Gents & Dames
Thirteen: Adelaide's Lament (Reprise)
When Thomas returned to the Hotbox, he found his dressing room was being used as a lounge. Sean was there, smoking and drinking a scotch. Nathan, who would normally have been out at the bar greeting customers, was pacing back and forth. Nick was standing quietly against a wall, looking nervous.
"You told 'im?" Nathan was asking Nick, as Thomas walked in.
"Yeah, I told 'im to show up. An' I told 'im David knows by now...Don't he, Thomas?"
Thomas was already pulling off his tie. "Yes."
Nathan sighed. "I screwed up pretty bad on this one."
Thomas threw his tie at Nathan as he stalked past, and said, "No kidding, Nate." He hurried behind the dressing screen, and saw his costume had been laid out, the pink corset for the solo number. He actually felt a lot better as he pulled off his shirt and unfastened his pants.
"I just—I can't believe this," Nathan muttered, seemingly to no one in particular. "Jack fucking Kelly. He lies, he screws over his friends, and now he thinks he can just walk into my game without even saying he's sorry—"
"Nate, he did say he's sorry," Nick commented.
"Of course he said he's sorry! Sorry don't make up for a goddamn thing, Nick!"
"Yeah," Sean muttered disdainfully. "He'd have to actually do something right."
"Exactly!"
Sean laughed. "And it would have to be something pretty goddamn big, too, right?"
"Yeah, Yeah, it would. I can't think of a single thing Kelly could do that would prove he's—he's anything but a lying sack of..."
"Well, I can," Sean said. "But then, I ain't been too busy hating him to look into it."
"Ha!" Nathan snorted. "Like what?"
Thomas listened with interest.
"You really...None of you bothered to ask Jack where the hell he's been for the last decade?"
"Out west." Nathan didn't sound impressed. "So what?"
"Out west, yeah. Out west. He owns Standard Oil of California, ya jackass. Or forty percent of it, anyways."
The room went silent. Thomas stepped out from behind his screen, his corset still untied. Sean glanced at him, then rolled his eyes. "How?" Thomas asked. "Jack..."
"Yeah, I know, I was pretty damn surprised myself." Spot nodded. "Well, I ran into him in the course of my work a couple years ago. You know what that means, at least, I hope?"
Nathan nodded, and so did Thomas; Nick was still looking surprised at the first announcement. Sean had made a career for himself by traveling the country, building unions. It had started with an Irish worker strike in 1901—only months after he'd ceased selling papers to take a job doing construction on the subway, a dam had broken and killed eleven Irish workers underground. When no one else seemed to care about it (well, no one but other workers, fearing for their lives in similar conditions) Sean had rallied them together and convinced every Irish worker to walk out and refuse to come back until they won better safety conditions. And in so-doing, he'd realized his career wasn't in construction, but was in unionizing and protecting workers from greedy corporations.
Which meant that if he'd run into Jack in the course of his job, something not quite right had happened at California Oil.
"So what happened?" Nathan finally asked.
Thomas listened as he laced up his corset.
"I got a tip that there'd been an accident in California; that a bunch of workers were hurt, some of 'em died. I went to see what was what, found out that the workers were already talking unions, protection. And for a change, no one was scared of talking to me—lot of times, folks get fired for that, when fatcats are afraid of what'll happen if they give workers some rights.
"But no. Everyone I talked to said, one of the partners, he was all for unions. He'd already done right by the workers, too. Went right to the bank and bought the widows' houses for 'em, to make sure they'd never have to worry about keeping the roof over their heads, ya know? Went to the funerals, was real respectful, real regretful. Finally one of the workers—president of their union later, too—offered to get me a meeting with the guy.
"Turned out to be no one other than Mr. Jack Kelly. My jaw just about hit the goddamn floor, I tell you what."
"But...how?" Thomas asked. "Jack left here with two hundred bucks. That ain't quite enough to buy an oil company!"
"Yeah, I asked him about that. Turns out, Jacky-boy's mother was loaded somethin' fierce, which he never told us, 'cause he didn't know himself until he went out west to meet his grandparents." He finished his drink. "That's good scotch, Thomas."
"Yeah, it sure is," Thomas agreed. "You were gonna tell us something?"
Sean smirked and set the glass down. "I guess. You gonna put on pants?"
"No." Thomas did walk to his dressing table and begin to apply cream to his hair, readying it for the wig. Sean made a big show of clinking the ice cubes in his otherwise-empty cup.
"Sean, goddamn it, Nick will get you more scotch after you explain," Nathan snapped.
"Well, then." He considered. "What he told me was that his dad was a swindler, he had a scam he used to cheat rich girls out of money and then split town. Worked so well on Jack's mom, she thought they were in love, and he figured that would be a good deal for him—the family owned the biggest ranch in New Mexico, he thought that would make a mighty fine inheritance. But Jacky's grandparents saw through it, and when they forbade her to marry him, she ran off and eloped, and they disowned her.
"Well, Jack was born, and she died, and his dad was arrested. Jack didn't know a thing about the ranch. But when his grandparents started getting' old, they decided it was time to reconcile, and when they found out his mom was a goner, they sent for him and he split town.
"What he told me was that by then, Rockefeller was already sniffing around their land, and they let Standard Oil test it. Sure enough, the whole thing was floating on black gold—and Rockefeller wanted it. The family wasn't stupid, though, and figured that meant it was worth more if they kept it than sold it, but Rockefeller, well, he didn't build a monopoly by playing nice.
"Finally, Kelly said, they agreed to sell the land to him, if he'd give work to their former ranchhands, and if he could find a way to keep the family rollin' in it so Jack wouldn't never have to find work himself. Thing was, they'd figured—he was good at the ranch, worked hard, but he'd never been to school or nothin', so they didn't think it would be too easy to just find a job for Jack.
"So Rockefeller, he handed over part of one of his subsidiaries—he still figured he'd win the lawsuit back then, he'd still be controlling them all anyways, so all it did was give Jack a cushy job and a shitload of money. But as of last week, California oil don't answer to Rockefeller no more. And Jacky boy, he owned 40 perfect of the company when it went independent, and that makes him the biggest partner in the place.
"Last I knew, he was doin' his best to do right by all the workers—the ones who used to work on his family ranch, and the ones in Standard of California. As far as I'm concerned, the decisions he's made in charge there—well, they're more important in the long run than the shit he did here in New York when he was just some dumb kid. As far as I'm concerned, things are square between me and Kelly, so long as he's doing right by the people who work for 'im." He jangled the ice cubes in his glass again. "You said something about gettin' me some scotch?"
Nick nodded numbly and walked off to do so, taking Sean's glass with him. Thomas began to pin his wig on, but looked in the mirror to watch Nathan. Nathan was pacing again, stalking angrily now. Finally he snapped, "That don't excuse nothin'! I'm glad Jack grew up and all, but he still didn't give half a shit about us!"
Sean shrugged. "He's here now, ain't he?"
"Yeah, 'cause of oil, I bet."
"I doubt that," Thomas commented easily, forcing the casualness. "After all, Jack is just some guy with no education. You don't think there's someone more qualified working in his office? I'm guessing if he's here, he wants to be here."
"Why are you defending him all of a sudden?" Nathan snapped.
"I've been defending him all along," Thomas answered. "You've just been unable to listen to anything you don't want to hear." The 'as always' hung in the air, unsaid.
"Yeah, why is that, anyway?" Nathan demanded. "He hurt our friends, Tom! Just 'cause it wasn't your money he stole—"
"This ain't about money, and you know that," Thomas snapped. "Stop pretending it is, you're starting to look pathetic."
"Funny," Nathan said, half-snarling. "When I say something ain't about money, you tell me it is. When I say something is..." He trailed off. "Anyways, I'm not surprised you're defending him now."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"You know what it means."
Now the unspoken word between them came from Nathan, and Thomas knew it by the look of contempt and disgust, by the sneer. Like Nathan thought he was so much better, because he didn't dress like a woman; because he'd never had sex for money. Not officially, anyway.
"Yeah, I was a whore," Thomas said sharply. "So tell me—the kinda guy who borrows money and doesn't pay it back, who lets his lover pay his rent and give him a job, who ain't got a single goddamn thing going for him except he's got a guy who likes his dick—what the hell is he if he ain't a prostitute?"
Nick walked back into the room, holding the now-full glass. "Hey, guys, I--" was as far as he got before Nathan stormed past him out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him. Sean accepted the drink calmly.
"You two fight like that a lot?"
"Every night, seems like." Thomas sighed and reached for his wig.
"He gonna come back?"
"I hope not. I'm so tired of this," Thomas murmured. "So goddamn tired. I swear, if he does this to me one more time..."
"Aw, you always say that," Nick said.
"I mean it, this time!"
Sean snorted. "So what the hell happened between him and Jack, anyways?"
Thomas sighed and reached for his rouge. "I suppose no one but him and me remembers anyway," he said finally. "The week before David showed up, Jack and Nathan shared a bunk for a few nights. I remember it because I was terribly jealous. Nathan remembers it because it never happened again."