The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  “I’ve got business to attend to. Not,” he says, “that it’s any of your business.”

  “You’re going to the Cocktail Route, aren’t you? Haven’t you had enough to drink today?”

  He stops in his tracks. “I beg your pardon, but the president of the Bank of California will probably take his usual at the Reception. He may be useful to me, and I would do well to hobnob with him. I may need financing.” As he lectures her, his nosebleed starts up again.

  “Oh, Daniel!” She pulls out a handkerchief of her own and takes the liberty of blotting his nostril, seizing his chin, studying his face more boldly than any other woman has ever dared look at him, even his mother. “I’m coming with you.”

  “I should say not!”

  “Try and stop me.”

  “Only whores frequent saloons. And you are not a whore, are you, miss?”

  She thinks that over. “I’ll come like this.” She plucks at the ridiculous denim tunic. “I’ll come as your manservant.” She grins wickedly. “As your coolie.”

  “By God, no! That is absurd, that is… .”

  Then suddenly the idea tickles him. Wouldn’t Father be outraged by such a ploy? A young woman masquerading as a manservant, accompanying him on the municipal custom for drumming up business?

  Yes. Father would be outraged.

  “All right,” he says. “But you cannot drink.”

  “You know I don’t.”

  “And you’ll not be served the free lunch. Not as a coolie.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You must keep your head down and your mouth shut.”

  “Suits me. I’m supposed to be only an observer in your spacetime, anyway, except for the object of my project. The more invisible I am in your Now, the better.”

  “Hm!” Spacetime? What the devil kind of a word is that? And there she goes again, raving about her Now and his Now. It’s really quite perplexing, and she has never once offered an explanation. “Very well. But I want you to know, I do not approve of this stunt at all.”

  “Duly noted, Mr. Watkins. And I want you to know, I do not require your approval to do whatever I want to do.” She giggles. Quite disconcerting.

  “And don’t go temperance on me.”

  “That I can’t promise. But,” she adds with a grave look, “I don’t think preaching will make much of a dent in your thick skull, so I won’t.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it. I can assure you, preaching doesn’t make a dent at all.”

  And they set off together, he striding down the street, the handsome young gentleman, she trotting behind him, his coolie in disguise.

  Yes. Father would be outraged.

  But is he?

  He most certainly is. Outraged and amazed by Zhu Wong, by her easy banter now that he’s had his way with her. No simpering or blushes or batted eyelashes. Not like any other woman he’s ever known.

  *

  Ah, strolling along the Cocktail Route! What a splendid tradition the gentlemen of San Francisco enjoy, hatching business schemes and enjoying a healthful constitutional as they promenade from saloon to saloon. The Route proceeds along Market Street, zigzags up Montgomery to Sutter, then down to Market again along Kearny or Stockton. And all along the Route, first-class establishments sparkle like stars in the sky. Each place, Daniel fervently believes, deserving of his respectful visit.

  Gambling resorts, sporting houses, and steam baths also offer their delights. During the stroll, which the city’s most important gentlemen engage in as a nightly ritual, one may encounter friends and potential friends, acquaintances and associates, competitors and enemies, newcomers and ladies of a certain charm. Milton and Shakespeare are quoted, Latin and Greek flow like wine. The latest political gambit, gossip, and rumors are mulled over, interpreted, and adjudged. Business deals are discussed, negotiated, and consummated. No one cusses, guffaws, or tells lewd stories. Not along the Cocktail Route, sir.

  Daniel notices a flit of shadows behind them, and Zhu whirls around, anxiety stitching her brow beneath the brim of her fedora.

  “Boo how doy?” she whispers.

  He surveys the street. A couple of thugs are roaming about, nobody he knows. No hatchet men, either.

  “By God, why are you so skittish? What business have you with hatchet men?”

  “None,” she says, but continues to glance about anxiously.

  “If you say so.” He heartily disapproves of her propensity to dissemble. “We’ll start at the Reception. Always good for the first visit.”

  Daniel eagerly sweeps through the grand mahogany doors of the Reception Saloon. The dark, high-ceilinged burrow is splendidly lit by gaslights in crystal candelabra. Liquor bottles banked before vast mirrors behind the bar glow like rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and topaz. Fastidious bartenders in white jackets attend to one’s every need. They’ll hold a gentleman’s gold and other valuables behind the bar for the evening, ensuring he won’t lose his kit and caboodle to the pickpockets who roam these streets, the thugs, or a light-fingered sporting gal. The black-and white-marble floor gleams like a giant checkerboard. Polished brass spittoons stand between each brass and leather bar stool. Daniel sniffs. The air is thick and rich with cooking smells. Among the delightful odors wafts the delicate fragrance of the Reception’s specialty, Maryland terrapin.

  The bartender raises on eyebrow at Zhu, and Daniel says, “He’s my manservant.” He orders a Sazarac—rye whiskey, a dash of bitters, and a dash of absinthe shaken with ice and served in a glass rubbed with anisette. Father would die at the expense of four bits, but Daniel adores Sazaracs. “My just reward,” he tells Zhu. “I’m celebrating the entertainment of a creative thought I had this morning.”

  “What creative thought is that?” Zhu says in a lowered voice, hunching her shoulders, and concealing her delicate woman’s hands in her long sleeves. Very good. She’s quite a clever creature, he must admit.

  “There’s a scientific theory called the persistence of vision.”

  “Oh, right. The principle behind how our perceptual apparatus works. Led to the technology of movies.”

  “Movies?” What an odd word!

  “Yep. But of course, insects and other creatures have evolved other perceptual means. Just goes to show you, that old cosmicist homily is so true. ‘What you see is what you are.’”

  “What on earth are you jabbering about?” he demands.

  “Never mind. Sorry, Daniel, I interrupted you. What was your creative thought?”

  The director of the Pacific Title Insurance Company huddles over bourbon with the president of Bankers Investment Company. Daniel should join them. New financing is just what he needs to refurbish that blight of a boardinghouse, perhaps develop those weeds in the Western Addition, too. He can practically hear Father’s stern scolding voice. “Go on, Daniel. He who hesitates is lost, sir.”

  But Daniel does hesitate. Why can’t he linger with his new mistress discussing the persistence of vision? Movies? What does she mean? Why can’t he ever do what he wants to do?

  The bartender brings his Sazarac, and he knocks it back. Ah, finally a sharp feeling against which he can rebel—shirking family duties, carousing with a degenerate woman, guilt. Better and better. To hell with new financing. He’ll see about new financing some other day.

  “I dreamed up a device,” he says, “a machine, a gadget. I envisioned how the seven phases of action of magic lantern shows and Herschel’s spinning coin and the painted parrot flapping in a Zoetrope could be made into something brand-new. A device that could make the mermaid in the painting swim across a whole wall as if she were reality itself!”

  “I’m quite sure it’s possible,” Zhu says seriously. Not laughing at him.

  “You are?” At her vigorous nod, “I’m sure, too. The trick is to keep the sequence continuous with a mechanical device. Perhaps a miniature steam engine?”

  “A steam engine?” Now she laughs.

  “Why not?”

  She shrugs
. “Invent this device, then.”

  “I intend to!” He raises his empty glass. “To my moving picture machine! I want some lunch. Come help me with my plates.”

  Zhu dutifully follows him to the tremendous buffet. The Reception offers free lunch every day, any time of day, to anyone who buys a drink. Daniel surveys the platters crowding the sideboard. There’s a Virginia ham baked in champagne. A whole goose ringed by roast quail. A cheddar cheese the size of a wagon wheel. Grilled bear steaks, a side of venison, broiled rattlesnake, stewed rabbit, porcupine cutlets. Plates of salami and sausages, sardines and salmon. Prawns the size of a man’s thumb. Sweet and sour pickles, celery and gherkins, radishes and water chestnuts, onions and tomatoes, artichoke hearts. Loaves of rye and pumpernickel. Pots of mustards, mayonnaises, ketchups, and clarified butter. More cheese—rounds of brie, gorgonzola, mascarpone. Molded domes of liverwurst, pates and puddings. And of course, in silver chafing dishes, the famed Maryland terrapin.

  Daniel heaps two plates with delicacies, hands them to Zhu, then loads up two more for him to carry, balancing a dish of terrapin between his thumbs.

  “This is obscene, Daniel,” she says, surveying the feast on their table.

  “What is obscene?” He feels so refreshed after the Sazarac, he starts to take her hand, then forcibly stops himself. What if someone important saw him holding a coolie’s hand?

  “Well!” She waves her hand at the magnificence before them. “You people treat eating and drinking like a hobby.”

  “And a very fine hobby it is, too.”

  “What about people who don’t have enough to eat?”

  “What people?” he says, dipping a prawn in clarified butter.

  More men stream into the Reception. Next to the director of the title company and the investment banker crowd politicians, financiers, newspaper men, merchants. Corpulent men in striped trousers and fine silk cravats, top hats or brushed bowlers, gaily colored vests, brocaded waistcoats, sable collars on cashmere topcoats. Chunks of gold glint at cuffs, on cravats, on fingers and wrists. Abundant beards and mustaches fur plump-cheeked faces. Though Daniel proudly boasts a thirty-two inch waist, he would not be unhappy sporting a girth like the ironworks heir, whose waistcoat is fashioned entirely of silver sealskin.

  “The men of Chinatown, for instance,” she persists, bending near so he can hear her over the rising din. “Surely you know that peasants are tricked or kidnapped, forced aboard clipper ships, and sold into slavery in this very city. Slavery as pernicious as the servitude of black people over which American people were willing to die.”

  “Not the war again. Mariah was raving about the war today, too.”

  “And what about the women of Chinatown? Surely you also know that Chinese girls, some as young as five years old, are sold into slavery, then prostitution. They’re beaten, stripped of their property, starved, and imprisoned.”

  Daniel notices some fellows barging through the Reception’s mahogany doors and casually turns to look at them. It’s those thugs again, in shabby workingmen’s togs. Not the sort of swells who are welcome on the Cocktail Route, but there’s no law against them coming in for a drink. The poor devils can eat like kings for the price of a beer.

  He doesn’t want to hear this kind of talk from his mistress. It sounds too familiar, like the dreadful lady on the train, Donaldina Cameron.

  “My dear miss,” he says curtly, “that is their lot in life.”

  “They’re people, Daniel!”

  “There’s nothing you or I can do about them, even if we wanted to.”

  She glowers at him. “There is something I can do for one girl in this Now. And there’s plenty you could do for a lot of them.”

  “Oh, damn it, Zhu. The coolies and the slave girls, you and Mariah. All women, really, and the inferior races. You are what you are and where you are due to the forces of evolution.”

  “Oh, yeah. Muse warned me about that, too. You’re a social Darwinist. Like being born in a time of war or drought or pestilence or of a certain gender is the same thing as why some species have bifocal vision or red feathers on their asses.”

  He starts at her loose language, shakes his finger at her. “Mr. Darwin’s theory explains much about society, too.”

  “I see. And I suppose it’s your lot in life to wallow in self-pity over the ruin of your father’s business and punish yourself over your mother’s death. I suppose it’s your lot in life to smoke and drink and gorge yourself to death.”

  He orders another Sazarac, just to spite her. “I do not wallow, miss. It is my lot in life to rehabilitate my father’s errors in business. And I shall do so.”

  “You don’t seem to care very much about rehabilitating his business.”

  “Of course I do. I care very much about securing my prosperity in the future.”

  “Ah!” She leans forward, face flushed, green eyes glittering. “Then you do acknowledge there’s a future?”

  “Naturally.”

  “If you care at all about the future, then you must care about the people who don’t have enough to eat today. Don’t you see? You must care about them because they’re a part of the future, too.”

  “Not my future.”

  “Yes, your future. Everyone’s future. Everything you do now affects everything else. It’s all connected. That’s the principle behind cosmicism—that humanity cocreates reality with the Universal Intelligence. With the Cosmic Mind.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re a communist.”

  “No, no. I said cosmicism.” She flicks her eyes to the side in the peculiar way she does and mumbles to herself, “All right, all right, Muse. The Tenets. I know.” To him, “Daniel, the future can only survive because people care. Live responsibly or die.”

  “How tiresome.” He gulps his second Sazarac. “Pardon me, but you’ve got it all wrong. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we surely do die.”

  *

  The golden late afternoon deepens into a shadowy dusk and gentlemen throng the sidewalks, jostling into saloons, tossing coins to beggars beseeching from the gutters, negotiating with painted ladies clustering at every street corner.

  Usually Daniel loves the hustle-bustle, but now his nerves grow frazzled. Zhu’s skittishness is contagious. She walks slightly behind him, as is proper for a manservant, but he’s well aware how wary and somber she is. He glances over his shoulder, notices those thugs again. They duck around the corner at Post when he looks. A moment later, when he looks again, there they are.

  He seizes her elbow and hustles her down the street, quickening their pace, which seems to please her. She moves like a man in her crude sandals, keeping pace with him. That’s good. Daniel likes speed. Speed is the key to the persistence of vision, the telegraph, the train, the transoceanic steamships. Modern life is speed. He hurries to each pleasure along the Cocktail Route as though this may be the last time he will ever savor pleasure again.

  At Haquette’s Palace of Art on Post near Kearny, Daniel samples the aged Kentucky bourbon, thick and rich and fragrant, and gazes at the art–paintings of nudes, nudes, nudes, and more nudes. He’s starving again by the time they stroll into Flood and O’Brien’s, must sample the corned beef and cabbage plate washed down with Black Velvets, champagne with a mug of stout. He orders a crisp gin cocktail at the Peerless, a Pisco Punch at the Bank Exchange.

  “You must try this,” he says, offering Pisco Punch to Zhu. “Go on, no one will notice.”

  “I don’t drink, Daniel.”

  “You’ve never tasted anything like it,” he insists. Pisco Punch is concocted of a mysterious fiery Peruvian brandy that one else in the world has been able to procure save for the proprietor of the Bank Exchange. “Do try it, my angel,” he says, pressing the glass to her lips. “Smooth as silk, hot as fire, long as love. Down the hatch.”

  She is as tight-lipped as a temperance worker. Oh, fine. Daniel finishes the Pisco Punch himself. He samples the crab stew at the Occidental, devours roast turkey at Lucky
Baldwin’s. Beneath the jeweled cornucopia chandeliers, his strange little mistress rails on about the evils of greed.

  “My dear,” he says, throwing an arm around her shoulders. To hell what the other fellows think. “All this talk of the lower classes, of women and slaves. Of the future and my responsibility for the suffering of others. All right, I grant you it’s a shame and a sorrow. But I say, forget all sorrow. That is our highest duty in life—to live. And to forget.”

  “I believe our highest duty is to live and to remember.”

  “By God, I remember too much. And, somehow, not enough.”

  She rests her hand on his beneath the table. “What don’t you want to remember, Daniel? Tell me.”

  Remember. His heart tumbles, spinning him around and around. He doesn’t want to remember, but he does. Bits and pieces. He does.

  “It was 1881,” he says, leaning close, his lips nearly touching her cheek.

  Saint Louis languished beneath incipient summer, the fecund heat ripe with fruit and disease. Daniel, a lazy boy of seven, sucked on sugar cubes Mama heaped in silver bowls. He remembered the heat, the smell of mold, of corn whiskey. The heat squeezed sweat off everyone’s brow, filmed skin beneath cotton and silk. That smell of mold, mud, mint, Southern Comfort, overripe peaches, and sickness—it nauseated him just to remember it.

  Cholera was everywhere. Father conferred with the priest, city councilmen, merchants, the great landowners, shippers who worked the river. They knew the infection had to do with the heat, with moisture, rot, and perhaps insects, vermin in the water. But his father and those men were powerless before the slippery devilish disease that wrung life so painfully from a person’s gut. Even lazy little Daniel could sense their defeat.

  “Yet it seemed as if she was sick ever since I was born,” Daniel tells Zhu, sipping a Bonanza. “That’s what she would tell me. ‘Danny, since the day you were born, I have been sick.’”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “Guilty, of course.” He glares at her. What kind of damn fool question is that? He doesn’t want to think about his feelings. He wants to forget about his feelings. But she only smiles at him in the smoky darkness of the bar. “But that summer she was worse. Much worse. I remember her crying. Crying in the night.”