The Last Days of Dogtown

asked. In the full light of day, Mrs. Stanley was older than he’d first thought, with fine lines around her eyes and blue veins starting to show on the backs of her hands. Still, he was dazzled by the straightness of her nose, the curl in her hair, the throaty pitch of her voice, the way she touched her finger to her lip as she considered her next move.

“Now,” said Mrs. Stanley, pointing to the door and tapping her foot.

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A N I T A D I A M A N T

“You do what she tells you,” he said to Molly and Sally as he hurried away.

“Help me with the trunks, ladies,” Mrs. Stanley said with a bland authority that quickly became the ruling force of their lives.

Within a week of her arrival, she had a door for “her”

room and moved the girls into the front room, with blankets hung from the ceiling to separate their chamber from the parlor and kitchen. She got Stanwood to put glass in the windows and rehang the front door so it closed properly. One of her crates produced a few curtains and sheets enough for three beds. A sturdy table and two chairs appeared soon thereafter, and by Christmas she acquired a small chest of drawers and a real bedstead for her room.

All of this was paid for by whoring, though Mrs.

Stanley was never heard to use the word. She behaved as though the three of them were merely women of reduced circumstances. “I myself am a widow,” she’d say, softly.

“Lacking any family, I have been blessed by the charity of dear friends, gentlemen, all.”

No one ever learned her Christian name—not even

Stanwood, who over time became familiar with every inch of her. No one ever called her anything but Mrs. Stanley for all her days in Dogtown. Sally never even called her that, managing to avoid using any form of address. “You there”

was as much as she could squeeze out. With Molly, she referred to her as Beelzebub.

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The L A S T D AY S of D O G TOW N

“What?”

“That’s the devil’s first name, don’t you know? I get the feeling she’s run away from something,” Sally said, with the glassy look that tipped Molly to the fact that Sally was having one of her visions.

“Well, there’s nowhere farther to run than this,”

Molly said.

“I figure she kill’t a man.”

“Oh, Sal, you have murder on the brain.”

But Sally shook her head with conviction, and Molly felt the hairs at the back of her neck prickle. There was something icy and entirely calculating about Mrs. Stanley, which was as plain as the nose on her face. But men didn’t see past the flattery and fluttery glances that promised more than any woman could deliver, and they gladly paid her twice what it cost to have it off with Molly or Sally.

Mrs. Stanley led her customers to her tiny bedroom like she was showing them into a gilded drawing room, and she used the words “lady” and “gentleman” so often that Molly wondered if the old tart actually believed her own lies. She and Sally rolled their eyes when the bass groan, baritone howl, or tenor hoot issued from behind the door, where Mrs.

Stanley made quick work of them. They stumbled out minutes later, faces still flushed, with boots, trousers, and coats in hand.

Few of her callers returned for a second visit. Sally said they didn’t come back because “Beelzebub” smelled so strongly of brimstone, but Molly said it was because her price was so high. Whatever they thought of her, Mrs.

Stanley’s johns were satisfied enough to send plenty of others, so there was often meat on the table as well as sugar

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