The Good Time Girls by K.T. Blakemore

Author:K.T. Blakemore
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780990584391
Publisher: Sycamore Creek Press

CHAPTER 15

ORINDA

1898

Pip Aims to Put Me in My Place—China Mary Refuses My Request

Pip and I smoked and shared a ham sandwich and watched Wu Lin at his tubs. I pulled my shawl tighter around me. Just the day before it had been hot enough for knickers and a chemise. At noon the temperature dropped and all the leaves along with it. And thus, fall had completed its cycle which is how seasons occur in the desert and Arizona mountains.

I squinted at Pip. “You pay Pascoe’s yet?”

“I will.”

But I knew she had the same empty wallet as me.

“We have been paid minimally for three weeks straight,” I said. “All that money coming in and none of it heading out. So, where’s it go? Is it all under China Mary’s bed? Down some old mine shaft?”

Pip spit a bit of tobacco and took her time blowing smoke rings. She lounged in the chair, knees spread under her skirt and head lolled back so her hair swept on the ground. I envied her wool skirt and jacket, for she seemed content and didn’t crowd into the square of sun with me. “Cockfights.”

I squinted at her. “What?”

“And dogfights. And fan-tan when she heads over to Mammoth every once in a while.”

“But it’s our money she’s gambling.”

Pip shrugged.

“That’s all? You’re just going to shrug? She’s stealing our money.”

“You going to confront her on that issue?”

“I just might.”

“You’re dumber than I thought.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Then don’t be dumb.”

“You’re the one that’s dumb. I’m just here temporarily.”

She made some humph-humphy noise.

“Why are you like this?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“So laissez-faire. Those slips of paper she waves around. She can put anything on them she damn well pleases. We pay board and food and anything else that needs replacing, like that silk ribbon I ordered for your swan costume. She says I owe her for that. And she says I’m ahead because I broke even this week, and she was generous and didn’t charge for the extra pillow I took from the hall closet when I had my monthly and wanted some extra comfort.”

“You took two.”

“She does not value our act, Pip. And we have a good act.” I swiped at a fly that tried to batter my head. “She’d be sorry if we left.”

“And where would we go?”

Wu Lin lifted a heavy soaking pile of sheets and slapped them onto a table. Then he leaned the pole to it and took something from a long pocket on his cloak and tossed it near the ocotillo fence. A rush of birds exploded from the limbs, jostling and cawing at each other as they fought for some of the seed. Then it was gone and so were they. Wu Lin returned to squeezing out the sheets and Pip picked at a callous on her palm.

“You’re in a funk,” she said.

It appeared to me Pip was more interested in ripping at the callous with her teeth than remarking upon China Mary’s penurious ways. I folded the wax paper from the sandwich and crushed my cigar in the dirt.

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