Husband on Credit Read online

  “So you’re saying that if I were married, I’d be getting more?”

  “Oh, yes,” Clark said. “Substantially more.”

  “Well, I am engaged.” The words flew out of her mouth almost without thought.

  His eyes widened in a flash and then narrowed almost to slits. “Engaged? Why didn’t you mention that when I asked you?”

  “Well, sir, you asked if I was married,” she said. She could feel her heart pounding furiously in her chest. “I’m not. I’m only engaged.”

  “When are you getting married?”

  “Sunday.”

  “Sunday?! You’re getting married this weekend and you didn’t say a thing about it?”

  She could feel the heat building in her cheeks. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t know it would matter.”

  “Well, it matters,” he said. “Matters a great deal, in fact. What’s the fellow’s name?”

  Cora glanced at the wall behind him. “Booker,” she said.

  “What’s his first name?”

  “His first name is…Paul,” she said, though her throat had suddenly gone dry.

  “Paul Booker.”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  Clark studied her quietly for a moment, then began to write on the tablet.

  “So I’ll be getting more than two hundred dollars?”

  He glanced up at her quickly. “Well, to be honest I’m a little bit leery about what you just told me,” he said. “But if you show up here by noon Tuesday with Mr. Booker and a marriage certificate, then yes, you’ll be getting more than two hundred.”

  “How much more?”

  He leaned back and clasped his hands together, resting them on top of his stomach as a smile crept onto his face. “Your uncle Jack wanted to divide things between you and Emma, but it’s not an exact division,” he said. “You’ll split the money evenly, but the younger of you two gets the house. That’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, Emma’s two years older than I am.”

  Clark nodded. “So you two newlyweds will have a home to call your own, plus quite a nice bank account.”

  “How much, exactly?”

  “Your uncle left a total of three hundred thousand,” Clark said. “So your share is half that.”

  Cora felt as if the room were spinning. It can’t be, she thought. So much money, and a house besides? I must be dreaming. Or I misheard him.

  “How much did you say?”

  “You’ll be getting one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I know this must be quite a shock,” he said. “Would you like a glass of water?”

  Cora reached for the armrest to steady herself. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’ll be fine. It’s just a big surprise, like you said.” She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “So if I weren’t about to get married….”

  “Then you’d get nothing,” Clark said. “Your cousin would have claimed it all, except for the two hundred I mentioned earlier.”

  I’m going to have to have a talk with Emma, Cora thought. Her heart was pounding like a kettledrum inside, and she suddenly noticed that the office was very, very warm.

  “Are you sure I can’t offer you some water?”

  “No, thank you,” Cora said. “I just need some air. So what happens now? Is there anything else I need to do?”

  “Not today,” he said as he stood up. “We can’t do anything until I see your marriage certificate. I’d suggest you go home and get some rest. You’re going to need it.”

  He showed her out to the waiting room and shook her hand. “Remember, you and your husband have to be back here by noon on Tuesday. After that it’ll be too late.”

  “I understand. Thanks, Mr. Clark,” she said.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said, then leaned over the receptionist’s ledger to see the next appointment.

  Cora went outside to her waiting driver, who helped her back up into the carriage. “Back to Mineral Point now?” he asked.

  She nodded and settled back for the ride. A house and so much money. She still couldn’t believe it. For a girl who had grown up with no man to provide for her and her mom, living in a dirt-floor shack and always wondering where her next meal would come from, it was more than a little overwhelming. As the carriage rolled down the street she could feel tears welling up in her eyes. How silly, she thought. Sitting here crying when everything might be about to turn around for me. She wiped the tears away and took a deep breath of the crisp air, pulling her shawl closer around her.

  So I show up married on Tuesday and my life will change forever. So far so good. Now I just need to find a husband.

  Chapter 2

  Nathan watched as the waitress crossed the bar, returning to his corner table with his drink. She placed the glass of whiskey in front of him and stuck out her hand.

  “That’s twenty-five cents,” she said.

  He reached into his pocket and fished around for coins, praying that he actually had the money. When he opened his hand, he found a scrap of paper, some lint, and a quarter he had forgotten about entirely. Guess this is my lucky day, he thought, handing her the coin. She took it without saying a word and spun on her heel, heading back to her perch behind the bar and stopping only to roughly shake the shoulder of an old man at the next table.

  “Hey, wake up,” she said loudly. “If you’re gonna sleep, then you gotta go. This ain’t a hotel.”

  The old-timer nodded softly, but as she walked away his head drifted down to the table again and Nathan was pretty sure he could hear snoring shortly thereafter. So this is what I’ve come to, he thought. They should name this place Rock Bottom. As it happened, the bar was called Miners’ Oasis, though there was nothing remotely green nor fertile about the place; its only attraction was that it was the cheapest of the three saloons in Mineral Point.

  When Nathan had first arrived in town only a few weeks earlier, he had spent his first day looking for work and his first night at Sally’s. Sally Paar owned the nicest tavern in town, complete with a piano player, a full kitchen and the cutest girls you ever saw, delivering smiles with every drink. He would have returned the following night too, but good sense got the better of him once he counted the rest of his money the next morning.

  His rooming house charged seven dollars a week for full board, but after seeing the damage that Sally’s had inflicted on his wallet, Nathan decided to pay only for his room and breakfast. That brought his weekly bill down to three-fifty, which would be much more manageable until he could find work. Fortunately, Mineral Point was a large, vibrant city—especially when considered next to his native Plainfield—and he’d certainly find a job in short order. And if he were hungry after only one meal a day? The better to motivate him.

  Nathan managed to spend the next several days surviving on the egg, toast and weak coffee that the rooming house provided every morning, while spending much of each evening at Bill’s Bar, which was not nearly as nice as Sally’s. There was no music, and Bill was nowhere near as pretty as the girls over at Sally’s, but for the prices, Nathan couldn’t complain.

  After a couple of weeks of this, however, he began to realize that he was on a truly untenable path. Every day was turning out to be the same: he’d go from business to business, door to door, asking about available work, and it was beginning to appear that there was none to be found. He certainly didn’t want to return to Plainfield, hat in hand, when he’d bragged about going off to make his fortune to everybody he could find. After speaking to the innkeeper, he’d decided to forgo breakfast, which brought his weekly bill down to a dollar seventy-five. If he only ate when he was absolutely famished, and he found a job quickly, he’d be fine.

  It hadn’t quite turned out that way, however, which is why he was now sitting at the corner table in this dim and dirty tavern on a Saturday night, instead of enjoying the music and fine food over at Sally’s. Today had been the last straw. He had gone to the Point Plaza hotel in the afternoon, explained to the woman at the desk t
hat he was looking for work, and she had asked him to have a seat in the lobby to wait for the hotel manager.

  He had tried to mask his excitement as he sat there, his stomach gurgling and his feet tapping; after weeks of asking around, this was the first time that he’d made any progress. In a few minutes, the door to the office opened and a middle-aged, potbellied man with a fine set of whiskers came out. The receptionist said a word to him and nodded in Nathan’s direction; as the man approached, Nathan stood up to shake hands.

  “I understand you’re looking for a job,” the man said. “I’m Albert Gates, the hotel manager.”

  “Good to meet you, sir. I’m Nathan Larrimore.”

  “Let me show you around so you get a feel for the place,” Gates said, leading Nathan through the lobby and up the wide staircase. They went from floor to floor as Gates explained the history of the hotel, taking care to point out the fine details that—he said—set the Point Plaza apart from its competitors, from the hand-cut crystal wall sconces to the thickly woven carpets that covered the floors. Nathan could hear the pride in his voice as he narrated the tour, and by the time they arrived back in the lobby, Nathan was sure that he had found just the place he’d been looking for.

  “So, it looks like you’re in pretty good shape,” Gates said. “A bit thin, but you’re healthy? How’s your back? No problems?”

  “My back?” Nathan asked. “Uh, no, it’s fine.”

  “And your legs? You have strong legs?”

  “Well, strong enough to get me around, I guess,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  Gates pointed to the stairs. “Well, our bellhops go up those stairs a hundred times a day,” he said. “If your legs aren’t strong now, they will be pretty soon, I assure you,” he added with a grin.

  “Bellhop?” It felt like Nathan’s empty stomach had just dropped into his shoes. “That’s what you’re hiring for?”

  “Sure am,” Gates said. “You got lucky—we haven’t had an opening for months, but one of our guys just moved away.”

  “Mr. Gates, I appreciate you taking the time to show me around and everything,” Nathan said. “But to be perfectly honest, I was hoping that there might be something else available. You know, something maybe more…professional? Like assistant manager, perhaps?”

  Gates couldn’t conceal the faintest hint of a grin as he looked Nathan up and down, from his dusty shoes and slightly frayed pant cuffs to the too-loose shirt collar around his neck.

  “Have you ever had a job, son?”

  “Of course, sir,” Nathan said. “Back home in Plainfield I worked on the farm.”

  “Did you finish school?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long have you been here in Mineral Point?”

  “Going on three weeks now.” His stomach growled as if to emphasize the point, but Gates pretended not to hear.

  “Nathan, I’m sorry, but this is the only position we have available right now,” Gates said, extending his hand. “I tell you what—why don’t you take some time to think about it, and if you change your mind, you come back and see me.”

  “Thanks for your time, Mr. Gates,” he said, shaking hands. Nathan left the building and the heavy front doors swung shut in a rush, as if the hotel itself had wanted him gone. For the rest of the afternoon, he’d wandered the streets, passing by the same shops and businesses that had turned him down previously, and eventually found himself back at Bill’s Bar. He had been defeated.

  Nathan stared down at his drink. There was a trace of lipstick on the rim of the glass; he wiped it off with his thumb and tried to ignore the other dirty smudges. This wasn’t the kind of place where they took constructive criticism well.

  He leaned back and looked around at his fellow customers. Surely the only thing that bound them to him was their common interest in a cheap place to drink. There was the table of miners on the other side of the room, all of them uniformly covered in mud and grime and getting louder with every passing minute. There was the repulsive middle-aged woman, her skin yellow and her hair stringy, passing from man to man like a crow picking over corpses; once in a while she would convince somebody to step outside with her and they would only return in five or ten minutes. Nathan had a pretty good idea of what they were doing, but he didn’t care to imagine it. Then there were the patrons like Nathan: sitting alone, not attracting attention, not concerned with anything but the drinks in front of them, each man presumably wrestling with his own problems.

  He took a sip of whiskey and gritted his teeth at the scorching trail it left down his throat. He sniffed the glass. It smelled like whiskey, but in less than a month in the big city, Nathan had become suspicious and cynical. It wouldn’t have been too much to believe that they had poured him a shot of grain alcohol with some kind of coloring added. He let out a long sigh and took another drink. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, he thought. Tomorrow I have to head for home.

  It was a trip he was not looking forward to. In retrospect, it might not have been his best idea ever to explain exactly how he felt to all of the people who had annoyed him in Plainfield. His parents. His neighbors. The mayor. Nope, it was not going to be a happy homecoming. Nathan rested his forearms on the table and let his head drop down.

  “No sleeping!” the waitress shouted from behind the bar.

  He sat back up again. Still, he had no other options. The job at the hotel had been the only possibility he’d heard of since he’d arrived, and if he was going to do physical labor, then he might as well go back home and work on the farm, where he wouldn’t have to pay rent every week.

  A loud burst of laughter from the miners’ table drew his attention, and he watched as the men called the waitress over to order another round of drinks. Whatever savings the miners found by drinking here must have been offset by the volume of liquor they consumed, but it didn’t appear to bother them in the slightest. Nathan had even briefly considered working in the mines, but that combined hard labor with the added attraction of a possible death far underground. No, thank you, he thought as he shivered and took another drink.

  While he watched the waitress shuttle back and forth between the bar and the miners, he reviewed his plan for the next day. He would get up as usual at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock in the morning—his landlady had an almost maniacal insistence that her lodgers get up at that time, and she roamed the halls with an old cowbell to enforce it. He would try to clean up as best he could with the single small basin of hot water he was allowed, and then he’d attend to his shoes and clothes to make himself as presentable as possible. Then he would walk the twenty minutes to the church he’d discovered earlier in the day. If the poster he’d seen was correct, he’d probably only have to sit through an hour or so of sermonizing before the potluck lunch began; hopefully nobody would notice that he hadn’t brought anything himself, and he could finally eat a full meal before heading for home.

  From Mineral Point to Plainfield on foot. He shuddered at the thought of the long walk; it would take him several days to get up there, and the weather wasn’t getting any warmer. He could almost feel the cold wind, and he shivered again before realizing that somebody had just entered the bar, letting in a wave of cold air.

  Nathan turned to see who had come in. Standing just inside the door, surveying the crowd, was a blond woman he had never seen before. She looked like she had had a rough day. He could see mud on her boots and the hem of her dress, as if she’d been stomping around the same streets he had. Her hair, which appeared to have once been styled, lay collapsed and limp; as he watched, she brushed a strand out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. She’s pretty, Nathan thought. Looks kind of tough, but pretty.

  She searched the room with narrowed eyes and a pinched look, like she wasn’t expecting to find what she was looking for. Her eyes passed over Nathan as if he were a table or chair before her shoulders slumped and she went up to the bar.

  Nathan watched as the bartender, a tall man whose shoulders were as b
road as a barn door, went over to the woman and began to pour a whiskey, though she hadn’t said a word to him. She dug in her small black purse and eventually pulled out a coin, which she slid across the bar to him, then took her drink in hand and turned to look at the patrons again.

  Yes, she was definitely a good-looking girl. Nathan would have guessed that she was about twenty-five or so; she was just at that age that finds a balance between the beauty of youth and that of maturity. Still, there was something in her eyes that made her seem older than she looked. Perhaps it was a hint of sadness, or a weariness that hung about her. It was hard to say.

  He looked down at his drink. There was about one swallow left, and he would need it if he was going to go talk to her. This was no wilting flower by the roadside, waiting for anybody to pick her; from the looks of it, she was probably the one who did the picking most of the time. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. He downed the last of his drink and stood up.

  Just at that moment, the door to the bar opened again and a small, wiry man blew in along with the cold air. He also paused to look around, and when he caught sight of the girl at the bar, a lopsided grin revealed his crooked yellow teeth.

  “Well, if it ain’t Cora Rice,” he said, heading more or less straight for the bar. He stepped uneasily at times, as if this weren’t the first tavern he’d been to this evening. Nathan sat down.

  “Evening, John,” the girl said as he arrived at her side and gripped the edge of the bar to keep himself upright. “Looks like you’ve been out and about a little bit tonight.”

  “Honey, I’ve been out, about, all over town tonight,” John said. He pounded his fist on the bar. “Get over here, Henry!”

  The bartender slowly looked over at them, as an ox might regard a fly that was buzzing around his ear. “Let’s see the money first,” he said.