Verboten

3.

Sunday is the only day of the week in which you feel like you can breathe. Prostitution and exposure is forbidden on Sundays since it's the Lord's day, so your father just has the band play ragtime or folk music to fill the void on stage.

Your Sunday ritual usually entails church in the morning followed by a visit to the bath house and then to your secret creek spot to read in silence, away from the bustle of the saloon. Your routine today is littered with thoughts of the stranger clothed in the color of night, his attractive side profile and the way his nose slopes into his pouty lips. You wonder if he will come into the saloon again or if he was just passing through town for an evening and for the first time in your entire life, you're looking forward to going to work just to find out.

It seems as though you aren't the only woman at work who noticed the guest in all black; as you wind your way through the crowded backstage area of women applying makeup and removing curlers from their hair, you can hear mumblings of his description followed by musings such as, "his hands were absolutely enticing", "I could practically see his pecker in his trousers" and "I'll be trying my damndest to carve a slice before he disappears for good."

It pains you to hear him spoken about like a piece of meat in a situation where he can't even defend himself. Your envy for their outright nature and your curious desire to hear him speak kept you awake tossing and turning for the majority of the night, your dreams sprinkled with images of smoke curling around his nose and his hair draped in his eyes.

Your castle in the air bursts with a friendly shove against your shoulder, "you saw him too?"

You nod and force a smile before applying a thin layer of rouge to your lips and a brush of carmine to your cheeks. You wipe the sweat from your palms before pushing the curtain aside and scanning the already crowded saloon. The folk guitar weeps on stage, the slide of harmonica and the howl of woeful vocals accompany its simple chord progressions.

The stranger is nowhere in sight and your chest aches at the understanding that you may never see him again. Hours pass as you incessantly check your pocket watch, you convince yourself that you knew nothing about him and that he was just another pretty face to help ease the pang of loss of a wistful fantasy that you had built up in your mind for twenty four hours.

Your fingernails drum the bar top as you wait for your table's order, the music in the room soothing you as you reel from lack of sleep. You allow your eyes to slip shut for a moment before the scent of botanicals passes you in a breeze, followed by the glitzy clink of spurs and heavy footsteps and then finally the drop of a hat against wood.

You know it's him before you peel your eyes open, your heart pounding like a gang of running buffalo before your hands slip from the bar as you wake from your stupor. You glance to your right to find him perched upon the same bar stool as yesterday, his ivory tuxedo shirt buttoned completely up the front and his neck hidden by a ruffled collar that ends at his jaw. He looks like a prince or a pirate, or possibly a combination of the two as he nods at the bartender and wordlessly receives a full glass of whiskey with his simple signal.

You can hear a waitress gasp behind you before she runs off to alert the other girls of his presence, but the stranger doesn't seem to notice anyone around him or at least has little to zero interest in them. His thumb traces over the square-shaped ruby on his index finger before he sips his drink and continues to keep to himself.

Woman after woman approach him throughout the night only to be politely and decidedly declined, his body language fearless and aloof as he burns through cigarettes and flips through the pages of a shabby and small hardcover book. At the end of the evening, he leaves a generous pile of cash on the bar before slipping his hat onto his head and sauntering out of the saloon doors in the same direction that he came from.