“There’s money in it,” said Cora.
“You’re setting yourself as inspiration?” Desirée said.
Cora looked peeved. “I’m not sharing a room with eight brothers and sisters anymore, am I? Not living next to a stockyard that smells of shit.”
“Now,” Belle said to Marian, “put your hand on your hip like this and say, ‘Hiya, mister, need a date?’？”
“Hiya, mister,” Marian said solemnly. “Need a date?” The girls fell all over themselves laughing.
“Date to a funeral, maybe, you ask like that,” said Desirée.
“Sit like this,” Cora said, arching her back and looking over her shoulder, “and say, ‘No twat like this one.’？” Marian obeyed, blushing, goaded by their laughter, the dirty word, the glimpses of herself in the mirror.
The doorbell. Loud and resounding, startling them into silence.
“Just when we’re having a laugh,” Cora said.
Belle said, “No one had an appointment.”
“They don’t need an appointment,” said Cora. They heard the muffled sounds of Mrs. Wu letting someone in.
“Damn.” Desirée had sprung to her feet, begun to root through a drawer. “It’s for me. I forgot.”
“Cora can go,” said Belle.
“No, it’s Barclay Macqueen. He’s choosy.”
“Why, thanks very much,” said Cora.
“Not like that, just—he likes everything just so. Go down there, Belle, and stall for a minute. Cora, help me put my hair up.”
“It’s Barclay Macqueen?” said Marian.
Cora was already twisting Desirée’s hair back from her face. “Know him?”
“I know who he is.”
“Take the kid,” Desirée said to Belle, screwing a red bullet of lipstick up out of its tube.
Marian grabbed her clothes off the floor. “Come on,” Belle said, trying to tug her along. “I have to get down there. Dolly will be furious if he leaves.”
“I feel strange going down like this.”
Belle eyed her. “Let’s see what he does when he sees you.”
“I can’t,” Marian said, dragging backward.
Belle pulled her by the arm. “Just as a lark. It’ll be funny—you’ll see. They can’t help themselves. Say the bit about your twat. I dare you. I’ll give you a whole cream puff.”
Downstairs Belle grabbed Marian’s clothes out of her hands and tossed them into the dark front parlor before she passed briskly through a swinging door to the back parlor. Marian hung behind, leaning against the wainscoting in the hall. Through the door, she glimpsed the crossed legs of a seated man, a polished black shoe tipping at the end of an elegant ankle. A shoe, not a boot, despite the snow. The door closed. The hallway was dark except for one electric wall sconce. Belle said, rather grandly, “Terrrrrrribly sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Macqueen. Desirée will be just one more minute.”
A low voice, a hint of an accent not unlike the Scottish miners’ but cleaner, softer: “I’m told patience is a virtue, and this is a house of virtue, isn’t it?”
Marian had known Barclay Macqueen’s name since she’d started driving for Stanley. A rancher, in theory. From up north. His father, a Scotsman, had made himself one of the first cattle barons in the state, back before there was even need of fences. His mother was Flathead Salish. When misfortune put local moonshiners or bootleggers out of business, a raid or an explosion or an intercepted shipment, it was Barclay Macqueen’s name they whispered. The feds had busted Old Potshot not long before, destroyed his still and a dozen other rinky-dink stills around Missoula, and rumor was they’d been tipped off as part of their bargain with Barclay Macqueen. Mr. Stanley didn’t know how much longer he could hope to be spared. They said Barclay Macqueen knew every trick in the book. He brought booze over the line by automobile, rail, mule, horse, backpack, canoe; he had operations in every town in Montana and more in Washington and Idaho and the Dakotas; he owned more speakeasies and cordial shops and roadhouses than you could count; his payroll was crowded with cops, lawyers, feds, train crews, councilmen, congressmen, judges, all their bookkeepers; he had liquor warehoused everywhere from mine shafts to church cellars to actual warehouses. They said his thousands of cattle and his massive landholdings weren’t more than a hobby. They said most of the people who worked for Barclay Macqueen didn’t even know it.