Frog Music (6 page)

Jenny blinks and grins at the company, pulling the steak off her eye.

“Arthur Deneve—Jenny Bonnet,” says Blanche, waving instead of getting up. She savors her fancy man through the visitor’s eyes: his elegant eyebrows; the slim checked pants that sit just so, even in this heat; his strong hands studded with rings (black intaglio, bloodstone, a signet A); those cuff links, each painted with a tiny horse and rider, she blew so much on for his thirtieth birthday last year … For all Arthur’s love of unconventionality, he’s a scrupulous dandy.

“Enchanté,”
he says with one of his slightly mocking bows.

“Oh, and Ernest Girard,” she adds with a gesture at the younger man.

Who only nods. “Now, why don’t you toss her out,” Ernest suggests, “so we’ll have room to sit down?”

Arthur raps the floor with his crystal-topped cane. “Where’s your sense of hospitality?” he scolds his friend.

Jenny places the steak on the folded newspaper on the carpet. In the manner of a magician who’s seen better days, she pulls a crumpled handkerchief from her brown-edged cuff and wipes her face.

Ernest lets out a mocking wolf whistle.

Rich purple all around her eye, the lid half shut. “Am I going to have a pirate’s patch?” Jenny laughs.

“I’ll say,” says Arthur.

“She had a run-in with a brute chez Durand,” Blanche explains, leaving herself out of it. She never lies to Arthur, but she doesn’t need to tell the whole truth. Living together has much in common with horse-handling, it strikes her now: best to keep the tone soothing, the signals simple.

“So whose
pantalon
are you wearing?” Ernest asks the visitor.

“My own,” says Jenny.

“She’s just done forty days for those pants,” Blanche puts in, figuring it’s better to introduce the subject of Jenny’s recent jail time in this playful way.

“Chacun ses goûts,”
says Arthur with a tolerant smile, “‘to each his own’ and all that.”

Ernest is down to shirtsleeves now. The fuzz is shadowing the young man’s jaw and throat already, Blanche notices, though he always shaves before going out in the evening; Arthur sometimes calls him his gorilla. Ernest is wearing exactly the same mustache as his friend this season—a wax-stiff pair of wings—but somehow Ernest’s appears stuck on. How unfair, Blanche thinks, not for the first time, that his strong features, genteel pallor, and impressive height somehow don’t add up. Arthur—a head shorter, with Mediterranean coloring, past thirty—is the peacock everyone wants to stroke.

“Forty days, for such a triviality?” Ernest exclaims.

“There’s nothing trivial about clothes,” Arthur reminds him in a scandalized tone, taking off his jacket and folding it carefully over the back of a cane chair. “They maketh the man, and all that.”

“As the fellow says, there’s never been a naked president,” Jenny points out, which earns her a grin from Arthur.

“Remember the old joke about Déjazet when she was doing breeches parts?” Ernest asks him. “She complained to a friend, ‘Half Paris thinks I’m a man.’”

“
‘Qu’importe
, don’t worry’”—Arthur delivers the punch line with a leer—” ‘the other half
knows
you ain’t!’”

Jenny sniggers. “I heard that before—about Adah Menken, I think it was.”

Jokes must be like songs, Blanche supposes: the words change when they cross an ocean. “It’s funny that travesty’s all the rage onstage,” she says with a little laugh, “but if you step into the street, the same pants will get you locked up.”

“It’s usually a fine,” Jenny tells her. “The cops been catching me and letting me go every month or two for a couple of years now, all very cat and mouse.”

“How much of a fine?” Ernest wants to know, sitting down.

“Ten bucks—and then there’s the lawyer’s fee on top,” complains Jenny. “Once I made mine tell the judge that I considered the whole thing an infringement on the rights of women, and the son of a bitch fined me twenty.”

“How come you ended up in jail this time?” asks Arthur.

Jenny makes a face as if she has a toothache. “Sacked my lawyer and demanded a jury instead of a judge. I told them the truth, that I don’t have any other clothes, and would they prefer me to walk around naked as a worm?”

Hoots all round.

“Turned out twelve good men and true didn’t look any kindlier on me than one. Now, spending forty days dry,” she adds ruefully, “that was the real kick in the pants—as it were!”

“Speaking of which—some cognac?” proposes Arthur, getting up.

“I can’t believe you sacked your lawyer,” Blanche tells Jenny. “When your Maman said not to touch the stove because it would burn you, I bet you went right ahead and touched it.”

“How else was I supposed to know if she was lying?”

“Why would somebody lie about a stove?” wonders Blanche.

“Folks always lie to kids, don’t they?”

“Tell me we’ve still got ice,” Arthur calls theatrically from the passage.

“In the closet, under a blanket,” Blanche calls back. “It was the coolest place I could find.”

“Alaskan or Nevadan?” Ernest demands.

Blanche gives him a look. “Are you claiming you can taste the difference?”

“Got both? We could test him blindfolded,” suggests Jenny.

“Well,” says Ernest, conceding, “so long as it’s not that machine-made muck.”

“Practically a puddle,” complains Arthur, coming back in with the bowl. He hands the ladies their cognacs with a few pebbles of ice in each glass.

“Any luck at the game tonight,
mon beau
?” Blanche asks him under her breath.

Arthur winks.

Well, that’s a pleasant surprise. She’s more used to hearing about “disappointments” or “mishaps,” as the fellows of the sporting set refer to losses.

“Heureux au jeu, malheureux en amour,”
Ernest intones lugubriously from the floor.

“Oh, I think I’m lucky in both lines, gaming and love,” says Arthur, giving Blanche another long, spirituous kiss.

She wishes they could go to bed, right this minute.

“What’s your game, gentlemen?” Jenny’s asking.

“Faro, of course,” says Ernest. “It gives the best odds, unless the bank’s rigged.”

“You know a house in America where it’s not?”

“My friend and I seem to make out all right,” he says sleekly.

Jenny breaks into satirical song. “‘For work I’m too lazy,’” she trills, beating time on her thigh.

And beggin’s too low
,

Train-robbin’s too dang’rous
,

To gambling I’ll go
.

The men cackle at that. Blanche thought they’d have sent Jenny on her way by now, but they seem to be enjoying her no end. Clearly Blanche should bring strangers home more often.

“Was your
petite amie
out with you two this evening?” Blanche asks Ernest.

“Madeleine?”

“As if you ain’t sure which I mean because you have so many lady friends and not just one loyal old blonde!”

A rueful smirk from Ernest. Blanche has teased him about Madeleine’s age so often, it has no sting anymore. Madeleine’s placid as well as lovely, and she never seems to object to the fact that her young man spends at least as much time here, in the spare bedroom of his old intimates from Paris, as he does at her place.

“No, we were a pair of lonely bachelors tonight,” says Arthur, striking a mournful pose. “Is that your bicycle we tripped over in the hall?” he asks Jenny.

“Such a pleasure to study one up close,” says Ernest, “if only in the dark, with our shins. I saw one just like it selling for two hundred bucks the other day,” he tells Arthur.

Blanche’s eyebrows soar at the price. “Jenny, ahem,
found
this one on Market Street.”

“Ah, the divine workings of chance,” says Arthur, blowing a kiss toward the sky. “Five foot, is it, that front wheel?”

“Four foot nine,” says Jenny fondly. “It shoots down California or Sutter at about twenty miles an hour. The next best thing to being an eagle.”

“And on the flat?” asks Ernest.

“Smooth as silk. The knack of it is, prop your feet in front of the handlebars so if you meet an obstacle you can jump free.”

“An obstacle such as … me,” Blanche can’t resist adding.

Jenny’s grin is devilish. “Well, even birds crash, the odd time. Those high buildings going up downtown, with their yards of plate glass—I’ve seen a gull break its neck against a window.”

“Ah, you ain’t a true citizen of this city until somebody’s run you over,” Ernest says with a yawn.

“Sounds as if you’ve had quite a night,
ma puce
,” murmurs Arthur to Blanche, caressing her neck.

Oh, she could ride him right here in the chair. Leaning back, Blanche straightens her stiff leg, rotating her ankle. “You owe me a spin on that machine of yours sometime,” she tells Jenny.

Who grimaces. “I know you’re a dancer, but I’m afraid that, to master the high-wheeler, you’d have to be something of an acrobat.”

Ernest and Blanche burst into simultaneous laughter.

Blanche lets the visitor in on the joke. “The three of us happen to have forgotten more about acrobatics than you’ll ever know.”

“My partner here was the best flier in the Cirque d’Hiver,” boasts Ernest, patting Arthur’s glossy shoe.

“Ah,
les jours anciens
.” A dark edge to Arthur’s voice. “Ancient history now.”

How much does her man miss being the lean aerialist of those past times? Blanche wonders. Arthur’s muscles aren’t gone, just softened, looser on his frame, and from his perfect carriage, you’d never know about his back. Who can take their eyes off him?

“Well, I’ll be damned,” murmurs Jenny. “The Cirque d’Hiver in Paris?”

Blanche spreads her hands as if to say,
Where else?
“That’s where we learned our English, from a pair of genuine Yankee cowboys in the troupe.”

“The Cirque d’Hiver’s where our master Léotard
invented
the flying trapeze,” Ernest puts in, “no matter what charlatans claim otherwise.”

“Hey, did you wear those skintight fleshings?” asks Jenny.

“As the maestro used to tell us,” Ernest remarks, stroking his thigh, “if you want the crowd to love you, the trapeze is optional, but the fleshings are compulsory.”

“Enough nostalgia,” commands Arthur, cutting through Jenny’s laughter. “We were always cold, underdressed, and underpaid.” He gets up and stalks over to refill his glass.

“And you, Blanche,” Jenny pushes on, “what class of artiste were you? Wait, you mentioned horses earlier—”

She listens, this one, Blanche notes.

“An equestrienne?”

Blanche smiles. She knows Arthur wants to drop the topic, but—

“Bareback?”

She nods. “Jumping ribbons, bursting hoops, scenic riding, Roman …”

Jenny lets out a respectful whistle. “The Wilson Circus came to town when I was a kid,” she reminisces, “with this dazzler of a Creole rider, Mademoiselle Zoyara. Turned out after, she was actually one hundred percent man.”

“Des conneries!”
scoffs Ernest.

“Just telling it as I heard it. Well, I guess this is my lucky night. Genuine stars of the Cirque d’Hiver,” Jenny marvels. “How high up was your trapeze hung?”

She throws the question in Arthur’s direction, but he ignores it, sipping his cognac.

She persists. “What was your riskiest trick?”

“They’re called passes,” Ernest corrects her.

“No nets, I hope?”

He gives a snort of contempt.

“Ever fall?” asks Jenny.

The young woman doesn’t know it, but she’s gone too far. “Everybody falls,” says Blanche, to close the subject. She means it to sound nonchalant, but it comes out shrill.

“Speaking of risky,” says Arthur, staring under the sofa with his head on one side, “is that a revolver?”

“My single-action army .45,” says Jenny with satisfaction. She hooks it up with one finger to show it off: reddish wood and silvery metal. Blanche reckons the thing must be a foot long.

“This is one strange class of female,” Ernest remarks to Arthur.

A shrug from Jenny. “Why should your lot have all the firepower? As they say, God made men and women, but Sam Colt made them equal.”

Arthur bursts out laughing. “Who says that?”

“I bet you’ve never fired that thing,” Ernest mocks, weighing the revolver in his hand.

“Into the air, a couple times,” Jenny tells him.

He sniggers. “Can’t bite? Don’t bark.”

“The air’s the best place to shoot,” she insists. “A gun’s for keeping trouble at bay.”

Arthur holds out his hand for the Colt, takes it, and fingers its metalwork.

“Well, tonight at Durand’s, it welcomed trouble in,” mutters Blanche.

“Because tonight’s fellow was a foolhardy loggerhead,” says Jenny.

“Oh,
he
was foolhardy?” Blanche rolls her eyes. All that makes this creature halfway tolerable, she decides, is that she delivers her bluster with a wink.

“It’s the weather,” says Ernest, “making tempers flare all over. At the table beside ours this evening, a pair of Spaniards went for each other’s throats.”

Jenny grins at the image.

“Well,” says Arthur, handing the Colt, butt-first, back to Jenny, “I suppose if a girl means to swagger around Chinatown in pants, she’s as well off carrying something.”

Blanche snorts. “I’ve never had any difficulty. The neighborhood’s notoriety is more than half invented, to give tourists a thrill. Ying upstairs told me the guides have taken to staging brawls in Fish Alley, paying fifty cents a man!”

“Yeah,” says Jenny, jerking her head north, “the Barbary Coast dens are ten times more dangerous than Chinatown.”

“Nowhere’s dangerous if you know what you’re doing,” says Arthur silkily. “My friend and I go all over the City, wherever our affairs happen to take us.”

Blanche holds her tongue.
Affairs
, he always says, as if he and Ernest are partners in some serious line when all they do, between faro games, is hand wads of cash to dodgy characters they call “business associates,” money they rarely see again. Or they wine and dine richer suckers in the hopes of persuading them to share the risk of one of the schemes in which Arthur and Ernest are already entangled.