The Gentlemen's Club Ch. 03

For his part, Thaddeus Collins stood back, naked from the waist down, hands folded across his chest.

"You were a fool to bring her here tonight, Thaddeus" a voice said, unusually strong and sure.

Douglas! Sarah's heart leapt immediately into her throat, pounding so hard she was sure it would simply explode any second.

"Perhaps it was a magnificent mistake," Collins said, taking one step toward the doorway, "but we both know you aren't going to do anything about it."

For one half a second, Sarah was sure that Collins was right—that he would replace his trousers and don his shoes, that he would merely walk away, and that he may, in the future, even attempt to repeat the events of this night again.

Then, that half a second later, the thunderclap of a discharging firearm stopped Collins still, filling the air with smoke and the acrid smell of gunpowder.

As the smoke cleared Collins, having not moved an inch, asked a very simple question: "Have you shot me, Douglas?" His voice, ever confident, had the slightest pang, a mournful sound that said plain as day, everything he had ever known to this moment was over.

"Not this time, Thaddeus," Douglas responded, motioning his pistol towards the hole in the polished wood floor inches removed from Collins foot. He then brought the weapon up, pointing it straight between Collins eyes. "However, I can make no guarantees about the next."

Collins took a step towards his trousers before he noticed Brown shaking his head; evidently, he wouldn't need either those or his boots. He walked, trouser less, through the shattered door and out of the Visum into the cold Southern night.

"Are you quite proud of yourself?" Brown asked, eyebrow arched, of Jennifer who stood stock still in the corner. She tried to be defiant, to return his stare but found she lacked the will. "Don't bother going back to Winthrop's. Don't bother doing anything in this town—you will find no work here, no one who remembers your name or even acknowledges your existence. This, I promise."

Jennifer knew it to be so and disappeared herself, never again to be seen or heard.

*

"Sarah," he said, a simple word, perhaps the simplest he had ever spoken.

"Douglas," she responded. Her relief was plain.

"I went to see you, I… I should have known, this—"

"Douglas," Sarah said, quite insistently.

"Yes, Sarah?"

"Please, before you do anything else—"

"Anything," Douglas interrupted.

"—please untie me."

SIX MONTHS LATER

Sarah gazed out upon the square, a scene she had become quite fond of the last few months. She remembered this view, albeit from the office below, from the first time she had some to see Douglas in his office (the circumstances of that visit now nearly forgotten) just over eight months before. In particular, she enjoyed the coming and going of people, watching them tie their horses, the men walking with some affectation, and of course the mothers taking care of their children. This invariably brought a smile to her face (a smile to fill the darkest room) and, always, her hand went to the rounded belly within which grew her unborn child.

She sighed and continued knitting the tiny green and yellow outfits with which she had become so proficient. As she did, the events of the last months played over her mind for the thousandth time…

First, the unfortunate circumstance of a certain, little known structure burning to the ground on the outskirts of town. The fire was especially potent, leaving no identifiable traces in the scattered debris. Curiously, no one seemed to notice, no calls were made, no claims filed, no cleanup initiated. It was as if the structure had never existed—and its eccentric brotherhood, loyal to the end, never spoke of Dus Aliter Visum again.

The Collins clan—father and son, to be clear—had disappeared around the same time. It seemed they had gathered their belongings and, after a hurried stop at the local bank, taken off on a second hand carriage, due west. It was said they were headed to California, an imaginary place as far as most Southerner's were concerned. It was also said they met an untimely end mere days into their journey, an end that left no witnesses, a carriage of personal possessions, and two very large, very empty strongboxes beside which lay their (newly deceased) respective owners. No proof was ever given to back up this version of events—perhaps none was needed.

The Junior Clerk of a particular firm, having received word of his immediate, unqualified termination, returned home to a completely empty dwelling. Rather than his wife, and a hot meal, and another attempt to save her from her own wickedness, Robert Higgins instead found a paper, issued in absentia, stipulating annulment of unconsummated marriage. He didn't fight it but instead, never unpacking his bags, took the next train from Atlanta out west where he secured employment with Standard Oil. An outstanding negotiator, he closed many deals and died, very wealthy and very alone.

Charles Winthrop, ever the gentlemen, treated Sarah as if she were the most prized and highly sought after of possessions, listening to her advice, deferring to her judgment, and never once making even the slightest mention or note of any past indiscretions, such as they were. Rather, the wife of his business partner was a woman of enormous prestige—a sometimes headstrong woman, almost always right, who kept her husband out of more trouble than he ever could have known.

Douglas Brown, most sought after bachelor for a thousand miles, finally locked down, as it were, with the most unusually beautiful and full-bodied redhead anyone had ever seen. There had been one rumor about the wife having been previously married—a rumor summarily quashed and sure never to return. It was said that Mr. Brown had an heir on the way. Lucky man, that Mr. Brown. Very lucky man.

Sarah Brown, no longer a Crutchfield or Higgins, was happier than she could have ever imagined. Her life's dream had been to raise children in her own house, a simple dream for a simple woman. Their under construction home was almost complete, a sprawling structure on the outskirts of town perfect for raising a family. For now she stayed with her husband in his executive apartment above the firm, knitting away at the various articles of clothing her child would soon need. She paid careful attention to the tiniest details; there would be no finding fault with any of her work, that was for sure. She treated her husband as a king—a favor he returned in kind, in all aspects of their private and personal lives. Surely her father would have wanted this, for her to be with a man who valued her for more than what she could do for him (although she did plenty), who saw her as something more than the sum of her individual parts.

Still, there was one thing that nagged the back of her mind, a small, nearly trivial thing really, so unimportant she hated to waste even a second thinking on it. As she fashioned a long sleeve on a tiny green shirt she wondered, neither for the first nor last time, whether her child would be a boy or a girl. Each held promise—each came with peculiar requirements—each would be loved unconditionally and forever. And then she wondered whether, when that boy or girl sprang from her womb, he or she might have Douglas' brown hair or hair red as her own, framing matching brown or brilliant sky blue eyes.

Or if, perhaps, her child might just as well be blond, with eyes of darkest gray.