by Lisa Mason
“Sure, mister.” The porter stops in his tracks, holds out his hand. “But first, that’ll be two bits for unloadin’ you from the ferry.”
“Oh, very well.” Daniel searches his jacket pocket. He blew too much cash at the First and Last Chance Saloon, that’s a fact. But he’s got more. He reaches into his vest, his fingers searching for the smooth Moroccan leather of his boodle book. He’s got a few treasury notes, but Father warned him no one honors paper currency in the West. A gentleman needs coins, gold preferably, and he’s got several dozen in the coin pocket of the boodle book. Now where is the blasted thing? It seems to have migrated someplace.
Daniel searches, puzzled, and pats his pockets, reaching here and there. Nothing? Nothing! “Damn,” he mutters.
“Something the matter, mister?” That malicious grin again.
With an awful sinking feeling, Daniel knows the boodle book and its contents are long gone. “Seems I’ve lost my dough.”
“Cashed in your chips on the trip out, did ye?”
“No, I haven’t gambled since… . No. That bird. The little bird I left the ferry with.”
“Oh, her? Good ol’ Fanny, she’s a hummer, ain’t she?”
“By God, are you telling me she’s a dip?”
“Fanny Spiggot? Ha, ha. Faintin’ Fanny, that’s what we call her. A’ course, a smart young gentleman like yourself wouldn’t fall for her racket, now would ye?”
Daniel fights the anger and disgust welling in his chest while the porter sticks his mug into the stream of champagne for another guzzle. Naturally, he didn’t carry his whole kit and caboodle in the boodle book. He’s not some bumpkin. He’s stashed a few gold coins in his ditty bag. Then there’s the trunk with the deeds and papers, a bit of the art he acquired in Paris. He’s not wiped out.
Still! Still! The lousy little bitch, he could take her slender neck in his hands and twist it. Women! They’ll steal your soul if you give them half a chance.
The porter reels up from his guzzle, flushed and shiny-eyed. He’s drawn his own conclusions from Daniel’s sudden dejection. He proclaims with high spirits, “Hell with the two bits, mister. Where ye bound? It’s the Fourth of July. Welcome to San Francisco!”
“Thank you,” Daniel says humbly.
“Next time, I’ll charge ye twice.”
The porter lugs the trunk, Daniel takes the bags, and together they fight the festive crowd up Market Street. At last Dupont appears to the north. The porter turns right up a gentle incline that might as well be an Alp, for all Daniel cares. By God, he’s dry. And exhausted. Thank heaven Father cannot see him in this ridiculous predicament.
He and the porter enter another part of town, and the traffic, the sounds and the smells, the mood and the very light change. A saloon stands on every street corner, four per intersection, sometimes more if another proprietor has got the story up. Daniel has never seen so many saloons and resorts crowded together in such proximity. Music blares from doorways, inviting him in. Men guffaw and shout. Glasses bang on bars or crash together in toasts. The stink of gunpowder is infused with the powerful smells of whiskey, tobacco, roasting meat, and an odd indefinable sickly sweet scent.
A few women drift in and out of the saloon doors, but mostly linger on street corners. Daniel approaches a young girl who skips gaily down the pavement in a sailor’s costume, a navy and white topcoat over bloomers, striped stockings, and little button boots. A jaunty straw boater is pinned over her yellow curls. She sidles up to him and curtseys charmingly. He gapes at the heavy white powder over her grainy jowls, her thin masculine lips beneath the mouth drawn on her face in red paint. She frowns at his startled look and skips away, tittering.
The porter laughs nervously. “Here’s as far as I go, mister,” He unceremoniously plunks the trunk down and strides off.
Daniel glances around. Something dangles above him, draped over the telegraph wires. Lace and ribbons, straps and stays. A woman’s undergarment? On the telegraph wires? His eyes travel from the garment to a window where a lovely young woman sits. Half-dressed, her hair disheveled, she leans out, seizes a strap of the corset, and reels in the undergarment like a hooked fish. But she does not attend too closely to her task. No, her eyes—are they blue?—are trained on him. He looks over his shoulder, to the right, to the left. She throws back her head and laughs, her bare throat throbbing.
Heat rises in his face, under his collar, beneath his belt.
He drags his trunk a step further. Damn that porter, abandoning him in the middle of nowhere. He finds himself in front of a huge house with square-cut bay windows, angular battens, and geometric decorations. The house is painted a conservative pale gray with bronze green trim, sable brown doors and vestibules. He should think it a perfectly respectable house except for the young woman at the window.
Daniel checks the address. What luck! The porter didn’t abandon him in the middle of nowhere, after all. He climbs the stairs and pulls the door bell of Number 263 Dupont Street. The bell chimes within. The young woman at the window exclaims and scampers down from her perch as he stands at the front door of Miss Malone’s Boardinghouse for Gentlemen.
3
Miss Malone’s Boardinghouse for Gentlemen
“Jar me, I’ll not have my Fourth of July cooked,” says Jessie Malone to the eager gentleman as he negotiates with her in the downstairs smoking parlor. “And on a Thursday, which, I’ll have you know, is my most magnetic day.”
“Magnetic day?” says the gentleman, feigning surprise. Jessie knows very well that his wife, who also consults with the famed spiritualist Madame De Cassin, surely possesses a most magnetic day herself. You don’t blow it in on a magnetic day. Still, if Mrs. Heald was more of a slut and less of a shrew, Mr. Heald might not be speaking so eagerly with Jessie right now. “What the devil is your ‘magnetic day’?”
“Sure and it’s the day when I speak with the sweet spirits.” The bell chimes. “Ah! There’s someone at the door.”
Mr. Heald twirls the graying tufts of his tremendous mustache and smirks. How transparent men are. Plotting how he can convince her otherwise. He would not dare broach the topic of the increase in the civic contribution he delivers for her to certain persons in the mayor’s office. Not when he wants to dip his wick. The biz is the biz, no less and never more when it comes to Mr. Heald. Sure and Mr. Heald is such a dear friend from the days when she was the toast of the town and the special gal of the Silver Kings.
“Now, Jessie. To hell with the spirits and your magnetic days. To hell with whoever is at the door. To hell with the Fourth of July.”
“Mr. Heald! I thought you were a patriot.”
“You’ve had your breakfast and your outing. Now I want to go upstairs like we agreed. Did we not agree?”
Jessie smooths the feathers of the pressed hummingbirds decorating her Caroline hat. She brushes dust from the pink flounces and bows on her bodice. She spies a clot of horse dung clinging to the hem of her pink topskirt, gives the filthy silk a good shaking. Mariah will need to clean the carpet. “No, I’m all done in. Good day, Mr. Heald.”
“Now, Jessie.” His tone deepens alarmingly, though he’s more or less sober. Mr. Heald takes her wrist in his hands that have been known to throttle a man. She does not struggle, but merely lifts her face and raises her eyebrows. He lets go, but her wrist throbs. He broke it once. When was that? Years ago, so many years ago, perhaps not long after the time when she was a mermaid at Lily Lake. Was it really dear Mr. Heald who broke her wrist? Never mind. She’s lost track of time, of men. “Do not get shy on me.”
“Shy! Mr. Heald, I cannot abide that ruckus in the park. It has made me weary.” Cannot abide? She is outraged by the affront she witnessed in Golden Gate Park.
How she loves her traditional Fourth of July outing! A fitting tribute to the United States of America, this great and marvelous country that has allowed her, Miss Jessie Malone, once a penniless orphan, now a woman of nice sensibilities and simple desires, to amass a modest f
ortune. Her custom on the Fourth of July is take breakfast with a roast turkey, champagne, and a gentleman. Then on to Golden Gate Park for a promenade through Concert Valley. A breath of air, a shot of sunlight, and the company of fine, upstanding San Franciscans. How she loves to see the little children skip and run, admire the ladies in their frocks, nod to gentlemen she scarcely ever sees in the broad day. She feels patriotic and righteous though her liver aches beneath the stays of her corset. The Doan’s Pills this morning haven’t helped.
There’s a goddamn war among the tongs these days, as if a woman of her sensibilities didn’t know. They’re gangs, of course, organized crime despite the excuses of the Six Companies, Chinatown’s official liaison. The tongs deal in coolies, slave girls, opium, weapons, extortion, murder-for-hire. They’ve got codes and signals. Each tong man wears a special coil in his queue, a particular cap, an earring, a snippet of embroidery on his jacket. There must be thirty tongs operating in San Francisco, with rivalries and feuds bloodier than thirty cockfights. Lately the highbinders have been hacking each other to bits right beneath the very noses of the bulls running this burg. The stories Jessie has heard.
But that’s Chinatown. Not Golden Gate Park on the Fourth of the July. What is the city coming to?
The bell chimes again, and Li’l Lucy, a housecoat slung over her corset and bloomers, flies out of the bedroom on the second floor and hurtles down the stairs.
“Li’l Lucy,” Jessie calls sternly as she passes by the parlor.
“Yes, Miss Malone.” Li’l Lucy skids to a halt. She’s a pastry of a girl, all buttery and plump, which is the rage in Jessie’s biz. Li’l Lucy is under contract at Jessie’s Sutter Street resort, the Parisian Mansion. She had gotten in the family way for the second time and spent the past week recuperating after her medical treatment. She does not look proper with her housecoat flapping open. Not here, at the boardinghouse, which is a respectable establishment.
Jessie frowns. “Why aren’t you dressed, Li’l Lucy?”
“Oh, Miss Malone, I still ache.”
Hmph. Jessie seizes the ties of Li’l Lucy’s housecoat and wraps them tightly around her waist twice, securing the ends in a gay bow. She arranges Li’l Lucy’s yellow curls across her forehead, smoothing strands down her plump neck. She wets her forefinger and smooths Li’l Lucy’s eyebrows, vigorously pinches the girl’s cheeks, the fullness of her lips. The girl’s tender skin blooms with pain and color.
“There. You gotta get back in the habit of groomin’, Li’l Lucy. That’s what gentlemen expect. Now you may answer the door.”
“Yes, Miss Malone. Thank you, Miss Malone.” Li’l Lucy gazes at her like a starving she-dog given a thimble of cream.
Jessie frowns, watching her go. The plumpness is starting to sag. The girl is too careless. Li’l Lucy is becoming more trouble than she’s worth.
“Now, Jessie,” Mr. Heald says again, pleading. He takes the liberty of nuzzling the diamonds dangling from her earlobes. Diamonds that beat anything Mrs. Heald owns. “You can speak to the spirits later, can you not? Right now, my own sweet spirit, I thought we could go upstairs. Like we agreed.”
His mustache tickles, well, she likes mustaches well enough and just about every fashionable gentleman wears them these days. Upstairs is her private parlor. She doesn’t have to live at the Parisian Mansion, not anymore. She can afford door maids to handle the traffic when she’s not there.
“I have a caller, Mr. Heald. You heard the bell.”
“Jessie, please. Have pity on me.”
Pity. Sure and Jessie Malone has pity for no one. Still, she sinks to her knees in the smoking parlor, grunting when her joints complain. She should not have to do this anymore, truly she should not. But there’s the boodle for certain persons in the mayor’s office. Perhaps Mr. Heald, being such a dear friend, may persuade those persons that her civic contribution is adequate and need not be increased.
She tugs at the buttons on his trousers.
Gentlemen, pah. Like most of his Snob Hill associates, Mr. Heald is a fool and a coward. A deadbeat when it comes to the behavior she expects of him. Allowing tong men to carry on in full view of law-abiding citizens.
Tong men—hatchet men, highbinders, the boo how doy—all words for the same wretched creatures. She knows why they made a fuss in the park, all right. The ragged Chinese girl is likely to fetch up to two thousand in gold, if she’s fifteen or sixteen. Well, the biz is the biz. Jessie doesn’t give two hoots about that. No, the outrage is that hatchet men were troubling a consumptive-looking lady in a veil and a smart gray dress. A lady, on the Fourth of July!
Jessie trembles with anger, but she finishes her work. Mr. Heald, thank goodness, is done quickly. She glances up. He’s got that sagging look he always gets through the jowls after he’s done. She dabs a handkerchief to her lips, and he helps her to her feet. Suddenly she’s weary of him, of him and all the gentlemen she has ever serviced. They’re not even human beings to her anymore. She needs a drink.
“That will be the usual for the pleasure of my company, Mr. Heald,” she says primly.
Not a moment too soon. She hears voices murmuring, Li’l Lucy conversing with the caller, and he answering. A man, of course. Jessie checks her face in one of the mirrors and peers out the door of the smoking parlor. She glimpses gray gabardine, a blue vest and necktie, an expensive bowler. He inquires about lodgings in a charming accent. She spies his hefty trunk and a collection of baggage he’s vigorously stacking in the foyer. Sure and he’s a vigorous one, she can see it from here. Young and vigorous, brown curls tumbling down his neck.
“Now, Jessie,” Mr. Heald says, pulling her back to him. “If truth be told, I thought this was for friendship, not the usual.”
“If truth be told, Mr. Heald, it’s always the usual.”
Jessie whips out her pink lace fan and stirs up a breeze in front of her flushed face. A drink, a drink, she needs a drink. She runs to the window, leans out, and yells, “Mariah! Mariah!” The maid is on the roof, keeping a lookout for stray rockets with a broom and two pails of water. On the Fourth of July in ’93, a rocket landed on the eaves of Hunter’s Resort on Water Street in Sausalito and damn near burned down the entire business district. Jessie has no intention of losing this house, a very fine three-story Stick-Eastlake with extra gingerbread and a proper paint job that cost her an arm and a leg. “Get down here, Mariah, we’ve got company. And bring me some champagne.”
“Ah, now I see,” Mr. Heald says, straightening his vest. “You’re still angry about those Chinee hoodlums, eh? Now, Jessie. Chinee business is no business of ours. Why, you ought to know that. You are the Queen of the Underworld. Why should a little discombobulation like that put you off your feed?”
“The Queen of the Underworld is never off her feed, Mr. Heald,” she answers tartly.
“Well, then. I expect such tenderheartedness from my… .that is, from the ladies of the Western Addition. Not from the Queen of the Underworld, eh?” Mr. Heald’s eyes glisten at Jessie’s self-proclaimed title, which is as much a flattery to her as a titillation to him.
“Oh, you expect, do you, Mr. Heald? Well, the Queen of the Underworld says there is a place for sin and a time for sin. And that time and that place is not during my Fourth of July promenade in the park.”
Jessie gasps for breath, she is so truly distraught. Then she does her act. One of her acts. She breaks out into tears, great fat raindrops of tears, the kind that can really drench the heart of Mr. Heald and all the likes of Mr. Heald. She fans herself furiously, peeking through her deluge at his mortified face.
“Now, Jessie,” Mr. Heald says gently. “I had no notion you were such a patriot.” He fumbles in his vest and pulls out a fistful of double eagles. He spills them on the table for the pleasure of her company.
“Thank you, Mr. Heald.” Jessie permits herself a trembling little smile.
Oh, how she loves double eagles! Her favorite of all the gold coins circulating in San Francisco. So p
retty. Madame De Cassin says the American eagle is really the phoenix, the mythical bird that never dies. He just hatches over and over again from the flames and lives forever. Jessie loves that idea. The phoenix is like the soul, dying and being born again in the Summerland. Like her Rachael, her sweet innocent Rachael who speaks to her from the Summerland, thanks to Madame De Cassin’s expertise. Double eagles. Jessie wouldn’t think of taking anything less, let alone that worthless paper money. Government certificates, pah. You cannot even bite them.
“Let us forget all about those hoodlums,” Mr. Heald says, watching as she turns the coins over in her palm, fingering them, stroking them. He tugs at the buttons on his trousers. “Let us forget all about the heathen Chinee, and the park, and all such argle-bargle, shall we? Let us go upstairs.”
Jessie snaps the fan shut and smartly slaps the ivory rib of it against his plump cheek. “Forget about the highbinders? I should say not! You are a coward, Mr. Heald. I’ll entertain no cowards today. Mariah!”
The maid climbs down from the fire escape, her black skirts billowing around her ankles. Not some auntie or chippy is Jessie’s Mariah, oh no. Mariah is a prize, one of the coveted Negro maids hired straight out of the Palace Hotel for a pretty penny. Mariah takes as high a wage as a hotel chef, since she can cook something grand, keeps the boardinghouse spotless, and keeps her mouth shut. Mariah knows exactly how to behave around the likes of Mr. Heald. She demurely draws her skirts through the window and glares at the gentleman with so evil an eye that Mr. Heald blanches visibly.
Now Jessie is in distress. After all this excitement, her liver positively throbs. She cannot see a caller in this condition. “Fetch me my Scotch Oats Essence, Mariah. And be quick! I feel faint.”