Anything You Can Do
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Three A.M. and Hannibal Heyes bolted upright in his bed at the sound of someone knocking on their hotel room door. He glanced across the room to the other bed and saw Kid propped up on one elbow, Colt .45 in hand.
"Who is it?" Heyes shouted.
"Either you let me in right this minute or I will write myself a key, and I don't care what state of dress either of you are in, or not in!"
"Kate?" they replied in unison with puzzled looks on their faces.
"Are you going to let me in?" she asked from the other side of the door.
Kid holstered his gun and threw back the covers, then padded across the room in just his long johns and unlocked and opened the door.
Kate marched right past him and came to a stop in the middle of the room while Kid shut the door, then folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the door and grinned at her attire.
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Heyes asked. "And, why are you dressed like that?"
Obviously excited, Kate was beaming ear to ear and she took one step back and made a wide, sweeping movement with both arms to draw attention to her elegant 1880s period dress of dark blue satin with hand crocheted lace along the neckline and the cuffs of the long sleeves. "Isn't it beautiful! I wrote it myself!"
"You wrote it?" Heyes asked.
"Uh-uh," Kate said, while shaking her head and waving her notebook inches from Heyes' face. "I suddenly realized that if the two of you could just appear at my house any time you wanted, why I could do the same to you! All I have to do is write it. Then I realized I could write myself into period clothes"
Kid dropped his arms and shook his head as he walked across the room and sat down on his bed. "What you're wearing is some high society, socialite dress that will get you labeled as some snooty old woman that comes from money and never had to lift a finger in her life," Kid told her.
"Excuse me? Old?"
"That's all you got outta what I just told you?" Kid asked.
"Fine. What should I be wearing?" Kate asked as she took her eraser and began rubbing vigorously across the page, while the dress she had described began disappearing from her notes and, unbeknownst to Kate, from her body as well.
As she frantically rubbed the eraser on the page, from the corner of her eye she saw Kid once again with his arms folded across his chest. This time though, he had a very amused grin on his face.
Kate stopped erasing the words and stared at the Kid. "What do you find so amusing?"
"Oh nothing, nothing at all. You just keep right on doing what you were doing," he said.
Kate noticed he was looking down as thought he was finding something humorous about her shoes. But when she looked down to see what was so amusing, she gasped. "Why didn't you tell me?" she exclaimed when she realized her dress was disappearing more and more with each swipe of the eraser, and the end of her dress was now at least an inch above her knees.
"You had to draw that to her attention," Heyes grumbled to his partner while also sporting a wide smile. "You just couldn't let her erase just two or three more sentences?"
"Ohhhh, the two of you are...are..."
"Men," they replied in unison.
Kate quickly scribbled a line about being covered in a floor length men's rain duster. "That should wipe those smiles off you faces," she said triumphantly. "And don't you forget that I can write you into whatever style of clothes suits my fancy. So the both of you just mind your manners."
"You're a fine one to be talking about manners," Heyes reminded her. "You come banging on a hotel room door in the middle of the night demanding to be let in. You probably woke every guest in the hotel."
"Well... I'm sorry about that," Kate replied. "I was just so excited to discover I could get an authentic old west experience."
"What's with women and their 'authentic' experiences?" Kid asked. "Is there such a thing as an inauthentic experience?"
"There is Kid," Heyes replied. "It's called faking it. But I'm guessing you wouldn't know anything about that."
"Stop joking and help me," Kate told them. "So, what should I be wearing?'
"Are you dressing for summer or winter?" Heyes asked.
"What season is it now?"
"You are flustered," Kid replied. "It's your story, you get to make it up however you want it. Pick a season."
Kate gave his comment a bit of consideration, then scribbled 'summer' into her notebook.
"If it's summer, then you want to go with cotton or linen, but stay away from wool, even a light wool is hot," Heyes told her.
"That's true. A wool shirt on a hot day. You'll end up smelling like the sheep it came from," Kid added.
Kate sat down in a chair and gave her attire some serious consideration, then began writing and Heyes and Kid watched as the rain duster was slowly replaced by a light brown riding skirt and a a modest white, cotton blouse.
"Better?' she asked when she had finished writing.
"I kinda liked the vanishing dress better, but you look fine," Kid told her.
"I was thinking I might stay with the two of you for, say... one month," Kate told them.
Heyes and Kid looked at each other with shocked expressions.
"Here?" Heyes asked.
"With us?" Kid added.
"What's wrong with that? It would show me what the west was really like."
"You want us to give you an itemized list of what is wrong with that?" Heyes asked.
"Just the highlights," Kate told him.
"Kate, I don't mean to be harsh, but you wouldn't last ten minutes living in the old west, as you like to call it," Heyes told her.
"Why not?" she asked defensively.
"You ever heard of a washboard?" Kid asked. "Or lye soap?"
"I've seen them," she replied.
"It would only take about ten minutes to do away with that pretty little manicure you got. And lye soap will dry and crack your hands."
"Well, Mr. Know-It-All, I don't have to wash out clothes. I'll just write new clothes," Kate said with a smirk.
"And lose out on that authentic experience?" Kid asked.
"Kid's right Kate," Heyes said. "You're just too... delicate for these times."
"Delicate? DELICATE? I'll have you know I have done plenty of hard labor jobs in my time!"
"Like what?" Kid asked, leaning back against the headboard with his hands clasped behind his head as he settled in for another good laugh.
"I... I... I cleaned a chicken coop! That was disgusting!"
"How many times you done that?" Kid asked.
Kate pouted. "Once," she confessed.
Kid looked at Heyes and they both chuckled.
"You ever plucked a chicken or skinned a rabbit?" Heyes asked.
Kate's face pinched up and she shook her head.
"You ever cleaned an outhouse?"
"Yes! I was a Girl Scout!" Kate said proudly. "And I've cooked over an open flame, too."
"Milked a cow? Handled a team of horses? Used a plow? Dug a well? Rode in a saddle for more than an hour at a time?" Taken a bath in a horse trough?" they asked after taking turns throwing out ideas.
"Now stop it, both of you. I don't have to actually do all those things," Kate replied.
"If you want an authentic experience, you do," Heyes told her.
Kate frowned at the thought of taking a bath in a horse trough. "Wait just a minute," she exclaimed as her face brightened. "I could have an authentic observer's experience," she proclaimed.
"Come again?" Kid asked.
"I don't have to actually do all those things," Kate repeated. "I can watch the two of you do all those things!"
Heyes broke into a belly laugh. "Guess we both know who gets the bath in the horse trough," he said, nearly choking on his words.
Kid reached for a pillow and threw it across the room at his partner. "Now that ain't funny, Heyes!" he exclaimed.
Heyes tossed the pillow back over to his partner, but the smiled remained on his face.
"You can't watch us do all those things, Kate," he told her.
"And why not?" She asked defiantly.
"Because most of them things is hard on the back," Kid told her. "And everybody knows we don't do things that are hard on the back."
"You'd be writing us out of character," Heyes told her. "A good writer never writes her subjects out of character."
Kate pursed her lips and looked from one cowboy to the other. "You two are just in your element in this time period, aren't you?"
"Well, we have been at this for a long time," Heyes told her.
Kate stood up and took a hard look at the words she had written in her notebook. She tore the page from it's binding and slipped the notebook under her arm.
"You two sure know how to spoil a brilliant idea," she grumbled.
"Kate, you know Heyes is the only one with brilliant ideas," Kid reminded her.
With her bottom lip pushed out in a pout, Kate took the page between her hands. "You can go back to sleep now. I guess I'll go home and do the same," she said and tore the page into tiny pieces as she vanished from their sight.
Heyes looked at the little pieces of paper scattered about on the floor; the remnants of a broken dream.
"You gonna clean that up?" he asked.
Kid scooted down in his bed and pulled the covers up to his shoulders.
"Maybe in the morning. Good night, Heyes."