Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(71)

Like that purse and suitcase, she had seen a lot of traveling. Her guitar case, Arturo’s, was now in the possession of another Grand Ole Opry auditioning hopeful, going by the name Stanley Davenport had chosen, Minnie Pearl.

That morning, Romy felt travel weary, soul weary.

“Sorry to say,” the bespectacled booking agent told her, “but the Royal Navy is requisitioning all its British ships for war conversion. The only ship outbound for Britain is the merchant SS Teviot Bank, due in the day after tomorrow. But leave port it won’t for five more days.”

“I have to get out now.”

Because if she did not, she would be tempted to stay, to abandon her dream. How she would survive, once she found her way to one of Galway’s Traveller camps, did not worry her. She had gotten this far, by hook or crook. More often by crook. If she did not qualify as a nurse, she could always hang out a “Psychic” sign again.

That thought made her think of Old Duke, and her mum and da – and Luca – and her shoulders slumped.

“Well, you might try the Holland-America line,” the booking agent replied, perusing through eyeglasses propped on the end of his nose, his latest schedule updates. “Tomorrow, it has a Dutch steamship, departing at sunrise and putting into Rotterdam in six days. From there, you could hop the channel to England.”

“I’ll take a third-class ticket.,” she said promptly.

“Miss,” he replied, peering over his spectacles at her, his seamed lips curling disdainfully, “The Nieuw-Amsterdam is a cargo vessel, a twelve-passenger freighter. You are already scraping the bot – ”

“ – scraping only the surface. I’ll buy a berth.”

She fished through her purse for the precious currency and, as she paid it over, a reporter’s press camera flashed.

§ § §

‘Little Ellis Island’.

‘The Wall Street of the South’.

This was Galveston.

But ‘The Island of Illicit Pleasures’ and ‘The Sin City of The South’ were also Galveston.

The Island had the greatest concentration of prostitutes in the world. Because of Galveston’s celebrated brothels, nightclubs, and lavish casinos, even the island’s YWCA was full, but the Oleander Hotel, at the corner of Post Office and 25th Street, had a room to let that Romy could afford, just barely.

Having spent time around Amsterdam’s Red Light District and decadent Weimer Berlin – and given the decrepit hotel’s lurid location in Galveston – she should have expected the same moral decay, which was exactly what she got.

Still, she was exhausted . . . and she was low on funds. So, when she checked in later that morning and hen scratched her name, she ignored the pot-bellied desk clerk’s lewd ogling and the seedy lobby to climb its rotting staircase.

Eighteen hours to pass before the freighter’s departure. From down the street came the sound of a police car’s siren, and from the opposite direction she heard a gunshot, as if right out of a Western moving picture. Not even at the S&S had she heard gunshots.

Well, not until that fatal Fourth of July.

Unwilling to endure the moans and groans and shouts coming through her room’s rice paper-thin walls, she stowed her suit case under the bed and set off to seek out the solace offered by waves slapping against Galveston’s caramel shoreline.

She removed her club-heeled shoes and, the pair in one hand and her purse tucked under her arm, she strolled the beach, heading away from the seawall.

Tiny sand crabs scurried out of the way of her bare feet that scrunched the moist sand between her toes. September’s wind whipped her thin wraparound floral dress. Salt coated her lips and stung her eyes, which was likely the only reason they teared continuously. Overhead, seagulls shrieked, echoing her own inner shrieks.

She could not remember ever feeling so lonely. There had always been Old Duke to fall back upon in times of trouble. And now, she did not have even his irascible support. She had deserted him on his deathbed. What a shite she was.

She supposed the desolate feelings she was now experiencing were a result of her time spent at the S&S. Life with Duke and the ranch hands had opened a window of comparison to her life before she had left Germany.

In all her and Old Duke’s country-to-country wanderings, she had not known that something existed grander than the eye could see or the body could feel. Life before the S&S now seemed monotone, bland, colorless. And life at it had seemed either star-spangled high or heart-shattering low.

Of course, she had buried some of the past’s more gruesome memories of Sachsenhausen so far below that, like a mob-buried body, one could never dig deep enough to find them.

But those nights in the haven of big Duke’s arms, those days spent joshing with the ranch hands, tending to their needs, had made her feel a part of a family, a clan . . . had made her feel valued. Needed. Wanted.

Well, Duke might not want her, but he needed her. Alas, he did not realize that and probably never would. The cowpunching fool.

And as for ambitious Gideon, well, he had his own dreams, and he was the kind of man to make them come true. If she wanted to ride on his coattails, she would be better off. But he deserved his chance at grabbing the golden ring without an encumbering Gypsy tart.

She had been given her chance at the golden ring – and aye, she was a fool for turning her back on the Grand Ole Opry. But it was like she had to recover a part of herself left in the past before she could go forward.