The main room was warm with body heat, the result of too many hearts in a confined space pumping with raw forms of infernal adrenaline and lust. It also smelled acridly of smoke. Daryl reckoned his eyes might have watered from the intensity of it had he not been conditioned to the long exposure of desert grit. His eyes were but thin slits, always squinted to the sun and wind.
The floorboards were coated with a thick dust from the street outside and they squealed under his weight, though with the racket it would have taken the ears of a bat to notice. Several heads did swivel his way, to size him up and his apparent business there, heads that weren't distracted by cards, drink or women. He looked like any other patron prone to such establishments- bedraggled, fresh from the ride and looking for a little comfort. A house of ill-repute ought not be too judgmental, least it were for men of title and wealth, which this one was not. The revolver on his waist would settle disputes any fellow frequenter may feel the need to enunciate.
He nodded a greeting to a passing barmaid, eyes clandestinely lingering on her backside in a tight, satin getup as she sashayed away from him. Most of the card tables were full, littered with coins and chips and smoking ashtrays, men taking cautionary glimpses at him from under wide brimmed hats. Where he was from, hats came off when indoors, but etiquette was as lawless here as everything else was.
Daryl wasn't there to gamble. He wasn't in the mood. He would spend his money on a good, stiff drink, sit back and warm the aching muscles endless life in a saddle had wrought him. The bartender was a man but the drink runners were ladies of the night, and they received a commission off the amount of drinks ordered as well as their trade. His contribution would come from the former.
He settled into a stool at a bar in the back of the room. He liked to be able to see the whole of the place, of people coming in and out of the exists, nothing too much to worry about or watch at his back. He removed his hat, darkened and stained by sweat, and let it rest on the glazed wood of the bar top. A mustached man took his request. Whiskey. More expensive than beer, but he determined he'd earned it.
Women came to solicit him. He looked but didn't encourage, often denying them without muttering a single word. He didn't participate regularly, he thinking most women who worked in these establishments unclean and vulgar. His eyes drank in the shapes of their bodies, the way the clothes they wore cupped the breast and accentuated the hips, hips to hold on to, to brace himself against. They practiced the art of revealing just enough to tantalize to the point of capitulation; the glimpse of flesh from a thigh, calf or ankle. God, when was the last time he'd seen a woman? Had it been weeks?
A gramophone played some wobbly tune before the piano player took his seat. Daryl didn't know too much about music, but it was a kind of high class sound, a big orchestra with many instruments and some rich sounding male vocalist. Before the act took their place on stage patrons viewed the painting behind the platform- a bare breasted belly dancer in a harem-like palace, a minstrel cross legged behind her, plucking a tune. The woman in the painting wore a striped turban matching the skirt falling off her hips. It was indicative of the entertainment here which was often risqué and suggestive. Sometimes the acts skipped the foreplay altogether and came out in the nude, or wound up that way at the end.
Daryl's fingers, tipped with thick black dirt curved under the nails, wrapped around his drink. The glass felt thick and heavy in his grasp. The liquor went down smooth and warm, but mild compared to the raw forms he was used to. A couple more and he might start to feel it.
With a rip and a foul note the recording was cut off. A skinny man neared the piano and the room hushed an octave to prepare for the act. As he lowered himself to the bench a woman floated out amid the fog of smoke, shoes clacking on the uneven planks. Her beauty was greeted with whistles. Long blonde hair was pulled high on her head with pieces falling down around her neck. She wore a big poofy skirt and a shaped top with nothing holding it up, her shoulders and the length of her arms visible to the crowd. A single feather stuck out from the yellow curls and swayed as she bent her head to exchange words with the piano player.
He couldn't distinguish all she said, something about notes and letters, terms he didn't understand, but her drawl reached him loud and clear. There was something in the elongated i and the dull r that he always associated with home. With a bang the the first chords of a pounding, upbeat jig were struck.
She sang, There is a tavern in the town, in the town
And there my true love sits her down, sits her down,
And drinks her wine as merry as can be,
And never, never thinks of me.
Shoes began to tap on the floor. It was a drinking song, one where the crowd could join in and yell the repetitions back. It was the kind of thing an audience enjoyed. They began to clap in time.
The chorus, Fare thee well, for I must leave thee,
Do not let this parting grieve thee,
And remember that the best of friends
Must part, must part.
She received her first interruptions, men heckling her to take an item of clothing off. Crude catcalls were shouted, but as the song progressed the woman didn't do anything but sing. Didn't disrobe, didn't play with the audience or make any extended eye contact with them or anyone at all. A born hunter, Daryl knew that look- the way her eyes kept darting around like that of cornered prey, ensnared and quivering for its life.
She sang, He left me for a damsel dark, damsel dark,
Each Friday night they used to spark, used to spark,
And now my love who once was true to me
Takes this dark damsel on his knee.
Not pleased with her resistance, the rougher crowd grew unruly and impatient. A table of glossy-eyed drunkards near the front began jesting in collusion. One of them reached into his vest and pulled out a medium sized skinning knife. It was held up and he squinted at the gleaming edge for some moments and then hurled it at the stage. The woman yelped and jumped, doing a quick side-step like a petrified horse. The knife struck the painting of the belly dancer, lodged just below the knee. A wave of hysterical cheers almost drowned out the songstress. She looked over her shoulder and saw the blade protruding from the wall, stammered over a lyric but continued singing. An admirable effort.
Daryl dug into a pocket and with a request exchanged payment with the bartender.
Before the last key on the piano had been struck her stockinged leg made its way off the stage. Hoots erupted from the men who taunted her and those who had enjoyed watching, and boos from the disappointed few. Daryl dropped the glass on the bar top and left it next to his hat. He kept his eyes locked on the curly pinning's of blonde hair. The emerald feather that adorned it danced above the crowd and he set off after it, not wanting to lose her.
One of the ladies with whom she spoke saw him approaching and lifted her chin. The blonde turned to face him, the doe eyes widening. He presented the token, the one that granted him access to one of the birdcage cribs and her womanly comforts. He must have been her first customer for she knew not what to do and stood frozen in place. It was so unlike the other painted women, who's mouths were still full of the last customer as they were saddling into the lap of the next. The woman behind her nudged her shoulder, pushing her into him and closer to the staircase. It was a narrow space, unable to fit two bodies standing side by side. One needed to follow behind the other, and Daryl stepped free of the landing, waving an arm toward the stair. "Ladies first."
Daryl's expression varied only in degrees of supposed anger; mild to insatiable, even when nothing much to warrant the look even occupied his mind. His voice was described in the same manner, increasingly roughened by tobacco use and vice. That was just him, courtesy of the hardened life he'd endured. One didn't make it this far without brands to show for it.
He could see the rapid fire of thoughts behind her eyes. How could she get out of this? Where could she run, what could she do? Something won out, and mechanically she preceded him on the staircase. She placed her high heeled feet slowly, stalling at whatever cost. When he followed her the layers of her skirt nearly brushed his face, and above him he eyed the tiny waist shaped by her corset.
The curtain was drawn on the first crib in the upper level. When they passed they could hear a male grunting and a single feminine shout. Pain and pleasure sometimes sounded alike; it was anyone's guess. The next cage was open, but folks were lounging and sipping drinks, observing the frivolity of the lower level. The blonde hesitated at the third cage. The passage was not fit to linger so she tucked herself just inside the curtain and he dipped inside swiftly. He snapped the curtains shut, eliciting a tiny wince from her. When he faced her he found she was trying to sink into the wall, her hands clasped and guarding her chest.
"I ain't gonna touch ya, not like that." Not that he wasn't attracted to her and wouldn't enjoy sinking into her body, feeling hers wrap around his. She blinked at him, large iris's of clouded blue. She had some powders and paint on her face but it wasn't needed. She was young, and pretty. "You looked terrified up there."
She looked like it still. Her eyes trailed him up and down, across all his dirty, scraggly clothing and weapons- the visible ones. He saw the bridge of her nose crinkle and a brief flicker of repugnance. He knew he stank something fierce, on the trail for weeks without proper washing or access to any aroma other than heady animal and sweat. He was plainly stealing looks at her chest, all stuffed together and nearly spilling over her bodice. He couldn't help it. He might have been better about it if they weren't so close, and if he wasn't so unaccustomed to female company of the like. Soft milk white skin, untainted, unexposed to desert sun or hard labor. God bless the inventor of women's undergarments. And on second thought, damn him to hell, too.
"You're a long way from the Georgia territory."
Her brows furred together. "How did you...?"
"You opened your mouth." She glowered, unsure how to take this curt comment. Was that an insult to her speech or singing? Or both? "Spalding," he said, disclosing the county in which he'd been born and raised, just south of the new capital they spent the last two decades rebuilding after the war.
"Oh," she released a quiet breath. That seemed to relieve some of the tension in her posture, but not all of it. Her eyes beheld him now as someone she may have known, who may have known her, or was at least familiar with the places she had come from. She would have remembered someone like this. Too frightened to hold his gaze before she noted now the icy hue to his squinted eyes and the sharp angles of his unclean, shadowed face. No. He was someone her family would have kept her away from.
If she wanted to say more she resisted. Her eyes spoke volumes, even if Daryl didn't know all of what was being said in them. She needed to be coaxed. In their pauses the noises below still floated about, laughter and glass clinking just outside the confines of the curtains and walls.
"Your first customer?"
Wistfully her eyes looked off in the distance. In the main hall the record player had begun again, some tendrils of melody managing to fight their way up and reach their earshot. A gulp bobbled the front of her throat. "I'm a singer..." she relayed morosely. Well, she might have been, but this wicked world had other plans for her. She may have been lured in by that assumption, but the reality was another. This was a brothel, not a dance hall. Someone had likely conned her, and she was likely naïve, and now here she was. He took in her stature, so close and small in the compressed room. He imagined what it would be like to hold her, and how easy it would be for others with ill-intentions to do so, too. Was a damn shame, a girl like this in such a place.
"You got a weapon?"
She seemed to hesitate at the immodesty, then remembered where she was and decided it would be the most modest act performed in the theater that night. Timidly she reached downward and lifted up a plume of ruffled skirt. Revealed underneath was a jagged scrap of metal whittled to a point at one end, tucked into a lace garter. It was homemade, either by she or someone generous enough to lend it to her.
"Reckon that'll do." With it she might be able to fend off some if she found herself in this situation again, but the clients would fight back- harshly, and soon enough her procurer would catch on and toss her out in the street. It wasn't good news for her in any circumstance.
"They like to scare you, get a reaction. Act like it don't bother you none." He wished he could say that would help the abuse from the crowd, that they would leave her alone then and she wouldn't have to worry, but they'd both know it would be a lie.
"What's your name?"
"You gotta make some noises."
The pretty face frowned, her request ignored. "What?"
"Make it seem like you did somethin'. Reckon your madam's keepin' a close watch." Her face grew inflamed, nervous and abashed. She stared at the curtains that surrounded them, knowing he was probably right. He clearly knew more about this situation than she ever could. He figured no one had ever asked her to do such a thing. "You can turn a'roun if ya like."
She did, slowly. He was faced with a pale shoulder. He could see her breathing lightly quivering through her body. She was silent. He extended his arm and touched the back of her neck, brushing the blonde hair off the nape. She gasped and arched her head with his roughened touch, wondering if he would take advantage of her after all. Her heart was beating fiercely against the confines of her corset. The next thing she felt was a painful pinch, right on the back of her bare shoulder, and she cried out in surprise.
Understanding, she allowed her reaction to vocally exaggerate. This created a harsh yelp and then a wispy huff following after. The tip of his worn boot kicked at the wall, a repetitive thud thud thud that made her turn red. Her head bent down and her bosom heaved. She received the next pinch high on her right arm. She issued another squawk. He was nearly becoming aroused by the nearness of her and her mewing vocals. The shyness, but willingness, and confidence in him.
"That'll do." Holding herself again she turned back to face him, rubbing the sore spot on her arm. He started to unclasp his belt and she adverted her eyes. He left it hanging with a button undone and open at his waist. She peeked, seeing him wrinkle his trousers. "Mess up your hair some."
Discretely she slipped her fingers into the hair at the top of her head and tugged in an odd direction. His stare, intense and provocative, burned into her. The emerald feather now pointed south east.
"Good."
He dug into a pocket and withdrew a few coins, they clanking together in his hand. He pulled the delicate wrist away from her chest and placed them in her palm. His eyes didn't leave her face until he had turned away and made for the curtain. A thought seemed to grip him just before he departed. He rounded back to the woman, and with a softness she didn't expect he touched her by the elbow and kissed her.
On his lips she tasted whiskey, salt, and a summer night back home, under a blooming crape myrtle and a clear sky full of stars. When it was over her eyes fluttered open. No parting glance was exchanged. He was just gone then, and the curtain swung listlessly in the doorway.