We Leave Together, стр. 20
The new private disappeared, and Jona thought that was a good sign that he’d work out fine in the Pens on account of how fast the new private was learning how to disappear when he was sick of being the lowest rank around.
Geek didn’t spare a single thought to the new private. He thumbed at the mudskippers. “How we going to impress them all into the navy, now? They still growing up wrong.”
Calipari shrugged. “When they roll, they won’t all be just kids,” he said. “Maybe a couple get honest somewhere, or get a soldier’s pay to get out of the city.”
Geek snorted. “You been in this too long, Nic. When’s the last day?”
“I got some time left. I’ll stick here until they replace me with a real sergeant ready for the job. You got your stripes, yet, Corporal?”
“Nope.”
“Then what do you care?”
“I’ll get them, soon as I can, Sergeant.”
“You do that. Who knows what kind of soldier they send down here if you don’t. You got any good leads on your stripes?”
“This.”
“Jona got this one while you weren’t looking.”
Jona shrugged. “Sorry, Geek. Want to write it up like it was yours?”
“No,” said Geek, “You’re after that fleur more than I’m after stripes.”
Geek pulled out a flask from his pocket and took a long drink of whatever was inside. He handed the flask to Calipari. Calipari drank and handed it to Jona.
Jona drank, and almost spit it out in disgust. It was well water, once-boiled and it tasted like runny, rotten eggs. He poured it out in the street and handed the flask back to Geek empty. “Nic, you got anything better than piss water?” said Jona.
Calipari handed Jona a flask of piss gin. Jona drank it all, fast and to the bottom, and the other king’s men were howling about it.
Jona didn’t want anyone to drink after him, even if it made him look greedy. He didn’t want anyone to get sick.
***
Three days for the three kings, and everyone wore their crowns, king’s man, stevedore, baker, mudskipper, and even beggars of skin and bones.
For three days, this was a king’s land, not the dog-infested Pens.
Then, the crowns were gone like they had never been there, at all. The fashion turned faster than any noblewoman’s dresses at the balls.
***
The season’s heat had not fallen asleep when the rains began to come. The heat lingered like a bad guest. The heat drank deep of the swampy, damp city and had no sunlight to burn off the humidity in the dark. A hot fog filled the night with all the heavy stinks that had been hiding in the mud. It was like walking in an oven. There would be no great capers that night. There would only be waiting and cool drinks and few bothered to leave their shelter for the night.
Mishaela had bound her red curls up above her head to keep her hair off her shoulders and neck. She loosened her dress down scandalously to get more air flowing over her skin. This didn’t help much, and it wasn’t the sort of tavern where the scandal drew attention when the district was so bloated with prostitution.
The tavern keeper put a fire on in his hearth, and lit candles up across that half of the room. He led his patrons away from the fires, to the darker side among long shadows. He wanted the fires to dry the room out, which would cool it off a little compared to the street. His few patrons let their eyes wander to the scarlet-haired girl in a loosened dress sweating with the kind of sweet smell that could drown a man in drink, because they were pretty sure she wasn’t a prostitute.
Salvatore and Mishaela had one long table to themselves. They sat across from each other, sideways at the table, each with one leg down a bench. Their backs curled against a brick wall at the dark edge of the tavern because the stones were cool to the touch.
She reached a hand out to him, to take his sweaty palm in her own. He squeezed her tiny, little hand. He marveled at the smallness of her hand. He placed her hand on her own cup of tepid tea.
He didn’t want to touch Mishaela tonight, because the skin contact would be too hot.
He sipped his tepid tea. He asked her what she thought about the men in the room, if any of them might have anything worth taking.
“My mother,” replied Mishaela, “back when she lived in the Pens and my da a stevedore here, she’d see men like that and tell me never to talk to those men. Never have anything to do with them.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. I never did. Then, I married one of them because he had his own room by himself when an uncle died. I don’t know why I did that, either.”
“Did you love him?”
“No,” she said. She touched his hand again. She looked into his eyes. “I wanted to be by myself somewhere, and marrying got me out of my mother’s house for good, and I was alone all day long in an empty house and I didn’t have to take care of my brothers and sisters. I didn’t have to sleep with all of them around all the time. I just wanted to be by myself for a while. Then, he got sick and died, and I married his boss because I wanted a garden and a place that smelled clean. Not like this.”
Jona, just another man at the bar, drank his cool ale. In the heat, he had stripped his uniform jacket