Chapter Text
It was a Thursday when they came through Tombstone.
A Thursday--not that it mattered a-tall, because he would be leaning against this post and drinking his whiskey al fresco on the storied porch of this fine watering hole were it the day after, or the day before, or any given afternoon.
He heard them before he saw them; the bump and grind of the high cart wheels on the horse-packed hardpan of the optimistically-named Main Street, the sun-bright laughter and bawdy callings-out; the hoots of the bad men and the silence of the good women. That taciturnity, thought Doc, was less an audible clue than a visual one. They had paused on the boardwalks in prim, alarmed phalanxes, eyes up and feather-headed like quail, calico backs erect and taffeta bustles stiff like tailfeathers in a startle display.
The arrival of a novel conveyance of soiled doves was always cause for carousal, and consternation in some quarters. Every so often, a new troupe of girls would come through to spell the old and pique the collective palate. Piled on a phaeton like ripe produce, they would proceed to parade through town to much general fanfare; gunfire and ebullience. Sometimes the coach in question was a proper carriage and sometimes just a good old hay-wagon, repurposed for more precious cargo. Despite his upper-crust upbringing, or perhaps because of it, Doc bore no personal preference for surrey girls over haywagon ones.
Whatever way they came, they were welcome.
The ungracious truth of it was that a town like Tombstone had its appetites, and harbored its defects of character, and neither women nor whiskey could be in short supply for long without arousing carnal impulses far more concerning and chaotic than the usual vices.
Doc took his cue and another sip, and turned toward the calliphony, intending to greet the fair newcomers as he always did; with a tip of his hat and a raise of his glass. They would be stopping at the grand saloon in the center of town, as always, to begin their new tenure as artists-in-residence.
Doc supposed he would make his way there in good time, but for now his present straits were not so dire.
The carriage came into view, and these were surrey girls, all the way--even more so than usual hothouse flowers--with the fancy fringed canopy rendering their China-silk parasols obsolete. Doc let himself drink in the sight of jostling beauty as the cart-wheels jounced, bosoms in luscious motion below Paris lace and bared shoulders, curls bouncing over smooth decolletages and gartered legs dangling, lure-like, over the side of the coach.
Surrey girls, all, and pretty, apart from one. She was pretty, that was, but not a wool-dyed surrey girl. She was also familiar to him. She sat at the fore of the coach, beside the driver, looking more like a figure on a bowsprit than a lady of barterable charms. Her dress was a riotous but nearly respectable traveling costume in stripes and chinoiserie, bright yellow and black, that put Doc in mind of both a hornet and a honey bee.
In profile, he could not be wholly sure, but when the carriage drew up and she turned her head to look at him, he knew her to a certainty by the heart-shaped black satin patch that covered her missing eye. There might have been more than a handful of one-eyed whores in the West, but none who wore that damage with such brazen impunity, nor turned it to such alluring advantage.
Ignoring the others, he went at once to help her down from the carriage, offering the hand without the whiskey. “Why, Aspasia Talcott, as I live and breathe.”
“I’m glad to see you still do.”
“I do both,” said Doc, laconic. “Badly.”
“Surely you have other talents that come more easily.”
Aspasia’s eye walked over him, taking him in from tip to toe. It seemed to him at first an unnecessary flourish; he and Aspasia already knew each other intimately, after all. But he understood when she said, “How long has it been?”
Doc put on a game smile. “Seems like no time at all.” Aspasia didn’t reply right away, though, and finally he admitted, “Going on three years.”
“That’s what I thought.” Aspasia was eyeing the glass in Doc’s other hand. Without missing a beat, she reached over and plucked it out of his grip. She downed it in a gulp, not even moving her head enough to upset the broad-brimmed travelling hat she wore.
Handing the empty glass back she said, “I hope there’s more where that came from.”
“There’s more so long as my luck holds,” Doc replied. “Am I to take this to mean that I’m buying?”
“That’s a kind offer. I’d have to be a mighty unrefined lady not to take you up on it.”
With that, she leaned back into the window of the carriage to briefly confer with the driver, telling him to take her valises on ahead. When she returned, she fit a shapely, none-too-soft arm into Doc’s.
“I suppose you have all of one decent saloon in a little cowtown like this. One man to tend bar. One bottle of whiskey growing dusty on the shelf.”
“It’s not quite so bad. They have managed to replenish their larders somewhat, without you coming through to drink them dry.”
Aspasia laughed airily behind her hand. “You always say the most charming things.”
Doc took her back inside. Out of the sun, once more in the dim, cavelike gloom of the saloon, the air felt considerably cooler. Doc had, for the most part, acclimated to the heat. As for Aspasia, he had no idea where she had been spending her days, but if the sun got to her she was much too cool to show it.
“You do know such interesting places,” she said, sweeping her single-eyed gaze around the dusty saloon. “But rarely so rustic. Have you gone native?”
“It's not my usual watering hole,” Doc replied. “But sometimes a body does long for peace and quiet.”
Aspasia seemed to understand, though she didn't seem particularly pleased about the dive where Doc chose to do his thinking.
“I don't want you thinking we’re savages,” he hastened to add. “We do have better places, even in Tombstone. I suppose I could introduce you to society.”
He took a seat at a new table, away from the window, confident that nothing else was going to come up that dusty road today that was comparable to what he had seen. “Seeing as you’ve been so enterprising as to set up your own shop. I myself am not possessed of the Capitalist spirit, but I can appreciate it in others.”
Aspasia poured fresh shots for them. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m just hitching a ride. My business is of a different type these days, and it doesn’t require any introduction.”
“Just what line of work is that?”
Aspasia laughed again, a delicate high-society laugh that was not reflected in her dark eye. “Drink your whiskey, Doc.”
“I have been,” said Holliday, “and shall do. Never let it be said I spurn excellent advice, particularly when it aligns so favorably with my heart’s desires.”
She studied him for a long moment, over the rim of her glass and once again once she’d dispatched it. Her voice had sobered when she spoke, but still carried a hint of humor. “But what’s eating you, John Henry? You have that old morose quality about you, my darling, that I recall so fondly from our salad days in Philadelphia.”
“What’s eating me? Why, that is the consumption, my dear.” He cleared his throat like a thespian. “I hear it imparts a rather hectic glow. Dewy, if you will.”
“Not that,” she said. Her smile was wry, and perhaps a little taut, if he was honest. His gallows humor clearly panged her on some strata, but she was wise enough to his ways to let him have his levitous defenses. “You’re ruminating. I propose you looked this way whenever someone had you hogtied and hopelessly besotted, though even so, I think never quite to this degree.”
“Ah,” he said quietly, reflecting on the amber in his glass. “Yes. You are correct there, madam. Not tuberculosis at all, but a malady rather more pernicious.” He finished off the whiskey and slammed it on the table indelicately. “That of thwarted desire.”
“Your desires are never thwarted indefinitely, Doc. Your particular vigor and esprit cannot long be denied.” She declared it good-naturedly enough, and he knew that she considered it a self-evident truth.
“This one may well be,” he said, vaguely, eyes roaming the patterned walls. “It isn’t exactly like the others.”
“How so?”
“Well, foremost, I should accord it something slightly more than desire. Perhaps even verging upon that most pernicious of afflictions—”
Aspasia turned all at once, seemingly intrigued, training her single eye upon his face. “Do go on.”
“You know the one. And secondly, I do not think he cares for me in such an earthy manner, despite the absurdity of such a thing.” Even in the grip of his chronic, low-grade misery, Doc was pleased by his own words. It was like him; blunt and subtle all at once, the brutal truth made palatably blatant, all in the course of civil conversation. He reached for the bottle again and poured himself a fresh measure to anesthetize the revelation.
The painted woman was silent for several beats, considering it. “It is absurd,” she said, at last. She set a hand on his arm to show she meant the words. “Of course it is.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“What’s his name?”
A simple question, with a simple answer, and endless, uncounted complications and considerations. Well across the room, the saloonkeeper cleaned barware with a cloth. Doc eyed him, gauging his distance before uttering a reply. “Wyatt,” he said, almost into his shot glass. “His name’s Wyatt.” His drawl made the words come out more like ‘white’.
Aspasia regarded him curiously for a moment, and then she shook her head. “Shame on you, you old reprobate. However you survive at the card table with a poker face like that I'll never know. You’d be better off trying to tell me you'd fallen for some mysterious stranger named Barrymore than to try to hide that your new beau is the one and only Wyatt Earp.”
Doc downed his whiskey in a gulp, doing his best to look amused about the turn the conversation had taken when in fact his unflappable nature was more than a little flapped. “I declare, someone has been telling stories about me. My ears are fairly burning.”
“Not at all,” Aspasia replied. “The only stories are about a tall, strapping sheriff in the town of Tombstone. An honest man, they say, whether he likes it or not.”
“When you put it that way,” Doc replied, not trailing off since he had no idea of what he might possibly say.
Aspasia was watching him closely, her single eye narrowed in feline contentment. “You do have a type, Doc.”
“Nonsense. I can appreciate all types.”
“No,” she replied. “Not so many as you think.”
“Then I am predictable and unrequited in love. Have you ever seen a more pitiful specimen than that?”
“More times than you can know,” Aspasia replied. “Where are my manners? I never did tell you just what kind of work I do.”
Doc laughed abruptly, feeling the subterranean tension inside him break and give way. “Oh, my dear Aspasia,” he said. “Your singular talents are many, myriad and no mystery to me. Have you so quickly forgotten the hours in my arms, the joys of our company? I should be quite vexed to be deemed so forgettable in the flesh.”
She rolled her eyes--rolled one, at any rate--and he chivalrously hid his canary-eating smile, satisfied to have teased a response out of her.
“You do know my halcyon complement of tricks better than most. But you would be woefully mistaken if you assumed I had somehow stagnated there, while you went on to become ever better at guns and gambling.” She leveled a look at him, mild but pointed. “And likewise, I would be remiss if I did not inform you that I chanced to develop something of a niche specialty in the years since we last kept company. One that I seem uniquely suited to, and one that you may find uniquely beneficial.”
“A specialty.” Doc dragged the word out, caressing it like he was loath to let it go. “Why now I am intrigued, Miss Talbot.”
She smiled slowly. “As I thought you’d be. In the simplest terms, my dearest John Henry, I am an ambassador; a diplomat, if you will, between the lost and isolated nations of mankind.”
“Sounds terribly noble, but I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re referring to.”
Aspasia tried again, conspicuously ladylike, inflecting her words with more weight and innuendo this time. “If each man is an island, why, then I am the bridge between them. A common ground, uniting them with my body.”
“You cater to men who like to share their women.” Doc’s eyes had a slight glint in them now, nothing like the feverish too-bright shine of illness.
“Not only that,” she said delicately, leaning in, like they were engaged in conspiracy, which he supposed they now were, “I have a history of great success in cases like yours. In initiating first contact. Brokering a very particular bond, an intimacy of ardor between two fellows previously unacquainted in such ways.”
The words sunk in, as Doc stared into the middle distance. “My, that is favorable.”
Her voice was low, solicitous. “Have you shared a woman before, you and Wyatt?”
Doc liked the sound of that name; liked it even more in close concert with his own. He sat back, bones turning to blackstrap. He closed his eyes for a moment. “Whores,” he said. “Once or twice.”
“And he never touched you, throughout? Or you him?”
“I touched him,” he said softly, on the underside of his breath. “Once, maybe twice, by happenstance. Glancing. Pulled away like he was a hot stove.” Doc rubbed his face for a moment, eyes defocused, remembering. “He touched me, and acted like he thought nothing of it, like it was a simple, incidental thing. He did not flinch, nor did he linger.” The memory pained him.
“That’s good,” she said, solemnly. “It’s a simple enough matter, with a few libations, to convince your oblivious swain to indulge in a little feminine recreation. And from there, why, it’s a mere matter of degrees, disinhibition, and expertly applied passion. I assure you, I’ve surmounted worse odds.”
“You mean to help me seduce Wyatt Earp?”
“If he can be won, my darling, I’ll do everything in my power.” She placed her gloved hand over his, gazing at him with territorial fondness and a ferocious devotion, draped defiantly over the inevitable bones of a future sorrow.
Doc held her piercing gaze for a long moment, as long as he could without laughing. But it was not too long before he broke into an incredulous grin. “You’re telling me that there is a market for this? There are enough sadsacks like myself around to keep you in your silks and jewels?”
“Paste jewels,” Aspasia soothed. “But, yes, you are a sad and pitiful lot. Back in Texas, they called me The Fixer. They’re so unimaginative out there. I’m sure you’ll think of something much more amusing.”
“I shall certainly put my mind to the task. Someone ought to. Wyatt, I’m afraid, does not have such a supple intellect.”
“I won’t say that makes it easier,” Aspasia said. “But it certainly doesn’t make it more difficult.”
“Dare I ask what else eases the process along?” Though he scarce believed that anything Aspasia was telling him was true, he felt himself buoyed along on a wild and preposterous hope. He wasn’t sure if he was humoring her, or allowing himself to be drawn into some kind of con game, the likes of which he would have disdained any other man for falling for.
“What do you think?” Aspasia said, nudging her glass towards him with one finger so he could refill it. Doc did not disappoint her. The shot he poured was less than a finger short of a hand.
“Now,” Aspasia continued. “I do take half my fee up front. It’s a security deposit of sorts. If things don’t pan out for you, I refund it. Usually.”