“
You look ten years older. What is the occasion?” Sounding almost miffed, Mrs. Beattie was frowning, not smiling at the lovely dress as Clara had expected.
“
A special séance. Papa wants me fancy. The seekers are stiff in their heels, Papa says.”
“
Mrs. Beattie, what about this lovely thing?” The fat woman held up one of Mrs. Beattie’s most elaborate bonnets, the cherry velvet with black lace and garland of flame-colored flowers.
“
I’ll see you in the morning,” Mrs. Beattie said to Clara, then sped toward the customer.
Papa poked his head in the shop door. “Come now. You can’t be late.”
Clara went up to the Spirit Room to wait for John Reilly. At precisely three-thirty, she heard a man’s voice on the landing outside with Papa, then John Reilly came in alone and greeted her with only a nod. Without hesitating, he took off his coat and hat and hung them near the door. He was more or less how she remembered him, his brown hair long and thin over the back of his collar, a shiny bald spot on top of his head, his face ruddy. He was rounder in the gut than she had recalled, though. Maybe he had added to that recently. He looked a bit like Benjamin Franklin, she thought.
“
I like every bit of clothing off a girl. You women wear too many things on your person.” Reilly plucked his watch from his waistcoat, wound it, then settled on the red sofa. “It uses up precious time, putting all that on and taking it all off.”
“
Even the lace mitts?”
“
Why would I want those? I don’t like the feel of those. They scratch me.”
Chewing at the inside of her mouth until she felt a loose piece of skin between her teeth, Clara kept silent as she climbed out of the new green taffeta dress, hung it over a chair at the table, unhooked her hoop, then lifted it over her head and set it over near Papa’s secret bell ringer. Then she came back to the table and took off her shimmy, leaving her torso bare. He watched her every move, not saying anything and not showing anything on his face, either.
The room was warm enough. Papa had come down earlier and started the fire. He’d also brought in a washstand and put it near the back wall. Sam Weston’s whiskey and Old Peach brandy bottles and glasses were on the shelf back there too.
She wouldn’t mind one of those brandies right now. She was slightly nauseous and felt tiny as a beetle. “Do you want a drink of whiskey or brandy?”
“
No, I don’t take liquor. It fogs the mind. I want to know where I am and what I am doing in every moment.”
She glanced longingly at the bottles thinking she could take a drink on her own, but decided Reilly would not approve so she continued undressing. When she had finished taking off her pantalettes, stockings, boots, mitts, and neckband, she stood naked and shivering by the séance table. She perched a hand lightly on one of the chairs to brace herself.
“
There. You see what I mean?” Smirking, he pointed at the garb draped over every chair around the table and the whalebone hoop sitting at the side of the room. “Look at all of it. It looks like a darned dress shop.” Belly laughing as he came to her, he pulled out the chair draped with her pantalettes and plopped down, legs spread wide.
“
Here. Come sit on my lap.”
She sidled onto one of his large thighs. Sliding an arm around her waist, he drew her against him. He didn’t smell like much of anything, except a little sweat and cigar breath.
“
Your father has a unique arrangement with you here. I went to a brothel in New York City once that was run by a husband and wife. Their two lovely daughters, Dinah and Alice, worked for them. That man was the only father I’d ever seen with daughters serving him like you do yours.”
Brothel
. The word exploded in her head. Is that what her Spirit Room was? That? That word? That kind of place? She jumped off his lap. It was. Of course it was. Before it had been a private place where Sam Weston was her paramour. Now, with Reilly, it was a brothel. She was Dinah or Alice. A whore.
“
Are you feeling all right? You’re perspiring and shaking. Are you ill?”
“
I…I’m going to be sick.” She rushed to the new washstand and vomited into the basin. Trembling and hot and cold, she stood over the bowl for a long while.
Finally, she felt something come over her back and shoulders. It was Reilly’s coat.
“
Come and sit on the sofa. Is it the nerves or are you with fever?” He put his wide, rough palm over her forehead as he walked her to the red sofa. “You seem cool enough.”
“
It’s nerves, sir.”
After letting her rest a while curled up in his coat on the sofa, he came over to her and touched her forehead again. “No fever. Don’t fret, Miss Clara. I’m a gentleman, you know.” He ran a finger over her lips. “Are you ready then? You look delicious.”
Ready to die, she thought. Ready to drown in the lake like Mamma. But she sat up slowly and keeping her eyes down, nodded. He took his coat from her and hung it up again. Then he took off his suspenders and trousers and dropped them on the floor, then his collar and tie, shirt, long johns. He was fully naked, his chest hairy with black curls, his prick already hard.
He picked up his heap of clothing, dumped it on the séance table, then came back to the sofa. “Lie back.”
When he lay down on top of her, she could barely breathe.
“
Wait,” she said.
“
For what?”
“
The bed linen. I have to take care the sofa isn’t ruined.”
Laughing, he pushed himself off her and stood. “Be quick.”
She retrieved the bed linen from the cupboard underneath the whiskey and arranged it over the sofa. She glanced across the room at the mantel clock as she lay down. Three forty-three. As soon as he lowered his full weight onto her again, her lungs flattened into the sofa. She coughed for air. Then, he kissed her lips and forced his tongue inside her mouth. After that, he spit on his fingers three or four times, wiped the saliva on the tip of his prick, then with his hand, guided it inside her. She felt the first heavy thrust of him. He was an absolute tree trunk. As fast as she could, she flew away from herself and everything he was doing to her.
She imagined herself floating in the air, hovering around the room like an angel, drifting over to the window and watching the afternoon activities out on snow-covered Seneca Street. Men, women, children, dressed in scarves and hats, carrying packages, going in and out of the bakery, the bank, Mrs. Beattie’s downstairs. She knew some of them and waved. She flew down to the street and joined some children throwing snowballs.
When Reilly was done, and had got up and was getting dressed, she drifted back down to herself. Then she sat up, wrapped herself in the sheet, which was wet where it had been underneath them, and watched him finish dressing. The fireplace mantel said three fifty-two. Nine minutes. That’s all it was.
It was much faster than with Sam Weston, who always rambled incessantly about her beauty and repeated her name until she was sure she never wanted to hear it again. But Reilly had taken off his clothes, got into her, pushed and pumped, and was fully dressed before she had just begun to settle into her other world. Grateful for the tricks she had learned during her times with Weston, she had scarcely been aware of him after the first moment. Next time, if there was going to be a next time, she would leave herself even sooner.
“
You should have a mirror in here so a man can make sure he is put together properly before going outside again. I have to go back to my office.”
“
I’ll tell Papa.” She took a deep breath. “Mr. Reilly, will you come here again? I mean, for this, for me?” Say no, please say no, she thought.
“
Maybe tomorrow?”
She began to perspire and felt she might vomit again. Two men would be coming to her now. Two. Her heart sank slowly like a ship sliding below the water line for the last time. Papa had made her into a whore. If Reilly would just go away forever, if she could be unappealing to him somehow, then she would be Sam’s paramour, but not a whore. Perhaps demanding money would discourage Reilly. Papa couldn’t persist if Reilly wouldn’t pay. Wrapped in the sheet, she stood and walked to him, faced him squarely as he was fussing with his bow-tie. She looked down at her naked feet.
“
I have my own rules.”
“
What do you mean? You’re just a young thing. You can’t have any rules. Your father makes the rules.”
“
No, I have my own rules.” She held her breath, then tried to stand straight, tried to get that look into her eyes like Izzie had when she argued with Papa. It was especially important not to blink. No blinking whatsoever. Lifting her gaze, she concentrated on his green-gray eyes.
Reilly chuckled as he finished with his tie and put his hands on his hips.
“
Well, then, what are your rules, young miss?”
The room suddenly lost its air. Sweat trickled from her armpits and ran down her sides.
“
You pay my father, but you pay me something else too, separately, privately.”
His bright eyes darkened. Then he sauntered over to a ladder-back chair at the table, sat, and grunted as he struggled to pull a boot on. When he had both boots on, he smirked at her.
“
You think you’re worth more than the five dollars I already gave him? That’s a dear price as it is, even if you are a stunner. I can go down to Minnie’s whenever I want for less than five dollars, and besides that, you were rather lifeless in the act.”
She swallowed, holding her eyes wide open and steady. She wasn’t worth anything really, certainly not five dollars, certainly not more. He saw that. He stared back at her. But it might work. She might get rid of him.
“
Yes, sir, I need five dollars for Papa and two dollars for myself, and the two dollars are a secret just between us. Papa can’t know.” Remembering Papa at the bottom of the stairwell, she kept her voice low.
Reilly clomped over to the door, snatched his coat from its hook and put it on. “You’re not shy and nervous after all, are you? And why wouldn’t I just tell your father about this sweet little arrangement, then?”
“
Because I’ll tell your wife that you came to me to speak to the spirits but that you forced yourself on me.” Still willing herself not to blink, she tightened her leg muscles to hold herself fixed. “I’ll say that you raped me.”
Crossing his arms, then cradling his chin with a hand, he laughed harder still.
“
And why should she believe a young whore like yourself?”
The room began to spin. She tasted the vomit at the back of her throat.
“
Why shouldn’t she?”
He watched her a moment and finally stopped his sniggering. “Ah, you’re a dangerous one. Something tells me I should stay on the other side of the ocean from you.” He rested his hand on the doorknob but didn’t turn it. “If I come back, I’ll honor your rules, but that’s if I come back. I’m not saying I will.”
He opened the door and was gone. She ran to the window, threw back the curtains, and waited to see him leave the building, but he didn’t come out to the street right away. He was probably talking to Papa downstairs at the door. What if he told Papa about the deal she asked for? What would Papa do to her? Her stomach twisted up in a knot.
Finally, the door slammed shut downstairs and Reilly emerged onto the sidewalk. He took out his pocket watch, read it, then looked up toward her window. He tipped his hat to her in the dusky light, then headed down the snowy walk toward the lake. He would be back. He called her a stunner. He would be back. Mamma had always told her that her looks were a gift, a ticket to a better life. But they weren’t. They were a curse—a horrible curse.
Two girls, probably just a year or two younger than she was, came out of the bakery across the street. While they stood in the doorway, one of them raised a small bundle and lifted back the wrapping. They tipped their noses toward whatever it was, smiled at each other, then closed the bundle back up. Suddenly, tears began to flood down Clara’s face. Her chin quivered out of control.
“
Papa, why are you doing this to me?”
As the two girls from the bakery climbed toward Main Street and disappeared, she cried and longed for Izzie to appear beside her, stroke her hair, and tell her everything would be all right. But instead Reilly’s voice was inside her echoing the word “whore” over and over again.
She heard a knock and then Papa ask through the door if she was ready to walk home.
“
I’m not ready. I’ll go by myself.”
“
You all right?”
“
I’ll go by myself in a while!”
She heard nothing for a moment, then his footsteps clomp down the stairs and the door to the street creak open, then clunk shut.