For Love

Chapter 28

JASON

Jason rolled over in bed and cursed his stupidity for giving Doreen two days. He had played cards, checked on Clancey, walked the streets, and eaten at the hotel restaurant. Thinking of Laurie, he took in a show on the Barbary Coast and finished drinking himself into a stupor when he got back to his room. That was the first day.

Today, day two, the sounds of Satan were at his door.

He groaned and sat on the edge of the bed; his hands planted firmly on his knees. At some point in the night, he had discarded his shirt and boots to sleep in his undershirt and pants.

The pounding started again. He stumbled out of the lumpy bed where he had passed out and yanked open the door, nausea sweeping over his senses. He closed his eyes and leaned against the door frame.

"Lawd, Mr. Bolt, you look a might worse for wear."

He squinted through one eye and grunted. Doreen stood in the doorway wearing a pretty pink cotton dress and blue knitted shawl, the colors staggering against her dark skin. He shut his eyes and grunted.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Miss White."

"Doreen," she reminded him.

"Doreen," he mouthed, and walked back into the room, the door open. She stayed put and peeked in. Jason looked back at her and sighed, ruffling his curls as he ran his hand through his hair. "I won't bite."

"I can't just walk into a white man's room," she said to him, clutching her shawl around her arms.

He raised an eyebrow and snorted. "And if I were a black man?"

"Oh, you is wicked. Same as," she insisted, and hid her chuckle behind her hand. "Lawd, Miss Laurie must really like you."

"Oh?" He stood at his dresser and emptied what little was left in the bottle into a glass. He had hoped he'd left a little more than what trickled out.

"Miss Laurie always says she prefers a good man that act bad, 'cause that be a heap better in her book than a bad man pretending to be good."

"Hmm." He threw the liquor down his throat and closed his eyes. Probably the worst hangover since... He couldn't remember when. He normally kept himself on the sober side of drinking.

"You sure you should do that?"

"It helps. Well, temporarily," he said with a blush. "Truth is, I don't normally let myself, uh... well, it takes a lot to give me a hangover these days." The night revisited him, images of scantily clad women crossing the stage in his head. Dancers lifting their dresses to show their legs. Laurie in her nightgown. The shadows...

"What did you do?"

"What did I do?" he repeated absently, still mentally grinding his teeth. If only Laurie had been with him last night.

"You get too close to another woman? Maybe you forgot you was married to Miss Laurie."

Jason's head came up a bit too fast. "No!" He winced. "No," he said in a more reasonable tone. "I thought I'd catch a show, see what Laurie's opera house was like. I forgot I didn't know which one, so I ended up on the, ah, Barbary Coast. and someone pointed out a dance hall that looked to me like something she might have sung in." He squinted and folded his arms. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"Because you don't want to tell Miss Laurie."

"You're right. I don't. And I doubt that was where she worked."

"Oh, no. She never worked on the Barb'ry Coast. She sang at Maguire's. On Washington."

Jason chewed on a thumbnail and thought back to a visit he had made to San Francisco a few years past. Business had taken him to an unfamiliar part of the city, and an advertisement had caught his attention in front of a grand-looking theatre. Visions of men in polished shoes and ladies with their corsets so straight they looked like walking totem poles came to mind. No wiggle in them at all, which to Jason's way of thinking was a tragedy. He remembered that because he had been bumped into a few times while he considered just exactly what the advertisement was suggesting. "Maguire's? Isn't that the Opera House that had the woman on the horse? She looked—" He was going to say something ungentlemanly about the woman appearing nude, and suddenly he was uncomfortable to be having the conversation at all.