Chapter 20

I was a very busy boy for the next week, starting the day after we formed our partnership. On Thursday we all, minus a gimpy and grumbling Pen Smythe, took a walking inspection of the hotel with Wilfredo. It was nearly perfect as it sat. The only major changes I saw as being needed were converting most of the second floor to our gaming room, library, private meeting rooms and dining rooms.

The El Paso hotel was four stories tall. The first floor (ground floor) had the lobby, restaurant and a ballroom. After we converted the second floor we would be left with two floors and a total of twenty-two private rooms, including two suites. Each floor had two communal bathrooms set in the center and across from each other. One was for men and the other for women. There were also a dozen dormer rooms in the attic space for the staff. The kitchen was a wing off the side of the building behind the restaurant. The other side of the building had a similar wing that was used for storage and the manager’s four room apartment. The apartment was empty now because the resident manager had moved to Las Cruces.

Behind the hotel was a courtyard surrounded by a high adobe wall. You could enter the courtyard from the lobby, restaurant or ballroom. The courtyard was paved with Mexican terracotta tiles and had a few benches, tables and chairs scattered around. At the back end of the courtyard was a men’s and women’s bathhouse. In one corner of the yard, a wooden fence screened off the steam driven pump that pumped water up to a series of one hundred gallon water tanks in the hotel attic and atop the bathhouse. The pump was run for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening to keep the tanks full.

Hector and Ramona were both in the kitchen when the tour took us in that direction. They were curious as to why I was there.

“I have fallen in love with all the Lopez women, so I am thinking of getting a job here to be closer to you,” I joked in Spanish.

Wilfredo looked at me askance due to my rapid-fire Spanish, as it was the first indication he’d had that I spoke the language. He excused himself and pulled Hector aside. The two men talked earnestly for a couple of minutes, before Wilfredo rejoined us.

Wilfredo next pulled me aside for a private conversation.

“Tyler, if I had any doubts about you, Hector just put them to rest. He says you are a man of much honor, and that you attend church with them every Sunday.”

When he paused, I acknowledged attending church with them. Wilfredo said “good,” and continued toward making his point.

“Hector and his wife are the only reason I’ve kept this place as long as I have. I barely break even on the hotel, but the restaurant brings in a tidy sum each month. What will you do with Hector and his family when you take over?”

“Are you serious? I’m going to hire more of their family so the restaurant can also service the private dining rooms on the second floor. I will honor any arrangements you have in place with Hector, so an increase in the volume of food prepared will benefit him financially. I will also probably keep most of the other staff as well, based on what I saw of them when I was a guest here.”

Wilfredo reached out and grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously.

“That’s all I needed to know,” he said jovially.

On Friday, I found me a master carpenter and we planned out how to re-divide the second floor to accommodate the fewer but larger rooms. We agreed on a price for the basic carpentry work, and he said that he’d start demolition on the following Monday. We jawed over a completion date for longer than we did a price for the work. He would only commit to having the work done in six or seven weeks. I was adamant he finish in three. In the end, I told him I’d pay him a five dollar bonus for every day less than forty-two.

Friday afternoon, I paid my weekly visit to Pritchett’s Mercantile. I always tried to visit the store on Fridays, because they received new stock from back east every Thursday. The first thing I laid my eyes on were some Levi Strauss denim jeans, although, back then they were called ‘waist overalls.’ I bought all three pair he had that fit around my waist. The jeans were almost identical as the indigo colored, button fly Levis I wore in nineteen seventy-seven, except they were not cut for as good a fit. The three pair set me back a whopping six dollars.

I returned to the Toro at about three in the afternoon and tracked down Liz. She and Pen were holed up in his room and it took her a while to come out and talk to me. I strongly suspected there was hanky-panky going on between her and her patient, and started teasing her about it. She blushed and stammered, but didn’t deny my accusation a whit. Finally I let up on the teasing and asked her the name of a good tailor to alter my jeans. She turned me on to the seamstress that fitted her clothes to her impressive décolletage.

The seamstress had a small shop off a side street on the edge of Sin City, near the El Paso Hotel. She was a plump, bright and pleasant middle-aged woman named Naomi Singleton. Naomi was the female equivalent of Clem the barber, except she knew all the happenings amongst the female population of El Paso. She knew who I was as soon as I told her my name.

“My goodness, Mister McGuinn, you sure are creating quite a stir among the ladies,” she said.

I just shrugged, smiled boyishly and showed her how I wanted my jeans to fit. She grasped what I wanted immediately. She sent me to a small side room and had me try on a pair. When I came out, she pinned the stiff denim from the thighs to the cuff of both legs. She said it would only take her a few minutes to have a pair ready for me if I wanted to wait and keep her company. I thought that was a great idea, because I wanted to see if I could gather some information about Belle Wilson and Feleena. As we sat and yakked, I mentioned meeting Belle the evening before. That opened the floodgates.

“Isn’t she just the sweetest little thing?” Naomi gushed. “I could never imagine her doing any of the things that she’s rumored to have done.”

My mind flashed back to the vision of my pickup hurtling towards me in the Waffle House parking lot, with Crazy Cora Leigh behind the wheel, totally focused on running me down. That was a life lesson that taught me women were capable of anything. Still, I nodded my head as if in agreement, just to keep her talking.

“Belle arrived here about a year ago, not long after the rail line from Fort Stockton to Santa Fe was completed. She first worked at the Gold Nugget for Vidalia, but she caught Bill Braxton’s eye and he hired her away. I’m told that he is quite smitten with her, but she doesn’t return his ardor. As a matter of fact, I don’t know of any man who she has fancied.

“She is one of my better customers because she is so easy to fit. The standard Butterick patterns fit her as if she modeled for them.”

I asked her the same question about Feleena. I could tell it was a struggle for her not to say anything negative.

“I know that woman slightly. She is too beautiful for words. I haven’t done much work for her, though. She uses a seamstress across the river mostly. I have heard that she is very popular.”

While she talked, Naomi pumped the foot treadle of her I.M. Singer sewing machine, making short work of narrowing the legs of my new Levis. Sewing machines like the one she was using were plentiful, but expensive in the eighteen-seventies. The steep seventy-five to one hundred dollar price tag led to Singer inventing the installment purchase plan.

She held up the finished jeans for me to try on again. I changed and checked myself out in her mirror. The legs were fine now, tapered down to where they were just big enough at the bottom to fit over my boots. I also noticed that the jeans fit better in the straddle and seat, because Naomi had used one long stitch up one leg, across the crotch and down the other. I showed Naomi how well they fit with my shirt tucked into them. She blatantly stared at the tightened crotch and unconsciously licked her lips.

“They look a little snug now, Mister McGuinn.”

I told her they felt fine and were actually more comfortable this way and less likely to chafe me when I was riding. She nodded and told me to change again so she could run another stitch and cut off the excess material.

While she was working on the pants again, I asked her about making me some shirts. I wasn’t that thrilled with the ones I’d bought at the mercantile, they were just not cut loose enough to allow me a lot of movement. That was because they were dress shirts, not work ones. I wanted a work shirt, but fancy ones with two button cuffs and a pointed collar that buttoned down. Naomi was intrigued with my ideas, so after she finished my jeans, we sat down and she sketched out a design.