The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [108]
The only nights Chloé did not sleep pressed against Awa were when a mark paid the extra franc to have her stay until morning with him on a lumpy pallet surrounded by cheaply perfumed curtains. Those nights were harder than Awa expected, though she was not so foolish as to think loving a whore would be easy. She managed it, though, and took a quiet little thrill in keeping her own secrets as Chloé let one after another slip out with the errant tear; she told Awa about her absent mother, her abusive father, and her molesting uncle, about running away from home to work in the city only to find herself on her back, about her dreams and nightmares.
“I’m going to be famous, a poetess,” said Chloé as they sat on the edge of their pallet early one morning. She stunk like the man she had just left and Awa drank more to kill the scent. “That Moor I told you about, he had a book by one of them, courtier, no, courtesans. Italian bird, sang poetry into her books, and now everyone from the Grand Duke of Muscovy to the caliph of wherever are singing her praises. I’ll write like her, sad poems and sweet, and be the queen of the courtesans.”
“Can you read and write?” asked Awa.
“Not yet,” said Chloé, taking the bottle. “But I learned to suck cock when I was ten, so learning letters at eighteen ought’ent be worse.”
“I can teach you,” said Awa. “If you like, I’ll buy, I don’t know, a book or something and teach you to read.”
Chloé was silent for a time, then burst out laughing. “Yeah, why not?! Teach me!”
“It’ll be fun,” said Awa, taking the bottle as Chloé rolled onto the floor and squatted in front of her, putting her hands on Awa’s knees. “Fun.”
“My first fucking sonnet will be an ode to the soft wings of the raven, eh?” said Chloé, moving in as Awa lowered herself down with a sigh, the portrait of the girl watching them from just over the jet-haired head now nodding between Awa’s legs.
Complications and jealousy were as inevitable as pox in that house, though not so easily remedied. The occasions when Awa passed through the third floor and saw Chloé at work, or worse, chatting up some slob in the tavern below, gnawed at Awa more than she would admit to herself or her lover. An especially loud and obnoxious Englishman named Merritt took a shine to Chloé, and he more than all the anonymous marks put together rubbed Awa wrong.
Merritt delighted in talking immense amounts of shit about the other patrons and whores, flexing and strutting like an especially immodest peacock, and picking fights at the slightest provocation—provided his opponent was smaller or drunker than him. Awa noticed that he had become a regular, and that he favored Chloé, but did not pay him much notice until one night when her last bottle went unexpectedly empty and she was forced to march down to the tavern for some of the local swill. It was quite late and she was already a little drunk so she had not bothered donning her cloak, which was still drying anyway, and so she went downstairs with her head held high only to hear Merritt crowing in the worst French she had ever heard.
“Blackmoor! Fuck, blackmoor!” Chloé was sitting on his lap and glanced up at his outburst. Awa looked to her instead of him, and when Chloé quickly turned away, whispering in Merritt’s ear, Awa set her face and made straight for the bar. Then it came again. “Fuck blackmoor! See! Why you telling me not they are had blackmoor, chit? Me buying her!”
Awa’s face must have given away far more than she intended, for Dario already had two bottles off the shelf and held out to her, his smile more grimace than grin. Through his frozen expression Dario murmured, “Fucking English’re the worst, eh, Awa? We fleece that mutton closest, believe