As he went out, limping slightly, she called, "It's Holmes's Dry Goods Store, on the left side of the street about half a block down."
Her eyes devoured his broad back. But suddenly he stopped, braced a palm against the porch column, and studied his boots. Then he slapped the column, muttered, "Damn," and pivoted.
The screen door squeaked like her love-sprung bones, and her heart careened while she wished desperately that he'd just go, get out fast. But he came instead to stand dejectedly beside the desk, his weight slung on one hip, a thumb hanging from the waist of his denims. He slumped one shoulder, leaning his half of the way, but she refused to look up from the pigeonholes of the desk. The thumb left the waistband and came to her chin, but she jerked aside, snapping, "Don't!" He hesitated a moment longer, then leaned the rest of the way, and dropped a kiss on her nose.
"I'll be back." His voice sounded a little shaky, and her chin quivered. He straightened, touched her lips with the back of a forefinger, then left the house as fast as he should have the first time. The screen door slammed and she leaned both elbows onto the desktop, then dropped her face into her hands. She sat that way a long time, miserable, knowing she would get far more miserable before she managed to get over him. Yet get over him she must.
At last she rose, bathed, and went upstairs to dress for the day. She donned a black skirt and a pastel blue organdy blouse. She closed the loops over the many buttons of the deep cuffs, then stretched her neck high and smoothed the tight lace up her throat until it nearly grazed her ears. All the evidence of last night's tryst had been erased, but as she studied her reflection in the oval dresser mirror, she looked ten years older than she had yesterday morning. Behind her, reflected in the glass, she saw the red shoes.
She raised her own castigating eyes once more, wondering if after last night those red shoes might fit. She turned, picked one up, studied it, closed her eyes, judging herself. Finally she sat down on the bed and drew a red shoe on.
From downstairs she heard the screen door slam, then Jesse, call, "Abbie? I'm back. Hey, where are you?"
"I'm upstairs," she called, casting a baleful look at the shoe.
He came to the foot of the steps and called up, "Is it all right if I take a bath?"
"Yes. There's hot water left in the reservoir, and clean linens in the bureau drawer across from the pantry."
"I know where you keep them." His footsteps moved away.
She closed her eyes against the onslaught of welcome she felt at his returning, calling up the stairs in that familiar way.
Oh, God, God, she didn't want him to go, not so soon.
The red shoe still dangled from her toe, and she leaned to lace it up. She stuck her foot out, rotated the ankle this way and that, admiring the look and feel of David Melcher's gift.
And somehow Miss Abigail felt reassured, so she put on the second shoe.
She examined them again and the red color seemed to fade into a less offensive, less improper shade.
She stood up, balanced on the comfortable shoes, and found they had a heavenly fit. They made her feel petite and feminine. It was the first brief wisp of vanity Abigail McKenzie had allowed herself in her entire life. By the time she'd paced off four trial steps, the shoes had lost all garishness and were actually now quite appealing. It did not concern her that this was true only because she wanted it to be. Pacing back and forth across the bedroom floor, hearing the baby french heels click on the floorboards, there was nothing within Miss Abigail's conscience to suggest that the reason she was going to wear these shoes downstairs was to show Jesse DuFrayne that even though he was about to walk out of her life forever, he could just bear in mind that he wasn't the only fish in the sea.
"Where the hell do you keep the razor anyway?" Jesse called from downstairs, sounding like his old self again. "Abbie? I've got to hurry."
"Just a moment, I'm coming," she answered, hustling down the steps, the red shoes forgotten. She produced the razor from its kitchen hiding place and turned to find Jesse standing behind her in a pair of greenish-blue stovepipe pants—that's all. Her eyes traveled from his waist to his long toes, then back to his face as he reached for the razor.
"Could you fetch me the strop too, Abbie?" he asked, seemingly unaware of anything that might be happening inside of her.
And something was definitely happening.
Here was a bittersweet pang of a new kind. Here was her house filled with the sight and sound and smell of a man's toilette, something she'd long thought it would never again see. Oh, he had shaved and bathed and dressed here before, but now he did it in preparation to desert her. Now she was intimate with the muscle beneath the trouser, the ridges beneath the razor, the texture beneath the comb, the warmth beneath the smell. Now she wanted to call back time, forbid him to beautify his body for any cause other than her. But she had no right.
So she tried to keep from watching his bare shoulders curl toward the mirror, his head angle away, his eyes strain askance as he shaved near an ear. She tried not to dote upon the scent of shaving soap drifting through her old maid's kitchen. She tried to keep her eyes from coveting the rich fabric of the new pants he was wearing. She tried to ignore the whistle of the 9:50 from Denver when it keened through the house, the same train that had brought him here initially. She pretended that there would be no afternoon train to take him away.
"I left the change on the secretary in the parlor," he said, drying his face, leaning to comb his moustache.
She'd never seen him do that before. She tore her greedy eyes away and moved into the parlor to sit before the secretary in an effort to appear busy, rummaging through some papers officiously. But all the time her heart grew heavier He went into the bedroom and from around the doorway came the rustle of clothing, clunk of boot, chink of buckle, soft whistle through teeth, all punctuated by proclamations of silence during which her imagination took fire with images too familiar and forbidden.
And then out he came.
He stepped through the bedroom doorway and it was all she could do to keep from gasping and letting her jaw drop slack. He might have been a stranger, some striking dandy come to call as he paused, smoothing his vest almost self-consciously with a queer look on his face. His bronze skin beneath the slash of moustache was foiled against a high, stiff wing collar of pristine white, its corners turned back to create a 'V at his Adam's apple. A four-in-hand tie was meticulously knotted and boasted a scarf pin against its bedeviling silken stripes. The rolled collar of a double-breasted waistcoat peeped from beneath impeccable lapels of a faultless cutaway jacket shorter and more contouring than the frock coats she saw in church on Sundays. The sight of him was breath-stopping, especially in this town, where miners trudged in dirt-grimed britches held by weary suspenders over grayed union suits. Jesse's entire suit was made of that startling color that reminded Abbie of the head of a drake mallard.
She suddenly knew a stab of jealousy so great that she dropped her eyes to keep him from reading them, jealousy for a cause which could make him dress like a peacock only as he left her, when all this time she could scarcely get him to don boots or shirt.
She spoke to her desktop. "You found all these…
habiliments
in Stuart's Junction?"
He'd thought she'd be pleased to see him dressed civilly at last, but the three-dollar word was definitely irritated and faultfinding.
"You seem surprised, but you shouldn't be." He moved gracefully to the side of the secretary, touched its writing surface lightly with three fingertips. "The railroads bring in everything they have in the East these days. The Yankees no longer have a monopoly on the up-to-date."
"Hmph," she snorted, "I should think you'd have chosen a less obtrusive color at least."
"What's the matter with this? It's called verdigris, I'm told, and it's all the rage in the East and Europe."
"Verdigris indeed?" she disdained, cocking an eyebrow at the fingers that haunted her, no matter how she tried to ignore them. "Peacock would have been more apropos."
"Peacock?" At last he withdrew his hand to tug his new lapels. "Why, this is no more peacock than…
than the shoes old Melcher sent you."
Reflexively, she tucked her feet behind the gambriole legs of the desk chair while silently admitting the verdigris was not a bit offensive. It was deep, masculine, and utterly proper But none of that mattered, for it wasn't really the color which riled her, and by now they both knew it.
"Perhaps it is not the suit that is peacock but only its wearer," she said stringently, and could sense Jesse bristling now.
"Why don't you make up your mind what you want out of me, Miss Abigail?" he asked hotly, referring of course to the clothing, but making her color at the memory of last night's request. Her mouth grew pinched.
"It must be a vital assignation you are going to, to bring about such a transformation when I could scarcely get a shirt on you for love or money!" Their eyes at last met in a clash of wills, but her dubious, ill-chosen phrase became poignant with unintended meaning.
"Not for love or money?" he repeated, slowly, precisely. She realized she had employed both in the last ten hours.
"Do not dare take those words figuratively, sir!" she snapped. "Just go! Be off to your
tete-a-tete
—
whatever it is—in your
verdigris
suit. But don't forget to take your everyday britches along. You never can tell when you'll get these shot off for you!"
They glared at each other while Jesse wondered how to get out of here gracefully without further recriminations on either side. At last he placed his hands on his hips, his stance wilted, and he shook his head at the floor "Abbie," he asked entreateningly, "for God's sake, can't we at least say goodbye without all this again?"
"Why? It makes it far more familiar to see you leave with anger in your eyes."
He realized that this was true, that wrapped in the security blanket of anger she needn't make appeals or excuses. He squatted beside her chair as she stared unblinkingly into the pigeonholed depths of the desktop.
"Abbie," he said quietly, taking one of her small, clenched hands, which refused to open, "I don't want to leave you in anger. I want to see you smiling and I want to be smiling myself."
"If you'll pardon me, I don't seem to have a lot to smile about this morning."
He sighed, stared at her hem, and absently rubbed his fingers over her tightly knotted fist that he had placed on his upraised knee.
Damn! Damn! she thought, why does he have to smell so good and be so nice? Why now?
"I knew you'd be bitter this morning," he went on. "I tried to warn you but you wouldn't listen. Abbie, I don't have time to stay here and help you straighten out your conscience. Just believe me. What happened happened, and you have nothing to be ashamed of. Tell me you won't go on feeling guilty."
But she would not say any such thing, or loosen her fist, or even look at him. Had she done any of those things she would end up in his arms again, and already she was bound for a long stint in hell, she was sure. Jesse realized it was getting late, that he must soon leave. "Abbie, there's one thing that's… Listen, Abbie, what we did might not be over yet, you know. If anything happens, I mean if you should be pregnant, will you let me know?"
It had never, never entered her mind. Not before, during, or after making love with him, but his considering the possibility gave her the final, unforgivable cut, for she knew he would never come back and marry her if it did turn out that way.
He was saying, "You can reach me any time by wiring the central R.M.R. office in Denver," when she slowly pivoted toward him and slipped two scarlet kidskin toes from beneath her skirt, right next to that verdigris knee on the floor. He saw the red toes peep slowly from beneath her skirt, like two insolent, protruding tongues, and jumped to his feet, fists clenched at his sides, two small horizontal creases now behind the knee of the very pant leg which he had bent to her with the kindest of intentions.
"Goddammit, Abbie, what do you expect of me!" he shouted. "I told you last night I was going, and I am!
Don't think I don't know why you're wearing those… those strumpet's shoes! But it's not going to work.
You're not going to beat me over the head with the kidskin fact that you are now a scarlet woman, because it takes more than one night in bed with a man to make you one! You wanted what you got and so did I, so don't make me the fall guy. Grow up, Abbie. Grow up and realize that we're both a little right and both a little wrong and that you do not have the corner on guilt in this world!"
She kept her eyes trained on his knee and innocently intoned, "My, my, what a shame, Mr. DuFrayne, to have crimped your faultless peacock pant leg that way."
"All right, Abbie, have it your way, but don't make a fool of yourself by parading down Main Street in those goddamn red shoes!"
At that moment a querulous voice spoke from the front door "Miss… Miss Abigail, are you all right?"
David Melcher peered in, suffering the unsettling feeling of
déjà vu
, for it seemed he'd lived through this scene once before.
Miss Abigail shot to her feet, gaping. You could easily have stuffed both red shoes into the cavern of her mouth just then before she gathered her scattered wits enough to stammer, "M… Mr. Melcher… how…
how long have you b… been standing there?" Frantically she heard the echo of Jesse's comments about scarlet women and pregnancy.
"I only just got here this minute. How long has
he
been here?"
But Jesse DuFrayne would not be talked past as if he were some cigar store Indian. His tone was icy and challenging as he faced the door "I've been here since before you left, Melcher, so what of it!"
David pierced him with a look of pure hate. "I'll speak with you across a bargaining table at high noon and not a minute before. I am here to see Miss Abigail. I assumed you would have relieved her of your presence long before this, especially since you are obviously well enough to be arranging arbitration discussion these days."