The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  They lie together for a while in silence, and then she says, “You haven’t done so badly with your father’s business. He left you with a mess in San Francisco. And you went in good faith to a man advertising himself as a doctor who prescribed cocaine as a health therapy. For dipsomania! It’s crazy!”

  “I most certainly have been a little crazy myself, miss.” Now he shifts on the cot, turning toward her, his eyes urgent, filled with emotion. “I do apologize.”

  “Listen, Daniel. You’ve made some wrong decisions. It happens. But now you’ve got to start making right ones. I mean, look at your mother.”

  The minute she says that word, she regrets it, because his face twists with sudden sharp anger.

  “Ah, my mother. Such a fine lady. An angel of purity and a whore. Do you know that when I went to London and Paris, I never wanted to see her face again? I was furious when Father summoned me home to watch her die. So beautiful, as always, her deep sea eyes beseeching me.”

  “Deep sea eyes?”

  “Not emerald-green, like yours, my angel. Sea-green. And her question, always her question, even on her deathbed. ‘Danny, haven’t I been good to you? Haven’t I always been good?’ And I would always give the same answer. ‘Yes, Mama. Of course, Mama.’ By God!”

  Zhu pulls the dust protector off, shakes her hair loose of the strap. “Wait a minute. I thought you understood why she took a lover. That your father beat her, aborted her baby. I thought you understood about her addiction. I thought you were angry with your father, not her.”

  “Oh, certainly, I cannot abide my father’s self-righteousness, the morality he preaches, the sin he decries, all the while he was an adulterer and a bully. He ought to go to prison for what he’s done. She suffered too much.” He rubs his forehead, remembering. “But she? Quite the expert she became on booze and narcotics. When I was an unruly child, when I ran about too much or shouted too much or simply annoyed her, she knew just what dosage of soothing syrup to spoon-feed me. ‘Time for your medicine, Danny,’ she’d say. ‘Am I not good to you?’”

  “She gave you alcohol and morphine to sedate you when you were a kid?”

  Daniel lurches up off the bed and unsteadily onto his feet, pacing around the tiny room. But he’s up! He’s moving! His pale face is flushed with anger, his eyes alive. “Ah-ha! Have we just put two and two together, you and I?” He paces past the bed, plants a kiss on her forehead. “My lovely lunatic. I suppose you could say I have been a dope fiend all my life, and that is the terrible truth.” He lights another ciggie, forgetting her warning about second-hand smoke. “By God, I could use a drink.”

  “But you can’t have one, Daniel.”

  “I know. But I could certainly use some fresh air. I’m stifling in this dive.”

  “Look,” Zhu says, sitting up and peering out the window. “The sun has come out.”

  *

  She needs to change her shirtwaist and skirt after her damp morning outing, he needs to change out of his nightclothes, so they tenderly help each other dress. Daniel is still weak and pale and much too thin, but he looks wonderful after Zhu buttons him into the three-piece gabardine suit that Jessie brought over from Dupont Street. Zhu is eager to try on the new maternity dress Jessie brought her. Jessie also brought an undergarment called an abdominal corset constructed expressly to slim the profile of a pregnant woman. Zhu takes one look at the contraption, cups her hand to her belly, and says, “I’d rather look fat.”

  Daniel examines the abdominal corset with an avid look.

  “No way, mister.”

  Zhu is nervous as they stroll downstairs, his arm around her shoulders, her arm around his waist. The stink of whiskey and beer is nearly overwhelming when they get down to the street.

  “Daniel,” she says warningly.

  He glances hungrily at the celebrants, who have taken the sudden sunshine as a portent that must be toasted with renewed vigor. Cries ring out, “Gah! A rainbow, sir! I do believe I see ‘un!” Guffaws and shouts, “Have another shot o’ the Irish, mate!” Daniel licks his lips, loosens his collar. Despite the chilly spring air, sweat trickles down his temple.

  Zhu takes him by his shoulders and shakes him. “Daniel, you wanted to make moving pictures. You wanted to be the first. Well, you’re not the first, but you can still make moving pictures. Plenty of moving pictures. But you’ll never fulfill your dream if you drink yourself to death by the time you’re twenty-two.”

  A gentleman staggers into them, raising his shot glass. “To your health, boy!”

  “Daniel, are you listening?”

  “Why the devil did you bring me out here? It’s an orgy!”

  “You said you wanted fresh air.”

  “This air is hardly fresh.”

  “Take him to Woodward’s Gardens,” Muse whispers just over their heads. “There you’ll find some fresh air.”

  Daniel grins, disbelief and wonder warring in his face. “My dear lovely lunatic. Still the voices? And all along I thought it was the drink and the dope and my imagination.”

  “That’s not a hallucination,” Zhu says, “that’s my guardian angel. Right, Muse?”

  “I am indeed her guardian angel,” the monitor says, sounding pleased with the charade. “Not that she deserves me.”

  *

  They take the steam train to Mission and Fourteenth where Woodward’s Gardens stretches over several city blocks from Thirteenth Street to Fifteenth, Mission to Valencia. Zhu claps her hands with delight at the grand entrance, the snapping flags, banks of ivy spilling over the wrought iron fence, colorful posters announcing events and attractions. She and Daniel enter a lush labyrinth, stroll along meandering paths amid little lakes and tumbling streams, admire sculptures, fountains, and monuments, visit the glass-paned conservatory with its tropical flowers and trees, tour the art museum where Virgil Williams, founder of the School of Design, has hung a new exhibition. The former residence of Mr. Woodward, who made his fortune during the Gold Rush with a hotel called What Cheer House, now shelters a natural history museum. Zhu is amazed by the zoological garden, which boasts small but nicely appointed cages and yards for curious lamas, shy deer, shouting peacocks, twittering South American birds with wings of emerald, ruby, and gold. California sea lions cavort and beg for raw fish at the seal pond.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she exclaims. “It’s like some trillionaire’s private preserve under a dome. I’m amazed the public is allowed in.”

  “Of course the public is allowed in,” Daniel says. “Why wouldn’t they be?” He gives her a skeptical glance. “Are you telling me that six hundred years in the future people won’t have amusement parks anymore? How very dull!”

  “Oh, we have disneylands and playplexes and metaworlds. Plenty of zoos in telespace for the masses to jack into. When I was a kid, I used to think dinosaurs and dodos shared American forests with elephants and lynxes at the turn of the millennium and how lucky people were to actually see them.” At his puzzled look, she adds, “It was a cheap virtual zoo that didn’t distinguish between extinct species and living ones or which epochs and habitats they lived in. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.” She sniffs the air, which smells like new-mown grass and eucalyptus leaves. “But nothing like this, real live animals. Only the very rich and very rich private foundations like the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications can afford to maintain live animals in their natural habitats. New Golden Gate Preserve is one such habitat in San Francisco and, no, the public isn’t allowed in.”

  “Then you have become very rich being here with me.”

  “So I have.” Her heart clenches with joy at his words, and she flings her arms around him. They stand embracing in the fresh air amid the beauty of the gardens. She summons the monitor. “Muse, does this beautiful place last a long time?”

  Muse searches the Archives, posts a file in Zhu’s peripheral vision. “Woodward’s Gardens will be torn down five years from now, at the turn of this century. The site
will be paved over and filled in with industrial warehouses and low-cost multifamily housing. Where the grand entrance stands now will be the on-ramp to a major elevated freeway. In the earthquake of 2129, the elevation will collapse, killing two thousand commuters at the height of the rush hour. In 2254—“

  “Muse off,” Zhu says, unexpected tears welling. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  Daniel takes her hand. He’s somber and pale. “By God, is the future really that terrible?”

  “You’re beginning to believe me?”

  His hand trembles in hers. “How can you bear it?”

  “We bear it because we must. Oh, listen!” She doesn’t want to see him sink into depression again on account of her tall tales. “Listen.” In the distance, a pipe organ strikes up a lively tune. “Let’s go see.”

  They stroll up to a stage set inside of a cage just outside the zoological gardens, the back wall equipped with a door leading to another cage inside the zoo proper. A dapper fellow in tails and a top hat steps onstage, equipped with a riding crop and bucket of chopped apples. “Ladies and gentlemen-ah, we now-ah present Woodward’s famous dancing bears-ah!”

  The back door rattles open and four sizeable brown bears amble out onto the stage. Each bear wears a silly hat and a costume. Zhu spies a bellboy’s cap and a necktie; a sailor’s cap and a life preserver; a lady’s straw boater and an apron; a lace bonnet and a ballerina’s tutu.

  “Hah, hup, hup, hup!” shouts the dapper fellow, slapping his crop but mostly tossing apple chunks which the bears catch in their jaws.

  The bears whirl, roll over, climb up onto pedestals, stand up on their hind legs, paws batting the air, and turn slow shuffling pirouettes. They snuffle and bleat with strange goatlike cries, bend and lunge.

  With each burst of applause, the dapper fellow winks and sends his performers into another frenzy of gesticulation and posture. “Woodward’s dancing bears-ah!”

  “That’s probably bear abuse,” Zhu says, enchanted, “but I don’t care.”

  Daniel laughs, a welcome sound. “Bear abuse? I suppose now you’re going to tell me that people in future worry about whether bears have feelings.”

  “Not just whether bears have feelings, but whether they’re happy.”

  “By God,” he murmurs, “I feel just like that fellow in the bellboy’s cap.”

  “Muse,” Zhu whispers, suddenly inspired. “Shoot a holoid of this. Do it for him. Can you do it?”

  Alphanumerics flicker in her peripheral vision.

  But as they watch Woodward’s bears dance, Daniel’s smile fades and a wistful mood falls over him. That awful wooden look steals over his face, and his eyes seem to sink, their surface icing over. His hand grows cold in hers.

  “Daniel,” she says gaily, “you’ve gotten much too thin. I’m gonna buy you a squarer, and damn the cholesterol. I know how much you love sautéed oysters.”

  “No, no,” he mutters, distracted. Distant. “I’m not hungry, miss.”

  “Oh, but you haven’t had oysters in such a long time. Come, let’s picnic down by the lake. Anyway, I want to show you something lovely and amazing.”

  She takes his hand and firmly leads him to a bench set along the path, sits him down. Has she pushed him too far today? Well, he’s got to eat. She hurries to a food stall staffed by a hardy Chinese cook with a huge smile and a quick intelligence sparkling in his dark eyes.

  “Could you make me an oyster loaf, please?” She hands him a silver bit.

  “Missy mean a squarer?”

  “I do, indeed. A squarer, please.”

  “For sick gentleman friend?”

  She looks at him, surprised. “He looks that bad, does he?”

  The cook gives her a look of deep sympathy. “I make good squarer for him.” He rewards her with that smile. “And for you, too, missy.”

  The cook seizes a loaf of fresh milk bread, slashes the loaf in half with a huge steel knife, presses out a hollow, and slathers top and bottom with sweet butter. He pops the bread into a little wood-burning oven to toast. Next he tosses a bowl of fresh bay oysters into a shiny copper sauté pan with a huge scoop of butter, pinches coarse salt, black pepper, and garlic shavings onto the shellfish, and sets everything sizzling on the stovetop above the oven. Then he takes the toasted bread shell from the oven, spoons the oysters in the bottom, clamps the lid on top, and divides the gigantic sandwich into quarters. He wraps the fragrant concoction in crisp white paper.

  “Squarer for you, missy,” says the cook. “Is my San Francisco special.”

  “Thank you, sir. I will always remember your culinary skill.”

  Zhu hurries back to Daniel. He sits slumped and shivering, his face fallen, his arms folded across his chest like the limbs of a puppet.

  “Muse?” she says, panicked.

  “Give him a neurobic,” Muse advises. “Two, if you’ve got enough left.”

  The LISA techs supplied her with nine months’ worth of neurobics and no more. She’s taken care to ration them out. She finds the last half a dozen in her feedbag purse, takes out two without a second thought. She breaks open a capsule under Daniel’s nose, and his eyes flicker, a little color filters into his cheeks as he breathes the healing fumes. She breaks open another. Now he smiles wanly.

  “What have you got there, my angel? It smells wonderful.”

  She leads him to the picnic tables set beneath a whispering willow tree. They sit and munch on the squarer. After two enthusiastic bites, Daniel pauses, becoming pensive again. “I wasn’t the first,” he says heavily, “to make pictures move.”

  “You don’t have to be the first. This is only the start of the moving picture business. What’s needed is a creative mind like yours to choose which pictures will move. To choose which stories to tell with those pictures. And to pioneer more technological innovations. Believe me, a whole new world is opening up for you.”

  If she was hoping to rouse him with her encouragement, she’s disappointed now.

  “By God, I’d like champagne with my oysters.”

  “If your mother fed you whiskey and morphine to keep a little boy quiet, you’re going to have to fight every day of your life for sobriety, Daniel. Trust me, it will be worth it.”

  “But why?” He throws down his food. “Oysters taste so much better with champagne. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. We do die tomorrow, don’t we? As life follows birth, so death follows life. That’s the way the world works, is it not?”

  Zhu sighs. She too wishes she had a glass of champagne to wash down her oysters. And she wonders. If she dies in the past—which seems inevitable, now—then her birth and her life are to follow her death. How many times has she made this loop? How many times has she thought these thoughts? Though, at the moment, her thoughts feel fresh and new. Eat, drink, and be merry? Why not? Why not? How will she bear the rest of her life?

  “You know, I can’t see the stars dance anymore,” Daniel mutters.

  “The stars dance?”

  “Yes, in the sky over marvelous Californ’. There was a time when I could look up and see the stars dance. Not anymore.”

  “Muse?” Zhu whispers. “Help me.”

  That scratchy feeling irritates her left eye as Muse downloads data through her optic nerve and projects a holoid field. A translucent wall of blue light hovers over the grass in front of the willow tree.

  Daniel gasps, leaps to his feet, circles the translucent wall. He thrusts his hands into the field, marveling at the lack of resistance. Well, of course, his expression tells her, this how the future would do it. He guffaws with delight, and his cheeks bloom with color. He glances at her, jubilant, expectant. “Go on, go on! What’s next?”

  She blinks, and Muse’s holoid of Woodward’s dancing bears pops up amid the swaying leaves of the willow tree. There they are, the bears in their silly hats and costumes, yelping for apple chunks. The holoid is nothing special to Zhu, just a digital recapitulation of a previously recorded reality. But Danie
l drops to his knees, ruining his trousers with grass stains as he crawls all around the holoid, studying the three-dimensional images from every angle.

  To Zhu’s surprise, Muse goes on, showing holoids of megalopolises, the Mars terraformation, the EM-Trans, the huge infrastructure of space stations orbiting the Earth. Then holocausts, conquests, visions of apocalypse. The brown ages that last for terrible centuries. And restoration of the Earth, the New Renaissance. A stampede of virtual gazelles leaps over a blind where a man and woman lie hidden together.

  Daniel watches, transfixed. “Will I be able to do this?”

  “Not all of it, not yet,” Zhu says, smiling. “Three-d, let alone holoids, are a long way away from this day. But look, Daniel. Look and learn. Perhaps with your moving pictures you’ll tell the story of a young man from Saint Louis who went to San Francisco.”

  *

  As the afternoon slips into an evening promising more rain, Zhu hails a cab back to their south o’ the slot hidey-hole. The cab driver patiently cajoles his young bay gelding that rolls his eyes at every drunken whoop and bellow. The first celebrants of Saint Patrick’s Day have staggered off to their favorite brothels or cribs, passed out in the back rooms of saloons, or lurched home to their scornful wives. Now another crowd of celebrants streams into the streets and saloons, workers done with the dayshift at factories, warehouses, and sweatshops.

  “Did ye see the rainbow this afternoon, miss?” the vegetable vendor cries out as she and Daniel jostle through the crowd on their way back to the boardinghouse. “Ah, ye should’ve seen it. Them rowdies from Sausalito were hangin’ around here, and they saw it.” He adds with a significant wink, “Guess they didn’t see you and the mister go out earlier.”

  A sharp foreboding pierces her, and Zhu pulls Daniel to a stop. “Let’s circle around the block.”

  “I cannot around circle the block. I just can’t, my angel. So tired… .”

  Boom boom boom! Fiery debris sprays from their room on the second floor. People scream, jump back, scramble away from the blast. A knot of five men stand impassively on the corner, watching. One boldly dangles a can of kerosene in his hand.