon until two in the morning. I thought we could divide the time into twelve-hour shifts.”

Amelia stared at a child's knitted blue muffler left over from winter on the shelf above the coat hooks. She fought hard not to tremble and let him see her so emotional. All she could do was nod. She didn't have a choice.

He continued in a low tone. “You can have access to the piano from four in the morning to four in the afternoon. Mostly I'm in bed until noon, but don't worry about waking me with the noise. I sleep like the dead.”

Pressing a key into the palm of her hand, he closed her fingers around the warm metal. The mere touch of his hand against the thin cotton of her gloves sent a shiver through her. “This unlocks the front door.”

She mutely nodded again, wishing she didn't have to know the details of his sleeping habits.

Then he left, and she almost stumbled backward from the power his close proximity had on her. The world spun and careened, seemingly taking her with it on its axis and making her dizzy. A man hadn't touched her in such a fashion since . . . Jonas Pray.

Amelia stayed in the church long minutes after everyone else had left. She didn't want anybody to see her when she walked home.

The burning imprint of the key in her palm reminded her of Frank Brody and the implications of its intimate meaning. The key symbolized a connection between the two of them in a secret, wicked sort of way.

She'd sworn never to have anything to do with a saloon after Jonas ran off with Silver Starlight, and now she clutched the key to one.

Being voted down had been bad; having four of her own gender go against her had been worse. How could they have done such a thing to her? They knew how she felt. They knew about . . . about what happened . . .

Fresh tears brimmed her eyes and she fought them.

Passing her fingertips under her lower lashes to make sure her face powder hadn't smudged, Amelia turned on her heels to leave.

The light of day blinded her as she hurried across Divine Street, thankful no one had milled around to speak with her. And even more thankful Mr. Brody wasn't anywhere in sight.

She heard a
thumpity-thumpity
coming from down the block. When she glanced in the direction of the noise, she saw the big crate with the New American
upright parlor piano being rolled inside the Moon Rock Saloon's double front doors.

Her chest ached anew, and Amelia wanted nothing more than to go home, strip out of her clothes, slide to the bottom of her bathtub, and pull the cool water over her head to hide.

B
y two-thirty in the morning, the candle-melting heat cooled to a temperature that would have kept a puddle of wax only lukewarm. The seductive breath of garden roses consorted with the scents of freshly watered vegetable gardens and lawns. The combinations milling through the air roamed sluggishly under and over the paneled, frosted cut glass doors of the Moon Rock Saloon.

Frank lounged in a chair, his boot heels caught on a round table's edge while he enjoyed a beer mug of 5-Star Hennessy cognac. Forgoing the handle, he slipped his hand around the fluted glass to warm the liquor with his right palm. Far from drinking fashion, he rebuffed the idea of a snifter; they were too ostentatious and too large. Their wide mouths allowed the bouquet to evaporate into the air, rather than his mouth. Savoring the taste, he indulged in his favorite drink. The mellow brandy capped off his long night as he listened to Pap O'Cleary romp through “Buffalo Gals” for the dozenth time.

“Can't you play anything else?” Frank asked between
leisurely sips, growing tired of the song's square-dance tempo.

Pap didn't miss a beat while shaking his derby-covered head. “Got this one under my skin,” he replied in tune to the music. “Under my skin . . . under my skin.”

Frowning, Frank struck a match with his thumbnail and lit a cheroot. He brought the thin cigar to his lips, then inhaled. Exhaling a slow ribbon of white smoke as he spoke, he suggested, “Play ‘Sweet Betsy from Pike' or ‘Down Went McGinty.' Better yet, ‘A Hot Time in the Old Town.' We did a damn hot business tonight.”

“Best since we opened,” Pap agreed above the virgin-sounding chords he ravished from the New American upright parlor piano. “Oh, buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight and dance,” he sang in a deep-pitched voice, “by the light of the moon?” He abruptly stopped his jaunty playing and swiveled on the hardwood stool to face Frank. Meshing his fingers together and extending his arms, he cracked his joints. “Feels good to get the kinks out.”

“Feels good just sitting here.”

“You always say that at closing time.” Pap stood to shuffle through his repertoire of sheet music on top of the piano. He wasn't a tall man, but he was solid as a brick. Beneath his Danbury black derby, he was bald as a baby's bottom, but made up for nature's premature deficit by sporting a whopping red mustache.

“I always mean it.” Frank took a pull on his square-tipped cigar. “The best part of the night is smelling what everybody else has done with their day. That fragrance of roses belongs to Narcissa Dodge. She pruned the bushes at sundown when that elm of hers shaded her planting beds. And the whiff of grass is coming from Doc White's yard. He just mowed his lawn this afternoon. Watered it right after supper.” Frank tapped the ash off his cigar onto the floor.
“Jakey Spivey washed his yellow hound today. General Custer trotted by the saloon a couple hours ago, leaving the scent of Ivory soap, fresh dirt, and dog behind him. If you breathe in deep, you can still smell it.”

“I have no interest in sniffing after a dog who's half clean.” Selecting a folio, Pap pushed the brim of his hat up his forehead. “Besides, I don't smell anything but your cigar and Rupert Teats's livery.”

Frank let the last of his Hennessy slide down his throat, then licked his lips with a satisfied swallow. “That's because you don't know how to smell life, Pap.”

“I can smell food and I can smell women—and not necessarily in that order.”

Frank laughed as he felt along his jaw for the heavy stubble roughing up his chin.

A June bug bounced off the crystal chandelier above Frank. The hot, cut glass globe glowing from kerosene light burned the insect's wings, and the bug plummeted to Frank's beer mug with a plop. “Damn good thing my glass was empty,” he said to the dead beetle, and dumped the brown spot onto the sawdust-covered floor with a drop or two of cognac.

“Play me something unrefined if you won't play ‘Hot Time,' ” Frank persisted.

Pap gave his elbows a bone pop to stay limber. “I'll play you ‘Hot Time.' ” He set the sheet on the music desk and began with the chorus.

Frank closed his eyes and let the song dance through his mind. He pictured sunsets in the Mexican desert—an almost endless pancake of land barren as a ninety-year-old woman—where the only shadows on the ground came from his horse and himself. He waited for an arid breeze to mantle his face with dust, but the dry wind never came. And never would again. Gone were the days of rambling and a panorama
sprawling as far as his gaze could see. He'd traded in empty prospects and an empty life and decided to travel a road of stability instead.

Though the shoe of proprietorship didn't quite fit him yet, he hoped time would soften the leather and his sole would adapt to the size of small-town life. Hell, he had no place else to go. This was it for him. The final watering hole in a long line of thirsty ventures as a jack-of-all-trades. He'd mined silver on the Comstock, laid track for the Southern Pacific, ridden shotgun on the Overland Stage, ran a trading post in Nogales, and his last occupation—bardogging at the El Dorado in Frisco.

It was there he'd met Charley Revis and bought this building from him sight unseen. Old Charley had said he'd tried to make a go of things in Weeping Angel a couple of years ago, but fortune hadn't been on his side. He'd had a string of bad luck, most notably run-ins with the crones who didn't abide a second saloon in town. He'd been in business just shy of a month when his cash box disappeared the same day his hurdy-gurdy dancer ran off. After that, Charley had called it quits, boarded up the place, and went to San Francisco.

The night Frank met Charley, Charley had ordered a round of drinks for everyone in the El Dorado to celebrate his newfound wealth in the stock market. They got to talking, and Charley's description of Weeping Angel had appealed to Frank. There was a crystal-clear lake with trout for the taking, the seasons were pretty to watch, and a man need only bother to keep a dog at his side instead of a gun. Frank had been looking for just such a town to hang his hat up. The challenge of turning the shebang into a glory house had cinched the deal for Frank, and he and Pap had ridden out of Frisco by the weekend.

Frank felt the whir of June bugs as they flitted
through his saloon and opened his eyes to the false light. He viewed the Moon Rock as if he were seeing it for the first time.

A fine diamond-dust mirror ran the length of his thirty-foot, golden walnut bar. His back bar—or altar as the bartenders called it in the El Dorado—had shelves for pyramids of brightly labeled liquor bottles and the knickknacks forming his saloon's “museum.” He displayed a cracked in half geode—two pieces of split rock with pale lavender prisms of quartz inside—on the mantel. And to anyone who asked, he swore the rock fell out of the sky from the moon and hit him on the arm; he had the scar to prove it. He supplied towels at the edge of the counter so his customers could wipe the foam from their mustaches or beards. He offered men drinks out of crystal glasses. He'd scattered scarlet runners of carpet throughout the joint to add a touch of elegance, and he gave the patrons fancy brass cuspidors to spit in.

Coming from his rebellious, empty-pocket beginnings, Frank had done well for himself. He should have been happy and downright content. He'd be turning thirty in less than two months, and he could celebrate in the Moon Rock—the closest thing to a home he'd ever had. He seemed to have been taking his life in recently, trying to make it add up to something, but he was coming up with a zero.

Finishing “Hot Time in the Old Town” in a crescendo of finale chords, Pap chuckled. “Goes to show I can still twiddle the ivories and make 'em cry. What do you want next?”

“Girls.”

Tilting his head, Pap snorted, “Girls? You've got every female in this sleepy-eyed town tripping over you.”

“I don't mean the batting-eyelash and wave-of-the-handkerchief women. Their giggles and blushes wear on my nerves. I'm talking
girls
—as in decadent,
white-fleshed girls who can run around the place showing off real skin so pearly it would put an oyster's work to shame. The kind of girls who sing and dance and make a man feel like a man even if he's short on guts and not strong on brains. You know what I mean—dancing girls.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Do-si-do girls. Girls who charge for a look, a feel, and a do.” Pap shrugged. “Town ladies won't go for dancing girls.”

“What about Iza Ogilvie down at the Palace? She sings and dances.”

The drone of crickets chirped with Pap's laughter. “Iza Ogilvie is a dried-up British flower whose skin isn't pearly. I'd say her flesh is more along the lines of a lizard's belly, and so stretched out, it hangs off her like a dress that's too big. Oh, she can sing passable, but when I fantasize about a woman, I surely don't fantasize about a washed-out, middle-aged crumpet named Iza.” Pap stood and put his music away. “Now, I did hear tell, this place used to have a fine looker named Silver Starlight when Charley was here.”