Page 37 of If Looks Could Kill
I ducked down to grab them, and so did she, and we made a pretty pair of awkward females bending over and bumping heads for the general amusement of those around us. She smelled heavily of perfume and face powder.
“What’s your name and where are you from?” I hissed into her ear.
She froze, one hand still outstretched toward a glove.
“Go away.”
I don’t know what tone I had expected from this tragic damsel in distress when I began to heroically rescue her, but it wasn’t exactly this. Inwardly, I scolded myself. As a conversation opener, my question left much to be desired.
“I’m the girl who gave you directions,” I whispered. “When you’d first arrived in town.”
The cigar man eyed me as if I were a cockroach he’d found in the bathtub.
“Dames!” his comrade declared. “Know what I mean?”
Cigar Man and his pal laughingly agreed that they understood each other well re: dames.
“I want to help you,” I whispered to the girl. “Get you home to your family.”
She dropped onto one knee and made as if to lace her boot. “You’ll get me in trouble.”
“This busybody bothering you?” No mistaking the menace in Cigar Man’s voice.
“Leave off, Joe, she’s a half-wit,” the girl said coolly, looking me straight in the eye. “Can’t help herself.”
This drew more laughter from the men.
She narrowed her gaze at me. “Beat it.”
“I mean it.” I tried one last time. “I have… people and funds and…”
She took her time tying her boot. “You want to help me? Disappear.”
I rose. “Sorry,” I said, loud enough for all three of them to hear. “I’m so clumsy.”
I turned away, burning with shame. Had I made her situation worse? Had I—we—concocted this scheme thinking we knew someone’s needs when we didn’t, and meddled where we oughtn’t have?
“Half-wit,” Cigar Man repeated. He passed by me with the girl all but clamped to his side.
A few paces beyond me, she stopped. “Give me a penny, Joe,” she told him.
“What for?”
“I want a penny,” she said. “For the half-wit.”
His cigar waggled between his teeth as he spoke. “You’re wasting my time.”
She thrust out her hand. “All I’m asking is a penny. You can put it on my tab.”
He rolled his eyes, muttering, but found a penny and slapped it into her palm.
She approached me. “Buy yourself a coffee,” she said loudly. “Get yourself some help.”
She seized my wrist, raised it, and placed the penny in my limp hand.
“Cora Something,” she whispered, not looking at me. “Something Connecticut. They’ll never take me back.”
Tabitha—Gutting and Filleting(Monday, November 19, 1888, to Thursday, November 22, 1888)
