The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  Men cheer, others boo. When Walsh wheels at the opposite end of the field, Jessie spies blood leaking through his breeches in a bright red line.

  “One point for Sergeant Walsh! One penalty for Mr. Ross!” shouts the referee.

  The tumult grows louder, and a fracas breaks out at the croupier’s table. “Cheatin’! That’s cheatin’, he can’t friggin’ hit ‘im from behind!” The armed guards hustle the protesting gambler away, toss him out into the crowd.

  The contestants rein in their horses, whirl, and pause. A boy offers Sergeant Walsh a rag, but Walsh waves the rag away, sneering behind the fencing mask. Ah, darlin’, Jessie thinks, her heart pounding in her breast. Be careful.

  “Ready, steady, go!”

  Jessie shouts as they charge again. “Get him! Get him! Get him, Walsh!”

  Ross brandishes his saber at shoulder level, yelling, “Face me, you bastard!” He whacks Walsh as he gallops past, striking him full across the chest

  In the instant of passing, an enraged Walsh whips his saber up and heavily down again.

  Ross roars in agony, plummets off his stallion. When the dust clears, Jessie can see that his Prussian helmet is split in two. A mob descends on the fallen man.

  “Did you see that?” Zhu shouts. “Did you see what he did to his helmet? His skull must be shattered!”

  Jessie seizes her hand, and the two women push toward the wounded man. “Step aside!” Jessie shouts. “I know a thing or two about injuries. Clear the way. Stand aside, I say!”

  Indeed she does know a thing or two about the healing arts, as any madam must if she’s to stay in the biz. She’s seen enough fisticuffs to fill a book.

  “Die, die, die!” chants a contingency of the crowd, guffawing, spitting, slapping shoulders. Certain gamblers will win a very nice premium should Ross go to his ultimate defeat.

  Another contingency, red-faced with rage, throw off their topcoats, fumble with cuff links and buttons, roll up sleeves. “We’ll not hear your taunts!” the gang yells, advancing through the shadows.

  The crowd reluctantly lets Jessie and Zhu through. Jessie kneels next to Duncan Ross. A skin-and-bones fellow with tobacco-stained hands weeps as he cradles Ross’s bloody head.

  “’Ere, it’s that scarlet woman,” says another fellow standing over them both. A rat of a man, with pink eyes and a pointed face beneath his cheap bowler, he’d be a crib customer, Jessie thinks. She would never let a rat like this into the Parisian Mansion. “Don’t let ‘er touch ‘im. She’s likely to give ‘im the pox.”

  “And who in hell are you?” She restrains herself from spitting in the rat’s eye.

  “We’re ‘is trainers, chit,” the rat says, “and you’ll do well to leave ‘im alone.”

  “Take your hands away, you lunk, and let me have a look,” Jessie commands. Zhu kneels beside her.

  Duncan Ross’s proud head is drenched in blood, nearly making Jessie retch from the stink of life leaving the body. She smooths back his black hair, smooths away the blood, working her fingers down in the tear in his scalp till she can feel the cracked wound. A jagged edge is etched across his very skull, each portion of bone canting away from the other.

  “Jar me,” she whispers. “It’s hopeless. He’s a-goin’ to meet his Maker.”

  But Zhu gently places her hand over Jessie’s, works her fingers down, and feels the wound for herself. Suddenly she’s got a knife in her other hand. She bears the blade down on poor Duncan Ross’s head.

  “What the devil are you doing?” Jessie whispers. What will the mob do to them both if they find a strange Chinese woman, dressed as a coolie, hastening the demise of their champion?

  “Ssh, don’t worry,” Zhu says with a slight smile. Clicking a little knob on the hilt of the knife, she firmly and swiftly presses the blade across the wound as though slicing a melon.

  Jessie’s stomach clenches. But Mr. Ross’s skull does not split open. Zhu withdraws the knife and runs her fingers through his scalp. “Feel now.”

  Jessie runs her fingers through the black hair again, searching for that awful edge of ragged bone. But there’s nothing. His skull is smooth and whole again. Blood flows only from the scalp wound, which should heal all right if it doesn’t turn rotten.

  Jessie turns to Zhu, openmouthed. Her heartbeat throbs in her stomach beneath the stays of her corset. “What is that thing? What did you just do?”

  Zhu tucks the knife into a pocket in her tunic. “It’s just my mollie knife.”

  “That’s just a miracle! Let me see it. A mollie knife? But what is it? Where did you get it?”

  But Zhu shakes her head and stands, helping Jessie to her feet. Daniel sways over them, barely keeping his balance. Still, Jessie can see from his puzzled look that he witnessed it all. He frowns. The crowd begins to twitter and honk, inarticulate beasts on the verge of panic, a weird sound the like of which Jessie has never heard before. The start of a melee, of a riot. She’s read about the union strikes in Philadelphia and Chicago, how when violence starts, the crowd changes into some great ravening monster without reason or sensibility.

  “The bulls are here,” Daniel says. “Ladies, let us make our departure.”

  A squad of blue-suited, red-faced, cursing policemen scramble over the ridge by the cable car, wiping dirt off their hands as they gain the summit. They hoist out billy clubs.

  Jessie seizes one of Daniel’s hands, Zhu seizes the other, and they steer toward the opposite side of the jousting field, beyond the grounds of the German Castle to the far perimeter of Telegraph Hill where the slope angles down into velvety darkness and crude shacks cling to the cliff. Contractors have ruthlessly quarried the hill, blasting granite and shale from beneath the very feet of settlers perched on their fine precipice and carting away the rock to pave the city streets.

  Other spectators scramble and careen down the rugged hillside, too. No one wants to get pinched. In the dim light, Jessie spies Fanny Spiggott clinging to the arm of a solicitous gentleman. How many treasures will Miss Spiggott’s nimble fingers free from the topcoat and vest of her gallant before they reach the bottom of the hill?

  “But I’m wearin’ fine shoes!” Jessie protests as Daniel guides her down the rocky slope. Zhu deftly scales the slope in her flat sandals, loping from to grade to grade like a mountain goat. She offers Jessie a steadying hand, but Jessie declines.

  “I’ll take the low road, thank you, missy.” A blue funk settles over her soul.

  Why? Because Zhu Wong is a Chinese girl, a chit, a wench. With unusual qualifications and talents, it’s true. A smart kid, perhaps even a trusted ally. But she’s Jessie’s servant, for pity’s sake. Jessie’s possession, bound by a contract under which the creature must serve without question. In short, she’s not a person. Not a person the way Daniel J. Watkins is a person. Certainly not a person with a station in life.

  Yet this person—this Zhu Wong—has done something Miss Jessie Malone has never been able to do herself.

  Save someone’s life.

  *

  Jessie releases Daniel’s hand and stumbles behind Zhu the rest of the way down to Green Street, leaving the cries of the coppers and the melee behind. They trudge back to the noodle factory and collect her rockaway and pair from Rosita. The good widow has watered and rubbed the geldings down, and is feeding them carrots and apples. Jessie pays the hitching fee and tips her a double eagle.

  “Absinthe! I must have absinthe!” Daniel declares. “Jousting and mountain climbing have left me quite parched.”

  “Daniel,” Zhu says sharply, “you are out of control.”

  Jessie laughs. Now there’s an odd expression.

  But Daniel only says, “Don’t go temperance on me, miss, I warn you.”

  “I’ll give you another neurobic, even though the Tenets say I’m not supposed to. I just want to go home. I want to go to bed.” Zhu tries out a flirtatious look, but she’s better at slugging thugs and working medical miracles than she is at flirting with men. Jessie w
ill have to coach her. The coolie getup doesn’t help at all.

  “’By God, what is a ‘neurobic’? What, pray tell, are ‘the Tenets’ you keep talking about? And what on earth did you do to poor Duncan Ross’s skull? It is all quite brain-wracking. Absinthe, I say! Nothing else will do.”

  “A word of advice, missy,” Jessie says as she heaves herself into the driver’s seat. Zhu and Daniel climb in the backseat. Jessie clucks to the geldings, and they plunge into the night. “You cannot tell a man like Mr. Watkins what he can and cannot do. Ain’t that so, sir?”

  “Quite so, madam,” Daniel says expansively, evidently cheered by the jousting tourney. “By God, my Queen of the Underworld, where can I get absinthe in this burg? And not some damn cocktail. A proper bottle of Pernod Fils.”

  Zhu huffs and groans and sighs, but Jessie pays her no mind. “I know just the place, Mr. Watkins. We’ll cut and run to the Poodle Dog. Good ol’ Pierre stocks the Green Fairy. Sure and I’ll try a taste myself.”

  “Jessie,” Zhu says, “you know that pain in your side? Your kidneys could be quitting on you. Absinthe is the last thing you need.”

  “Missy, my kidneys ain’t quit on me in forty years.”

  “That’s just great. Between the absinthol, thujone, and ethanol, you’ll wind up with lesions on your brain. You, too, Daniel. Did you know that wormwood oil is highly toxic? It could kill you with just one sip.”

  “Jar me, missy,” Jessie says, turning to glance at her. “What mumbo-jumbo will you dream up next?”

  “Eat, drink, and be merry,” Daniel declares, “for tomorrow we die, and that’s that.” Jessie savors the good strong scent of his cigarette. “Miss Malone, my mistress has been lecturing me all night about responsibility. Responsibility and the future. Why, I do believe our Zhu is a preacher, a chemist, a physician, and a prestidigitator, all in one.” He says to Zhu, his voice tight, “Now, about poor Duncan’s skull?’

  “It’s just my molecular knife,” Zhu says, flashing the thing, then tucking it back in her pocket. “The mollie knife induces molecular recombination in physical objects, that’s all.”

  “Ah, did you hear that, Miss Malone? ‘Molecular recombination’?”

  “Must be some newfangled gizmo from Boston I ain’t heard about yet.” After all that mountain climbing, she’s thirsty as a fish, too, and hungry enough to eat a bear. The rockaway passes a messenger boy idling on the corner. “Whoa!” she calls to her geldings, and calls to the boy, “You! C’mere!” She scrawls out a note to Daphne:

  SERVE RED WINE AT MIDNIGHT

  FOUR BITS A GLASS

  MISS MALONE

  She hands the note to the boy and pays him a bit. “Take this to the door maid at the Parisian Mansion and be quick about it if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” the boy says and darts away like a wild creature.

  Daphne had better stick around the Mansion till Jessie makes her appearance or she’ll be out of an easy job, starting tomorrow. Jessie turns the rockaway downtown, back to the glittering boom and bluster of the Cocktail Route. Beneath the golden gaslight, the nighttime crowd celebrates Columbus Day with increasing glee. A quartet of aspiring young tenors and baritones offer ballads for coins to be tossed into a neat row of upturned top hats.

  “They ain’t half bad,” Jessie calls over her shoulder to Zhu and Daniel and tosses her contribution across the macadam. “They may make it to the Tivoli Opera House sure and if they don’t kick the bucket first.”

  “Tomorrow we die,” Daniel says.

  “Tomorrow we live,” Zhu says. “We’ve got to.”

  Down they go into the hubbub of the city. A kinetoscope booth catches Daniel’s attention. Zhu leans out and stares at a couple of bespectacled communists shouting the philosophy of Karl Marx at a restless crowd of roughnecks. The Salvation Army bangs a bass drum next to a pitch man selling Kickapoo tonic beneath a showy flare.

  Jessie turns into Bush at Kearny, finds the little turnaround alley, and hitches her geldings at the back door of the Poodle Dog. Drivers and their hacks linger on the pavement, watching the crowd, smoking, joking. Two soiled doves dally among the drivers, their straw boaters tilted over their spit curls, and titter like lunatic school girls. Even in the gaslight Jessie can see the ravages of smallpox on their faces. There but for the grace of God. Has Jessie ever seen them before? So many scarred women flock to the Parisian Mansion looking for work, and so many are turned away, that she can’t remember all the ravaged faces.

  “Evening, Miss Malone,” calls Finney.

  “Hey, Jess,” calls a bold new boy.

  “Old Pierre don’t allow no Chinks in his establishment,” says another driver when they disembark.

  Jessie is at a loss because of course the Poodle Dog is a class joint. But Daniel chimes in, “He’s my manservant. He’s square,” and they all slip in the back door.

  Ah, the Dog. How well Jessie knows this place. The scarlet and gilt, the shimmering crystal and silver. How the Dog once used her, and how she’s used the Dog herself over these many long years. Through the back door and up the stairwell they climb. There are three floors to the Poodle Dog like them rings a-goin’ down to hell, but here they go up. Jessie cannot resist. She peeks out through the fringed scarlet curtains at the first floor.

  She spies the wink of diamond dog-collars on cashmere-clogged throats, closely covered wrists, chastely laced hands. The Parrot sisters, those Flood girls, parties of ladies from Rincon Hill, and the Smart Set from South Park dine with doddering great-uncles and creaky old grandfathers. That is the company who dines on the world-class French cuisine on the first floor.

  Zhu peers over her shoulder. “More recreational eating?”

  Jessie laughs at her odd words. The luscious scent of lobster in sweet cream infuses the room, and solicitous waiters glide across the floor, inquiring what the ladies want. Sure and the Smart Set is a well-larded crowd. Jessie touches her corseted waist. Even with her joie de vivre, she can be proud of her figure. She’s got her stuffing in all the right places. She’ll fit into Mr. Worth’s new Parisian dresses if it kills her. Plenty of the Smart Set are the daughters of ladies who plied Jessie’s trade in the good ol’ days of this very same fine establishment. The Gold Rush days before Mr. Ned Greenway started keeping track of who came from where and how and why.

  She climbs the stairwell to the second floor, Zhu and Daniel following, and peers through another lush fringe hanging over the doorway.

  “By God, is that not your Mr. Heald?” Daniel says.

  The second floor of the Poodle Dog is well attended by Snob Hill gentlemen and other renowned worthies of impeccable credentials. Well attended also by the beauties of the city, the ones known as homewreckers. Jessie glances curiously at Zhu, who in her coolie’s rags is a far cry from these bejeweled ladies. Yet this is the set Zhu ought to belong to—the mistresses. In the mauve silk, which sets off her golden complexion, dark hair, and remarkable green eyes, and a few gold baubles, Zhu would look just dandy here.

  They are actresses, singers, or dancers. Some are beautiful, some beautiful and smart, some smart enough to make themselves beautiful. A mistress in Jessie’s world makes her way in life as the devoted companion of a wealthy gentleman, one gentleman at a time. Which does not mean, of course, that these same gentlemen do not take their ease in Jessie’s parlor. Jessie has fended off more jealous mistresses than wives at the Parisian Mansion’s front door, though only a wife had the gumption to show up with a horsewhip and demonstrate its use when her husband stumbled outside.

  Jessie studies Mr. Heald and his dining companion, a petite Frenchwoman who sings passably well. Sure and her red hair is a dye job and her dress is two seasons old.

  “My diamonds is bigger,” she sniffs.

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Malone,” Zhu says, catching everything with those eyes of hers.

  “Missy, I could never live at the beck and call of the likes of Mr. Heald, and that is what a mistress must
do.” She looks back and forth between Zhu and Daniel, arching her eyebrows. “Mr. Heald is merely my dear friend. I am my own mistress.”

  “Good evening, Miss Malone,” says a feminine voice.

  Jessie turns to find his honor the railbird attempting to hurry past her as he climbs the stairwell with Maisy, one of Jessie’s ripe blonds at the Mansion. Maisy giggles and waves.

  “Why, good evening, Your Honor. Looks like my twenty double eagles will come a-flyin’ back to my own little hands, won’t they, darlin’?”

  His honor’s mouth drops open. He wasn’t expecting to pay that much for his evening’s pleasure. He also wasn’t expecting to run into Jessie Malone en route to the third floor of the Poodle Dog. Well, he knows the price now, don’t he?

  Jessie climbs the stairs behind the happy couple, mightily pleased at Maisy’s swinging hips. The unctuous old doorman greets them at the top of the stairs and ushers them down a hushed hallway past a score of closed doors, to the next available private suite.

  “Is this satisfactory, Miss Malone?” says the doorman with an arch look. He’s uncertain what to make of her latest ménage a trois. Sure and she’s met the old fart at the top of the stairs all the many long years she’s been escorting guests to the third floor of the Poodle Dog. His arch look annoys her.

  Jessie surveys the suite—the red velvet carpet and plush chairs, a divan, the small gilt dining tables, a silver bucket with champagne on melting ice. The paintings have gone dull over the years. Seascapes and mountains. Hmph!

  “It’ll have to do.” She hands the doorman a measly tip. “Bring us Pierre’s frog legs sauté sec, cracked crab, and a bottle of Pernod Fils with the works.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  She plumps down on the divan and pats the cushion beside her, smiling at Daniel. He sits, his eyes glittering with anticipation, and Jessie sighs. He cares nothing about their midnight tryst. Cares nothing for his mistress, if that’s what Zhu has become. He only cares about partaking of Pernod Fils. Jessie seldom pities any man, but she pities Daniel now.