The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  “She contracted cholera?”

  “Well, that cannot be, can it? She would have died, like poor old Tchaikovsky. No, no, she lingered on for years.”

  “Then dysentery, maybe?”

  “You know, I… .I’m not sure. She would have died of that, too, wouldn’t she? Oh, but her pain! Our doctor put her on the Montgomery Ward iron tonic. A jigger every two hours. Vile stuff. I tasted it, of course. A concoction of finely ground beef and grains of citrate of iron dissolved in pure sherry wine.”

  “Your doctor prescribed booze to a chronically ill woman?”

  “Now, now, my angel, it was a tonic, not booze. The tonic calmed her, soothed her. Father saw an immediate improvement, and so did I. She stopped crying. She was so ugly when she cried. I wanted her to look beautiful. We all did.”

  He lights his fifteenth ciggie for the evening and draws the smoke down hard. He welcomes the twitch of pain deep in his lungs. Lets him know he’s alive.

  She seizes the ciggie from his fingers, holds it like a piece of offal. “Why are you so hell-bent on self-destruction?”

  He seizes the ciggie back. “I am not self-destructing, I am smoking. I love to smoke. When I haven’t eaten, smoking settles my stomach. And when I’ve eaten too much, smoking settles my stomach then, too. And one cannot possibly drink properly without a smoke. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Well, for starters, smoking’s going to kill you. Rot your mouth, your throat, your lungs, induce other cancers.

  “Rot. I do apologize about my story. I’ve talked too much about rot, and now you’ve got rot on your mind.”

  “You people know about lung cancer in this Now.”

  “And when will this horror overtake me?”

  “One day. Someday. Someday comes sooner than you think.”

  “Always one day, someday. I cannot think about someday, I tell you. It’s a struggle for me to negotiate this moment right now.”

  She rises angrily and strides out of Lucky Baldwin’s.

  He dashes after her. “Zhu! Zhu!” Gentlemen turn and stare.

  He catches up with her, seizes her arm. “Zhu, please. You must behave yourself. You promised you would. This is all quite improper.”

  “I won’t be your mistress if you don’t respect yourself and your future.”

  “Very well. Very well!” The sudden exertion makes him dizzy. Perhaps he’s reached his limit. “Let’s walk. Let’s talk about the future.”

  But anxiety twists and sharpens in him as they stroll along the Cocktail Route, past Montgomery, past Kearny, past Dupont. He starts every time they encounter a gang of ragged fellows. His heart pounds as they turn every ill-lit corner. Beneath the tobacco smoke and booze and rich food, he can suddenly smell his own fear.

  “Daniel, what is it?” Zhu whispers as they reach the Dunne Brothers at Eddy and Market.

  “Someone is following us,” he whispers back. “I’m sure it’s the same fellows I’ve seen all evening.”

  “I’ve seen them, too.”

  “You have?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Listen, my dear, I may have enemies.”

  “What enemies?” She stops and gazes up at him, her strange eyes bright behind her tinted spectacles. In his bleary gaze, she is sympathy incarnate. An angel, a lady, a woman—what? Something turns in him like a knife.

  “A fellow defaulted on a boardinghouse Father financed. The note at breakfast, that was from him. Most impolite. Perhaps he’s sent some thugs.” Though Daniel doesn’t really think that’s likely. Dotty old Mr. Ekberg? Still, this is San Francisco.

  “Perhaps,” she says, “I’ve got enemies, too.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. I went to see a girl today, the girl I’m supposed to rescue.” At his bewildered expression, “The girl who was with me when Jessie bought me from Chee Song Tong. The hatchet men took her away, remember?”

  He isn’t sure at first, then he does remember the day he arrived at 263 Dupont Street. He nods. “Why are you supposed to rescue her?” As if any of this makes any sense.

  “She was sold to a brothel. Damn it, she’s just a kid. There are other reasons, too, that I can’t explain. Anyway, I’ve got to get her out of there.”

  “And does the tong know you intend to rescue her?”

  “No, actually they don’t. Not yet. But one of the tong men told me today he was interested in me.”

  “May I remind you, you’re indentured to Jessie Malone.”

  “You think Chee Song Tong gives a damn about that?”

  “I get your drift.”

  They duck into the Dunne Brothers Saloon. The air is so thick with tobacco smoke, he can barely see three feet in front of him.

  “Just a quick nightcap,” he says, “and then we’ll go home. I promise.”

  “I can’t take any more smoke,” she says. “I’ll wait for you by the door. Don’t be long, please.”

  Daniel greets his fellow tipplers, says hello to dapper Frank Norris, who is drinking deeply at the bar. He pays for his nightcap and knocks it back, then cuts through the convivial crowd. But Zhu is not waiting by the door.

  He senses her distress even before he hears her cry, filtering catlike from the alley next to the Dunne Brothers. He pulls the Remington derringer from the back of his belt and dashes into the alley.

  Not one man, but three circle around her. The scrappy thugs he’s seen all night. They’ve got her between them, lunging at her as she whirls like a dervish, keeping them at bay.

  “She’s just a girl,” he shouts. “Leave her alone!”

  The first thug turns from Zhu, lurches at Daniel. Before Daniel can jump back, the thug swiftly kicks, kicks high, his boot toe connecting with Daniel’s wrist. The derringer flies from his hand.

  “That’s a message from Mr. Harvey,” the first thug says.

  “Who? What?”

  “Mr. Harvey says you friggin’ leave his poolroom alone.”

  Mr. Harvey? Then the name swims up in Daniel’s memory like a big ugly catfish, pale whiskers streaming. The shack in Sausalito? Got to be.

  “This isn’t worth it, man!” Daniel cries. “It’s not worth thrashing us!”

  He backs away, and the second thug pounces, punching and thrusting hard fists into his back, his gut, his poor old kidneys.

  “So you say!” The first thug seizes him, and knuckledusters pop against his mouth, shooting white-hot sparks through his jaw.

  But through his pain and dizziness, Daniel glimpses an amazing sight—Zhu whirling through the alley in some strange purposeful dance. She flies around the third thug, who gapes her, openmouthed.

  She assails the second thug beating Daniel. He hears the sickening slap of flesh on flesh, masculine grunts of pain and surprise. She worries him away, keeping the third thug at bay, but the first thug strikes Daniel across the back of his head with the knuckledusters.

  The world spins and shatters.

  “My dear Zhu!” he shouts. A gay tune pounded out on a piano roars in his ears, filling his head with chaos.

  6

  Absinthe at the Poodle Dog

  “Jar me, I’ll charge ‘em two bits a glass for that dago wine,” Jessie Malone tells herself as her rockaway and pair trot smartly down Market Street. “Make ‘em pay, darlin’. Make ‘em pay.”

  And why not? What is she, after all these years? Still the wee sad orphan, that’s what, a-cryin’ herself to sleep. Mum and Pater cold in their graves when she and her sweet innocent Rachael started out on their own. Started out at Lily Lake where they swam like mermaids so long ago.

  Columbus Day turned out to be a very fine day for the eminent judge with a mustache like a walrus and a gut to match—the one who hears tenderloin matters and a long-time railbird—to touch her for twenty gold eagles. Twenty gold eagles! Half her winnings at Ingleside Racetrack. Jessie’s got a nose for the nags, there’s no more to her luck than that, though naturally every now and then she hears a tip at the Mansion when a nobbler’
s fixing a race and booze loosens somebody’s lip. But how in hell did the good judge know she’s banked a hundred thousand dollars of her hard-earned cash at Wells Fargo Bank? And what kind of polite conversation is that?

  “Good afternoon, Miss Malone, aren’t you the lucky one today,” his honor the railbird said, miraculously meeting up with her as she was collecting her winnings at the cashier’s window. “Why, I’ll bet you’re going to add some pocket change to that Wells Fargo account of yours. Eh, a hundred thousand big ‘uns, I’ll be dadblamed. That’s quite a bundle for a little lady like you.”

  “And every penny of it, Your Honor, earned a-workin’ my fingers to the bone.”

  “Or on the flat of your back, eh? Oh, I do beg your pardon,” his honor said when she sucked in her breath so sharply that her liver ached. “I do beg your pardon, but could you spare twenty eagles of your good luck for your dear old Samuel?”

  As if dear old Samuel doesn’t get his in the usual way—a brown leather purse delivered on the fifteenth of the month. Gold, of course, a boy from the American Messenger Service.

  Hmph! But as rude as he was, could she say no? His honor spoke to her discreetly. Not a soul witnessed their exchange. And she might very well find herself before his honor’s bench—next week, perhaps—if the bulls decide to raid the Parisian Mansion on one trumped-up rap or another. Why, his honor wouldn’t know her from Adam then. Or from the Serpent.

  If that doesn’t get her in the neck. Still hopping mad, Jessie skillfully navigates the rockaway through the jostling evening traffic among reckless hacks and drunken cabbies. Her matched geldings—chestnuts the color of rose gold—trot like a dream, attentive to her every command. She’s also got an excellent hand with the steeds, won’t let some whiskeyed lunk drive ‘em. She always drives herself. The rockaway is a very fine vehicle paneled in finest cherrywood, piped and upholstered in chestnut leather. She always wears gloves of chestnut pigskin when she drives, and a throw of chestnut cashmere wrapped over her lap. The whole getup costs a pretty penny to maintain, plus she has to take a cab to and from Harwell’s Livery over in Cow Hollow where she garages the rockaway and stables her horses. But it’s worth it, even if she only goes driving five or six times a month. She holds her head as high as a duchess as she passes the diamond broker and that wife of his. The wife glares. That hateful look them Snob Hill ladies always give her.

  “Pull your eyes back in your sockets, missus,” Jessie mutters.

  But a tiny corner of her heart always stings when she sees the wives’ faces. Is she forever to be shut out of polite society? Will she never feel respectable?

  “If you was more of a slut and less of a shrew, your old man wouldn’t come around to me,” she mutters as the diamond broker’s carriage passes by. The sting sharpens. “Would you like to know how he likes it? With two bouncing blonds at the same time, that’s how.”

  Jessie takes great pains to accommodate the diamond broker. That’s why her earrings glitter brighter than the stones on that wife of his. Hmph! That eases the sting a bit. Miss Jessie Malone’s diamonds is bigger and brighter than the diamond broker’s wife’s. Miss Jessie Malone drives her own rockaway and pair.

  But there, a sight catches her eye. Lordy, ain’t that Mr. Watkins? On the corner of Market Street and Eddy? Despite the usual crowd of bigwigs and bulls, bruisers and tools promenading along the Cocktail Route, she could never miss Mr. Watkins’s fine cut, his bearing, his refined form into which his spiritual essence has been so purely poured. She always feels a stab of anxious affection at the sight of Daniel, as though he might disappear if she blinks.

  With an awful jolt, she also sees the tangle of thugs, three of ‘em, fists flyin’, and Daniel reelin’, while a scrawny bespectacled coolie kicks and thrusts and punches at the thugs in a most peculiar way.

  Sure and a peculiar way Jessie has seen before. There’s a name for it—juju something. Ain’t that what Mr. Yakamora called the taut poses and deft moves he once showed her in the parlor of the Parisian Mansion? Mr. Yakamora is a porcelain importer over in the Fillmore. He always asks for plump blonds, though of course he reveres his petite dark wife who waits patiently for him in Tokyo while he scrapes together his fortune in America. The wife has waited eleven years. Or at least eleven years is as long as Jessie has been servicing the needs of her dear friend Mr. Yakamora.

  Yep, juju something, a style of hand-to-hand combat from the Far East. Jessie recognizes the movements, despite the shadows cast over the fracas. The coolie whirls and dives, yelling.

  Yelling in a high, womanly voice. Say. Hasn’t Jessie heard that voice before?

  Jessie cracks her horsewhip as Daniel rises, stumbling, the back of his head bleeding, swings at a thug, and misses. The other thugs tear at his fine clothes. His face is flushed, his collar askew, his bowler pushed up on his sweaty forehead. He throws another punch and staggers. Blood trickles down his face, too.

  “Mr. Watkins!” she cries.

  Jessie clucks to the geldings, cuts through traffic. A gift from an attaché to the ambassador, the geldings were. And last autumn it was, a party for some poxy barons who’d invested in certain municipal bonds and dropped load at the opera. It was a swell party, too, plenty of champagne and whiskey. She made a bundle that night. And though she had the girls douche with mercuric cyanide afterwards, Rosa and Dolores came down with the pox only too soon. Jessie had to turn them out to her Morton Alley cribs. A shame, but the biz is the biz. And now the geldings are all hers.

  Jessie pulls up to the curb, reaches in the glove box. She finds the silver flask of Jamaican brandy, bites off a nip to steady her nerves. Then she seizes her horsewhip, stands unsteadily, and cracks the whip but good over the thugs’ noggins. The geldings rear. “Whoa!” she cries, pulling them up and falling on her bustle onto the driver’s seat. She lands another lashing, this time across the thugs’ backs.

  “That’s from Mr. Harvey!” cries the thug in the slouch hat, landing one last punch across Daniel’s kidneys. Jessie winces. She can practically feel the blow in her liver. “Keep yer friggin’ mitts off his joint!” Dodging the scrawny coolie, the thugs turn and flee.

  The coolie hoists Daniel to his feet, slings his arm across one shoulder, and staggers to the rockaway. “Help me, Miss Malone,” he says in a ragged voice, his fedora knocked askew, his queue unraveling.

  “What in tarnation?” Jessie leaps down, seizes Daniel’s other shoulder. Together she and the coolie boost him into the back seat of the rockaway where he collapses with a curse and a groan. The coolie takes off his fedora, wipes sweat from his smooth, pale forehead.

  “Jar me,” Jessie whispers, staring. “Missy? Zhu? Is that you?” For a moment, the person standing before her, heaving for breath, is a puzzle. A riddle that don’t make sense. Well, tan her hide, it is Zhu! “What in the blue blazes do you think you’re doing, gadding about dressed like that? You could get arrested.”

  “For impersonating a man, I know.” Zhu shrugs and smooths back her hair, yanking the fedora over her head. “Sorry, Miss Malone, but I had some business to attend to.” She laughs softly at Jessie’s astonishment.

  “Don’t you dare laugh at me.” Jessie shakes her finger at her. “How dare you gad about in peasant’s rags? You, my servant, my bookkeeper, my trusted… .oh, I don’t know what to call you! What will people think to see you?”

  “It’s no reflection on you or the business,” the chit says, climbing into the backseat with Daniel.

  “Like hell it ain’t!”

  “No one saw me, Miss Malone. Can we get out of here? Please?”

  Jessie clucks to the geldings who canter off, magnificently terrified.

  She’s so rattled, it’s all she can do to drive and the nighttime traffic is a fiddler’s bitch. She pulls up at a traffic jam on Montgomery. Looks like an accident, the tangle of a beer wagon and the beery driver of a cab. The horse screaming in pain, how Jessie hates that. The passenger in the cab is climbing out, pushing up his sleeves,
spoiling for fisticuffs.

  As she steadies the geldings, waiting to pass by, Jessie glances back.

  It isn’t just that Zhu is skinny. The girl is muscular and angular, built like some creature other than a woman. She doesn’t slouch her shoulders, doesn’t bat her eyes. She has no hips to speak of in those denim trousers. She’s so slim, Jessie often frets about her health. She is bold and forthright, almost intimidating in her directness, and nothing much intimidates the Queen of the Underworld. She holds her head up, doesn’t simper or defer. She moves and acts unlike any girl or woman—rich or poor, lady or whore—Jessie has ever met before.

  “I’m still awaitin’ your explanation, missy.”

  “I bought some clothes.”

  “Those ain’t clothes. You got perfectly fine clothes. I bought you the mauve silk myself.”

  “Which I love. Thank you, Miss Malone.”

  “Then why the coolie’s getup?”

  “So I can walk around Chinatown without being noticed.”

  “Jar me.” As astonished as she is, Jessie is ever practical, and what Zhu says actually makes sense.

  Zhu peers out the window at the street corner where Jessie whipped the thugs. “Daniel’s got trouble.”

  “Hmph! I daresay Mr. Watkins has got more trouble than you or I know.” Jessie clears her throat. “I saw you fightin’ with them thugs. How the devil did you learn to do that?”

  “I’m trained in the martial arts, Miss Malone,” she says matter-of-factly. “Where and When I come from, I served as a soldier for years.”

  “A soldier!” Jessie guffaws. Scrawny little Zhu, a soldier? Jessie owns a magnificent painting of the mythical Amazon, her thick loins girded with a leopard skin, her curls bound up in a leather thong, her left breast shockingly amputated so that she may more accurately aim her bow and arrow at the enemy horde. The Amazon clutches her weapon in gleaming curvaceous arms. Zhu, an Amazon? “You ain’t no soldier, missy.”

  “But I am.”