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You dab a dry linen to the corner of Holliday’s mouth, wiping away the crusted blood and phlegm there.
“Don’t,” he rasps, his words provoking another coughing fit. His cold, clammy hand rests over yours to take the handkerchief as he hacks into it. It’s stained red now. His face looks dead, deader than bleached skulls sitting in the sun, his complexion white as chalk and cheeks gaunt. He stares at you and his eyes are like gunmetal burning up in the heat. “I pay you for sex, not to take care of me,” he wheezes.
“Thought you said y’had a missus to clean up after you,” you barb. “Where’s she?”
He weakly rolls his eyes, exasperated. “I’ll pay you some more to shut up about that bitch,” he says.
“That bad, eh?”
“Why do you even care?”
You shrink back a bit as you drop your shoulders. All of a sudden, you feel ashamed for being naked in front of him, his semen on your stomach growing cold like ice. You don’t care. You really don’t. Doc Holliday, the talk of Tombstone, Arizona, pays you a pretty penny once or twice a week to warm his bed. Nevermind how many times his ill tongue has made you come–had there been no money, you would’ve never been here to begin with.
“If you die,” you tell him, “my pockets’ll be drier than the Mojave. Then I’ll have to sleep with someone twice as old and twice as ugly just to buy me another dress.”
“If I die, you bring your ass straight to Wyatt Earp,” Doc laughs, trying not to cough again. “He ain’t too bad-looking and his wife doesn’t like him, anyways.”
You scrunch your nose in disgust. “Ain’t he used to be a brothel keeper?” You ask.
Doc scoffs. “Not my business what he done or don’t do.”
“But it’s your business what I do after you’re gone?”
“Then it’s my fault I care about you,” he sighs. “You women are all cruel.”
“Why don’t you and Mister Earp go off’n’marry each other, then?”
“He’s an idiot, that’s why not. You aren’t.”
“You’re not marrying me, and I ain’t marrying you,” you scoff, pulling your chemise back on. “Couldn’t pay me the world to.”
“You make me sick, honey,” Holliday quips lightheartedly, adding a false cough to the end of his sentence.
“You know, you’re real handsome ‘till you start opening that smart mouth of yours,” you say as you start to get up.
“Wait,” he coughs, for real this time, a pale hand fumbling around the mess on the bedside table. Some coins clatter to the ground as his lungs wreck him. You rush over to the other side of the bed to pick the fallen money up and his hand grips your shoulder like a vice so you support him the best he can. His whole body shakes like brown leaves fluttering by in the wind, translucent, sickly skin pulsing over his skeleton with each movement. Sweat beads on the expanse of his forehead, graying locks of hair falling out of place as he tries to contain himself.
“Just–just spend the night,” he sputters, pressing the hand of yours holding his money to your chest. “Please. I’ll pay you more in the morning.”
You say nothing, looking down at the wad of cash and coins laced between your fingers. His larger hand over yours is a pitiful sight, all skin and bones, knuckles tense and white without even trying to be. You nod, putting the money back on the table.
You don’t feel bad for him, you think to yourself. He’s dying and that makes him the luckiest man in the world. You reckon if there was a way out any easier than that sickness of his you’d take it in a heartbeat. The money wouldn’t ever matter, then, and he wouldn’t either. Neither would you, or anything else in the world, really.
You’re jealous.
He knows that. You’re sure he does, otherwise if he didn’t he’d already have let you go a long while ago. He’s sick in more ways than one, the kind of sick that likes it when he sees how miserable he makes you.
Surely you hate him. You just can’t decide whether you hate him more than you like the money he gives you.
“Okay, then,” you say after some time. He’s coughed up blood again, some of it barely leaking out behind the seal of his pallid lips. You’re clambering over him to get back into the bed as he exhales a pained breath.
“Thank you,” he whispers, and there is no fight left in his voice. You wonder if he’s ever embarrassed about how pathetic he is for you. Wyatt Earp would probably fall down a flight of stairs seeing the boneless kind of mess you reduce him to when his money is in your pocket. Forget the money, actually–you’d humiliate a man like Doc Holliday for much less.
But then again, he is a dying man. He doesn’t have any more time left in the world to be embarrassed.
You lie next to him, silent. Your breaths are so soft compared to his, his lungs rattling in his ribs like death is knocking right at his door.
“You know I’m sweet on you,” Holliday says after some time. “I don’t just mean the money. Forget about it. Y’could rob me of everything I have and I’d thank you. Don’t even need to kiss me goodnight or goodbye. Just do what you want.”
He’s an idiot. You start to wonder whether dying or loving makes you dumber. For Doc, he’s both dying and in love, so you can’t tell.
“I wouldn’t,” you say.
“Thought’y’didn’t care about me.”
“You’re a gambling man, ain’t you?” you rib. “Why don’t you make a bet?”
He scoffs, procuring a quarter from his pocket. “I don’t usually like playing games I know I’ll lose.”
“You’re playing yourself and y’don’t even know it.”
“Oh, I know it, girl,” Doc says. “I’ll let you win. I’m a dying man, anyways. Let me lose if it means I get to see you just another day. Tails if you care and heads if you don’t.”
The coin flips with a quiet whistle, his hand slapping over his chest as he holds it down. You crane your neck to see what it reads–sure enough, seated liberty is smiling at him, shield in her hand and stars about her head. Doc laughs weakly.
“You keep this damn thing,” he shakes his head. “It ain’t my lucky quarter no more.”
“Idiot,” you jeer.
“Bitch,” he scoffs, no venom in his voice.
You leave him alone in his cold bed early that morning before the sun rises over the red rocks. You leave your things there, no need for them. You don’t even take the money he left by the bed for you, just the quarter he gave you in your pocket and nothing else. He’s a dead man soon enough. It won’t matter come a few weeks.
You never see him again after that.
A couple months after he passes on you take a day off to visit his headstone near Glenwood Springs. What an awful place to die, you think. The air around is damp and sulfurous with the stench of the hotsprings about. Your fingers fiddle with his quarter as you stand before his grave. There’s another man standing before the stone, who’s been here for longer than you have.
“You knew him?” He asks you.
You nod. “He used to be my dentist,” you lie.
The man chuckles before extending his hand to you. “I’m Wyatt Earp,” he smiles gently. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
You don’t like that Doc was right. Wyatt isn’t all that bad-looking after all. There is no ring on his finger as his warm hand clasps over yours.
“Never mattered what my name was,” you joke. “Doc ain’t never called me anything other than bitch.”
Wyatt laughs, a hearty, genuine laugh. “Sounds about right,” he cheeses. “Means he must’ve liked you.”
You let yourself smile, thumb rubbing over the ridges of the quarter. “That he did.”