Wilde West Read Free Page A

much the cravat. Do you think I should look presentable in that shade of yellow?”
    Oscar smiled. “I venture to say, madame, that you should look presentable in whatever you chose to wear.”
    â€œOr chose not to,” said O’Conner, leering over his whiskey glass and interrupting before Oscar had a chance at cleverness himself.
    O’Conner’s remark was a trifle coarse, but it was apposite. (And also perhaps usable, sometime in the future.) The Countess was undeniably a handsome woman. A rosy complexion, only a few lines at the corners of her hooded blue eyes, thick tumbling ringlets of blond hair untouched by gray (but lightly touched, no doubt, by anoccasional application of cash). She was wearing a dress of black tulle, gathered at theshoulders, sleeveless, plunging dizzily in a décolletage which would have occasioned her arrest almost anywhere in England, and possibly in even a few remote corners of France.
    O’Conner had been attempting to seduce her since the tour left San Francisco. The Countess’s virtue, such as it was, had apparently remained intact. Oscar suspected that the Countess’s virtue, like the mortgage on the chalet she owned in Plaisir, had been several times renegotiated over the years. Still, her sleek white arms demanded admiration, and the alabaster swell of those round white breasts …
    Oscar’s reverie was broken as von Hesse stood up from the table. His back straight, he made a small stiff formal nod. Somehow the dark gray suit he wore contrived to resemble a military uniform. The effect was heightened by his hair: shiny pink scalp gleamed beneath a close-cropped bristle of white. “Please, Mr. Wilde, you will join us?”
    â€œDelighted,” said Oscar. He pulled back a chair and sat down. Von Hesse sat opposite him, his spine never once veering from the vertical.
    Von Hesse smiled his small crisp smile and asked him, “You are, as they say, out on the town tonight? On your own, eh?”
    Oscar nodded. “For a bit, yes.” He looked around for an ashtray, saw that the table held only a whiskey bottle and three glasses, and so tapped the ash from his cigarette onto the floor. When in Rome. “Later this evening I’m to pay court to the man who owns the Opera House here. A chap named Tabor. The good Mr. Vail arranged it. Evidently, Tabor’s a man who’s dug tons of silver out of the ground and converted them into tons of gold.” He inhaled on the cigarette. “Or perhaps it was the other way round. The intricacies of high finance have always escaped me.”
    â€œSilver mines,” said O’Conner, sipping at his whiskey as quite openly he ogled the sweep of aristocratic breast offered by the Countess. “He owns the richest silver mines in Colorado.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œHe is married?” asked the Countess.
    Oscar smiled. He found it endlessly endearing, this tendency she had in any conversation to deflect it suddenly, and with an utter lack of self-consciousness, toward herself and her concerns. It was a trait with which he sympathized. “All successful men are married, Countess. Society inflicts marriage upon them as a punishment for their presumption.”
    She returned the smile. “And what of yourself, dear Oscair?”
    He laughed. “Ah, well. My own presumption, alas, continues to outpace my success.”
    â€œTabor’s married, all right,” said O’Conner. “But while the wife’s stuck back in Leadville, old Horace is here in Denver, playing house with Baby Doe.”
    â€œAnd what, pray,” said Oscar, “is a Baby Doe?”
    â€œElizabeth McCourt Doe. Baby Doe. A real beauty, they say. A knockout. She came here from Virginia with a husband in tow, and dumped him when she decided she wanted a silver baron of her own. She latched on to Tabor a couple years ago.”
    The Countess blinked quizzically. “A