Breath and Bones (34 page)

“There is no color in a photograph,” he learned to explain. “For life to appear we must have color.”

Indeed, in those parts of the West, photographs were most often associated with death, for it was only in extremis that most ordinary people thought to have their loved ones' portraits made. The painted portrait was the living art form, which was why the madams covered those pictures with shawls when the first guests filed in for a funeral. Funerals were surprisingly good for business; gazing on the dead made customers appreciate the living that much more, and they buried their sentimental regrets between the legs of the deceased's sister whores. Viggo never quite realized just how valuable his work there was.

One well-read madam was so mournfully gratified by his efforts that she presented him with a box of calling cards identifying the name and profession she thought were his:

Vigo Hart
- professor of the chthonic arts -
traveling

Viggo saved these cards carefully, in the packet with the diminishing stack of Famke's pictures that he was leaving in the towns and houses he visited. He thought he might never give a single one of the cards out, unless he wrote to Birgit again: In their own way, they were beautiful, too, and must be cherished up and treasured. They wove him into the tapestry of Mæka, the land in which beauty reigned supreme, even after death.

We can not possibly describe the attractions of these resorts. They are at once terrible, overpowering, lonely, and full of indescribable majesty. Amid them all the tourist travels daily, imbibing the life-giving, beautiful, fresh air full of its oxygen to quicken and stimulate the system; the eye drinks in the wealth of scenery, and loves to note the beauties of the wonderful glowing sunlight, and the occasional cloud-storms, and wild display of power and glory
.

F
REDERICK
E. S
HEARER
, E
D
.,
T
HE
P
ACIFIC
T
OURIST

On the morning Famke's fever broke, she found that the black hands she'd dreamt of were spooning a gruel down her still-burning throat, and Cracklin' Mag was standing at the room's tiny window, tugging at the curtain so as to see into the litter-strewn courtyard outside. The light was dull and gray, like the once-white walls, and the cloud she thought she'd been sleeping on was a lumpy mattress that seemed to have been set on a boulder. There was a terrible smell of hot flesh that Famke hoped was not her own. She inhaled to find out, then choked. Gruel splattered the bed, the walls, and even Mag, who turned quickly and gave a wide pink grin to see Famke awake.

“I knew there was something different about today!” She bounced onto the bed and, heedless of the sticky gruel, kissed Famke quickly on the brow. The black servant had vanished momentarily. “Here you are, awake at last, and your eyes have a look to 'em they haven't had in a while. You see me now, don't you?” She made as if to drop another kiss.

Weakly, Famke turned her head away and coughed. She was confused—this could be a dream, too, or maybe none of it was. “Can you . . . my . . . Albert . . .”

“Shh.” Mag laid a butterfly finger on Famke's lips, then touched it to her
own, as if she had an itch there. “You've had an awful septic throat. You shouldn't talk much if you can help it.”

The dark servant came back with a wet cloth and swabbed Famke's face clean. “Mrs. Cinque she coming”—the woman's accent was nearly unintelligible to Famke—“and she will know what you be.”

“Yes, darlin',” said Mag, “tell us who you are.” She laughed quickly, her eyes luminous with excitement—or perhaps with the belladonna that some of the fair but frail used to keep their eyes bright. “All we know is you're not the man we thought you were.”

Famke was defeated, and too exhausted to think of a new lie. “My name is Famke Sommerfugl.” She whispered because of her throat.

The black and white faces exchanged a look. Both wore the same impenetrable expression.

“Fanny?” the servant tried.

“Summer fool?” Mag echoed the immigration agent from New York, and suddenly Famke felt as if she had made no progress at all, as if she were back at that busy, confusing, hopeful day on the dock. Albert had surely left Santa Fé long ago, and there was no telling how many days she, Famke, had lain here.

“What kind name be that one?”

Famke turned her head into the pillow and wept.

She didn't weep long, however, because Opal Cinque turned up quickly, wearing a red velvet wrapper and an air of haste, as if she'd been disturbed in the middle of a transaction. She was puffing away at another cheroot—much as Albert did, Famke thought; but then again, not like him at all.

“So you must be Bertie's girl.”

Bertie
. What a dreadful name. “You know him? My brother?” Famke didn't want to tell Opal how the smoke bothered her throat. She tried to lie straight in her sickbed and take shallow breaths. “Did he tell you about me?”

Opal gave one of her characteristic shrugs and filled her lungs. “Your brother, is he.”

Cracklin' Mag spoke eagerly into the silence: “Imagine our surprise when we picked you up off the floor and found you weren't a customer at all! You could have knocked the lot of us down with a feather. We thought you were
a newspaperman at first—a good number have come by since we got the 'lectric and that big painting—”

“Mag insisted we keep you here, as a special favor to her,” Opal interrupted.

“That's right,” Mag interrupted in her turn. “I said, ‘We can't just turn a poor sister out in the cold—'”

“Leastways,” Opal continued implacably, “not after giving her a kiss, no charge. We went through your things to find out who your people were, and your pockets weren't too fat. So we gave you this little back room here. Our Chinese cook used to sleep in it before he lit out for the goldmines. It's a dollar a night.”

“I'm sure I'm very grateful,” Famke said in her best imitation of Sariah, though the price seemed high to her.

“I found a nice little picture that looks to be of you,” Mag said, plumping up Famke's pillow, “though the features have smeared. Daisy—that's the maid—washed that little yellow bag. Don't look so rattled—we put everything back in it, and I mended the seams myself. It's right here on this little table—”

“Fanny,” Opal broke in again, as seemed to be her habit, “are you familiar with a gentleman who calls himself Hermes?”

Perhaps she should have been surprised, but she wasn't. “I have met him,” she said cautiously. Nothing good had ever come of knowing Harry Noble.

“He came by the very morning before you did.” Mag brushed the dirty hair away from Famke's brow. “He wanted to find out about the painting—wrote about it for the
New Mexican
. But he asked about you, too.”

Opal inhaled one last time and set the stub of her cheroot down in a little crystal dish. “Ursula Summerfield, he said, Mag. But I suspect it's you he's after—there can't be too many red-haired lungers calling themselves Summer in this territory. He said he'd be in town a few days and to let him know if you turned up. Maybe you're his mistress as well as Bertie's?”

“Well,” Mag said in the voice of one who knows she is speaking reason, “a girl must make her way through the world somehow, even if it be as a mistress—or a—”

“What does he want with me?” Famke wondered aloud. It was becoming increasingly difficult to lie still, but at least she could take somewhat deeper breaths now that the cheroot was extinguished.

“We'll find out soon enough,” said Opal, with so much smugness that Famke wondered unhappily if
she
considered herself Albert's mistress. “I sent for him soon as I heard your name.”

Harry Noble breezed in wearing the familiar green suit, or perhaps a fresh one cut to the same pattern, and carrying a carpetbag. He'd been on his way to the station when the maid Daisy had found him, panting up and grabbing his arm as if for dear life.

Famke surprised herself by being glad to see him; his was at least a familiar face. Cramped as it now was, the tiny room actually seemed to expand when he entered.

“I'm off to points north,” he said grandly, by way of greeting. He took out a cigar, and Famke resigned herself to another suffocating conversation; but he did not light it, merely ran it under his nose and then used it to scratch an itch among the few hairs that remained behind his left ear. “I'm planning a series of features on the Dynamite Gang—all New York's in a frenzy for them. Ladies are wearing dynamite in their hair and twisting their jewels around it. And I have a theory involving those fellows, one that will make for a most ripping tale if I develop it correctly.”

“Why did you come looking for me?” Famke asked, squeaking around the wound in her throat. She remembered now why she disliked him. “How did you know to look in this place?”

His eyes grew big; he was clearly delighted with himself. “My dear Miss Summerfield, you gave me all the information I required. Your interest in a certain artist, one who has made a name—or at least a set of initials—for himself painting the women of the West, your appearance in the works of that artist, your visit to my hotel—”

“So you have been hunting me through Albert's pictures.” She didn't know why it hadn't occurred to her that someone might do this, when she had been using the same method herself.

“Yes, and very nice some of them are, too. Quite personable. A few,
of course, are less accomplished, and some appear to have been laid waste since first they were committed to canvas. I would say the very pressures of the market that has made your A. C. successful have also rendered him corrupt, a slave to the demands of his customers, as prostituted as they—”

“Have you seen him?” Famke asked. She began to cough, but she spoke through it—without bothering to wonder
why
Harry Noble would have taken the trouble to look for her through three territories: “Do you know where he is now?”

Mag was looking at Harry now with indignation, Opal with contempt.

Noble took a deep pull on his cigar. “Before I answer that question, my dear, I must offer you one small reproach. Why did you not wait for me that afternoon in Salt Lake City? I avow, that very morning I had succeeded in tracking down your friend, and I could have told you to look for him at the home of a Mrs. Dixie Holler of Leadville. Telegraphs confirmed his temporary residence in that locality, and a telegram could have held him there for you. You see, if you had not rushed off—”

Famke cried out, then collapsed in a fit of ragged coughing. Mag, who had been clinging silently to a wall while Noble's tale unfolded, brought a glass of tepid water and held it to Famke's mouth while she drank. She even blotted Famke's lips for her.

Harry Noble shot the two of them a calculating stare, then smoothed it over. “Miss Summerfield,” he continued, “haste has been your downfall. But I have a question for you now—”

“Do you know where Albert is?”

“I do not know, but I suspect.” He stopped and looked at her gravely; Famke got the sense that he was trying to intimidate her. “And there is more that I suspect, and it is this that I came to ask you . . .”

He paused to enjoy some suspense, and she demanded, “What is it, then?”

Harry Noble drew himself up to his full green height. “Are you, Miss Summerfield, in any way associated with the Dynamite Gang?”

Mag gasped and pulled slightly away from Famke. Even Opal Cinque let a look of surprise flit over her features. Harry laid his unlit cigar down in the little dish and ran his hands up and down his sleeves, like a cat grooming itself after swallowing a bird.

“Why do you ask me that?” It took Famke a moment to realize she should also say, “No. I do not know them. I am not
associated
with them.”

Harry Noble would have paced the room like a triumphant general if there had been space enough. “There has been a most intriguing coincidence between your travels—for, yes, I have found news of you in one place or another—along with the work of the infamous Gang. In brief, Miss Summerfield, I have placed you both in the same townships on several occasions. Leadville in particular—did you have anything to do with the explosion that destroyed Mrs. Holler's boardinghouse?”

Opal Cinque and even Mag looked at Famke accusingly.

“No!” she fairly shouted in indignation, or would have shouted if she'd had the breath to do it. “I went there to look for Albert—and some boys stole my money—I had to sell my nicest thing to go onward—”

Harry Noble held up one plump pink hand. “Do not fret, Miss Summerfield. I am merely gathering information. I have not informed the law as to my suspicions, although”—he reached into his vest pocket—“these notices have naturally given me pause for thought.”