Al raised his eyebrow, looking her over. She gave the physical impression of a brittle old maid with that sour puss, glasses thicker than Dolly’s ass, the high-necked dark gray dress, and pin-straight hair coiled in a bun at the nape of her neck. But the voice was youth itself. Light, high, straightforward, clear. She looked not at Doc or himself but with a sort of cool detachment at some samples in a clear glass case.

Doc nodded in her direction. “Here’s who I wanted to introduce to you, Al. This is Lucy Easton.” She stepped forward with seeming reluctance, the scowl denoting now vague impatience. “She’s joining us as Deadwood’s first official ‘Applied Scientist’ – with a specialty in engineering, although if you follow her work, she is expert in anything she so sees fit. She was last in Switzerland conducting independent research.”

“Well,” Al drawled slowly, presenting his hand. “We truly are on the frontier, Doc. A woman scientist. And just what were you researching, ma’am?”

“Death,” was all that flat little girl voice said. She did not take his hand, but clearly not out of any overt rudeness or wish to offend. Her attention was taken by another corpse nearby. 

The place sorely needed a dusting; he’d yell at Jewel about that later. 

Still, the guileless voice was full of pleased and excited surprise.  “Yes! Yes, this will do just fine!”

Al sucked in a breath as she suddenly turned around with a graceful alacrity; her face was transformed.

All trace of the scowl was gone and she was in that moment, both in feature and in manner, if not beautiful something far more exciting – clear behind the glasses even. He swallowed as her green-brown eyes truly met his for the first time through the glass.

A fathomless beauty did gleam there; fathomless enthusiasm. He suddenly couldn’t say what age she was at all; in her energy and excitement, she seemed now a girl of seventeen, almost.

But – also – from the ghost of a glimmer shining through those eyes and in the workings of her delicate jawline – there was an unsettling intensity sparking out.

Those eyes lighted on the balcony outside. She opened the curtain and peeked out. “This is a wonderful location. It’s by so many businesses. A construction company is moving just down the thoroughfare soon, right?”

“Loaded with more hoopleheads to service.”

That strangely sweet voice darkened a shade. “And no Church ladies come calling much, do they?”

He couldn’t help but huff a laugh at that. “No, my dear Lucy, I can’t say but they do.”

The dim lamplight reflected in her glasses obscured whatever look came into her eyes now. Her energy remained almost beguilingly youthful. She looked back out the window again and he felt a stab of memory of Trixie, doing the same. Their hair was the same shade. Same pale skin…

But all that was where the resemblance stopped. Trixie was ever an earthbound girl, frank and filthy, the loopy cunt; but the sparkling, penetrating look of this woman’s eyes behind their glasses was positively not of this dusty slab of earth.

"She felt she had to go to Switzerland and change her path to one of healing and applied science to counterbalance her discovery in Vienna should bad actors ever seize it.” Doc leaned forward, voice lowering. “She exiled herself here to escape such bad actors, urging on her work. Military types, Al. For weaponry.”

“So, she’s running from something after all,” Al muttered over the rim of the bottle. His eyes were hot on the dimming horizon.

“That she is, Al. But to do good works, I’m…yes, I’m sure.”

Al’s eyebrow flew up again. “I hear hesitation, Doc.”

He was rueful now. “I do wonder sometimes if the extraordinary marvels I’ve seen her perform not just with the road here but for my patients – for the kids – makes me biased to sing her praises while avoiding other things that give me pause.”

Al leaned forward too now; arms smooth like snakes draped over the railing. “Oh? Such as?”

Doc darted eyes to him then down again. “Ah, hell. Let’s just say there’s a part of her that reminds me of myself during the War, when I once undertook to disturb all that’s sacred in the graveyard. She does not wish to interfere with anyone's life, but subscribing to no religion, she finds no reason not to disturb the dead. To be led astray by lofty scientific ideals, the promise of discovery, over all common decency, at least a decency which is measured by good Christian society, is an easy pitfall for someone like her to fall into.” He shook his head. “And that’s what I mean when I call her both a genius and more than a little cracked.”

Something about it all made Al uncomfortable; everything to do with this fucking woman made him uneasy. “Cracked I understand, but ain’t the rest a contradiction, Doc?” Trying to bring back some manner of levity. “A woman genius?”

Doc merely rolled his eyes and pat him on the shoulder, heading toward the balcony door. “Good night, Al.”

“Night, Doc.”

He stood alone overlooking the thoroughfare.

Night was indeed fast approaching; the chill air bit into his bones.

Before he headed in, he allowed himself a private laugh. The woman genius, running from the evil fruits of her own mind, reared by missionairies turned Mystics of the East – sleeping right next door to where he the vicious uneducated pimp got his cock sucked on the regular.

Life was funny, sometimes.

“Mind if I ask you a question of a personal nature?”

“I won’t know until I hear it.” She began loading the equipment into the empty case, pushing them aside and fishing below the table, rising again with her microscope in hand.

One more swig. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

Thirty-two. Yeah…yeah, that made sense. When he first met her he would have believed older; now, he would have believed younger.

She still moved all about the room, re-positioning her equipment, her tubes and wires. Vaguely he recalled the hotel room across from Mrs. Anderson’s that last day with his mother. She was moving about just like that, quickly but carefully folding her clothes and packing them away; when she was done, she packed his things. She answered no questions.

Something made him jumpy all of a sudden. “Don’t you ever feel ashamed being an old fucking maid?” Maybe he could make her jump.

“Nope.”

Always so fucking easy her words were, so light and airy coming out of that stern face. But was she really present? At all? From where inside of her did she send this civil creature to address the outside world when she was busy inside, solving who knew what world crisis with her fucking witchcraft?

Easy, quick, light, a nice girl nicely reared, been around the world and still talked in a voice like that and would sound that way even with her hands squirming around the guts of a corpse –

He’d knife that fucking killer inside hiding behind the civil representative. The calculating wildcat within.

He couldn’t stop trying to poke that wildcat, get her mind off her unseen target and on to him.

“But certainly you must have had a lover or two in your time?”

“Must I have?”

She didn’t, then. She didn’t.

Unless that flat quiet tone covered irony. 

He crossed his ankle and leaned comfortably against the doorframe, willing the same comfort to course through his jumping veins. “Well, tell me now. How many were there? Of what type and character? Stalwart and noble, akin to our striking sheriff, hiding a deep core of fiery passion? Or more meek and accommodating like his Jew? Were they scientists of lofty mind like yourself, or did you like so many men of your level of respectability do with their choice of whores, throw off good taste and find the nastiest prick you could swallow instead?”

Oof, that one, that one, who knew but that might be the one to break her, careful if you want to keep whistling at the wildcat, Al.

She leaned over her microscope now, and the shadows played upon her bone structure making her look like some glass-eyed creature transported by moonbeam into the Gem’s upper floor. 

“You are being very personal now.”

But those drooping lips now curved upward; a downright fucking smirk, if you asked him.

Clearly she’d fucked someone somewhere sometime. Is that what that fucking smirk meant?

How was it so fucking hot in here?

Before he could continue prodding at that wildcat, excitement tinged her voice as she waved him over. “Come here.”

She turned the microscope to him.

Her eyes, her fucking eyes were on him soft again, green-brown and vast as Earth its-fucking-self.

He made sure every drag of his feet read as deliberately weary, the King condescending to follow the Fool’s joke.

He peered.

Something that bubbled like white puss flowered out over a red background.

“Fuck’s this?”

“Neuroendocrine cells. There’s a lot of crossover between the neuroendocrine integration and the functions of the adrenal gland.”

Whatever the fuck that meant. “From whence did you conjure it?”

“Lt. Chapman’s gastrointestinal tract.”

He closed his eyes, swallowed the shudder.

If only her voice had lowered a little, showed some sort of dark spark of humor about it he could play off of. But no: straightforward as a schoolgirl.

“You chill me, Applied Scientist Lucy Easton. You chill me.”

“Eh. Anyway, the way these cells work with adrenaline and then make their most impact in the gastrointestinal tract – the gut – could prove there is a definite tie between violent emotion and our digestive system. If we could isolate how, we might be able to find a way to battle both psychological and physical ailments in one. If we had physical proof of how psychology affects our adrenaline, which then affects the rest of our body, psychology would carry a lot more weight in the scientific community. Dr. Katz in New York asked me to look into it.”

He stood back up; another swig, smaller now. Not a lot left, though how that could have happened he didn’t fucking know. “How much he paying you?”

She shrugged. “If somewhere along the line we develop a prototype for a treatment, I’ll probably get a couple bucks off that. Or get good word for another grant.”

“And if it goes nowhere?”

Another shrug; she was back on the microscope, reaching for some tweezers.

“You know, you should set up fucking contracts for shit like this, people take advantage.”

She sighed but didn’t take her eyes off the glass. “I’m aware.” A marked tinge of the jaded to her tone.

She turned the dial then looked again.

He stood swaying, the whiskey creating a warm haze all around his head, enveloping him. His mouth felt freer, looser. “Well, why show me? What the fuck does that have to do with anything around here, anyhow?”

“Oh, I’m sure it could help folks. But mostly I called you over to see the shape it made. Like a daisy.”

Cells from a murdered man’s guts.

She wore the ghostliest specter of an innocent smile as she peered into the glass again.

“Go to bed. It’s late.” Al shuffled away, closing the door behind him.

Like a fuckin’ daisy.

“Well?” She tapped off a few ashes of her cigarette, just missing the ashtray; she knew how much that pissed him off. “What were you and the good sheriff gossiping about like a couple of hens when I came upon you, making you shut your mouths?”

Sol sighed and sat on the bed, gazing at her as if she were some miraculous beauty, as always. Fucking sap. “We were talking about Al. And the scientist.”

A quick painful flutter in Trixie’s chest. The first woman to make it to one of those sacred little meetings at the Gem. Of course people would speculate about her and the other men there. Of course. “Uh-huh?” Another puff.

“Seth thinks he’s smitten with her.” Her cheeks grew hot. “And he’s worried that’s throwing him off-balance. Distracting him and making him biased toward what she wants done for the town versus what Seth thinks might actually be best.”

Her eyes were the burning ends of her cigarette. “And what do you think?”

His eyes and his face were so kind as he quietly nodded. “I think he’s smitten.” He watched her carefully.

The fluttering turned into a deadening thud.

“What makes you two hooplefucks say that?” She was uncharacteristically quiet, looking down.

“Trixie…”

“Oh, shut up and go on. I’m a big girl, I can take it.”

“Well. All right. It’s been building. His eyes following her wherever she goes. Getting real uptight when she’s challenged. He even looked like he was ready to kill Jack Langrishe when he was trying to flirt with her in a joking kind of way, and I know he likes Mr. Langrishe. Lately he’s taken to fiddling with threads hanging off her shawl when he gets going on one of his tangents. He doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, I’d stake any claim on that. He seems to always want to be touching her in some way – not, not lewd, but – a hand on her arm, or suddenly grabbing her wrist. He hovers over her. Always on her to eat something and not to disappear on one of her ‘wilderness misadventures’, he calls them. He kind of acts like – kind of –” Was this fool really giggling? – “Kind of like how you’d expect a nagging wife to carry on.”

“Why?” Trixie asked sharp, not even realizing she was going to ask.

“Why what exactly?”

Her teeth were clamped together so hard she couldn’t answer if she wanted.

Sol’s voice was gentleness itself. “Why is he smitten with her, you mean?” He took the quick darted eyes as a yes. He shrugged. “I’m the wrong person to ask, Trixie. I like her and think she’s probably good for the camp, which makes me differ with my partner. But she also is a bit…spooky...for my personal tastes. Never can quite tell what she’s thinking until she says it.”

Trixie finally found her voice and it was reedy. “Maybe that’s what he likes?”

Goddamn his sunny self laughing like a drunken ass. “Use their combined powers to scare the camp straight, you mean? Might be something to that.” He reached out a hand to her. “Come on to bed, now.”

“And her, what about her? What can you two brilliant minds discern happening if anything there?”

“Her –”

“Her awareness, any feeling she may have back.” Her voice was a thin blade, her bright eyes locked on the high corner of the wall.

Sol sighed. “Difficult to say, Trixie. Like I said, I have a hard time reading her. She did notice Al fiddling with her dress –”

“Shawl. You said shawl.” Goddamn her voice shaking.

“Well…okay, if you want all the grim details truly, I can tell you that he started off on the shawl then got real heated at the end about the Pinkertons and – I really don’t think with realizing – he grabbed the bottom of her skirt in a bunch.”

Fuck, why there got to be tears to hold back now? “And you said she noticed?”

“She sort of glanced at Al then glanced down and scowled like she always does. But she didn’t say anything. Just returned her attention to the meeting like it wasn’t happening. But – I guess she got a little quieter after that. Maybe.”

Her foot tapped the ground rapidly. “So, what? Is everybody in on this? I don’t want Al laughed at, Sol.”