The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  “Jar me, what is it?’ Jessie cries and turns toward Madame De Cassin. “What’s happening?”

  The spiritualist snatches her hand away, leaps to her feet. Jessie hears something heavy clatter on the floor. Madame De Cassin stoops, whirls, and sprints across the room. Light blooms as she stands at the gaslamp, turning up the flame. Her face is drained pale, her brown eyes wide. Jessie has never seen the spiritualist look frightened before.

  “Is it really true? Mama was here?” Mr. Watkins says, looking around. “Mama?”

  Li’l Lucy’s teeth chatter. Mr. Heald looks pinched.

  “My mother passed away a month ago,” Mr. Watkins says. “And that strange presence, did you feel it? On the Overland, I felt a strange presence, too. A strange presence, I tell you, and a vision that changed the whole world just for a moment. She said, ‘Beware, my son.’” He seizes Jessie’s arm. “What does she mean?”

  “Sure and what does it mean?” Jessie demands, turning to Madame De Cassin.

  “Let’s go downstairs,” the spiritualist says. “All of you, come on.” She herds them out of the sitting room. The others go as Jessie turns off the gaslamp, crushes the smoking piles of incense in their burners, plunks a silver snuffer over the smoking candle. The spiritualist takes Jessie by the arm and resolutely closes the door to the sitting room behind them. “Let no one in there. Do not go in yourself.”

  “What was it?” Jessie whispers as they climb down the stairs. “You must tell me, Madame De Cassin.”

  “My dear Miss Malone,” Madame De Cassin says, “strange times are a-coming.”

  *

  Madame De Cassin assures Jessie that evil spirits, or whatever the strange presence was, departed from the sitting room when she turned up the gaslight. But the unflappable spiritualist looks unsettled herself. Jessie pays her the usual fee, picking out a few gold coins from those Mr. Heald paid her, and begs her to return and ensure that the sitting room hasn’t become haunted. The spiritualist readily agrees, consulting her little black leather appointment book, and schedules another visit.

  “Madame De Cassin, you must advise me what to do.” Mr. Watkins confronts her as the spiritualist pins on her riding hat.

  “Beware,” she says. “Beware of others. Beware mostly of yourself, sir.” With that, she stomps out the door.

  Mr. Heald hurries out the door, too, without another word about going upstairs. Sure and it’s just as well. Jessie is hardly in the mood for the biz. But an anxiety grates at her. Truth be told, she must admit that Mr. Heald is a nice old sport, a dear friend after all, and always flush. Those diamonds swinging from her earlobes? They were paid for by all the Mr. Healds. Mr. Heald is no worse than most and better than some. She must remember to invite him to the musicale on Sunday night at the Parisian Mansion and stand him a bottle of champagne. She cannot afford to lose the patronage and goodwill of Mr. Heald.

  A séance usually refreshes her. Not this time. She’s only glad that her Rachael is doing well in the Summerland after life cheated her so cruelly. That bittersweet thought instantly hardens her heart as she finds Li’l Lucy lingering in the foyer with Mr. Watkins.

  “Pack your things,” she orders the girl. “Off to Sutter Street with you.”

  “But Miss Malone,” Li’l Lucy says, “I still ache, and Chief Silver Thorne said… .”

  “Never mind Chief Silver Thorne. Be quick about it.” There, you see? Never mix employees in personal affairs. Oh, give them an inch! The biz is the biz. “And clean the place up proper, Li’l Lucy. I’m letting out those rooms today.” She smiles at the young gentleman, who is definitely looking quite the worse for wear. “Mr. Watkins, we should talk. Will you come up to my parlor? Would you care for some champagne? I’m as thirsty as a camelopard myself.”

  “Gladly. I’m dry as a bone, Miss Malone. But I do believe you mean a camel. Nasty beasts that run about the desert and spit and bite and smell something dreadful. A camelopard, on the other hand, is a lovely creature with an extraordinarily long neck that lives on the African savannah far south of the desert and nibbles charmingly on jungle foliage.”

  “Ah, a scholar, then.”

  “And a gentleman.” He shows off his sparkling white teeth. “Please excuse my poor manners. I just got off the train from Saint Louis, and I’m beat.”

  Bang, bang, bang! Firecrackers pop in the street. “I’ll show you, ya lout!” Two bruisers commence a brawl in front of her door, fists swinging, their pals cheering them on. “Heeey, biff ‘im one, Johnny!” “I’ll smash yer ugly mug!”

  Never has Jessie seen such a Fourth of July.

  *

  Huffing and puffing every blasted inch of the three flights up, her stays cutting into her liver at every stair, Jessie takes Mr. Watkins to her private parlor on the top floor. “Got to look into one of them elevator contraptions that the swells use in their skyscrapers downtown,” she tells him as she leads him inside. Sure and this is her pride and joy. A room of her own design, not at all like the sitting room for the sweet spirits and Madame De Cassin.

  When Jessie bought the three-story Stick-Eastlake mansion with the intention of securing her private residence above, private boarders below, the place was as plain as a pig, the paint peeling to shavings. Since the seventies, lower Dupont Street had become a tenderloin. Respectable folk fled the old city as the poor of every nation flooded in, tainting once-genteel streets with vice and sport and crime, with laundry flapping on clothes lines and sour cooking smells and unruly children.

  But the rooms were huge, the architecture sound, the views superb. A good purchase it was, in spite of the rough neighborhood. To the southwest, Jessie sees the top story of the Palace Hotel and Lucky Baldwin’s showplace. Due south, the panorama of Market Street, the Cocktail Route, and all the delights of the old city. To the northwest, the exotic curved roofs of Chinatown like another little country. Behind Chinatown, purple hills scarcely touched by civilization—Russian Hill, Pacific Heights. To the northeast the scruffy dome of Telegraph Hill—“dirty awld smelly awld Telygraft Hill”—and the German castle at its peak. And when Jessie throws open the wobbly glass of the east window and leans far out over the sill, she glimpses the whole crawling heap of the Barbary Coast. Beyond that, the bobbing masts of the great clipper ships, the steamers and the fishing trawlers, the blue-gray bay sparkling when the sun rises like a sack of spilled diamonds.

  It is a beautiful house, and Jessie has covered her parlor’s walls with the finest rose-colored damask she ever did see with a rose-of-Sharon pattern. That’s for starters. She has hung every window with scarlet velvet curtains that sweep up and back and dangle thickets of tassels and thick furry fringe. She has laid Persian carpets down on the plank maple floor, layer upon layer of carpets till the floor is a patchwork of arabesques and medallions.

  And Jessie has bought and arranged good furniture, some wood, some wicker, some fancy French gilt. Ferns in massive Chinese pots adorn every sunlit corner. And gold, lots of gold—a gold tea set, gold dinnerware, gold lamp sticks, gold embroidered doilies, gold statuettes of Venuses with their heads and arms intact. She cannot abide Venuses with their heads and arms lopped off. Her long mirror is framed in pure gold, the frame encrusted with birds and foliage in gold and silver. A gold-plated spittoon is set out just for show, since Jessie abides no chaw in her private parlor. Gilt frames surround every piece of Art.

  Oh, and the Art! She prides herself on her Art collection. She has made them Gump boys richer than thieves in their import business. One of the Gumps’ best customers, that’s what Miss Jessie Malone is, more than two of them Snob Hill ladies rolled up into one. She’s got fauns playing flutes and cupids on the wing. But mostly Jessie collects nudes, the female in all her glory. Nudes recline on couches. Nudes stroll through fantastic gardens, through forests, through fields. Nudes are sold into slavery, their hands bound behind their pearlescent backs. Nudes pose in the bedroom, in the bath, in the stables. What a hoot!

  Now Mariah brings in
goblets and a gold-plated ice bucket. Jessie frowns. She should have bought the solid gold bucket, not this cheap plate, but her pony lost at Ingleside Track and she balked at the expense. She pops the cork with a thirsty smile, splashes champagne into the goblets. The young gentleman studies her Art collection, his expression inscrutable.

  “Why, Miss Malone, you’ve got an Aubrey Beardsley!” Mr. Watkins exclaims over the photomechanical reproduction of an odd line drawing Jessie has never understood except that it is very wicked.

  “A gambler whose name you would recognize gave me that drawing.”

  The drawing depicts denizens of the night—a masked clown, a depraved ballerina, a devil-eared satyr with a huge erect penis and cloven hooves.

  “Is it true Mr. Beardsley slept with Oscar Wilde?” Jessie hands Mr. Watkins a goblet and smiles at his surprise. She follows the international gossip as best she can. “I heard that after the glory of his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, Mr. Wilde was imprisoned for having his way with young men.”

  “Mr. Wilde languishes in prison even as we speak, but I cannot vouch for Mr. Beardsley. We do call him Awfully Wierdsley,” Mr. Watkins says. “Poor fellow is a wreck with the consumption. They say he won’t live out the year.”

  “So young and talented, what a shame.” Jessie clinks her goblet with his. “That’s why I say eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” They drain their goblets and Jessie refreshes them. “Mr. Watkins, what with your interest in ladies’ fashion and art and the theater, you’re not a queen, are you?”

  “Heavens, you are blunt, Miss Malone. But no, whatever else I am, that I am not,” he says without missing a beat.” He drains his goblet again, holds it out for another round. “Have you read Mr. Wilde, then?”

  “Of course. Why, I’ve read all them French poets, Baudelaire and Verlaine.” Jessie takes her copy of Salon from the side table where she keeps naughty magazines like The Pearl and Boudoir. She leafs through the pages and strikes a pose, her hand aloft. “’Goddesses riding hippogryphs and streaking their lapis lazuli wings with the death agony of clouds.’” She slaps the book shut. “Ain’t it grand?”

  “Indeed, but what the devil does it mean?”

  “Jarred if I know, but it makes my head spin!” She refills her goblet. “This world has become such a cold, gray place, Mr. Watkins. Look at how life has changed. Them big ugly factories, and everyone sufferin’ from the booms and the busts, and no one lives in the old hometown anymore. Maybe poets give us back romance and wonder. Maybe they can tell us what the world is really like, or used to be like, or will be like better than the newspapers. Maybe they tell us things one else will tell us, whether it’s pretty as pink or black as death. What do you think of that, Mr. Watkins?”

  “I think you’re a remarkable woman, Miss Malone.”

  Hmph. Jessie whips out her fan. She’s acutely aware of his unspoken insinuation, an insinuation she’s heard before in conversations with gentlemen. She’s a whore and never forget it. “I’m a woman of nice sensibilities and simple desires who has to keep up on the culture, Mr. Watkins,” she says coolly. “These are modern times. We sporting women have got to amuse you men. You cannot imagine how easily men get bored of sex.” With a weary sigh, she lies down on her rose-colored satin divan, stifling a groan of pain. “You men would much rather drink or bet on the ponies than please a lady.”

  “Really.” He stands over her like a lord claiming his territory. Lord Watkins, is he? “Boredom is the province of the unimaginative soul.”

  “Indeed.” She is no man’s territory. Not anymore. Jessie pulls herself up, though the pain is excruciating. “Look here, Mr. Watkins. I’ve been in the biz for damn near twenty-five years. In case you don’t get it, I own the Parisian Mansion on Sutter Street and cribs on Morton Alley and this boardinghouse which, thankfully, is also my own private residence after many years in the saddle. And a respectable place. I own what I own, I’m a proud citizen of the United States of America, and I can drink any man in San Francisco under the table. I am the Queen of the Underworld, Mr. Watkins, and don’t you forget it.”

  He clinks his goblet with hers. “Tomorrow we die, my Queen.”

  “That we do, sir,” she says primly, “and you must pay for your lodgings. Too bad about your boodle book being pinched and all. But how do you propose to pay me? The other gentlemen boarders pay me two months in advance. The rent is twenty-eight dollars a month for the suite with a private water closet and bath. Oh, and that includes board, too. Mariah cooks up a whopper of a breakfast.”

  “Miss Malone,” he says returning to his chair and slumping wearily. “All the money I had was in that wallet.” His face twitches, and Jessie instantly knows he’s lying. But not about much. “The porter said the dip who took me is known as Fanny Spiggott.”

  ”Sure and the faintin’ pickpocket.” Jessie permits herself a mocking smile. Mr. Saint Louis, London, and Paris, taken by the likes of Fanny? Lordy, he’s greener than he lets on. But she relents. “That little twist bamboozles the best of ‘em.”

  “Then you know I’m not lying. Look, Miss Malone, my father owns several properties in town. The mortgagors defaulted in the ‘93 crash. I’ve come to collect back payments and renegotiate terms or repossess the properties. When that’s done, I shall be flush. It’s as simple as that.”

  “But in the meantime, sir.” She will permit this pup no slack.

  “In the meantime? In that hellishly heavy trunk I’m lugging is all the junk my mother left me when she died. Father doesn’t want the stuff. French and English antiques, dusty eighteenth-century bric-a-brac. Maybe some of it is worth something. Do you know where I might sell it?

  “Sure and you should take it to the Gump brothers. One thirteen Geary Street near Union Square is where you want to go. But first”—she’s ever the fool for European antiques—“you must let me see what you’ve got.”

  “Certainly,” he says with a sly look. “As for your advance on the rent, I’ve got something else in my baggage that may very well interest you.” He clatters down the stairs and clatters back up again, carrying a square of canvas tacked to wood stretchers.

  “Feast your eyes.”

  He shows her a painting of a bare-breasted woman with haunted, dreamy eyes rising up from a frothing sea. She clutches a young man in her long-fingered hands. But wait. She’s not just a nude. At her naked waist, the woman transforms into a sea creature with shining scales and an elegant fanned tail. A mermaid. A living mermaid, not a stone carving like the statue in Copenhagen, but a werewoman with pink and silver flesh, filled with strange passions and ambiguous intent. She is lust incarnate. She is death.

  A mermaid, the way she and Rachael were mermaids at Lily Lake long ago.

  “Jar me,” Jessie murmurs.

  “Like it?”

  “Ain’t never seen anything like it.”

  “She’s yours. I picked her up for a song on the Left Bank. She’s the latest fashion in Symbolist Art.”

  Jessie calculates, and calculates again. A modern French nude with an erotic fantasy theme? Sure and that’s worth two months’ rent at Miss Malone’s Boardinghouse for Gentlemen. Not that she will ever sell this mermaid. Not in a hundred years.

  “Done,” she says, taking the painting before he can change his mind.

  “Superb.” Mr. Watkins relinquishes his treasure readily, eager to please. “And I shall sweeten the deal.” Now he hands over a stack of magazines. “This is only to lend since I don’t want to part with them permanently. But if you enjoy stories about other worlds, stories about what the world will be like, take a look.”

  Jessie takes the stack. The New Review, a British magazine from January through May, 1895. “But what is it?”

  “This fellow named H. G. Wells wrote a terrific novel called The Time Machine. The Review ran it in five installments. All the literary critics in London, even that curmudgeon Frank Harris, call Wells quite the genius. And it is wonderful, Miss Malone! The story goes
like this. A fellow invents a machine that takes him far into the future and back again, all to tell the tale. Can you imagine such a thing?”

  “Do women have the vote in Mr. Wells’s future?”

  Mr. Watkins laughs. “Mr. Wells does not discuss woman suffrage. Which is a shame, now that you mention it.”

  “Will these magazines amuse my other gentlemen boarders?”

  “I should say so, if they’ve got half their wits. And I shall be happy to lend them out, if that is your implication.”

  “Then I shall allow you to stay, Mr. Watkins, and see how the biz works out.” Jessie drains the bottle of champagne. “Let’s have a look at your rooms.”

  *

  Jessie shows him the suite, which Li’l Lucy speedily vacated, leaving only a hint of her fleshy scent behind. The parlor is furnished with handsome redwood tables, chairs, a chest, and a writing desk. A fireplace and a store of dry kindling. The bedchamber is larger, with a Belgian wool carpet in somber hues, and a sturdy brass bed frame which Mariah polishes to a gleaming gold. The water closet is quite modern, as well as the large claw-footed tub with running hot and cold water. She informs him that he will have to schedule his bath since the plumbing can tolerate only one soak at time.

  “This is quite splendid, Miss Malone.”

  Jessie hands him the brass key. “Live up to my expectations, Mr. Watkins.”

  “I shall try my best, Miss Malone.” He reaches for her, embracing her waist.

  She breaks free, backs away. “I do believe you’ve been lonely too long, Mr. Watkins. You need to hire yourself a filly.”

  “I never pay for whores. Rochelle, my cancan dancer in Paris, gave herself freely, though I must say, I seldom touched her, if you understand my meaning.”

  Jessie understands his meaning only too well. Mr. Heald is only too fresh in her memory and in her mouth. He seldom touches her, either.