'Til Morning Light

by Ann Moore

  “I’m young,” she whispered to herself, acknowledging the hum of her body, the lightness of her heart.

  She grabbed Jack up by both hands and twirled him around her, laughing at his delighted squeals, then set him down and swept up Mary Kate, determined to bring a smile to her face, as well. When she was done and both children were wide-eyed and grinning, she knelt down before them and took one of their hands in each of hers.

  “Be happy,” she said to them then. “’Tis a beautiful day, we’re all together, and life is long. Be happy,” she repeated. “And never forget how wonderful it feels.”

  Fifteen

  Always the great strategist, Sean had memorized the layout of San Francisco within a week of his arrival, traversing the streets and alleys on his horse, making notes on the map he’d bought, and so he knew exactly how to get from Delmonico’s on O’Farrell Street to Ah Toy’s luxurious parlor house in the alley off Pike Street in the Chinese district. That first week had been the only time he’d traveled San Francisco by daylight; now he was strictly an occupant of the nighttime city. Still, streets lay out the same by day as by night, so finding the famous brothel was no trouble at all.

  He lay back in the soaking tub, eyes closed, as steam rose around him and his muscles began to relax. Tonight was a big night, and he’d already had a fine meal at Delmonico’s, a walk for his digestion, now a bath, and then an hour with one of the girls. This was a Chinese house, so he’d requested a peasant—no bound feet for him. The first time he’d come to Ah Toy’s, they had sized him up as a man of exotic appetite and had shown him to a room where sat upon the divan a lovely woman in an extraordinary gown. Though he’d been relieved of his virginity in the first week of his arrival to the city and had made the rounds of many parlor houses, Sean was by no means a worldly man and was therefore unprepared for what his first Chinese woman offered. Her appearance alone was enough to excite him—the long dark hair, white-powdered face, and brightly painted lips, her slim, pale body beneath the silk robe—and he had no problem moving into her delicate arms. But as their fondling grew more heated, she nudged him with her foot and he took hold of it, kissing the little silk shoe and then unraveling the strange stocking. The sight of what lay beneath had shocked him, and he still did not like to think of it, had tried to put out of his mind the broken, deformed foot, toes curled round to the heel. Later, he had learned from Chang-Li that this was a rare delight—the lily—a courtesan’s most erotic offering, but he could not imagine pleasure between a man and woman that depended upon such painful sacrifice. He had become aware of these women and had since caught glimpses of them being carried from room to room, or hobbling painfully on the arm of a servant. His own affliction, the shortened leg and twisted arm, made him especially sensitive to theirs, but his was the result of an accident, not the intended outcome of loving family members who broke the foot of a child, then bound it tightly so it would never grow, considering this a beautiful and desirable attraction for a future husband. He simply could not wrap his mind around this and had made it quite clear that bound feet were not what he wanted when he came in for a woman.

  But this degradation he considered an anomaly; he had not witnessed the cruel side of prostitution, though if he were to be honest with himself, he knew it existed. He had seen the battered faces of girls who quickly closed their doors, had heard screams in the middle of the night, had stared into guarded eyes when he asked after a girl who was no longer there. He told himself that this was simply a rare hazard of the job. Most of these girls—whether in the best parlor houses off Portsmouth Square or the slab shanties of rebuilt Little Chile or the backroom dives of Sydney Town and Clark’s Point—were here by choice, in this town to make their fortune just like the miners they serviced, the entrepreneurs, the gamblers and businessmen. This was a city of opportunity, and these women were making the most of it—the houses he frequented were clean and well run, the women he bedded seemed to be enjoying themselves while at the same time experiencing a measure of independence and good money. Most likely, he supposed, they left here with a hefty bankroll and were able to establish themselves in other towns, where they would enjoy a life of pleasant anonymity, assuming the identity of widow women or spinsters.

  This was what he told himself as he reclined in his steaming tub in an upstairs room in the back of Ah Toy’s parlor house, listening to the grunts and groans of happy customers, the polite laughter of the girls. His own girl would come in shortly to dry him and then lead him to the bed that lay behind a silk curtain in the softly lit room. Most gamblers he knew liked to visit the brothels after the cards or dice, capping off a perfect night of vice, as it were, but Sean preferred to begin his night this way instead—it relaxed him completely, left him languid and comfortable with a sense of well-being that served him well at the card table. He could see tension building in the other players as the night proceeded, knew they would find their release long after it was too late to do them any good; he played so well and so confidently that he’d begun to believe that this was the secret to his success, unwanted though success may be.

  Tonight was important, which was why he’d dined at Delmonico’s. There were any number of good French restaurants in San Francisco—the Poodle Dog, Maison Doree, Merchand’s, Jack’s Rotisserie, all with their twelve-course meals that took hours to eat and their private wine reserves that took hours to drink, and of course, their private floors and even more private rooms for those whose romantic inclinations were inspired by such repast—but Delmonico’s was Sean’s favorite. The right price always bought him a private table in the back where he could observe without being observed.

  Most of the men in there tonight had begun hours earlier, following the cocktail route from Ernest Haquette’s Palace of Art, to the Grand Hotel’s Hoffman Café, to the Palace Bar, and, eventually, to Johnny Farley’s Peerless Saloon, where they downed buckets of champagne, Gold Rush Sazeracs, and the new-style iced cocktails. Well oiled by the time they arrived for dinner, these men were not shy in conversation, and Sean learned a great deal about the inner workings of city politics.

  This was a city that loved its food and thought nothing of spending five or six hours over dinner; Sean enjoyed the bounty after years in Utah, with its beans, buffalo, beef, and salt pork. Tonight, among other things, he had sampled jellied shrimp, crab legs in creamed sherry sauce, a delicious piece of venison, and potatoes unlike any he’d ever tasted in Ireland. Working his way through the steak and well into a bottle of whiskey, Sean had listened to the conversation, watched the pontificators, smelled the cigar smoke, and thought of better days in Ogue’s saloon, where an Irishman would pick a fight with the devil himself just for the sake of good argument. Some of these men were Irish—Sean could hear it in their voices, could almost place the county from which they’d come if they were new enough—but there were also Germans, Norwegians, Chileans with their strong good looks, French, and Italians. Plenty of priests were dining out on the goodwill of their parishioners, as well, and Sean watched them most carefully. From his place at the bottom of the morality scale, he found it much easier to tell the good from the truly bad. After all, he knew the truly bad now, rubbed elbows with them all night long, laughed with them over a bottle, and listened to their stories; he had come to know which daylight citizens were really nighttime in disguise and which nighttime dwellers still carried the light of day in their hearts. Mostly good citizens tonight at Delmonico’s, he’d allowed, but a nice mix of schemers in the lot, as well, like that Harry Meiggs, who owed money to everyone in town and was bound to go under any day now, and James McCabe, who sat with his usual cronies, as well as Sam Brannan, who stopped at their table for a quiet word with McCabe.

  Sam Brannan was a name everyone in San Francisco knew, though Sean had heard it mentioned long before he’d ever gotten here. Brannan was famous—or infamous now—among the Latter Day Saints, for having brought over two hundred persecuted Mormon men, women, and children from New York to Yerba Buena on t
he Brooklyn. This new land on the West Coast was paradise, Brannan had written to Brigham Young; this was the new Kingdom in the Wilderness. Young, however, ordered the Brooklyn emigrants to cross the mountains into Utah with the greatest of haste. Brannan refused and remained in San Francisco along with half the original party; some went up the hills north of the bay to cut lumber, others went to work in Sutter’s Fort at New Helvetia, and another twenty families hiked up the Stanislaus River in the San Joaquin Valley to found an agricultural colony called New Hope. Brannan himself had built a mansion on the corner of Portsmouth Square, and owned a prosperous general store up at Sutterville, as well as the California Star. Some of those original renegade Mormons had gone to work for James Marshall, who was building John Sutter’s mill on the south fork of the American River; these men were there when the river revealed its first yellow sheen of gold. Though Sutter and Marshall had sworn their laborers to secrecy until the claims could be staked, it was Brannan who’d made the news public by marching up and down Montgomery Street, waving a vial full of dust, and proclaiming in his loudest voice, “Gold! Gold! Gold on the American River!” Sean knew all the stories, had been interested to see the man himself, and had been surprised at how young Sam Brannan was for one who had accomplished so much.

  Brannan had been among the most formidable vigilantes in the early days of San Francisco proper and had facilitated more than a few lynchings, and he still swaggered through town quite certain that the respect he was given was indeed his due. He was one of the powerful men in San Francisco, those whose word was law, and Sean avoided him like the plague. He wanted nothing to do with Mormons, founding fathers, newspaper owners, or vigilantes; Brannan was all of those things and worse—he was a Saint who’d remained a Saint, even as he lived the life of a sinner. Sean was an interested observer but had no intention of meeting the man himself. Ever. What if he were wooed out of this pit, brought back into the light, and made a success on top of it all? Well, he would just have to make sure that didn’t happen. There was a way to the bottom of this hole and, one way or another, he would find it.

  Perhaps he would find it tonight. Certainly, he would be pushing what had been the most extraordinary luck. He’d been warned away from the El Dorado, McCabe’s gambling palace, after winning too much—far too much—in the past week. What could he do? Sean smiled to himself—’twas a gift, one that made him laugh in the middle of the night as he undressed in his rooms and emptied his pockets onto the bed. Here, he’d come to sink into anonymity and disrepair, and instead he was wealthier than he’d ever been in his life! Men parted respectfully when he walked into the saloons at night, and barkeeps gave him his first couple of whiskeys on the house! Arrah, he was disgusted with himself. He’d meant to stay away from the very public gambling at the El Dorado, but it had simply been too hard to resist, and he’d spent night after night at the place, throwing the dice now and then to kill time, but mostly playing cards; letting others take the small pots, waiting for their guards to drop until the table was awash with cash, which Sean then collected.

  He would have kept on, had he not been tipped off by one of the girls in Irene McGready’s parlor house. McGready, a good Irish Catholic, was McCabe’s former lover and business partner, the two having parted ways years ago. Rumor had it that McCabe had not defended his mistress’s honor when she was snubbed at a social gathering, but whatever the reason, she had never forgiven him for it. Biding her time until he visited her with a change of heart, Irene took her revenge in the form of a haircut, first drugging McCabe, then shaving his head to the scalp so that he was forced to slouch around town in a too-large hat until the hair grew out again. Needless to say, she was delighted with Sean’s enormous winnings at the El Dorado, particularly during a time when McCabe needed ready cash for property investment. Not only was Sean cleaning out the house on a regular basis, rumor had it that the properties he was picking up here and there in the city were really being purchased by a Chinaman. When Chang-Li had approached Sean about the difficulties a Chinese man faced trying to buy property, Sean had readily agreed to a scheme that would be profitable to both men. It seemed Sean couldn’t turn around without making money in this town.

  When word reached Irene of McCabe’s keen interest in the nattily dressed Irish gambler and real estate speculator, she advised Sean to lie low until McCabe took another one of his long trips to the South, where he managed other gambling interests. Sean had taken her advice and had stayed in his rooms for the past four days, but last night he’d visited her parlor and learned that McCabe had indeed left on a steamer that afternoon. Thus, the celebratory dinner at Delmonico’s, which turned out to be cautionary as well, for there the man sat, eating with his cronies. Had Irene purposefully set him up? Sean wondered again. Was she hoping that Sean would be accused of cheating, that a code duello would follow? Dueling seemed to be the entertainment of the day, it was true, but if she thought Sean was gentleman enough to defend his honor, she was sadly mistaken. He drank, he gambled, he whored—he shrugged his shoulders—there you had it: no honor left to defend. Certainly nothing worth killing a man over. Maybe, though, it would be a nice way to die. Pistols at dawn. How romantic. Sean laughed. And so he was going to the El Dorado anyway, just to see how this next page of his life turned out. Maybe he’d be alive tomorrow, and maybe he wouldn’t.

  The door opened, interrupting his reverie, and a girl came in with a soft piece of toweling, which she used to pat his face and hair. He stood and she wrapped it around him, pressing it against the moisture on his body, kissing his bare arm. She led him to the bed and waited for him to recline before removing her own robe, letting his eyes wander over her slender figure, the smooth skin and long limbs; she shook out her silky black hair and he reached for her then, pulling her down on top of himself.

  He took his time—there was never any rush these days—and enjoyed her completely, pausing to kiss her neck, her throat, her lips, and to whisper to her like any good lover, though whether or not she understood, he didn’t know. The irony of his life never ceased to amuse him, and it was not lost on him that the small crippled Irish boy who once sewed nappies for a living and couldn’t get a girl to look at him twice, let alone kiss him, was now a man who knew his way intimately around a woman’s body and could please her as thoroughly as he pleased himself. Who would have thought that the two things Sean O’Malley was best at in the world were cards and women?

  After they’d finished and had lain a short while in silence, the girl rose and put on her robe, twisted her hair and put it up, then bowed politely to him and left the room. Sean rose and dressed himself, then opened the lid of a black-tasseled red silk box and laid the money within; on top, he left a packet of tea and a porcelain cup as a gift. If his time spent with a girl had been slow and languid, and there had been intimacy between them instead of just sex, he always left a token of his appreciation. The Chinese girls, he knew, valued the black or green tea of their homeland, combs for their hair, pieces of silk. Not so different, really, from the Mexican or Spanish girls, or from the French, although if he’d been pleased by a Peruvian—cholo, mulatto, or Creole, it didn’t matter—he left the cigars they prized. It pleased him to do this, and he hoped they somehow thought well of him, though he supposed they were most likely laughing up their sleeves at the foolish romantic Irishman.

  Now on the street—fed, freshly bathed, and sated—Sean considered his options. Might as well arrive in style, he told himself and hailed the first cab he saw. It was an open carriage, and the night was cold, but the sky was crisp and clear, scattered with a thousand stars and a crescent moon, so Sean climbed in.

  “Where to, governor?” the coachman asked.

  English, Sean thought. Can’t get away from them even here. “The El Dorado,” he replied. “No rush.”

  The coachman turned to look more closely at his passenger. “Relaxed, are we tonight, sir?” He winked lewdly. “Partaking of foreign delights, eh?”

  “There’s a tip i
f you don’t talk,” Sean replied shortly.

  The coachman was unruffled. “Right you are, sir. The El Dorado, it is.” He turned and started up the horses, then spoke over his shoulder. “Place is hopping tonight, sir. Dropped off several gay parties on me rounds. Now, one gentleman in particular—”

  “The tip,” Sean reminded him.

  “Right.” The coachman pretended to lock his lips and throw away the key, then turned his concentrated effort toward driving.

  Sean enjoyed the ride across town, the light spilling from windows as they passed through neighborhoods, more light and the bodies of men spilling through windows and doors as they moved toward the center of town, with its saloons, theaters, and restaurants. When they were still a couple of blocks from the El Dorado, Sean stopped the cab, got out and paid the man, then handed him what would probably be his biggest tip all night.

  “Thank you, sir. My pleasure, sir.” The cabbie could barely believe his good luck; usually the big money, if any was to be had, came at the end of the night from those who’d done well at the tables, and were drunk beside. He’d never been made by a sober gentleman going into the saloon. “And the best of luck to you tonight, sir,” he continued. “Want a cab home, just send a runner for one Randall Dawson. That’ll be me, sir. Randall Dawson. Know this town like the back of me hand, I do. Get you anywhere you like. And fast.”

  Sean considered this bit of information. “Good,” he decided. “Be waiting here at two a.m., Mister Dawson, and I’ll double that tip.”