Page 71 of If Looks Could Kill
“We could go the long way round,” he said. “Head uptown, then cross over the Bowery well above here and come down. That’s probably safer.”
“That’s probably what you should do,” I told him, “but I don’t think I have time for that. I have to head straight back.”
He stared at me. “Miss Tabitha,” he said with some exasperation, “if you think, after coming this far and standing out here in the cold for so long, that I’m going to let you go back alone, then I…” He couldn’t find words to finish his thought.
“I understand,” I said, “and it’s awfully good of you. I feel the same way about my friends upstairs. Responsible.”
He eyed me strangely, then sighed and offered me his arm.
“Well, come on, then, old responsibility o’mine,” he said. “We got ourselves out of the frying pan. Shall we jump back into the fire?”
Pearl—Marked for Destruction(Sunday, December 2, 1888)
Pearl looks out the upstairs window and sees Tabitha walk off smilingly, arm in arm with that barkeeper from the Irish pub. How has he come to be part of this, anyway?
It doesn’t matter. There goes Tabitha. Wanting no further part of this snake business. Snatching at the first escape with, perhaps, the first young man to pay her a second glance.
What if the tables were turned, Pearl? Would you stay?
Yesterday’s Pearl would label it Satan’s work and flee. Just not with a Bowery bartender.
That doesn’t stop her feeling utterly pierced with the wound of betrayal. Of abandonment. All their time and service together—sparring notwithstanding—could be traded for the dazzling company of one young swain. On this loneliest night of her entire life, Pearl wishes that there was someone, anyone, who would stand loyally beside her.
But there is no such person. Nor will there be. Every relationship she’s ever known is over. Her mother. Her childhood friends. Purse Laurier. Anysuitor, once they learn what she is, will reject her. She will end up like this old woman. Alone in a haunted house of shadows.
There it is again. The pull. The tug at her very vitals, urging her uptown, to some irresistible person she is destined to find. Some dark and violent encounter, which fits her now.
She screws her eyes shut. No. She, Pearl, is still in control. She has a dual nature. Human and monster. All mankind bears the scars of just such a schism of the soul. Part devil, part angel.
She’s wide awake. Thirsty, too, and in need of a water closet. The old lady had offered a bath. Maybe a nice hot soak would be just the thing. If she could just wash her hair, scrub her head, scratch her scalp with her fingernails—it feels as though if she can just get clean, fully clean, she can wash this darkness off her soul and these serpents off her head.
She’ll be lucky if her sanity survives this night.
She takes her lit candle and peers into the corridor. It’s as empty and silent as a chapel at midnight. She tiptoes across the rug toward the bathroom.
Its tiled corners are dusty and cobwebby, but the middle of the space seems clean enough. She sets her candleholder atop the commode, cups her hand to drink from the faucet, then stoppers the bathtub and opens the tap for hot water. She finds a towel on a shelf and a ball of green soap in a wire basket. Soon she steps into the claw-footed porcelain tub, sits down, and slides her body, head and all, under the surface of the water.
Their barracks tenement has nothing so nice as this.
Half an hour later, clad in her nightgown, with damp hair, drowsy, and trailing a humid cloud perfumed with eucalyptus, she hangs her towel. The bath fixed nothing, yet it soothed her. Perhaps she can sleep. She hears faraway church bells chime the half hour. Ten thirty.
She marvels. Only ten thirty. Today has lasted a lifetime.
Today has ended a lifetime.
She takes her candlestick and opens the door to the hall.
“Oh!”
There, standing in front of the doorway, is Miss Stella. Her snakes blink at Pearl’s candle.
Pearl’s pulse thrums in her throat. “Thank you,” she ventures, “for letting us stay here.”
Miss Stella inclines her head gravely.
“It was kind of you,” continues Pearl. “We had nowhere else to go.”
“Come, my dear,” Miss Stella says. “Come and sit with me awhile.”
