The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  “If you keep going like this, Daniel, you sure as hell won’t live to see the twentieth century.”

  The San Rafael unceremoniously bangs against the dock, knocking them both off their feet.

  *

  Daniel takes Zhu’s hand again and they stride down the gangplank onto the dusty shores of Sausalito. It’s a homely port—raw streets pocked with potholes, railroad tracks laid in unsightly grooves right up to the ferry docks, a stinking slough thick with bilge. Importers transport apples and lumber down from Washington State on these tracks. The waterfront teems with saloons. Daniel smells the reek of booze, hears the guffaws and shouts of brawlers. The two dozen bruisers reel off the steamer, heading for the rowdy district. Painted chits promenade, right at home on these raw streets.

  Daniel spies a cheerier sight on the hills—a spectacular Queen Anne mansion and, farther up, a French provincial, and farther up still, something huge and Georgian. Sausalito may be a shipping port and a train terminus, but the burg is also a playground for the rich of San Francisco. The prestigious Pacific Yacht Club is down the shore, and several large and lovely hotels with lyrical names like Casa Madrona and Alta Mira are stationed well away from the riffraff. Many rich gentlemen’s mistresses live in those mansions and in those hotels, sequestered from Society’s scrutiny.

  “By God, I need a line and a drink,” he says and, dropping Zhu’s hand, practically sprints into Pete Fagan’s Saloon. He slaps down a silver bit and orders a shot of whiskey, which the barkeep delivers in an eye-blink. He knocks the whiskey back, goes and sits at a table. He fetches out his vial and his spoon, dips out a snort.

  Zhu takes a seat opposite him, ignoring the stares of the other patrons, and watches him snort away. Her eyes are moist. Well, that was Mama’s old trick, too. Neither his mother nor Zhu Wong nor any other woman will ever sway him with teary eyes. I’ve always been good to you, Danny, haven’t I? How he tried to please Mama, no matter what. And what good did it do?

  “Tears in your eyes,” he goads her, sudden anger fevering his blood. Or maybe it’s the whiskey. Or the line? “Just like every whore I’ve ever met. Trying to ruin me.”

  She refuses to rise to his challenge, but instead peers at him intently. “You change so quickly. I hardly know you from one moment to the next.”

  “Trying to ruin me. Just like Mama.” He regrets the words the minute they escape his lips.

  “Now, wait. I thought you loved your mother and pitied her because she was always in pain. A good woman like her.”

  “What a fine example of womanhood. Yes, she would have ruined me, too. She was always stinking after taking that blasted Montgomery Ward iron tonic. Probably why she allowed herself to be beguiled by common men. No wonder Father beat her. Now I understand. She was just a whore, after all her airs of being a fine lady.” He grins at her stunned expression. “Don’t look so startled, miss. She even got herself in the family way with another man and carried his bastard.”

  “Wow, you mean you’ve got a sibling?” she asks, her eyes sparkling with greedy interest. Women always have such an avidity for sordid family matters. “Brother or sister?”

  “Carried, I said.” He lurches to his feet. “Time to find Mr. Harvey.”

  He strides out of Fagan’s, his blood simmering as he stalks down Water Street. Between the snort and the shot, he’s ready to face the Devil himself. He reaches in his pocket, grips the Remington. Where is that lousy son of a bitch Harvey?

  And there, a commercial building emblazoned with the hateful name—Harvey’s. Pioneer architecture, all straight lines and weathered wood, the plainness relieved only by a row of craftsman’s gingerbread along the eaves with several scrolls knocked out like rotten teeth. Why on earth did Father ever extend credit to this hooligan on this piece of crap? Blood pounds in Daniel’s ears as he climbs the front stairs, Zhu hurrying behind him, and confronts a haze of tobacco smoke, the stink of cheap booze, and pandemonium.

  A boy bounds past him and brushes him aside, nearly knocking Zhu off her feet. “Say, now!” Daniel cries, but the boy clatters down the stairs and sprints down Water Street. Inside, men are yelling, flushed and gesticulating, striding back and forth across the barroom, or gathered around a long table at which croupiers sit in shirtsleeves and vests, taking coins, scribbling notations in their green leather ledgers. A wizened little operator sits at the end of the table, bending over a telegraph set. Next to him a burly red-haired fellow with muttonchops like great flaming wings on his face announces the latest news from the telegraph operator in a voice that manages to soar over the din.

  “Aaaand this just in! At Saratoga in the sixth, Saratoga in the sixth, it’s Diamond Jim Boy, Diamond Jim Boy at the finish line, gentlemen! Just a moment. Her Majesty’s Aristo to show, aaaand Baggage Smasher to place!”

  Men shout and scramble to the croupier’s table. Others groan and punch their neighbors, seize their beards, or stare stoically into their whiskeys.

  “Say, mister, what’s a fine gentleman like you doing in a joint like this?” says a sardonic voice. “That’s awfully game of you.” Daniel turns and confronts the handsome, rough-looking kid with his dark hair curling over his collar and his big hands. No soiled fisherman’s togs for Jack London this time. He wears the rumpled tweedy jacket and trousers of a college man, a disheveled collar and tie. He spies Zhu, and his eyes widen. He tips back the shot in his hand. “Awfully game of you, too, sister.”

  “Mr. Jack London,” Daniel says, “may I present Miss Zhu Wong.”

  “Charmed, Miss Wong.” Jack London’s smirk hints at the crude thoughts he must surely entertain. To Daniel, “Never figured you for the broad-minded type, mister. My congratulations.”

  “Miss Wong is an employee,” Daniel says stiffly.

  “Of Miss Jessie Malone,” Zhu finishes for him.

  “Really, now.” Jack London raises his eyebrows. “You’re a sporting gal, then?”

  “Hell, no, I’m the bookkeeper.”

  “You don’t say. Rest assured, Miss Wong, when the revolution comes to America, all we wage slaves will cast off our chains of bondage.”

  “Which revolution do you mean, Mr. London? The Internet revolution? The ebook revolution? The telespace revolution?”

  “Huh? Why, the communist revolution with blood and guns to back it up,” Jack London declares, “though I don’t suppose you’d know a thing about that.”

  Daniel watches in amazement as his mistress laughs derisively and shakes her head. “Oh, the Chinese people will engage in just such a revolution, though in time they’ll wind up with a rich and powerful elite and the oppressed poor stratified anew, just like in the bad old days. As for the United States of America, the revolution you speak of, Mr. London, will never come to pass. Though there will be times when your people will exchange their personal freedom, free enterprise, mobility, and independence for a semblance of security amid an ever-shifting rhetoric of crisis and an ever-expanding government. Fortunately for Americans, your free democracy is so resilent, your people will take back their power from that ever-greedy government bureaucracy again and again.”

  “You must forgive my little lunatic,” Daniel says to Jack London.

  But Jack London throws his head back and laughs. “She’s a genius. And much too good for you, mister. Let me have her.”

  To Daniel’s continuing amazement, Zhu smiles. “What is this place, Mr. London?”

  “Miss Wong, this here is a poolroom,” Jack London says. “No, there’s no pool table. The technical definition is an establishment for organizing a betting pool, hence, a poolroom.” He smirks and offers her his arm. “Buy you a drink?” She slips her hand around his elbow, and he escorts her through the frantic crowd, Daniel trailing after them. “See that guy over there working the telegraph? Picks up race results from tracks all over the country. And those guys?”—pointing at the rows of tables, the money changing hands—“they make book. And those guys”—he jerks his thumb at the crowded bar—“make
sure the chumps stay good and loaded, all the better to separate them from their hard-earned scratch.”

  “What a racket,” Zhu observes tartly.

  “You said it, sister.” Jack London grins at her so wickedly, the green-eyed monster of jealousy stirs in Daniel’s heart. “San Francisco and Oakland outlawed poolrooms in ’94. Too corrupt, they said. Fleecing the working stiffs out of their dough, they said. But the board of trustees of the fair burg of Sausalito were persuaded—persuaded generously—that the sport of kings, a shot of rye, and marvelous view of the bay go hand-in-hand.” He winks at Daniel and juts his chin at something behind Daniel’s shoulder. “Why, here’s the esteemed proprietor of this fine establishment. Say, Mr. Harvey, I’m placing ten eagles on Argle-Bargle to win in the fourth at Pimlico. What do you think?”

  Daniel whirls and confronts the scourge.

  Harvey is a tidy little gent with small hands and pared fingernails. His mother may have once loved him for his pleasant nose and mouth, well-shaped cheeks and forehead. But no one loves him now for his dead-white skin of a habitué of late nights. His black hair curves in a great, greasy roll cascading from the dead-white forehead and falling down his scrawny neck. A black beard spreads over his weak chest like a fur bib. Worse of all are his eyes—huge, bulging things mismatched and strangely shaped, dark bags of flesh beneath them and glassy staring pupils within them, the right wandering toward the left.

  “So yer the fuckin’ son,” Harvey says in acidic whine.

  Zhu drops Jack London’s arm and hurries to Daniel’s side.

  “Say, Harvey,” Jack London says. “This gentleman is square with me.”

  But Harvey hears nothing, not even that Argle-Bargle has just won at Pimlico. “Heard you had a pretty face,” he says and pushes Zhu aside, shoving his ugly mug up to Daniel’s. In his little right hand gleams a Bowie knife, a long evil thing made for killing and skinning, the cutting edge of which he presses against Daniel’s throat. “This here poolroom’s mine, Watkins. Your rich daddy ain’t got a thing to do with it. Fuckin’ go back to Saint Louis. We don’t want your kind around here.”

  Before Daniel can attempt to whip out his Remington and plug the bastard in the gut, Jack London’s big hand closes around Harvey’s. A gang of hard-faced men steps up behind Harvey, fists clenched.

  “Say, now, Harvey,” Jack London says in a genial tone. “I’m telling you, Mr. Watkins is a pal of mine and Joaquin Miller. What’s your gripe?”

  “He means to take my property away from me, that’s my fuckin’ gripe.”

  “Now why would he do that?” Jack London says, his hand still over the grip of the Bowie knife.

  Daniel stands very quietly, thanking Jack London with his eyes. Zhu’s hand on his arm a steadying influence. Thank God for friends. If he escapes Harvey’s with his person intact, perhaps he’ll go to church again, make a donation. And stand Jack London for a drink.

  “His daddy loaned me money to buy my land and my digs, only I ain’t sendin’ no gold back to no Saint Louis,” Harvey says.

  “Is it a legal debt?” Jack London wants to know.

  “Did I sign fuckin’ papers, you mean?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Hellya. How else do ya think I set this place up?”

  “You don’t say.” Jack London mulls that over. “Has Mr. Watkins cheated you in any way?”

  Harvey snorts. “No rube from Saint Louis gonna cheat me.”

  “Then you should repay the debt like you agreed to.”

  Everyone in the poolroom stops and stares.

  “What if the fuckin’ train gets robbed and the fuckin’ gold don’t get there? What if his daddy don’t credit me proper?” Harvey makes a show of being reasonable, but he’s no actor, and it doesn’t work with Jack London. That deranged gleam returns to his popping strange eyes. “Anyhow, it’s my establishment, ain’t his. I puts in the sweat every goddamn day, and I takes the losses. So I takes the gains, when they come.”

  “Harvey, old son,” Jack London says, “I fear you’re going to have to repay Mr. Watkins his legal due.”

  “Says who?” Harvey presses the knife blade tighter against Daniel’s throat.

  “Says me. That’s the way the system works, at least till the revolution comes,” Jack London says, pulling the knife and Harvey’s hand away. Daniel is relieved to see that London is superbly strong. As strong as Daniel used to be before the drink debilitated him.

  “Aw, shit, Jackie.” Harvey yanks his hand and his knife out of Jack London’s grip and lurches back to the bar. The shouting crowd closes in around him. He turns and smiles, a dreadful gap-toothed sight. “I am going to kill you, Mr. Watkins. Mark my words. I am going to fuckin’ kill you.”

  Jack London shakes his head. His smirk, so sardonic before, now is cold. “So you are a capitalist, Mr. Watkins. I knew it.” He stalks out of Harvey’s poolroom.

  December 5, 1895

  The Artists’ Ball

  9

  Prayers in the Joss House

  “Rachael?” Jessie murmurs in the dawn. “My sweet innocent angel, is that you?” She tosses and turns, unable to find comfort in her cashmere bedclothes. Her side aches. Her head aches, too, which never ached before. Everything has become strange these days since Zhu Wong came to live at the boardinghouse.

  Why can’t Jessie see things as she wishes they were? Why can’t she receive the gift of a second glass of absinthe? Toss, turn, toss, turn. Everything tossing and turning. Why can’t she see what she wants to, anymore?

  It’s no use. She lurches out of bed, goes to her window, throws open the watery glass. The city is waking, milk wagons and vegetable vendors rattling on their rounds. She hears horses neigh, a donkey honk. The ssh-ssh of the street sweepers’ sprinklers and brooms. She gazes out further, to her view of the bay. The fishermen have set out to sea, the last straggling trawlers cutting through the shifting darkness between the graceful shoulders of the Golden Gate. To the east, the bay shimmers and dawn’s glimmer shines from behind the Oakland hills, soon to grace them all with sunlight. She breathes chilly air with the scent of eucalyptus, the stink of the city night blown clean and clear.

  Why is her heart so dark on this beautiful dawn?

  Sure and it was another lively night at the Parisian Mansion. A trio of the local bulls stopped in for midnight supper and stayed on for drinks and smokes, then for a ride in the saddle. Chong was beaming. His terrapin makes even hardened beat cops randy. “Is my secret spice,” he boasts. Plus, Jessie got herself a new girl, a lovely thing with flaming red-gold hair and such bad teeth she never smiles, though the gentlemen tried to persuade her all night. Good racket. Who knows what’ll boost the charms of a fallen angel? She says she’s seventeen but, without her face paint, she looks like a schoolgirl barely out of diapers.

  Schoolgirl. Jessie’s gorge rises. “Rachael?” she calls out. “Is that you?”

  The bulls enjoyed her hospitality for free, of course. The law has been leaning on her more and more these days, not to mention the bench. His honor the railbird’s touch for twenty eagles at Ingleside was just the beginning. Mr. Heald regretfully informed her that her monthly civic contribution had increased by as much, and he still had the nerve to ask her to play the skin flute.

  These days.

  Strange times are a-coming, Madame de Cassin said. Bad luck is a-coming, Jessie feels it as surely as she feels the winter coming. She presses her fingers lightly to her liver pulsing beneath her skin. She needs a dose of Scotch Oats Essence just to lace up the corset, and she’s having Mariah lace her up tighter and tighter. Wasp waists are all the rage in Paris.

  She closes the window, latches it. Fiddle-dee-dee. Is the Queen of the Underworld a lady to succumb to vapors and apprehensions? She sure as hell is not.

  “Jar me,” she says out loud to no one but herself, “what diamonds shall I wear to the ball tonight fit to knock their eyes out?”

  Sure and that’s all it must be, this anxiety, fo
r tonight she’ll attend the annual Artists’ Ball. What the bohemians call their Mardi Gras, a wee bit of cheer in autumn instead in spring like them lively folks down in New Orleans. The ball is always held at the San Francisco Art Association, the beneficiary of the mansion old man Hopkins abandoned high atop Nob Hill. It’s the first bash of the Season after which the holidays begin. Mr. Ned Greenway assigns everyone to preferred lists and lesser lists, upon none of which Jessie Malone ever appears. Mr. Greenway is a fat little snob and a bore. He’s merely a champagne importer, after all, not some touchstone of taste. He ain’t been civil to her since she procured her own supplier of Napa champagne, scoffing at Greenway’s outrageous markup on his imported French. That’s the real dope on why he’s so standoffish. Once she sat down with a blindfold on and compared vintages for herself. Is French champagne better than her Napa bubbly? Not hardly. Not to Jessie.

  Nob Hill, Snob Hill. That’s the mocking moniker the maids and butlers and tradefolk call the place when they take their ease south o’ the slot. A jest among sporting gals, too. Snob Hill, rising high to the sky, is a rat’s nest of mansions perched cheek by jowl on a peak too small to fit them all. The city seat of the Social Set, though the Silver Kings, the Sugar Kings, the Railroad Kings, the Sundries and Dry Goods Kings, and all their lovelorn scions think nothing of descending from their gilded perch for an evening’s frolic at a congenial locale like the Parisian Mansion. Imagine—some of them kings of industry are worth ten million dollars while a factory worker earns a buck a day.

  Make ‘em pay, darlin’, make ‘em pay.

  Sure and the biggest, fanciest rocks she’s got, that’s what the Queen of the Underworld will wear to the Artists’ Ball tonight. Her jet beaded dress with the décolleté that’ll make the roving eyes of them Snob Hill gentlemen pop out of their sockets. A lucky break is the Artists’ Ball, since common folk like her with better diamonds than the diamond dealer’s wife can mix with the Social Set right in front of everyone. No skulking around town after midnight tonight. That’s one of many things Jessie adores about artists. No one is turned away from the Artists’ Ball.