Rot

She had arrived in Falling Creek on the last breath of summer. On sidewalks, leaves had begun to blow, and in the church, the piles of lilies that some devout stacked reverentially in front of the shrine to the Virgin Mary had begun to brown. On her first night there, she tracked puddle-wet footsteps on the white pavements towards her hotel, and felt herself hope against hope that this sleepy, saccharine town might be home, because it felt homely already. Worn, warm and flowery. The same way she thought of herself, but she already knew that she’d be home to nobody. She turned her nose to the breeze, and inhaled the faint smell of festering flowers. She could live with it.

The job in the local bar was par for the course, as it had been at every previous time, and the game that she started playing with Victor Thibault was cat-and-mouse. Victor loved a good game of cat-and-mouse.

She couldn’t escape his notice, because she was trying so god-damn hard to do so, but he kept catching her. A flash of dark hair where the previous bartender had been blonde. Perfume, and, ah! new blood on the breeze. If anyone could read his mind, they’d finally learn the reason that this quiet town kept replacing bartenders, and anyone ‘just passing through’ usually passed on, instead of through. Victor had been doing this for a long time, after all. This was far from the first bar he had propped up, and it wouldn’t be the last.

A new soundtrack that night: the tinkling of breaking glass. A new voice behind the bar. A whip of breeze as she passed by and he almost caught a glimpse. The clinking of coins as she made transactions at the other end of the bar. Glass grinding on wood and liquids splashing as she made drinks. The slap of rubber-soled sneakers as she made it out onto the floor to mop up or move chairs, but carefully at the other end of the bar, behind a partition, away from him. He hardly noticed for a while, but suddenly it was midnight and that new scent was gone, the air rich with bleach instead. He sniffed.

‘Benny,’ Victor had croaked to the owner. His throat was dry with a thirst that whiskey wouldn’t ease.

‘I know your tab, Victor. You’re going to need a new liver before Christmas if you aren’t careful.’

Victor waved it away, scornfully.

‘Skip the lecture. Who’s the new blood?’

The wariness didn’t recede from Benny’s face.

‘Her name’s Rose. Don’t know a lot about her. Nice girl, though.’

‘Did you warn her about me, or something? She sure is shy of the northern end of this bar. Not the best for business, Benny, old pal.’

Benny picked up a rag and wiped diplomatically at the droplets on the bar from Victor’s glass.

‘Well, if she got warned, it was a good thing. Doesn’t need you scaring her if you catch my drift. We’re down a bartender and I’d like to keep this one.’

Victor couldn’t avoid understanding, but shook his head in disgust.

‘She doesn’t seem very good,’ he protested. ‘I heard her smash a glass!’

‘One glass. She knows all the cocktails. Had a job in some fancy joint in New York. It means we can have a cocktail menu again, and cocktails are good for business,’ Benny said decidedly, serving Victor’s bill in an ashtray.

‘At your convenience,’ he said, with the thinnest layer of deference, and Victor rolled his eyes, as he reached for his wallet.

*

When Victor rolled out of the bar, tottering a little, and shoving his wallet back into his pocket, he saw her out front. She was kneeling in the neon light of the diner, pumping the wheel on a bicycle.

‘Need a hand?’ Victor offered, and her head snapped to find who had spoken, and locked eyes with him.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, with a quick smile before glancing back to the task at hand. ‘Bloody wheels refuse to stay inflated, is all.’

‘Not a lot of call for bicycles around these parts,’ Victor said, and she shrugged, ever-so-pleasant.

‘Well, be that as it may, I’ve never had cause to divert from the old ways,’ she said, evenly, unhooking the pump and squeezing the tube back into place. She climbed onto the saddle, snapped on a helmet, and balanced for just a moment, rubber toes on the pavement, about to strike off.

‘Stop,’ Victor said, and pure surprise made her. 

‘I was at the end of that bar for hours, and you’re new in town, and I barely caught a glimpse of you. What’s the deal?’

‘Do you expect every bartender to pay a personal call to your end of the bar?’

Victor blinked, off-kilter.

‘Kind of?’

She rolled her eyes and propped a foot on her pedal. 

‘I’ll bear that in mind for my next shift.’

‘You haven’t even asked my name. It might interest you.’

She turned her head, and took him in, carefully; leisurely. 

‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in town a week. You’re quite a topic of conversation, Mr. Thibault. By the way - do you smell that?

‘What?’

‘Flowers. Rotting.’

‘It’s as good a place as any for beauty to putrify - don’t you think?’

When she rode off, he sniffed almost desperately. Delicious, frothy blood. Like a mint julep, or a narcissus coming from under the ground. He could tell.

*

When she looked at it in the mirror, her body was nothing spectacular. She carried little scars on her flesh, stretches and pulls. She turned to the side to see the long, white length of herself in her rented room, the white pattern in the flesh that most women carried. Injection scars in her arms like a good girl’s track marks. Stringy because she liked to run and didn’t really like to eat. She couldn’t help it if she nursed dreams of something more. These 5 feet and 3 inches of body had followed her from place to place, and seemed to be the only part of her luggage which was irreplaceable.

Rose had been pouring whiskey-and-waters for the regulars, the local teachers, and the man who watched her like he was a hawk and she was a mouse for a few months before it caught her eye, on the way to work. A strong gust of dusty wind blasted down the wide street, carrying that same scent of flowers turning to rot, and she turned her face away instinctively. The shop-front caught her eye. 

The window was relatively small, and draped in pink and purple scarves. It had a little bunch of posies - probably porcelain - on wires, to the left of the window. Above, there was a simple sign, in gold cursive. Just a name: Effie’s. Front and centre, in the window was a mannequin, and laced onto her tiny, wooden waist was the most beautiful corset Rose thought she had ever seen. She crossed the road almost without thinking, and pressed her nose against the window, mesmerized. When she pressed the door, a little bell tinkled, old-fashioned, above her head. A marvellous old lady, with soft clouds of white hair and piercing blue eyes came from the back room, a measuring tape flung over her shoulder.

‘Hello, honey,’ she said, welcomingly. The walls were covered in the most beautiful undergarments Rose could imagine. Silk and satin, velvet, lace. Flowers and whales, polka dots, and plain bolts of fabric making up every kind of underwear she could think of. 

‘Are you Effie?’ she asked, bluntly, and if Effie was affronted, she didn’t show it.

‘Of course,’ she said.

‘Where did you get all these things?’

‘Had a shop on 5th Avenue. Retired to Falling Creek - grew up here, you see. The old bones want to go home.’

She smiled, and her face cracked like a biscuit into well-meaning lines. 

‘Look as long as you like,’ she offered, and pottered back to her room behind the counter, where, if Rose’s hearing was correct, she must be measuring and snipping fabric for some new gorgeous creation. 

In the centre of the shop, there was a rack with three of the corsets from the window on it. She made her way to it, and stroked it, longingly. It was lavender satin, with lace inserts, and underwear to match. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something about it spoke to her. She had a strange feeling that in this, the length of her spine with just one kink in it (one kink too many) wouldn’t matter. She trailed a finger lazily down the edge, and flipped over the hand-written price-tag as if it didn’t matter to her either way -

‘A pretty penny, huh?’ came a voice at her ear, and Rose almost died. Victor stood beside her, in an attitude of mock concern.

‘Oh, did I scare you? I’m terribly sorry - I was right behind you when you came in,’ he said, breezily, taking a look around the shop with keen interest, feigned or not. 

‘No, you weren’t,’ she began, but realised it was futile. The street had been empty. The shop had been empty. Places always seemed empty - and then, suddenly, there he would be, sniffing the air like he could smell the flowers rotting too. 

‘You’ve got to stop creeping up on me,’ she said, instead, in a low voice. She didn’t want Effie to come out, and find her shopping for underwear, with Victor Thibault, of all people. She edged away at the mere thought of it, towards the door, but Victor was between her and it.

‘It’s a beautiful piece,’ he said, admiringly, and she tried another step, but Victor leaned back, ever so casually, as if simple looking for a better view, but subtly blocking her way.

‘Yes, it is,’ she agreed, hastily. ‘I’ve got to get going.’

‘But you haven’t even taken a chance to look at it properly,’ he said, and tutted, reaching over to take her shoulders and position her right before the rail, his head just over her shoulder.

‘I saw you admiring it from the street, the least you can do is take the chance to look at the thing. You Protestants can be so damn self-denying.’

‘Catholic guilt,’ she corrected him, automatically. He released her shoulders, but nudged her towards it. 

‘Go on,’ he encouraged her, and she rolled her eyes. 

‘It’s probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,’ she said, honestly, feeling the lace edging the top of the cup. She turned to him.

‘What do you think?’ she asked. She might as well be bold.

‘I think you’re beautiful,’ he said, so honestly that her heart almost stopped. She turned back to the corset, heat rising in her cheeks, and he laughed, careless.

‘Is that a crime?’

‘Of course it’s not a crime,’ she snapped, still flabbergasted. 

‘Then why do you seem so angry? Don’t you think I’m beautiful too?’ he teased, pulling a teal teddy from another rack and modelling it across his chest with a wink, but it was too late for joking.

‘Of course I do,’ she said, matching his previous honestly, so he had the grace to at least twitch, even if his smirk was still in place.

‘Now I’ve really got to go,’ she said, shouldering her bag resolutely and facing him down.

‘Aren’t you going to buy it?’ Victor asked, with barely a twinkled in his dark eyes.

‘Maybe when I’m a millionaire,’ she retorted. ‘Later, Victor.’

He let her pass, his hands held up in a gesture of innocence. She darted through the door, slamming it behind her, hearing the bell jangle discordantly, and hearing Victor’s laughter echo from inside the shop. At work, she sat in the refrigerator room for a few minutes, until she was sure the red had left her cheeks. 

Victor dropped in for a drink, as usual. A gin and tonic, with a twist of lime. He drank it with the best of humours, and shot her a smile which might have killed a lesser mortal as he left, but she remembered the cold room and kept her head, clenching her fists behind the bar. 

It was almost one in the morning before she was free to go. She had cleaned up an inordinate amount of broken glass this evening and had mopped the dance floor rigorously. She pulled on her jacket and picked up her backpack, and her helmet, and found the gift bag hidden behind them. It was cream card, stiff, and embossed with that name again: Effie’s. Pink paper poked out of the top of it. She reefed the paper out and underneath it, as she had known it would be, lay the lavender corset set. She pulled it out slowly, holding it up in the unkind electric light, and it was still beautiful. 

She laid it aside, and fumbled around until her hand closed over the card inside. His handwriting was perfect. All it said was for the beauty. She crumpled it and tried to think beyond the blood pulsing behind her eyes. How dare he. She snatched up the bag, placed the corset ever so carefully inside and shoved the tissue paper back on top of it. She slung on her backpack, slapped her helmet on, and grabbed the small gift-bag before heading out the door that slammed automatically behind her. 

Her fingers fumbled while she unlocked her bike, and she swore. She had never been to the Thibault house before but she knew where it was in a general sense. When she kicked off, she seemed to fly, the wind in her face so very welcome now. She blinked into the darkness, and let her anger carry her all the way. When she arrived, she jumped off the bike kicking it to the side and throwing her helmet after it. She stamped up to the door, and rapped on it, hard, three times, not caring who she might wake up. There were a lot of lights on.

‘Victor!’

‘It’s open!’ he called. Wrong-footed, she pushed the door, and sure enough it opened easily under her touch. Why was the door open? she wondered, but propelled herself back to the task at hand.

The Thibault house was beautiful, plush and echoing, the least homely place she had ever seen but one of the most beautiful, probably because every surface was crammed, funereally, with bouquets of flowers. Living and dead. Rooted and wilted. In full bloom, and out. The smell of rot came from here - and so did that sweet smell of flowers at their peak. 

She wished late on that she hadn’t been so enraged; she might have enjoyed it more. As it was, she blundered into the sitting room, silky petals raining down on her. Victor was sitting on a sofa before a roaring fire, with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He turned his head to look at her, an arm laid invitingly along the headrest of the sofa to his left.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, and spread the arm welcomingly. ‘So glad you’re here. Won’t you sit down?’

‘Victor,’ she began, stomping around to stand between him and the fire, brandishing the bag. ‘What is this?’

Victor shrugged. ‘Little something I thought you’d enjoy. You’re no Puritan, one of the things I like about you.’

‘Victor!’ she exclaimed again, to cut him off, or something - afterwards she couldn’t remember properly. ‘I can’t accept this.’

‘Oh, of course you can,’ he tutted. ‘You worry too much. It’s just a little gift, from me to you. I’m not asking you to model it. Although,’ he said, leaning forward with interest, ‘if you wanted to -’

‘Stop,’ she demanded, throwing up a hand. ‘Victor, I’m serious. This cost $175. I saw the tag.’

‘I know,’ he said, and snorted. ‘Chicken feed. What’s it’s use sitting there in the store? Far more useful on you.’

‘Victor, stop,’ she cried, at last, shaking her head, and offering him the bag. She looked him right in the eyes, seriously. ‘I’m not your wife. I can’t accept this.’

He cocked his head. ‘I didn’t take you for someone so moralistic,’ he said, and she placed the bag on the floor, and made for the door. 

‘It was just supposed to be a gift,’ he said, and she could tell that now he was hurt. 

‘It’s not an appropriate gift for you to give me,’ she explained, in a gentler tone. He was on his feet now, the firelight licking animation into his face, some kind of fire.

‘It is wrong? To give you a gift? To have feelings?’

‘Is it wrong? It is wrong for me to say what I think? About you? Are you afraid of a man calling you beautiful?’

The space between them yawned, but it didn’t feel like that to her.

‘No,’ she said, and made for the door again. He didn’t stop her, but was still looking when she turned around. ‘I’m not afraid to be called beautiful. I’m just a little afraid to hear it.’

She picked up her bike in the dark, and cycled home without her helmet. The homeward journey was long, and arduous, without rage to drive her, and with the smell of rot and bloom dull behind her. When she got to work the next day, her helmet was in the same place the bag had been the day before. 

There was a bunch of roses, a day past their bloom. From the beast, the note read. When he came for his drink that evening, cautious, and tragically beautiful, she put one of the roses in his glass.

‘Rosehip gin,’ she said, sliding it across the bar. ‘For the beauty.’

His smile was like the dawn of a new day. This time, she didn’t turn away. She took a moment, and inhaled.