Page 23 of If Looks Could Kill

Pearl and I were prevented from keeping our promise to look for the girl in the window the next day by a surprise visit to our Army base by Commander Ballington Booth, who filled our ordinarily free time slot with a motivating sermon.

One that, bless him, kept us glued to our seats for two hours plus.

But the following Sunday, we took up the quest once more.

“We have two places we can look,” Pearl said that afternoon, back in our barracks room. “The crib above the Lion’s Den and the brothel.”

“Which one shall we try?”

Pearl’s jaw had a set look. “Both.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s start with the brothel, and next we can—”

“At the same time,” she said. “Let’s split up. Divide and conquer.”

Once again, Little Miss Rule Follower unveiled her devious side. So long as she considered the cause to be righteous.

“Incognito, I take it?” I said. “Dressing in normal clothes?”

She nodded.

“Which do you want?” I said. “The saloon or the brothel?”

“Said one Salvation Army girl to another,” said Pearl in an unexpected spasm of comedy.

“How about I take the brothel?” I said. “It’s… trickier.”

“Meaning only you can handle it?”

“Meaning,” I said, thinking fast, “an empty alleyway is harder to disappear into than a busy street. And I’m less… noticeable than you.”

She tilted her head. “Why do you say such harsh things about your appearance?”

Perhaps she meant to be kind, but was she really going to ask me to explain to her, to her , that I’d spent my life reminded by a chorus of helpful others of how unremarkable my looks were compared to more fortunate girls?

That schoolmarms and church ladies and shopgirls commented on beauty so glibly that they didn’t realize how routinely they trod upon the feelings of girls like me—us fair-to-middling types?

That I’d made my peace with it through finding other outlets in life more interesting than, say, hair, dresses, or hats?

That I consoled and entertained myself with a running inner monologue lampooning the Beautiful Ones?

In short: that I was jealous and insecure?

No, thank you.

“I don’t know,” I said weakly.

“It’s uncomfortable for those around you.”

The poor dears. As though I should care about the beautiful others who’d never spared a thought for me.

“There’s nothing wrong with how you look,” she continued.

“I’m relieved to hear it.”

And there, exactly, is my point, I wanted to scream, the point I will not stoop to make aloud to you. Nothing wrong with how I look? Thank heavens. Here I was, thinking I shouldn’t go outdoors without a sack over my head.

“You needn’t be so sarcastic,” Pearl sniffed. “I was only trying to be helpful.”

I took a deep breath. “Thanks.” I tried to mean it. “But…”

She unbuttoned her jacket and hung it in our wardrobe. “But what?”

Breathe. “But,” I said, “when Purse Laurier—”

“Percival,” she said.

“Fine.” With great effort, I didn’t roll my eyes to the ceiling. “When Percival Laurier tells you how your golden hair is like an angel’s or your blue eyes are like the sea—”

“Have you been eavesdropping on us?” Her breath came hard and fast.

“No!” I cried. “As if I—I would never!”

“Then how do you know what he’s said ?”

If this moment weren’t so horrible, it would be funny.

“Because men are dumb, unimaginative bricks,” I cried. “Because they trot out the same tired lines again and again. I was only guessing what he likely said.”

“They’re not ‘tired lines,’?” she said. “And Mr. Laurier isn’t a dumb brick. He’s a brilliant young man.”

Because he’s made sure to tell you he is, twenty times over. I sighed. Stop it, Tabitha. “Then tell him to compare you to something else.”

“Is it fun, Tabitha?” she demanded. “To go through the world, sneering at everybody?”

“I don’t—”

“Why can’t you just let people alone? Let them enjoy their own happiness without stomping all over it with the cynical, superior wit of the Great Tabitha Woodward?”

The Great—! “I’m no ‘superior wit,’?” I cried. “Is that what you think I think?”

“It’s what I know you think.”

“Look,” I said. “I don’t know how we ended up here.

This is what I was trying to say. When Percival Laurier tells you how beautiful you are”—I spoke carefully—“he’s not working hard to find something positive to say.

He’s saying what he feels. He is overcome with the feeling of your stunning beauty.

That’s how men talk to you. It’s not how they talk to me. ”

She bit her lip. She seemed to be struggling to compose herself.

“And that’s fine,” I went on. “They don’t need to feel that way about me. Only sometimes, you know, a tiny little part of me wishes that—”

Pearl cut me off. “You don’t know how men talk to me,” she said. “You don’t know the kinds of comments I’ve had to endure.” She caught herself. “Unless you’ve had to endure them also. Perhaps, as you say, men really are all the same.”

And there she went again. Possibly, even such a one as I might have had to endure them, if men really were such toads; she’d (obviously) endured them because she was pretty.

Yet, in all my fixation upon how men admired her, I’d brushed aside the other types of comments routinely thrown her way. I’d viewed them as if they were compliments she’d be pleased to receive, when, in fact, most were crude and horrible.

“You’re right,” I told her. “I don’t know most of the things men have said to you.”

Her expression, as she watched my face, was unreadable.

“I’ve only just met you,” I went on. “I don’t know what you faced before you came here.”

Pearl sat down heavily upon her bed. She seemed tired.

“Are you jealous?” she asked me at length. “Of Mr. Laurier’s attentions?”

I tried not to smile. “I’m not,” I told her. “Truly, I’m not.”

She didn’t believe me. Fine; let her believe her Prince Charming was every girl’s dream.

A distant clamor of bells told us it was five o’clock. The sky was nearly dark.

Pearl sighed. I felt weary and spent after our quarrel, and she likely felt the same.

“What do you say?” I asked her. “Do we have time to look for our window girl?”

“There isn’t time,” she said, “and that’s the point. No time to waste where a human life is concerned. Let’s go, and let’s hurry.”

I nodded and reached for the other cardigan while she put hers on. “Let’s, then,” I said. “But you’re taking the saloon, and I’m taking the brothel.”

Pearl rolled her eyes at me. “Let’s not start that all over again.”

“I’m not,” I said flatly. “At the Lion’s Den, the bouncer will keep you out of trouble. I don’t trust you not to march right into that brothel and get yourself killed.”