Free Storm's Thunder by Brandon Boyce Page A

alabaster of her skin. Everything about her face is painted. A pair of lacquered sticks, tipped with gold and no bigger than pencils, poke from her black hair drawn tight into a severe bun. A silk robe, splotched with warring factions of bright colors, stretches over the curves of her ample frame. My hat finds its way into my hands as I nod to her.
    â€œMa’am.”
    She glides toward me, the smile unwavering, tiny embroidered slippers shuffling beneath the robe as she arrives with an outstretched hand that slips into mine. Her palm betrays the illusion of the rest of her. The woman in my grasp is at least forty, maybe fifty. Before I can protest she leads me back into the dimness of a receiving room, where her words and wrinkles can avoid suspicion. “Yes, yes, come in. You want pretty lady, okay?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYes, okay. Pretty lady, five dollar, fifteen minute.” In the low light, she turns to face me.
    â€œPretty lady,” I say.
    â€œYou like?” I feel a languid finger trace down my chest and stop at my belly. She holds it there, expectant.
    â€œVery pretty.” The finger draws a slow circle around my navel and hovers just above the belt line. “But today,” I say, placing two firm hands on her shoulders, “top girl.” I give her a little squeeze and watch her shoulders slump with a sigh. Growing up in the trade has its advantages. Mamma always respected the men who spoke their minds, and were clear about what they wanted, even when the slow-death of a thousand rejections had failed to lose its sting. And in any bordello, from Peking to Pittsburg, top girl means top girl. But the sheriff and the missus had engrained in me too much manners to be discourteous about it, at least what I can remember of it now. Besides, offending the madam can get a fella paired with the resident sasquatch.
    The madam’s smile purses, a tight, hard-nosed pucker. “Top girl, top dollar,” she says, her voice bottoming into the low alto of negotiation.
    â€œTop dollar.” I open my palm, revealing a double-eagle that finds just enough of the light to close the deal. Plucking the twenty dollars from my hand, she half turns, barking out some assaultive string of vowels, that, after a moment’s pause, earns a reply from a delicate voice in the next room.
    â€œPei-Pei, top girl,” the madam says, pointing behind me. I turn and from a second doorway appears a wispy, fair-skinned China doll, similarly attired as the madam, but devoid of the cakey cosmetics. The young girl’s beauty needs little in the way of adornment, even the robe is too much. Deep inside me, blood begins to stir. I nod to her, but she allows only the faintest smile as she returns the gesture.
    â€œAfternoon, miss.”
    The madam’s hand finds the small of my back, prodding me forward. Pei-Pei, turning toward a heavy, velvet curtain, fires off a few words in Chinese, which the madam chews up and spits back at her. There is some brief argument between them. “You soldier?”
    â€œNo soldier. Just a fella.” The madam relays my answer to Pei-Pei, who takes only slight comfort. Something still eats at her.
    â€œYou want bath?” the madam says, as we reach the curtain.
    â€œNot much fussed either way.”
    â€œYou take bath.”
    The missus Pardell once admonished me never to refuse a stick of Beeman’s when it was offered. “Might just be it’s you doing the kindness,” she told me one Sunday, walking home from preaching. I ’spect now, staring at my reflection in lukewarm water blackened by two hundred miles of dirt and soot, the same could be said for a hot bath. I lean back against the hard copper lip of the tub and watch as Pei-Pei lugs in a second empty tub from the hall and drops it next to mine. There is nothing sexy about the chore itself, yet her movements, lithe and graceful in a short dressing gown that stops above the knees,