Page 51 of If Looks Could Kill

The second- and third-floor windows of Bowery shops flash by the train. Some dark, others lit, many with pasteboard messages. Liquor and soap flakes, canned peaches and tinned tobacco, ladies’ hats, salvation, and passbook savings accounts. They whir by in a snowflake haze.

Other messages aren’t written in words, but in women’s flesh, in nearly nude young women dancing in the windows, their pimps shilling them even at this forsaken hour.

May those girls be mercifully numbed. May they be allowed to forget that these trains transport prying eyes. May their spirits soar high above their trapped bodies to a happier place.

Pearl closes her own eyes and rests her throbbing forehead against the icy window.

And what of her spirit, imprisoned in her trapped body?

Time loses its grip. In the small of night, no church bells ring, no factory whistles blow. Train wheels squeal atop wet tracks. The trestle shudders and sways.

What a fool she’d been to think she could make a dent in this ocean of vice.

You can’t dent an ocean. An ocean swallows you. Pearl’s not sure she’d mind that.

But who needs an ocean? She has a train.

Just open a side door. Just lean out. A second’s terror, but it can’t be worse than this. Then all would be over. She could not become Stella. Nor Pearl the Killer.

Pearl the Killer. Some moniker that is. Tabitha could no doubt coin something better. It has none of the zip of that “Jack the Ripper” the papers go on about.

And what if—she lets her roving mind imagine—what if she did decide to become her own kind of killer celebrity? Launch her own reign of terror right here on the Bowery?

Feared. Unseen. Like the Whitechapel fiend, hidden in plain sight. Moving with impunity by day. Hunting and petrifying by night. Filling a vicious New York with statues of cruel men.

She could be an ingenue at parties. A coquette at balls.

Courted and coveted by men of wealth and fashion.

She knows her looks and Stella’s money can make Pearl Davenport irresistible.

She can shed her religious persona—like a snake sheds its skin, very funny—and become a society princess. Be the belle of them all.

She can go back to Lafayette Place and become Stella’s fashionable daughter. Host parties. Dance. Drink fine wine. Wear jewels. And kill any man who deserves to die.

And, oh, how full this city is with such men, who beat their wives and abuse these poor prostitutes and drink away their paychecks before they buy their children bread.

She’d come to the city to help such families by calling those men to Christ. Now she’s ready to exterminate them like cockroaches.

Thou shalt not kill. If ever the voice of God had thundered a plainer commandment, she doesn’t know when. Better to die than become a killer.

By God, this double-mindedness will drive her mad.

If she dies tonight, it will shatter her mother, who has lost so much. She groans to think of her mother’s pain. But isn’t burying her last child better than learning what she’s become?

Dead and mourned versus alive and monstrous.

Will anyone else miss her? Those who knew her back home will be surprised, but soon forget her. Her childhood friends hadn’t remained close. Her Army comrades will be shocked. Tabitha will feel it was her fault. For all her cleverness, Tabitha can be so oblivious.

It grieves Pearl to think of harming Tabitha or her mother or anyone. But far better this than to draw them into the hell of her disgusting, diabolical existence.

She is alone in the train car, until a stop where two men board the train.

Young. White. Laborers. Drunk. Their laughter is too loud, their words too large, too jocular.

Their steps, not quite steady. One is reedy and red-faced.

The other has a raw handsomeness about him.

A rugged stance and striking, if unwashed, features. He seems to have long known it.

They notice Pearl.

“Nick, look what I found,” announces the red one. “Little Bo Peep, on the train, asleep!”

This burst of genius deserves much mutual back-slapping.

“Little Bo Peep, where’d you put your sheep!” adds the handsome one, not to be outdone.

They approach, swaying with the train, swinging from stanchion pole to stanchion pole to keep upright. They’re coming for her.

Pearl’s stomach clenches. To her surprise, hot tears of embarrassment spring to her eyes.

“Don’t cry, baby,” the handsome one says, slinging himself into the seat beside her and draping an arm around her. “I’ve got you. I’m going to take real good care of you.”

“Yeah,” barks the other one, kneeling on the seat before them and hovering over Pearl. “Nick takes real good care of all his girls, doncha, Nick?”

The scent of them overwhelms her. Beer and sweat and the mildewy tang of hair, of wool coats never properly dried. She coughs away the foulness of them.

Nick’s arm curls more tightly around Pearl’s neck, bending her face unwillingly toward his. He leans in close and fixes an intense gaze upon her.

“You better believe it, baby,” he tells her. “Tonight’s your lucky night.”

“Get off me,” Pearl hisses. “Not interested.” She tries to stand, but his arm pinions her shoulders to the seat, and she can’t rise. Nick and his toady laugh uproariously at this. Her cheeks are spattered with both their spittle.

The train begins to slow down.

Nick reaches a hand to slide it under her coat at the bosom. She slaps his hand away. His lip curls in anger until he is distracted by an accidental discovery. Under her coat, her uniform.

“What have we here?” says he. “Lou. This bundle’s in the Salvation Army! Hallelujah and praise the Lord!”

They roar with laughter.

The train jerks to a stop.

She prays for a door to open, for someone to step on this train so she won’t be alone. Someone who might respond if she screams. No one does. The train starts forward once again.

The two youths arrive at the same conclusion. No one will interrupt their fun.

Lou, the toady, pulls a long face. “Take my soul to Jesus, Li’l Bo Peep,” he mocks her. “I’ve been a bad, bad boy.”

“Give us a kiss, Peep.” Nick nuzzles closer to her. She turns away at his beery breath.

Another dancing girl flashes by in a window. Lou notices her and giggles. He pokes Nick. “Take a peep at her, eh?”

Nick makes a lusty growl to the hilarious amusement of Lou.

In that instant, a calm settles over Pearl.

She realizes she is not afraid. Angry, yes. But not afraid. Why not?

Who is she?

Pearl Davenport, daughter of poor farmers from outside Erie, who jumps from the train.

Pearl Davenport, daughter of Miss Stella, the Manslayer.

Pearl Davenport, daughter of God, glory-bound.

A string of Pearls. (Tabitha would like that.) None of them need be afraid.

But she is none of them. She is her own self. She will be her own Medusa. Perhaps she’ll die at her own hand or at the hand of the Devil of Tenth Street. But tonight, she’s unafraid.

“Boys,” she whispers, “want to play a game of secrets?”

“Now you’re talking.” Nick presses closer into her side. Lou isn’t sure where he fits in.

“We can all play,” she says. “I’ll tell you a secret, and then you can tell me one.”

“I bet a Sunday school miss like you’s got some good ones.” Lou is almost drooling.

“Come close now,” Pearl croons. “Both of you. That’s right. Now, close your eyes.”

They both obey. Nick puckers his thick lips as if expecting a kiss.

“No cheating,” she coos. “Keep them closed.”

“How long?” demands Nick.

“Just a moment more,” she whispers. “Now, here’s the secret. Are you ready?”

“What is it?” bleats Lou. “Don’t keep us waiting.”

“Here it is,” she breathes. “Women” —she pauses and watches their eyebrows rise expectantly— “are sick of men like you who use brute force to hide how weak and dull they are.”

The best part, the very best part, is how long they wait with dopey grins of excitement for her words to catch up to their beer-soaked brains.

Those stretched seconds after she has finished speaking are priceless.

So is the anger, and then the mute terror that scrapes over their faces as they open their eyes and see exactly who they chose to harass on a late-night train.