Part 24 (1/2)
”Mr. Tabor has arranged an entire first-cla.s.s carriage for us.”
”How many people?”
”Six.”
”Tough luck. Only six seats in the first-cla.s.s carriages. It goes in the trunk.” He had the bad grace then to grin.
Oscar turned to Henry, reached into his pocket, pulled out his remaining money, and handed it to the valet. ”Go to the ticket office, would you, Henry, and buy a seat for my coat. No, buy two of them. It needs room to air.”
”Hey,” said the fat man. ”You can't do that.”
”Why ever not?”
”Because ...” He groped for a reason. ”Because you can't.”
”My good man,” Oscar said. ”I can understand that here in this carriage you are the master of all you survey. Quite clearly you are the Ozymandias of Baggage. But I fail to see how you can prevent me from purchasing a seat for any article of clothing I choose to. Clothes make the man, as I'm sure you'll agree, and in this case, so long as the seat is paid for, they also make the pa.s.senger.”
”Second-cla.s.s seat's gonna cost you five bucks apiece.”
”No coat of mine,” said Oscar, ”travels second cla.s.s.” He turned to Henry and nodded. ”Thank you, Henry.”
”Yes suh, Mistuh Oscar.”
Oscar turned back to the man. ”One day,” he said, ”when your own coat travels by train, I hope you'll find it within yourself to provide it a proper seat.”
”You crazy? I'm not gonna send my coat on no train trip.”
Oscar studied the man's threadbare coat for a moment. Looked up from it. Smiled. ”But you really should, you know.”
”Huh?”
”This has been a most edifying conversation, one that I'm sure we'll both recall with enormous pleasure. But I must run along now. Au revoir.”
The man stared at him in befuddlement, a condition he had doubtless experienced before, and Oscar turned away.
At the rear of the train, as promised, he found Tabor's private carriage. He was able to deduce that it was Tabor's carriage because on the door, set midway down its length, in raised wooden capital lettering, painted gold, were the words H. A. W. TABOR, and below that, PRIVATE CARRIAGE.
While the other pa.s.senger carriages had been attractive and colorful, fine examples of American workmans.h.i.+p (which could sometimes be quite surprisingly good), Tabor's looked as if it had been put together by a demented Swiss clockmaker. Every square inch of it was overlaid in elaborate, almost maniacal, wood carving: moldings and gingerbread filigrees. Obviously, too, whoever was guilty of its construction had intended that it resemble his own deranged notion of an Alpine chalet, for its windows were provided with exterior shutters and its s.h.i.+ngled roof was steeply sloped (presumably to prevent the snow from settling atop it while the train was traveling at speed). Taken in its entirety, the carriage achieved a level of bad taste that was very nearly sublime.
Oscar knocked on the door, half expecting it to be opened by an enormous mechanical cuckoo bird. He was greeted instead by Tabor's liveried butler, who told him haughtily, in his amusing nasal tw.a.n.g, that Mr. Tabor and Mrs. Doe had not yet arrived.
Oscar thanked him, turned, and was about to walk back to the front of the train when, just at the edge of his vision, he thought he saw a towering figure in a fur coat. He looked, suddenly alarmed; but no one was there.
No shambling black bear, at any rate. Only a pair of cowboys slouched near the corner of the building, each with a booted foot notched back against the wall, each rolling a cigarette with one hand and effortless skill.
But that big furry shape, that (perhaps imaginary?) lumbering form-could it have been the brutal giant from Shantytown? Buff?
No, Biff. Buff was what the man hunted. Buffalo, according to the old man.
Had he followed Oscar here? Seeking revenge? Hadn't Doctor Holliday suggested that he might?
But Oscar had been alone on several occasions since his visit to Shantytown: walking to the opera house last night, walking back to the hotel. Surely if the giant had wanted to attack him, he could have done so then.
And the fellow was hardly likely to attack him on a train station platform that held a hundred witnesses.
No, even if the half-glimpsed figure had been Biff the Behemoth-and, really, what was the likelihood of that?-Biff represented no threat whatever here. In only an hour or so Oscar would be putting Denver, and Biff and his bad temper, behind him.
Satisfied that he was perfectly safe (although, of course, had he actually been attacked by the oaf, he would have given him a sound thras.h.i.+ng) Oscar began again to stroll alongside the train.
And then he saw her.
Suddenly everything else, the station, the train, the milling crowd, the earth, the sky, became mere backdrop: cardboard props and painted sets.
She wore a long fox cape, dark and lush; but that thick cascade of t.i.tian hair, gleaming in the limpid sunlight, made the fur seem dull and drab. Beneath the cape she wore a long dress of silk, light green at the bodice, dark green at the skirt. The fabric-loose, cut on the bias-s.h.i.+mmered as it s.h.i.+fted across those superb proud b.r.e.a.s.t.s. (Along the palms of Oscar's hands, remarkably, he could still feel their porcelain texture.) Tabor marched beside her, the balding top of his egg-shaped head barely reaching the level of her sculpted jaw, his hands clasped behind him, his round vested belly jutting importantly between the opened front of his vicuna coat.
Tabor saw him. ”Oscar!” he called and, grinning, he held out his stubby arm in greeting.
Smiling pleasantly (an outstanding performance, considering that this bloated dwarf had kept Elizabeth McCourt Doe to himself for a full day now), Oscar shook the beastly little hand and then turned to Elizabeth McCourt Doe.
The glance from her eyes came as two uncanny beams of violet light that pierced to the center of his being, melting it. His breath left him and so, very nearly, did his panache.
He wanted more than anything in the world to sweep her into his arms. This pretense of mere friends.h.i.+p made him curiously uneasy: he feared that by denying their love they might somehow lose it; that the pretense might become, against both their wills, the reality.
”Oscar,” she said, and offered him her hand. ”You look wonderful today.”
He bent over her hand, inhaled its dusky moonlit scent, and gazed up at her. ”If so, madam, this is because I look upon yourself.”
Tabor laughed-brayed, more like it: haw haw haw-and said, ”Watch out, Baby. Pretty soon he'll be trying to take advantage. You can't trust these poetic types.”
Oscar stood upright and lightly laughed. You twit. You insufferable clod. ”Indeed you cannot,” he said to Elizabeth McCourt Doe. ”No form of beauty is safe from us.”
”Haw haw haw. Come on, Oscar. Let me show you the car. Nothing like it anywhere in the world.”
About that Oscar had no doubts.
Her hand still lay in his. With a small smile she squeezed gently at his fingers and slipped it free.
Oscar turned to Tabor. ”By all means.”
The interior of the carriage was predictably vulgar. Gold wallpaper, red carpets, red plush furniture ta.s.seled at the hem with strands of gold rope. The gas lamps were frosted gla.s.s torches held out from the wall by human hands, realistically molded in bra.s.s, which gave one the impression that their muscular bra.s.s owners stood on the other side of the panel, rolling their eyes in stupefied boredom.
”Whatta ya think?” Tabor asked him proudly.
”The mind boggles,” Oscar told him.
”Ten thousand dollars,” Tabor grinned, ”and worth every penny. Grab a seat,” he said, indicating the chair that stood opposite the divan. ”Want a drink? What'll ya have? A coniac? We've got sherry, too, if you want it. You name it, we've got it.”
”A small gla.s.s of sherry, then.” He glanced at Elizabeth McCourt Doe. Except (perhaps) for the small smile playing about her red lips, she gave no indication, none at all, that only two nights ago the two of them had rolled one atop the other for hours.
Grinning, Tabor took her hand in his. The two of them sat down on the divan and Tabor plopped both their hands into his broad lap. ”What about you, Baby?”