Free The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman

had expected to lay quick claim to the body and be gone. Now if she is to get Dr. Chiver his body she must be careful. Who is this man? What will he want to hear?
    Though she has never been to school nor learned to read, those who know Gustine will tell you she possesses a certain uncanny intelligence, hard to quantify but not so unlike Mag Scurr’s. What Mag practices on the dead, Gustine applies to the living, and were the two to become friends they might trade any number of miraculous stories. Mag might tell Gustine of the time she placed a pawned trumpet in the hand of an unrecognizable corpse, only to discover when he was identified that the selfsame man had, amazingly enough, two years previously placed that very instrument with her. Gustine could appreciate that story, because Gustine too has a gift. She might lean in to pug-faced old Mag and whisper a little secret. She might tell her that she can see through clothes.
    It’s true. Before a man has opened his mouth, Gustine can tell what sort of poke he’ll be after. Just from the shape of his body she can tell whether he will strip down or unbutton only his trousers; whether he will take her in a dark alley or bed her in a brilliantly gaslit room. Well-made men, she knows, will fuck her slowly, watching themselves reflected in a darkened window or in the mirror over the bed at John Robinson’s; they will come with excruciating slowness, and then will be most miserly with their spunk as if unable to bear parting with it. Ugly men will fuck her slowly, too, but when they are about ready to ejaculate, will pull out and blast her in the face like an artist smearing the canvas with white paint to erase a hated subject. The key to some men, she has learned, lies buried under layers of jackets, shirts, and waistcoats. Let him walk with his hands in his pockets and she will know he’ll want to see those hidden hands on every part of her body. Let him wear his ascot wrapped too tightly and he will want to choke her. She knew a man once who constantly rubbed his sore elbow through his coat sleeve. She guessed he made it sore from obsessive frigging and sure enough, he could not finish except in that way.
    Now when a man approaches her, Gustine finds herself mentally undressing him, looking for the defect on his naked body that will make him vulnerable to her. If she finds it first, she wins: he is in her power, not she in his. If she does not find his one seat of shame, Gustine’s experience has told her, men’s little humiliations have a strange way of rebounding on the women around them. It is best to be prepared.
    What, then, is the key to this doctor? She checks his head. His white hair is brushed forward, with no attempt made to cover his scrubbed pink pate—no, he is not self-conscious about going bald. She glances at his face: a straight, unbroken Irish nose, clear brown eyes. Nothing there. But what is this? Ah, look how the fabric of his jacket throws a crooked shadow between the left sleeve and the lapel, mark how his Cross of India medal (which she recognizes because her landlord, too, wears one, though his was taken in exchange for a week’s rent from an erstwhile hero fallen into drink) hangs as if disturbed below by a knot of uneven skin. Why, this doctor has been wounded in the shoulder. She sees now how he favors his left arm, by resting it gently on her corpse. That must be it. He straightens at the sight of her in the doorway. Without a moment’s hesitation, Gustine walks forward and lays her head upon the crook of his shoulder.
    “Here. Here,” exclaims Clanny, taken aback by this unlooked-for display. “What’s this?”
    She is not yet sure what to say; it will come to her, just as whatever dirty words men want to hear bubble up out of instinct. Already she can feel his scarred flesh pulse around her face as if to enfold it. He has a daughter her age, she would lay money on it, and he blushes when she climbs up on his lap, too old for that sort