The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  By God, he’s exhausted. If only he could sleep! He hasn’t shut his eyes for more than a few hours at a time in weeks. Everything seems fragmented and unreal. Days and nights splinter into shards of consciousness as scattered as his shattered shot glass on the Persian carpet. Sometimes when he’s sequestered in his suite—lamp burning low, shades and drapes drawn, a bottle of good brandy, his vial and his spoon, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing—he does not know whether it’s day or night, and does not care.

  Suddenly pain chases across the back of his eyes, and the room spins, bits and pieces swelling into his view and receding. He chuckles at the effect, though he thinks he may be about to retch. Now, why can he not do this with his kinesis machine?

  The kinesis machine, that’s what he calls the device he’s rigged up in his suite to experiment with moving photographs, a design not unlike his toy Zoetrope. He’s mounted translucent sequential images on a large wheel, situated an electric lightbulb at the wheel’s center. When he spins the wheel, the pictures whirl past the eye, illuminated from behind. It works, after a fashion.

  Still, the viewer cannot enter into the illusion the way he so desperately desires. Even a peepshow is more engrossing. The apparatus is distancing, the photographs too small. He considers enlarging the photographs to the size of paintings, constructing a giant wheel on which to mount them, perhaps forty feet in diameter. He’d need an auditorium to show the illusion. Frustrated, he finds it a paltry simulation of what he can envision. He still encounters problems with continuous motion, cannot quite determine the right acceleration. If he slows the action, the images jerk about. If he speeds it up, the images blur.

  Like Zhu is a blur. Like Woman is a blur. He adores her, he abhors her. Which is it?

  “Where are you when I need you, my angel?” he shouts in the empty parlor. His voice echoes strangely. Almost as if the reverberation preceded his cry. By God, he is going mad.

  *

  Daniel steps out onto Dupont Street and surveys the traffic with a shrewd eye. Harvey’s thugs don’t lurk about, but the evil way two streetwalkers glance at him merits his fingertips poised on his Remington derringer, a hand poised for the Congress knife. Is that the damnable Fanny Spiggot crossing at the corner? She has been following him, too, no doubt itching to see if she can lift another boodle bag off him. And wait—is that poor old Schultz? No, no, it’s just another portly German gentleman. Poor old Schultz is cold in his grave.

  He sets off at an energetic clip for Stockton Street. They say the plague has struck Chinatown again. The smuggled coolies his mistress weeps about probably brought it over from China, which suffered a dreadful dose in ’94. Ah, there’s the dump, 567 Stockton Street, over which Mr. Ekberg has wept real tears. The old man has got himself a hidey-hole downstairs and who knows how many Chinese crammed into the little rooms upstairs. Daniel knocks on the door, impatient, tapping his toe, and Mr. Ekberg answers. An old prospector he is, his face as ruined as the termite–riddled boards of this tumbledown wreck. Daniel will have to chastise Father, extending a loan on such a poor property. Ekberg forks over thirty-five dollars in gold coins, then slams the door in Daniel’s face. Splendid. That settles his account for another month, never mind the arrears and accumulated interest. What will happen when old Ekberg kicks the bucket? What then? Will Daniel have to manage the place? He shivers and sidesteps a dead rat writhing with maggots lying in the gutter. Who would buy this dump at a price covering the loan balance? He can see the wisdom of floating old Ekberg for as long as possible. He recalls that the plague is spread by rats. Daniel clears out.

  Mr. Harvey and his poolroom are another story. Harvey has been as intractable as a Hun and twice as dangerous. Resolution fills Daniel’s heart as he walks to the county courthouse on Mission Street, a fine granite building rendered in a worthy classical architecture. Now he’s feeling very righteous, sir, as the crusading knight must have felt. The power and the might of the law are on his side. His bootheels click across the marble floor, and he finds a clerk who assists him in filling out the documents. He did not need his clever mistress after all, well, he shall be sure to tell her so. Mr. Daniel J. Watkins hereby forecloses the mortgage on behalf of Mr. Jonathan D. Watkins of Saint Louis on said property, 412 Water Street, Sausalito, California, presently occupied by Mr. Nicholas S. Harvey, debtor. He will not be intimidated by a ruffian barkeep. He pays an extra fee to have the notice delivered by messenger boy. There could be a handsome profit in the Water Street property as long as poolrooms remain legal in Sausalito. Now, there’s justice. Perhaps some rich gambler from the green cloth circuit will show an interest and take the property off his hands.

  He’s feeling much better, gold coins jingling in his pocket. He jogs back across Market, sprints three blocks to Montgomery, and up four flights to the top floor of the Monkey Block and Dr. Mortimer’s clinic. No more huffing and puffing, sir, he’s as spry as an athlete. Though his breath does whistle in his nostrils, his lungs are on fire, and his heart pounds like a drum in his chest. He taps out a ciggie to refresh himself, drags on it deeply, relishing the sharp stab in his chest. Now there’s a proper draw for a gentleman.

  He knocks on the physician’s door. No answer. He checks his pocket watch. Well. He is ten minutes late for his appointment. Dr. Mortimer not only promised him a letter of introduction to Jeremiah Duff, but hinted that a judicious use of the physician’s new telephone might be in order, too. Splendid proposition. Daniel eagerly looks forward to speaking on the telephone with Mr. Duff. Even letters of introduction can be ticklish, rife with hesitation and awkwardness, but an actual voice transmitted over electrical wires—now there is a magnificent way to communicate.

  Still no answer. This is not like Dr. Mortimer, who usually sprints to the door before Daniel can lay his knuckles on the glass. He tries the doorknob. Not locked. The door fans open with an eerie creak.

  “Dr. Mortimer?” Daniel does not like this stiff feeling of intruding. He certainly wouldn’t like another man to barge into his suite. “Dr. Mortimer?”

  The first thing he sees and smells is the bright blood spilling from Mortimer’s nose onto the pale green paper of his writing pad. The physician slumps over his walnut desk, one arm hanging limp, the other flung across the desk as though attempting to seize something or ward something off.

  Murder. Shock explodes up and down Daniel’s spine. Touch nothing. He knows enough about modern police procedure to know that. He circles behind the dead physician and around the desk, confounded by this heinous crime. But why? Who? Someone demanding the cure? Wanting the cure, needing the cure? Someone lacking money, like poor old Schultz?

  Then again, nothing seems disturbed besides the physician himself slumped dead over his desk. The charts, the shelves of stoppered jars filled with preserved body parts, the side table where the physician kept his supplies. The mirrored tray dusted with white power, dappled with reddish brown stains. All of it quite the same.

  Daniel strides to the side table, pulls out the drawer. Catches his breath. The drawer is stuffed with vials of cocaine and a good quantity of gold and silver coins.

  Murder or… ? This is what an aneurysm looks like, idiot, one of his voices tartly informs him. Ah, now his voices are dispensing medical advice. Why does this particular voice sound so much like his mistress? “You’re not a doctor, Zhu,” he says out loud. No, I’m not, the voice says, it’s common knowledge about this drug in my Now. “Please,” he begs and struggles to remember. Did they actually engage in some variation of this conversation one tempestuous night? It seems so familiar. Or is it just his mad imagination?

  He takes ten vials from the drawer and tucks them in his pocket, reluctantly leaving the rest of the vials and the coins. He does not approve of thievery, sir. He dutifully deposits five dollars in the drawer. The good physician would have required fifteen, but now that he’s dead, Daniel thinks five is a fair price.

  Go straight to the police, that’s what he should do. But if there’s no foul pl
ay, sir, says another voice, persuasive, confiding, if it’s not really murder but just the fellow’s bad luck, why should you go to the police? Surely Dr. Mortimer has family and friends who shall miss him and seek him out. Why should Daniel pick up the pieces? Indeed, on further reflection, he does not want his presence here today known by the police at all. Not that he’s done anything wrong, certainly not. But Mortimer is of no further use to him, now is he? He returns to the drawer. Mortimer has no further use for any of the vials or, for that matter, the coins.

  You’re not hurting anyone, the confiding voice assures him, and anyway where will you get more?

  Daniel tiptoes out, gently closes the door. Damn bad luck—he didn’t get his letter of introduction or his telephone call to Jeremiah Duff. However. He’s got rather more pocket change and an excellent supply of the Incan gift. But still no means to ease his soul.

  *

  The cable car on California Street climbs straight up Nob Hill, aiming its prow toward the stars whirling in the heavens above. Truly the stars do dance above marvelous Californ’. Daniel has never seen anything like it, not even after his third glass of absinthe at La Nouvelle-Athenes. There, the stars would droop and smear, staining the night sky over Paris with blots of dull orange, and his fancy would turn to the sordid enticements of Rochelle. But in this night sky, the stars are frantic. Sparkling, wheeling, dancing across a dark infinity.

  He snuffles gently, nursing the fluid in his nose. The cocaine he appropriated from Dr. Mortimer’s clinic has elevated him to new heights of health and well-being. By God, the stars are dancing! Gripping the pole, he leans off the platform as far as he can as the cable car jolts up the hill to the Art Association.

  “Careful, Daniel,” Zhu calls to him. Proprietary, like a wife or a mother.

  “Am I the only one in costume, then?” he demands, ignoring her and flipping up his eyepatch.

  Everyone on the car chuckles because everyone on the car is in costume. There are nymphs and Roman soldiers, Buffalo Bills and winged fairies. An astonishing Egyptian pharaoh has stained his face blue and escorts a queen with a green-stained face on his arm. The royal couple is loaded with gold and gems that look real. You cannot get that glitter and gleam off a facet made of paste, Daniel is quite sure. There are several Dresden shepherdesses and their burly squires clad in varying degrees of authenticity and taste. An excellent mermaid with long silver hair, her lower limbs crippled by her gorgeous satin tail. She is carried in the brawny arms of two strapping bouncers adventurously clad as fishermen. One of Jessie’s rivals? Miss Malone cannot keep her eyes off the gleaming scales.

  Daniel himself has stooped to this absurd swashbuckler’s getup with a real sword, a scarlet sash, a swooping hat, and the eyepatch. Not particularly original. Several other pirates loll about on the benches of the cable car in preliminary stages of inebriation. Yet he has been willing to engage in the pretense for the sake of the Artists’ Ball. The ladies he has agreed to escort have not, however, engaged in the pretense and he is mightily displeased with them both.

  Jessie Malone is costumed as Jessie Malone, the Queen of the Underworld. Now, what kind of fool costume is that? She has pressed all her gorgeous flesh into a sparkly black dress of extraordinary shape and texture bedecked with black beads of jet, black sequins, black loops of satin, and frilly black lace. Her diamonds, by God, he had no idea she owned such treasures. He took one look at her jewels as they all stepped out of 263 Dupont Street and promptly returned inside to find Schultz’s abandoned Smith and Wesson, which he’d discovered going through the deceased fellow’s things. Daniel packs that pistol now along with his derringer, the Congress knife, and the real sword from the tailor. Armed robbers, sir, you never know where you may confront them on the night of a Big Celebration in the city.

  Rocks the size of gumdrops sparkle on Jessie’s knuckles. What they call a dog collar, a band of captive stars, encircles her neck above a bosom worthy of the Queen of Babylon. Earrings to knock your eye out dangle amid her riot of golden curls. And bracelets? He remembers how his mother had a bracelet, a plain silver band she wore on a wrist as thin as the bone beneath the skin. Jessie has stacked each of her ample arms with more bejeweled gold bracelets than Daniel has ever witnessed on one arm, let alone two.

  As for Jessie’s disguise, she has proposed that it shall be the Mask of Tragedy and Comedy, one side of the mask black and grieving, the other white and rejoicing, all of it set upon an ivory and ebony handle. She holds the mask over her exquisitely painted face the way a lady holds a fan, coquettishly flipping the thing between Comedy and Tragedy, permitting only fleeting glimpses of the mask behind the mask.

  Ah, well. Jessie will be Jessie, and ever shall she be.

  But his mistress? Her disguise is completely improper and unacceptable.

  Zhu wears her denim sahm, felt fedora, tinted spectacles, and straw sandals. She has plaited her long black hair into a peasant’s queue. Her disguise worked well enough when she posed as his manservant strolling along the Cocktail Route. It is hardly satisfactory for the Artists’ Ball.

  “What in hell are you doing, going dressed like that?” he demanded, outraged, before they stepped out the door.

  “I’m going as a t-porter,” she said, attempting a joking tone. “A time traveler, to use Mr. Wells’s terminology. A woman of the future. I told you I actually dress pretty much like this every day in my Now. I did tell you that, didn’t I?” She looks worried.

  Of course she did. His little lunatic says she likes disappearing in a crowd. What sane woman would ever want that? Perhaps H.G. Wells could make some hay of it, but Daniel would have liked to titillate the Smart Set by squiring the notorious madam on one arm, his lovely Chinese mistress on the other. Jessie as Jessie, very well, but Zhu costumed as a royal concubine clad in jade satin. Now that would have been something.

  But Zhu got her way. She usually does, laughs one of his voices.

  Daniel abandons the pole and squeezes onto the bench beside her. “I am deeply unhappy with your crude charade, miss.”

  “I’m deeply unhappy with your cocaine habit, Daniel. I’m deeply unhappy with your drinking.”

  He claps his hand to his forehead. “For the thousandth time, I am cured of the drink.”

  His irritation spirals quickly down into anger. She is as plain as a pretzel except for one small detail he notices for the first time in the gaslight of California Street. He spots it at once. So does Jessie, seated beside Zhu.

  “What on earth have you got there?” he says.

  “Say, missy,” Jessie says.

  Pinned to Zhu’s collar is the most charming bauble Daniel has ever seen, rendered in the Art Nouveau style with dazzling genius. A golden butterfly with diamonds and bits of multicolored glass. A nude woman poses at the center, a lovely slim thing like a dancer. He’s mesmerized by her languid little face, and he reaches to touch the brooch at the same time as Jessie, his hand colliding with hers.

  Zhu shields her collar from them both, holding her hands over the treasure.

  “Sure and what is that?” Jessie says, prying one of Zhu’s hands away.

  “It’s called an aurelia,” Zhu says.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “You like it?”

  “It’s blowed in the glass. But it hardly suits your costume. Here, let me wear it,” Jessie wheedles. “Look, I gotta a little vacant spot on the neckline of my dress.”

  “Nope. I can’t let it out of my sight.”

  “Hmph! You can look at me all night. Oh, do let me have it.”

  “Why? The diamonds aren’t much and the rest is just glass.”

  “Why?” Jessie says. “You are forever asking why. Why why why?”

  “Why?” Zhu says.

  “Because she’s a nude and I gotta have it.”

  “How about you, Daniel?” Zhu says. “You like it, too?”

  “It’s corking,” he says and means it. “Quite decadent.”

  “Decadent how
?” she says urgently, as if his answer will prove something to her.

  “Well, there she is”—he touches a fingertip to the tiny golden woman—“a woman borne away by an insect. The lowest creature on earth, though of course a butterfly is beautiful.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I’d say that the aurelia is Woman herself swept away by the brute force of destiny.” For a moment the cable car is silent except for the deep metallic humming of the cables churning beneath them. “That is all.” He needs another spoonful of Mortimer’s private mix for more inspiration. “Oh, and she looks just like you, miss.”

  “No, she doesn’t!” Zhu looks horrified. “She’s white, Caucasian. A Gibson girl.”

  “I beg to differ. She is golden, just like you. Look at the slant of her eyes, her slender figure. She is you.”

  “Where’d you get it?” Jessie asks again.

  “In a totally unexpected place. I’m thinking Chiron knew that from the start,” Zhu replies. “So that means the aurelia must be an enigma. A time enigma.”

  “Who is Chiron?” Daniel demands, enraged. She belongs to him. “Where is this Chiron?”

  “Not where, when. The red-haired man Chiron,” she says to Jessie, who nods. Jessie has heard about this man, apparently. “From six hundred years in the future.”

  *

  The cable car grinds to a halt at the crest of California Street, finding level ground at the peak of Nob Hill. Daniel helps Jessie down, but Zhu leaps off on her own, as spry as a boy. Daniel stands breathlessly and looks around. These astonishing mansions of the fabled rich—from mining, railroads, banking, sugar, so much money Daniel’s teeth ache—are really only town houses, and half the time the houses are empty. The original builders or the builders’ heirs are off to New York, Europe, or their country villas down the peninsula with acres of lawns for privacy. Not much privacy atop Snob Hill. These mansions rub elbows with each other and everyone else passing by on the street.