For a long hour, Courtney kicks and yanks at the cuffs and headboard. She gets up on her knees and pulls against the iron. Neither gives. Forgetting modesty, she shouts for help but the music from the live band downstairs is too loud. Courtney collapses back on the mattress, her wrists raw and stinging like her eyes.
There's a polite knock on the door. Courtney scrambles to cover herself as a barmaid comes in to the room.
"Are you Mrs. Jones?" she asks, eying Courtney.
"Yes," Courtney admits.
The barmaid walks over with a small silver key and uncuffs her. "Mr. Clyde sent me to get you after sixty minutes. Zeke the bartender has something for you when you go downstairs."
Courtney nods, rubbing her wrists. She keeps her head down, but out of the corner of her eye she catches the barmaid giving her a derogatory glare before she tosses the key on the bed and leaves. Even after the woman has left and she's alone in the room, getting dressed, Courtney keeps her eyes down. Her clothes burn of embarrassment as she puts them on. The beads itch.
She goes down to the bar and Zeke tells her Duncan bought her a whiskey and left her something. He slides her an envelope as she half-heartedly shoots back the drink. In the envelope, she counts the couple bills he left her and the train ticket, stamped with a date that night to Texas. Enough money for a few meals, not enough to follow him again.
She walks out into the street, shivering in the wind, and a man on the corner eyes her hungrily, asks her if she has anywhere to stay tonight. Courtney covers herself with her arms and has to run when the man starts trying to follow her. She disappears into a clothing store and asks if they have a jacket. The done-up women behind the counter, in pencil skirts and up-dos, take one look at her and tell her they don't have anything there for her kind of woman. It takes her three attempts to find a store that will sell her a jacket and even then it's overpriced.
"Tough economic times," says the cashier, smirking at her. "We all gotta work hard to pay the bills, don't we?"
Courtney slaps all of her money on the counter, snatches up the jacket, and walks back to the train station, shaking violently. On the train platform, the man behind the news stand recognizes her.
"Find what you were lookin for, doll?" he asks.
She buries her face in her chest and squeezes her eyes shut. "None of your business."
The three-day train ride back home is nerve-wrecking. She hyperventilates at every minor stop. She has to get back before Justin does, lest he find her letter. Stupid. She was stupid. Stupid enough to believe that Duncan would let her join him when his character suggested he'd do exactly what he did: fool around with her and leave her for the next dame that came along. How could she have deluded herself so badly into thinking otherwise?
Courtney makes it to the house just before sundown on the third day as the sky starts to turn sour with rain.
"Justin?" she calls, rushing in. But the house is empty. Courtney grabs the letter under the fruit bowl, unopened, untouched, and rips it to shreds before using it as kindle for the fire despite the Texas heat. The cold from Chicago was still in her bones.
In her room, she tears the dress off, a few strings of beads snapping and scattering across the floor. She kicks them under her bed. She rips the fishnets. The gloves and heels and jewelry follow suit and she tosses it all into the back of her closet, then goes to her bed and puts the wedding band back on her finger. It feels heavy.
In the bathroom, she pulls her short hair back into a tiny ponytail and puts on a hat despite the hour. Maybe Justin won't notice until it grows back. She scrubs off her makeup, but it's stubborn and refuses to come off as easily as the clothes.
The front door clicks.
"Bonnie?"
Courtney stops, whimpers reflexively at the sound. She washes her hands of the mascara stains and rouge streaks and stares herself down in the mirror for a long second. She breathes deep. She sets her shoulders. She puts on a house dress and slowly, steadily, walks into the main parlor.
Justin's on the threshold of the door, shaking an umbrella out on the porch.
"There you are. Thanks for setting up the fire," he says, focused on the umbrella. "Driving in this rain was insane. I'm going to have to dry out my trousers."
"I'm glad you're home safe," she says.
Justin turns to her. In the light of the fire, he squints. "Are you wearing make-up?"
Courtney nods and stares at the rug.
He leaves the umbrella on the porch to dry and shuts the door behind him, coming over to Courtney. He tilts her chin up to get a better look at her face.
"What did you do to yourself? You look like a circus clown."
She turns her face from him sharply.
"I only did what you suggested," she says in a low voice.
Justin doesn't answer. He looks her over carefully, then pulls her hat off by the brim. His jaw drops.
"You cut off your hair? All of it?!"
She can't look him in the eyes. "There's some left…"
Justin whirls away from her, hat clenched in his hand, the other pressed against his forehead. "I knew it! I knew I shouldn't have left you alone for so long after what happened at the bank! You were going off on your ideas again, weren't you?!"
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
He throws the hat on the couch. "That's it. First thing tomorrow, I'm walking to the bank to turn in your resignation. You aren't going back there ever again. You aren't working again after this."
"This?" Courtney says to the floor. "This is what you wanted."
Justin turns back to her. "How could I possibly want my wife to look like a sex worker?!"
Her gaze snaps to his. All at once, she's shaking again.
"I did what you expected me to do!" she shouts at him. "This is what you said you wanted from me! This is exactly what you said I was!" And now the tears start coming. "Because according to you, the only thing I care about is sleeping around and dressing like a whore! Because you think wanting to do something with my life means I'm a terrible mother to a kid I don't even have yet! I said fuck it! If my own husband thinks he married a tramp, then everyone else might as well think it too!"
Courtney collapses on the armchair, unable to hold it in anymore. She was an adulterer. She was a naïve idiot. To think someone like Duncan Clyde actually cared enough about her to give her a chance. Now she's right where she started, with shorter hair and a ripped up dress in her closet.
She doesn't hear him, but she feels when Justin sits down beside her and tenderly pulls her into his embrace.
"Oh Bonnie," he says softly, petting her hair as she cries. "Oh dearest, if this is all about the fight we had, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry if what I said was so hurtful, you felt you had to go mutilate yourself like this. I'm so sorry, honey, come here, now."
Courtney struggles uncomfortably in his grip, but Justin only holds her tighter.
He kisses her hair. "I am so truly sorry, Bonnie. I... Here. I think I know what to do to make it up to you."
She pushes away, but his insistence overpowers her. He pulls her to the bedroom and whispers to her lovingly as he strips out of his suit and pulls off her cotton dress and underwear. When he kisses her comfortingly, she can't pretend it's Duncan anymore but she doesn't want it to be Justin either. Even then, she could never love Justin with the same burning intensity with which she delusionally loved Duncan Clyde these last few months.
Courtney squeezes her eyes closed as he lays her on the bed, still crying jerkily. She says nothing as he touches her where he wants, his hands smooth from a lifetime of leather gloves and folding envelopes. With shaky resolve, she turns from his kisses and refuses to fake anything, and eventually, before Justin's even finished, exhaustion wins out and she sleeps fitfully through the rest of it.