Belle turned restlessly in her bed. Finally, she had stopped coughing. She looked around the room, the bejeweled curtains, the Charles XI furniture…it had been fun being a madame. There was poor Silas, fallen asleep on the divan. Poor boy.

Silas had so wanted to be like his father. But there had been so many barriers. First, the child had been tongue-tied, and you couldn't understand a word he said. That would stop you from brilliance as a con man, just right there. But also, Silas was as dumb as a bag of rice.

The door suddenly opened, and Urbana looked in. "You need some soup, Miz Watling?"

Belle shuddered. Urbana was almost as poor a cook as she was a bedmate. "Fellate, don't fillet" the Presbyterian minister had screamed as Priapus had tended to the aftermath of one of Urbana's early sessions…and then they'd put her in the kitchen, which had been not much better. Peaches and Debbie had wanted to rename Urbana Salmonella, but not everyone is hygienic, perhaps.

"Well if you want something? Otherwise I'll jes' go downstairs and knit in the parlor."

"N-no honey, why don't you go for a walk—you-you scare the men a little, darlin'" Priapus had insisted that Urbie's skin would clear up, but Lord a-mighty she was twenty-three years old!

Urbana smiled happily, scratched her unibrow, and slammed the door a little hard.

Belle winced, and looked again at the slumbering Silas.

A handsome boy, looked just like Rhett, without the moustache—Silas had no facial hair at twenty-six, although Rhett told Belle once that he himself had begun to shave once a month at ELEVEN.

But Silas always wanted somethin' for nothin', or to get cash easily, in an interesting way…got a whore for a Ma and a blackguard father, why not? But Si had taken up with some little tramp who'd gotten him to do all the stealing and run the errands, and then he'd been arrested, and Rhett had had to get him out of an Americus jail, and the boy was home here at the bawdy house—playing the piano in the parlor, which he could do relatively well—and of course planning to leave again and start some new, stupid scheme…it was just sad.

Belle could never understand why someone who was given as much free money as her son was, by she and his daddy would go out trying to fight a battle he was unskilled at. He was a damn fine piano player, they'd sent him away to school to learn music and art and all the fripperies as a child, and he'd lived at the school in Macon undisturbed during the bloody four year massacre, the damn war.

Eating venison and lobster while the rest of the South was making do on hard peas and okra…wearing velvet jackets and having a good time, and all he could think about was his Pa, the blockade runner, and how he wanted to be a rich rascal, too.

Belle had HAD to be a rascal. She'd escaped her schizophrenic mama's razor strop and the entire white trash swampland of the Kissimee River, with the embezzling selectman of St. Johns, County, Florida, at the age of thirteen…

Belle had been thirteen, that is, poor Addis Smoot, her first husband had not quite made it to age forty-two when he'd been hit in the head with a shovel by a prospective second husband. If you get out of the Everglades, you can really see life.

Two years and five husbands later, Belle had arrived in the little summit called Standing Peachtree, which then evolved into the Atlanta section of Five Points. A helpful sixth husband had changed Belle's name from Boniface Wartburg to Belle Watling, and found her work that she turned out to be real good at in Madame Clarke's sporting house…and truly, Belle had had thirty-eight good years in the business.

A long, hacking cough came. Oh, crimes. She was going to have to have Priapus come up here—Priapus was a former medico who was more interested in laudanum than surgery, and he worked for Belle and her friends full time… taking bullets out of the James Gang, treating the many cases of syphilis…but Priapus couldn't help Belle for long.

She wasn't going to reach her fifty-fourth birthday—and she had to talk to Rhett. Rhett was obsessed with that silly sow, Scarlett O'Hara. He somehow thought that if he could take away her sawmills and her store—she'd return to being a good wife and helpmate. Men were so lost—they reached the age of about twelve and just stayed there in bigger and more aging bodies.

Belle had to find someone to run the house after she was gone. Priapus, capable doctor that he was—couldn't mess with numbers. He was planning to take the jarred babies from his many operations, his "pickled punks" and join a carnival any day now…no amount of morphine would bribe him to stay, anyhow.

And none of the girls Belle currently had working were really bright enough to handle the business end of prostitution. And if they were, would they be willing to keep on the older women, who no longer could bring in clients, who Belle housed out of sympathy? Most whores were cruelly practical.

Peaches certainly would throw Urbana out if she were put in charge. She might even talk Silas into shooting her, so she could give the name to a more fetching wench…

Who would take over the house? Belle had been only twenty when Madame Clarke had passed, and had gone into management almost immediately, and with ease. Shame that Scarlett O'Hara wasn't a whore—she apparently was an effective businesswoman. But if Rhett took the sawmills, Scarlett might need an occupation.

Belle laughed, and hacked miserably…oh God. What would she do?

But Rhett—he might understand. He might be able to run the house, perhaps give Silas the idea that he would take it over in time (ridiculous) and keep him away, banging the ivories, and out of trouble. Where was Rhett, damn it?