down pretty much the same way.”
Laurace started to rise, sank back, leaned forward. “Another immortal?” she cried. “A man? What became of .him?”
“I don’t know.” Belligerently: “I wasn’t glad to be found then, and I’m not sure I am now. You are a woman, I guess that makes a difference, but you’ve got to convince me, you know?”
“A man,” Laurace whispered. “Who was he? What was he like?”
“Two. He had a partner. They were traders out of Russia. I didn’t want to go off with them, so I shook them, and never heard anything since. Probably they’re dead. Let’s not talk it about it yet, okay?”
The rain-silence descended.
“What a horror of a life you have had,” Laurace finally said.
Clara grinned on the left side of her mouth. “Oh, I’m tough. Between the times I work, when I live easy on what Fve earned and saved—or sometimes, yeah, I’ve married money—it’s good enough that I want to keep going.”
“I should think—you told me you’ve mostly been a, a madam since you came to America—isn’t that better than it ... used to be for you?”
“Not always.”
2
She hated sleeping where she worked. In Chicago she had an apartment five blocks away. Usually she could go home about two or three A.M., and the afternoons were her own; then business was slack enough for Sadie to manage. She’d go shopping downtown, or enjoy the sunshine and flowers in Jackson Park, or visit one of the museums built after the Columbian Exposition, or ride a trolley out into the countryside, all sorts of things, maybe with a couple of the girls, maybe by herself, but always ladylike.
Gas lamps flared. Pavement stretched ash-gray, empty as the moon. Lightly though she walked, her footfalls sounded loud in her ears. The two men who came out of an alley were tike more shadows until they fell in on either side of her.
She choked down a gasp. Fear chilled and keened. He on the right was a hulk, bristle-chinned and smelly. He on the left was hardly more than a boy. He had no color in his face except for the pus yellow the lamps gave it, and from time to time he giggled.
“Hello, Mrs. Ross,” the big man said. His voice was gritty. “Nice evening, ain’t it?”
Fool, she raged at herself, fool, I should have been careful, I should have spent what a bodyguard would cost, but no, I couldn’t be bothered, I had to save every cent toward my next years of freedom— In a way that was ancient with her, she killed the fear. She couldn’t afford it.
“I don’t know you,” she said. “Let me be.”
“Aw, we know you. Mr. Santoni, he showed us on the street when you was passing by. He asked us we should have a little talk with you.”
“Go, before I call a policeman.”
The boy tittered. “Shut up, Lew,” said the big man. “You get too impatient.” To her: “Now don’t be like that, Mrs. Ross. All we want to do is talk with you a while. You just come along quiet.”
“I’ll talk to your boss, Mr. Santoni, I’ll speak to him again if he insists.” Buy time. “Later today, yes.”
“Oh, no. Not so soon. He says you been real unreasonable.”
He wants to add my business to his string, he wants to end every independent house in the city, we’re to do his will and pay him his tribute. Christ, before it’s too late, send us a man with a sawed-off shotgun!
It was already too late for her. “He wants Lew and me should have a little talk with you first. He can’t waste no more of his time arguing, you got me? Just come along quiet now, and you’ll be all right. Lew, put that goddamn shiv back.”
She tried to run. A long arm snapped her to a halt. The way they pinioned her was effective; further resistance could have led to a dislocated shoulder. Around the next corner waited a cabriolet and driver. The horse hadn’t far to go before it reached a certain building.
Several times the big man-must restrain the boy. Afterward he would sponge her, speak soothingly, give her a smoke, before they resumed. Drawing on past experience, she avoided damage that would be permanent, on her if not on a mortal. They actually let her out of the cab in front of a doctor’s house.
The hospital staff were amazed at how fast she healed, quite without marks. While they did not interrogate her, they understood more or less what had happened and expected it would be a very meek, obliging, frequently smiling person who left them. Well, a body so extraordinary might generate a personality equally jesilient.
Just the same, Carlotta Ross cut her losses, sold whatever she could and dropped from sight. She had never heard of the rival who later bushwhacked Santoni. She seldom bothered taking revenge. Time did that for her, eventually. She was content to start over elsewhere, forewarned.
3
“I get along, though. I’m used to the life. Pretty good at it, in fact.” Clara laughed. “By now, I’d better be, huh?”
“Do you loathe all men?” Laurace asked.
“Don’t pity me! ... Sorry, you mean well, I shouldn’t’ve flared up. No, I’ve met some that I guess were decent. Not usually hi my line of work, though, and not for me. I don’t have to take them on any more myself; just take then-money. I couldn’t have anybody for real anyway. Can I? Can you?”
“Not forever, obviously. Unless someday we find others of our kind.” Laurace saw the expression before her. “Others we like.”
“Mind if I have a refill of this drink? I’ll help myself.” Clara did, and took a cigarette from her purse. Meanwhile she asked, no longer aggressive, almost shy: “What about you, Laurace? How do you feel? You were a slave once, you’ve said. That must have been as bad as anything I ever knew. Maybe worse. Christ knows how many slaves I’ve seen in my life.”
“Sometimes it was very bad. Other times it was, oh, comfortable. But never free. At last I ran away. White people who were against slavery got me to Canada. There I found ‘ work as a housemaid.”
Clara studied Laurace before murmuring, “You don’t talk or behave like a servant.”
“I changed. My employers helped me. The Dufours, they were: kindly, mildly prosperous, in Montreal. When they saw I wanted to better myself, they arranged schooling for me—after working hours, and servants worked long hours in those days, so it took years—but I’ll always be grateful to the Dufour family. I learned correct English, reading, writing, arithmetic. On my own, consorting with habitants, I picked up French of a sort. I turned into quite a bookworm, as far as circumstances allowed. That gave me a patchwork education; but as the years went on, I gradually filled many of the gaps in it.
“First I had to master memory. I was finding it harder and harder to pull whatever I wanted out of such a ragbag of recollections. It was becoming hard to think. I had to do something. You faced the same problem, I daresay.”
Clara nodded. “Awful, for maybe fifty years. I don’t know what I did or how, can’t recall much and everything’s jumbled. Might have gotten into real trouble and died, except—okay, I fell into the hands of a pimp. He, and later his son, they did my thinking for me. They weren’t bad guys, by their lights, and of course my not growing old made me special, maybe magical, so they didn’t dare abuse me, by the standards of the, uh, eighth century Near East, it must have been. I think they never let on to anybody else, but moved me to a different city every few years. Meanwhile, somehow, bit by bit, I got myself sorted out, and when the son died I felt ready to strike off on my own again. I wonder if most immortals aren’t that lucky. Somebody insane or witless wouldn’t last long without a protector, most times and places. Would she?”
“I’ve thought that myself. I was luckier still. By the early twentieth century we had a science of psychology.
