She doesn't understand, the first time he comes to her.

She doesn't mind her profession, not like some of the other girls. They cry in the middle of the night and run away and drink themselves into a stupor with the fine glass bottles they hide under their beds. To her it is a job, just like anything else. She doesn't have to like it, but she doesn't complain, she does her job well and the madame has begun to notice, begun to give her more responsibilities. Maybe one day she can stop make her living on her back and instead in a nice dress, greeting customers in the foyer instead of meeting them in a dark room with her small dress half torn off already. So it is not with trepidation or hatred or nervousness that she waits in the dark for her first client of the night.

He is a new man, one that came into town just this morning. He has a charming accent that she cannot place even though it sounds familiar, but she likes it because it is different than the gruff, guttural tones of the cowboys and lowlifes and merchants and government men that she usually services. He dresses differently too. He has... class. She thinks that is the word, but she's been without it for so long she isn't sure. Still, she knows that there in the dark they are all the same. He will grab her and use her and sigh and giver her the money she is due and walk out the door just like all the others, charming accents and fancy clothes notwithstanding.

Notwithstanding? Is she still using her upper class New York language? She smiles a secret smile to herself at the memories, enjoying it for a moment before it fades. There is a creak as the door opens and her strange and different-but-still-the-same new client walks in. She waits on the bed in the dark. She is sure he can hear her breathing but for a few seconds after he closes the door he doesn't say anything. The sliver of moonlight slipping into the room between the curtains cuts across the sheet and the bottom of her bare calf. She focuses on it, waiting for him to jump on top of her.

But he doesn't.

"Are you decent, my dear?"

His voice, that strange accent German, German like Granpere's rich friends rings out across the room and startles her so much that for a moment she doesn't respond. Then she is all business, pulling her neckline up, hiding her thighs and knees as best she can with the short skirt.

"Yes sir, I am."

"Excellent!"

He fumbles about for a moment or two before he finds the oil lamp on the nightstand, a fixture for the few customers who like to commit their sins in the light. She blinks a few times before her eyes adjust and she sees the face of her client, who is looking at her with a wry smile on his face.

"Now that's better, isn't it?"

He sits down on the edge of the bed, a safe distance from her. Ah. This is a man who wants to be chased, to feel like he is the one being wanted instead of the one doing the wanting. No problem. The kindness of his eyes and the softness in the lines of his face make it easier than usual. She smiles coquettishly at him before moving across the bed and reaching for him. She manages to get to the lapels on his coat before he gently grabs her wrists and gives her hands back to her.

"Ah, ah, ah, must not be too eager now, my dear. We must make a proper introduction. I am Dr. King Shultz. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?" She fights the urge to roll her eyes. A man who likes to play with his food before devouring it. He already knows her name. Madame would have told him. But she will play the game. If she plays it well and the customer returns she will have a regular. The more regulars she has the more money she brings into the cathouse, the more Madame will notice her.

"Katerina Ivanovna," she replies in the sweetest voice she can manage, slipping the fake name off her tongue as easily as if it were her own. Madame wants to be seen as cultured. All the girls have different names from far away places. She briefly wonders why he didn't go to see the German girl, Helga, whose real name was Mary and was one of the girls who cried herself to sleep.

"No, no, no, my dear, I mean your real name." Now she is uncomfortable, because she doesn't recognize this game. The men who come to see her do not want to know her, do not want to know anything about her. Still, she will not refuse him, because if she lies and he goes to the Madame it will not reflect well.

"Helene," she says, and her own name sounds so foreign on her tongue it almost scares her.

"Ah yes, the face that launched a thousand ships! It is not hard to see why." She actually laughs, a genuine laugh with a customer.

"Achilles and Hector are never going to war for ten years over this face," she replies, and then immediately covers her mouth. She had always promised herself that she would play the vapid floozy. Her customers never asked for anything more.

"What was that my dear?"

"Nothing!" she replies quickly. "Where were we?"

"I am sorry, perhaps my hearing is deserting me, it's just that I'm almost sure you made mention of two heroes of Greek Mythology and I'm curious as to how you know they exist." He is looking at her expectantly.

"Everyone knows who Helen of Troy is," she says, flippantly. "It ain't strange I know of them fellas too."

"But you have never read of their exploits?" She shakes her head.

"I never took kindly to no books." Her voice is smooth now, back in her stupid mountain accent.

"Well now you have definitely piqued my curiosity."

"Why's that?"

"Because I am baffled as to how you both do not enjoy reading and do not know of the Illiad when I see a copy of the newest translation sitting right there upon your nightstand." He is pointing and smiling a secret smile. She has been found out. Why hadn't she put the damn thing away?

"Well, it is good to know that I have not been lied to," he says, and she is confused.

"Sir?"

"I asked your madame that I be put with the most intelligent girl she had. She said that only one of you read books and that I could find her behind the blue door. I am glad she told the truth and did not lie to make a sale. Honesty is ever so important in this new and untamed land. I am even more ecstatic at how well you play the part of an idiotic prostitute." He smiles at her again. He is dropping all the masks she is familiar with. He is not ashamed to be here, nor is he afraid of seeing her with her clothes on, as if she is a person. He doesn't mind that she isn't a fool. It's new and strange territory and she can't believe she's feeling something she hasn't felt since Jonathan kissed her in Papa's study.

She is intrigued.

"What do you want?" she asks finally, her fake accent slipping. If he is dropping the act then she will as well. "What is it that I can I do for you?"

"I have purchased the remainder of your working hours for this evening. I need something, a diversion if you will, for a certain group of men down in the saloon while I conduct some business with their boss. If you would be so kind as to oblige me I can assure you that you will go to bed tonight as pure as you awoke this morning and certainly richer than you expected."

"Get out," she says, and his face falls.

"I am sorry," he says stiffly. I didn't realize my offer would be -"

"No, just stand outside the door or something," she mutters as she goes to her dresser.

"Excuse me?"

"If you're taking me down to the saloon I need to change out of this thing and if you don't plan on sleeping with me then you don't get to see what I have to offer. Stand right out there and wait for me." She points toward the door. He leaves and waits for her, chuckling to himself. When she finally emerges in a tawdry, flashy gown that is perfect for his plan he thanks his lucky stars for the circumstances that landed this woman with more than half a brain in her head in a whorehouse in the middle of nowhere.

The job goes off almost without a hitch. She plays her role well, brushing up against the boys of the Greenwood gang exactly as she knows they like it. The ones she knows are so stunned to see her in a public place at night that they don't know whether to run their hands all over her like they would the barmaids or avert their eyes. Either way is fine for the doctor, who manages to excuse himself and the boss while she brings the boys drinks and lets them stare at her cleavage. But when shots ring out from the back room of the saloon she knows that the doctor's business has been concluded, and that it is time to skedaddle.

She heads for the front door, in the exact opposite direction of the crowd but for a few people who realize it will be much faster to get to the back room from the alley outside. The doctor is standing across the street waiting for her and she sees the mad glint in his eye a split second before a man walking in front of her draws his gun on him.

"I've been tracking the Greenwood Gang's leader for months," the man says in a slow Southern drawl. "And I ain't gonna let some fancypants foreigner take the reward that's mine." He cocks the gun back and she stumbles into him, giggling a little girls' drunk laugh.

"Oh I'm so sorry!" she exclaims when he wheels around on her. "I didn't mean too! Hey what's everyone shouting about? Are you pointing that gun at me?" By the time the man realizes she is seemingly no threat the doctor has already slipped away. The man curses and moans and slumps off down the street, likely to drown his sorrows in another, less dramatic saloon.

The doctor is waiting again for her at the front door to the house, looking sheepish.

"I apologize for my sloppiness. That was foolish of me. Thank you for intervening." She laughs.

"Think nothing of it. It was fun, you know. More fun then I've had in quite a while." He nods as if he doesn't believe her, then hands her a wad of bills.

"You'll find there's a bit more extra than we agreed upon. I think that my life being handed back to me is worth a few more dollars." She takes the money from him and puts it down the front of her dress without counting it. Then she looks up at the moon, still so high in the sky.

"You still have me for three hours," she says, low and sly. His eyes widen for a moment before shaking his head.

"You must forgive me, miss, but I don't think that..."

"Shh," she breathes, putting a finger to his lips, finally allowing herself to feel the two whiskeys she downed with the boys while the man in front of her was off killing their boss. She knows she deserves this, hasn't actually wanted to sleep with someone in so long that she deserves this one night with someone she likes.

She kisses him, and his lips are just as soft as the lines in his face. He tastes different, some sort of tobacco she's never had before, and he's never been so close that she can smell him, a mixture of cigar and gunpowder and man. She likes it, and when his lips open she knows that he likes her too.

She was entirely wrong. He is different in every way. He is gentle words and caresses and soft touches. She's never bedded a man like this before, not since Jonathan at least, and that was practically another life. There is a give and take, of taking the lead and then relinquishing the reins between the both of them that she relishes, and she knows she will not like it when the daylight comes sidling in.

When they do finally make it back to her bed, right before she manages to get another one of his seemingly infinite layers off while he nips shyly, if there is such a thing, at her neck, she laughs softly to herself. She had thought he was playing hard to get at first. But it worked.

She is the one wanting, and he is the one wanted.

She wakes up in the morning and he is still there, beard tickling the back of her neck and an arm wrapped around her. She indulges herself one more time off the clock now, are we? before picking up their discarded underthings from the floor. She dresses slowly, trying to delay the inevitable moment when he leaves her behind in her dull and boring world after shattering it with colors. But eventually the time comes. He is dressed and impeccably groomed, looking for all the world that he spent the night in the town's only nice hotel instead of the town's only whorehouse. He pulls her to her feet from the bed and embraces her one last time, kissing her on the lips and forehead before pulling away.

"Auf wiedersehen," he whispers, and then he is gone, leaving her feeling inexplicably cold.

The Madame comes in to see here twenty minutes later, as she is washing her face in the basin.

"I don't know what you did to that man last night, Katerina" she says in a hushed and excited voice. "But you won't believe what he did before he left!"

"What did he do?" she asks nonchalantly.

"He gave me more money and told me that we could count on his business for a good long while as long as I kept your nights free whenever he comes to town! Oh you'll do fine in this business my little Russian doll!" The madame flits away out into the hall, humming a jaunty little tune to herself. Helene looks into the cracked, dirty mirror above the basin and smiles.

He is coming back.

She waits on the edge of her seat for the next few weeks, waiting through all the ordinary, drab customers, waiting through comforting the crying girls at night, waiting through a violent customer who tries to break her arm and doesn't succeed but leaves bruises all over her and splits her left cheek open. That customer is rapidly ejected from the building and not welcomed back and she spends almost a week in her bed with the sheets over her head recovering from her injuries, telling herself that it is all part of the job and that these things happen. Madame is proud of how she handled the situation and allows her bed rest without interruption, even to perform her chores. Thus it comes as a surprise one afternoon when Madame slams open her door and tells her to get dressed and ready.

"What's wrong?" she asks blearily, blinking away the afternoon light. The swelling in her left eye has gone down almost entirely and she can see the money hungry eagerness on madame's face.

"Your rich, well spoken gentleman just rode into town today. But if you're still ill I can-"

"No!" she says, too quickly. "I'll get ready."

"That's a good girl. I didn't want to offer him someone else when he enjoyed you so much last time. He likes you." Madame is thoughtful for a moment, then leaves Helene to put on her face.

She is waiting in the dark again, the curtains drawn and grey light of twilight settling in. She thinks that he will just walk in like he did the last time, but there is a knock on her door instead after she hears his patent leather boots stop outside. She smooths her dress down the nice blue one? A bit much for just a customer, don't you think? and opens the door halfway, hiding the left side of her face from the oil lamps in the hallway.

"Guten Abend, Helene," he begins, quietly. He is once again dressed to finely for his surroundings, once again looking unsure of himself in the circumstances.

"Good evening, Doctor," she replied in what she hopes is a coy voice instead of a relieved one. "Please, come in." She turns away quickly as he enters, retreating into the dark before he can see her injuries.

"Have you been well, my dear?" he asks in a conversational tone, as if this was a social call.

"As well as can be expected, I suppose." She averts her eyes and concentrates on the book she left on her nightstand, delights in the fact that she feels no urge to hide it from him.

"Is there any reason you're hiding your pretty face from me?" Before she can shout for him to stop he has lit the oil lamp and her damages are on display for the customer to see. She closes her eyes, refusing to see the pity she knows must be etched into the lines of his face. He says nothing for a full minute. She can sense that he wants to reach out and touch her, but holds himself back.

"Who did this to you?" he asks with a hardness in his tone she has never heard before, and she finally opens her eyes, stunned to see anger there instead of pity. She shrugs.

"A customer. About a week ago."

"Is he local? Or just passing through?"

"Yes.. local."

"Who?" She hesitates for only a moment. She knows the Doctor has killed at least one man before.

But that bastard deserved whatever he gets.

"Ted Keely. The blacksmith's apprentice."

"I see. And I can also see that the man is right handed?" She nods, miserable that he can read such a thing in the injuries on her face. He sits with her quietly again before reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. She is immensely proud of herself when she doesn't flinch.

"You're paid up through the night. Shall I leave you to your rest?" She shakes her head; she has been waiting long enough. She looks into his eyes and takes on of his hand in both of hers. Then, for the first time in years, she allows the silly, high pitched idiot girl's accent she has adopted to fall away completely, and her high-born New York accent to slip back into her voice.

"No, sir. I would very much prefer it if you remained."

This is the night she begins to wonder if he's ever been to a whore before her. He doesn't seem to understand that he is there to be pleasured, not to do the pleasuring. A client does not slowly undress a whore while kissing each bruise he uncovers. A client does not smile and make his whore laugh with his playful banter and his jokes. A client is not supposed to make a whore happy on his own merit – his money is. Yet the doctor breaks down all of these unspoken social barriers without thinking, without realizing what he is doing. There is too much intimacy in his movements and not enough business transaction.

The next morning, when he kisses her awake and starts the whole process over again, she thinks she is starting to become lost.

When word gets around that someone bashed Ted Keely's hand to smithereens with a ball peen hammer and he'll never be able to work again, she knows it.

There is no order to their meetings, no routine. Sometimes he comes and stays for a few days, sometimes she doesn't see him for weeks on end. But he is always gentleness and kindness and the exact opposite of everything she has conditioned herself to for the last several years and she never knows what to expect from him. One night he brings her a bouquet of flowers. After a prolonged absence he brings her a braided chain of silver to wear around her neck. He gives her so much money, too much, that she can't help but wonder what he does for a living.

She has a fairly good idea.

She begins to live for the mornings when he shows up with his ridiculous cart and clever horse, and the nights when she is Helene instead of Katerina Ivanovna, and discusses literature with her German client in a proper New York accent in between bouts of lovemaking. She cannot believe she has become to call it that.

When he is not around she mentally plasters his face, his voice, his touch onto those of her other customers and it makes everything easier and harder at the same time. Madame puts her in charge of the new girls, giving her extra cash for all the hand holding and shoulder-to-cry-on providing she had already been doing for free. But she no longer dreams of Madame leaving her to manage the brothel. Instead she nurses a secret, dangerous dream, one that she tells herself not to think about but is drawn too as sure as a moth is drawn to a flame.

She wants him to take her away from here, to put her up in a room or apartment or house somewhere and make her his mistress, his kept woman, his whore, his goddamn combination cleaning lady and bed warmer. She doesn't care. And every time he leaves her and every time he comes back the longing just gets worse.

She is desperate. She is drowning. And she doesn't care.

One afternoon in late October he arrives, accompanied by a tall black man riding a horse. She stiffens. The doctor had told her he didn't subscribe to slavery, has he gone back on his word?

But the man is his partner, the doctor tells her later as their limbs entwine and the sweat dries on their skin. He is his partner through the winter.

"What does a dentist need with a partner?" she asks slyly, knowing full well that he is no dentist.

"Well someone must hand me my tools, mind the cart and the horses, hold down the occasional rambunctious customer, that sort of thing," he replied with a chuckle in his voice, playing along with her game.

"You know," she says as she straightens up and rolls on top of him. She props herself up on her palms, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders. "I've been known to hold down a rambunctious customer or two in my time."

He grins.

"That you do, my dear. That you do."

He visits her through the winter, always accompanied by the tall black man. His partner never partakes of the same evening entertainment as the doctor, preferring to spend his nights in the hotel rather than the whorehouse. Some of the girls are disappointed. They are taken by the doctor's partner's beauty, the way he carries himself, his air of nobility and purpose. They roll their eyes when Helene doesn't share their fantasies, knowing she prefers her "rich old doctor" to his younger, virile partner.

But in the nights they share together she knows that something is eating away at her "rich old man," and the one night she asks him about it they end up in a hour long debate over German mythology that only ends when she starts removing one article of clothing for every word he says in German that she doesn't understand. He is detached, removed, and she doesn't think it has anything to do with her. When they are intimate he is as enthusiastic and engaged as ever. It is only after, as they lie together, that he becomes quiet and thoughtful. She wakes up several times during the nights because he is clinging to her so tightly. She lets him, never brushing him off or pushing him away like she knows she should. He is so close. Too close.

Something is very different when he comes to see her one morning in early April. His kisses are deeper, more intense and his lovemaking borders on the desperate. Like he will die if he doesn't get enough of her. He kisses her mouth, her eyes, the tips of her fingers, every inch of her skin that he can reach. She reciprocates in kind and the sounds coming from her room are loud and wild. As they come down from their high and he makes her shiver with pleasure by running the calloused pads of his fingers across her bare breasts he kisses her forehead and looks at her sadly.

"Helene, I would like you to promise me something." Her heart leaps into her throat.

"Anything. Ask."

He pulls away from her to rummage in his coat, long ago thrown to the floor, and pulls out a thick roll of cash tied with twine.

"I want you to take this money and I want you to leave this life. I want you to get out of this town, this state, go north, go back home to New York." The bottom is dropping out of her stomach and she feels sick and confused. She doesn't understand.

"What did I do? Why?" she asks. She is fumbling for the right words. He shakes his head and sits up, taking her head in both his hands.

"You, my dear, my beautiful Grecian beauty with a real French name and a fake Russian one and who talks to me about Dumas and Dickens and Cervantes and Homer and Virgil, who lives in a whorehouse and pretends to be a silly, ignorant young woman, you are the only thing south of the Mason-Dixon line that makes any sense to me and I don't want you here anymore." Tears that she promised herself wouldn't show start to flow down her cheeks and he wipes them away with his thumbs. "You've done nothing wrong and too many things right. The money is yours whether you promise or not, I just want you to consider -" She puts a finger to his lips.

"I promise," she whispers, and the relief on his face is almost palpable. "But you have to give me something in exchange."

"What?"

"Give me tonight."

He does.

When she wakes up in the morning he is pulling his boots on slowly, too slowly, the same way she dressed after their first night together. She dresses in silence alongside him and then the two of them are standing at her door, neither of them saying anything. Finally he embraces her, kisses her forehead. She wraps her arms around him and takes in his warmth and his scent one last time. She hates how final this parting is, hates herself for getting so carried away, hates him for making her feel so much.

He pulls away to look at her.

"Auf weidersehen, mine liebe."

Then he kisses her lips and he is gone. The tears don't fall until she shuts the door and sinks to the floor against it.

Madame is not surprised when Katerina comes to her and tells her she has decided to leave. Ever since the smooth talking German showed up on the doorstep she had been disconnected from the job she had once shown such promise for. Her rich old man has given her enough to retire on, if she wants to. But Katerina – Helene, as she will once again be known, has chosen to move back up to New York to open up a shop.

Helene is quiet and wraps herself up in a fog of sadness and Madame doesn't understand why until the morning the doctor's tall black partner appears at the door with his hat in his hand and a pretty black woman in tow. Without speaking she points him toward the pretty blue door that marks Helene's room.

She allows herself one blissful glimmer of hope when she hears a knock on her door. There's only one person who would knock!

She flings the door open and her grin shatters almost immediately. It is his partner – without him.

A small, soft wail rushes past her lips and expires in the air before she catches herself on the door frame.

"I am so sorry miss," the tall man says, and she knows he means it. "He died very well, if that's any consolation to you." She doesn't care, he's still taking about some slave owner in Mississippi, but she hears less than half of what he is saying. All she knows is that her doctor is gone, gone gone. "He don't have no next of kin. Figured that you were the only one besides me and Hilde that would care." She nods, white faced. Hilde. Brunhilde. German mythology. She finally sees the woman standing behind him, a woman with a steely gaze like flint that commands respect. "He was helping me get my wife back. He was a good man."

She stops thinking. She contemplates darkness before sucking in a deep breath.

"Please, Mr..."

"Django, miss. Just Django to you."

"Django. I thank you for bringing me this news, distressing and awful as it may be." Her voice is all New York now, none of the low mountain accent to be found. "But I must be alone now. Please allow me to take my leave of you and your lovely wife."

"Goodbye, Miss Helen," he says, using the American pronunciation of her name.

"I am sorry, Miss Helene," says his wife. "He would have said goodbye to you, if he could." She nods, numb.

"Goodbye. Best of luck to the both of you."

She closes the blue door and doesn't come out of it for two days.

It is 1868. A tall woman walks down 5th avenue with her two daughters, ages six and four, in tow. She holds her head proudly, and although her clothes belie her social status as middle class at best, her carriage implies someone closer to a queen than a shop owner. As she crosses over to 38th street she overhears two men concluding a business transaction outside of an office. The shorter man with the top hat laughs, shakes his partner's hand.

"Auf weidersehen!" he calls as he turns away.

She stops. She puts a hand to the braided silver chain that hangs around her neck, and she smiles.

Then she takes the hands of her children and walks on.