by June Hutton
He put his hands in his vest pockets and recited while I scribbled:
cordially invites investors like you & me the humble amongst us seeking their own small share of such riches as already found by my fine neighbours The Black Mountain Coal Company.
I stopped writing.
You’re giving free attention to your competition, I noted.
The length of this note was also threatening to run into the two ads as well as any room I might find on the newssheet for the only news article so far, about the shooting of Mr. George. I had planned a long, splashy piece but was now cutting it before I had even begun to write it. There had been no room for even a small item about those leeches.
Morris, why not call them small investors and other interested folk? You can explain further at the function itself.
You’re a treasure, he said. Erase it! Let’s start again.
He promised payment in a few days.
*
The next mail drop included an invitation to the opera, also thick, cream-coloured, but in an envelope sealed with red wax. I picked it up in the morning and tore it open right there on the street, scanned the card from top to bottom, seizing on the most important lines:
La Fanciulla del West … publisher and guest dinner and dance … followed by the performance
I slid the envelope into my pocket, and walked slowly back to the shop, my eyes on the ground and the black holes. I’d been invited as a member of the press. Others would have to buy their tickets. While they dined and danced, I would be busy observing and taking notes and writing it up for the newspaper. I stopped and pulled out the invitation again and studied the date. Friday, September 29. I had missed the significance earlier. What marvellous timing. That would be the day before our month was up and the first edition was due. There would be just enough time to include coverage of the performance. The bank would be impressed.
Even so, I felt my lungs tighten for a moment. Three weeks from now. Today was the eighth. And yet, and yet, so much accomplished already. A printer, plans for newssheets, an investor.
Publisher and guest, it said. Who should I take? Someone newsworthy.
My thoughts roamed about the hotel dining room. Not the dour Scot. Or that fool of a sergeant major. For a moment, they flashed upon that absurd, exposed, man. Mr. George.
Taxis scooted around me, a high-pitched whine that filled my ears and snapped my attention from the shooting to the dance. Such an evening would mean a dress, and taking one of these wasps to get there, or else risk fouling the gown walking in the black filth of the street.
A glance down showed my hem already smudged. I’d worn the lavender-grey, just in case. Of what, I wasn’t sure, until now, at least.
I pivoted and changed direction, heading through the haze to a place I had planned to visit since my arrival.
*
Bells clinked softly when I opened the door, a sound echoed by silver bracelets on the brown wrists of the shopkeeper.
We are having a busy day, she said to me, but if you don’t mind waiting a moment you are most welcome.
I was not surprised when she added, Mademoiselle. She had the look of Paris, a fitted navy suit with a colourful scarf at her throat, though her accent was not quite French. I studied her while she opened and closed drawers. Her dark hair had a slight wave and was bobbed below the chin. Every so often she looked up at me and smiled apologetically for being busy. She had a thin nose, large dark eyes with lids that drooped luxuriously, a plump mouth. She could be a princess from Persia, or the Punjab.
And the room. It had the same tin walls as everywhere else, but these were draped in sheer silk that barely concealed the room’s industrial bones. Had she used solid fabric, a customer could step into this shop and never see the pipes and metal. But glimpsed through the gauzy layers, the rust and bolts and corrugated tin became not only softened, but pleasing because of what they were. I turned my head to take it all in. Along the counter a row of lamp stands formed a flight of bare-bosomed women in chrome. Their upraised hands held globes of light.
She gave one of the drawers a final slam and rounded the counter, smiling brightly and saying, At last. What might I help you with?
I held my arms out and asked, Can you do anything with—me? I need something for the opera dinner.
La Fanciulla del West! She clapped her hands together, bracelets ringing. I will be there, as well, she said. I think everyone in town will be.
I could hear voices behind a curtain, shrieks and coarse laughter.
The dressmaker smiled and said, Yes, everyone, no matter who. Are we not modern thinkers? Are we not avant-garde? So them especially. And besides, it’s being held in their Saloon.
I didn’t know who and what she meant.
The Bombay Room?
We have two drinking establishments, Miss. The Bombay is part of the hotel. The Saloon has rooms upstairs, but they are rented on an hourly basis. Sometimes, less.
She smiled with her eyes until I got her meaning. Of course, I had seen my drunken competition outside the saloon that day, spraying into the street. I just hadn’t realized what else went on in there.
There was an attempt to rename it The Salon, but no one uses it. My name is Meena, she added.
She grasped my hand when I told her my name. The newspaper publisher, she said.
At that remark the curtain whipped back to more shrieks and I saw bare arms and high-heeled shoes, garters that flashed like fishing lures caught up in fishnet, iridescent corsets edged in black lace, glossy feathers in black and dark green, glittering strings of beads.
They spilled out from the dressing room, one after the other, a crude line of chorus girls pulling at their garters and lace and smoothing their robes in honour of my presence, gathering around me as though I were a news baroness, admiring my hair and congratulating me on my newspaper, even though it didn’t exist, yet.
Even without Meena’s advanced warning I would have seen who they were at once. Their manner as well as dress gave them away as whores, though the word seemed too harsh for the young things. They had not been in the business long. Their attempt to look provocative fell somewhere short of alluring and closer to helpless. Lipstick that was too red and inexpertly applied. A pair of satin heels two sizes too big that flopped about the feet of one girl, as though she were playing dress-up with her mother’s things. A corset yarded up hastily on another, the lace-tied centre of its pleated top ruptured by a cleavage shoved off to one side. And I reached forward, instinctively, momentarily startling the woman who began to pull back, even startling myself with my boldness.
It just needs straightening, I told her, my hands back at my sides and pointing with my chin. It’s a habit. I used to do the same with my little brothers’ ties.
The woman looked down, her brown hair a tumble of curls, and then up, her brown eyes large and languid.
Thank you, miss, she said, and gave a righteous tug to the other side.
Back inside! Meena called to them. We are not quite done.
They shuffled behind the curtain and Meena observed, They are my best customers. No one goes through clothing like they do.
She must be right. I had seen them through the window just a few days ago, and here they were, back, already.
Meena excused herself, disappearing momentarily behind the curtain. It opened again with a swipe of wooden rings clattering along the wooden rail.
They filed past in their velvet coats and hats, the one with the crooked corset turning a shoulder to call out, So nice to meet you, miss.
They would have stories. I filed them away in my thoughts, and waved.
In the sudden silence I could hear Meena’s tiny heels clicking as she walked around me.
You are not at all what I expected, she said.
Me! I wanted to say.
You have a perfect shape and height, she decided. A slender ankle.
I made a sound and Meena pulled a measuring tape from her pocket. You don’t believe that?
I told her I used to split the seams of my dresses.
Of course you did, she said. You were becoming a woman and you were wearing little girls’ frocks.
I studied my shape in the three-sided looking glass. When I was a child there were no full-length glasses in our home, just tiny shaving mirrors nailed up high for our father and Will. Though I had begun to note how my little brothers’ boyish bodies, just before they jumped in the water, would take on the shape of men, legs and backsides muscled up like the haunches of a horse, thin undergarments rucked up into their backsides, twin figs tucked between. Occasionally, at the pond near a twisting mountain trail, no trunks at all. A tumble of ruddy flesh that caught my breath. Nothing like my memories of Pete and Pat in the bath with me, pink darts between their legs. The twins had changed before my eyes. I couldn’t pass our Italian neighbour’s fig tree, its plump fruit dangling, without staring. Perhaps I had focused so much on them I neglected to observe the changes in myself.
The whole time I was brooding over this, Meena was whipping a measuring tape around my waist and then my hips, stopping to record the numbers in a slender notebook.
I was also a swimmer, I told her. I grew these shoulders. And then these.
As I looked down I was seeing that warm afternoon when I stripped and dived into the pond, swimming well beyond them, showing off. Then I rose, water streaming off me, triumphant.
Pat had pointed at me and shouted, Tits!
I had been rubbing across my itchy chest with the backs of my arms and only at his outburst saw plump nipples like ripening plums, angry red. In that instant my world changed, because I had. I was no longer invited on their hikes. Couldn’t climb their trees or sleep in the tent with them. I was alone, now. A female. I hated it.
Your bosom? Meena asked. She dropped her voice, A handful each, that is exactly what a woman should have.
I slapped a palm over a breast and sighed. More than a handful.
Meena smiled with her eyes. A man’s hand, is what I meant.
I showed just enough surprise that she must have guessed that no man’s hand had ventured there. Another woman might have been proud of that. But not me. I flushed from my throat all the way up to my ears, the shame of it, to have been so poorly loved in my twenty-nine years.
She pulled the tape around my chest. Thirty-four, she announced. And what man will you bring to the opera?
I’m not sure. It would be have to be someone with interests in mining.
And why is that?
Why—because I’ve been invited as the publisher. It’s business.
Business, she repeated, and shook her head.
Do you have someone? I asked.
She turned me around to measure me from nape of neck to ankle.
Yes, she said. Fifty-eight.
My side reflection showed I was only slightly taller than the delicate Meena. Not much thicker, either. I cast a sideways glance at her bosom, but her curves were ensconced in a ruffled blouse beneath the scarf.
The lavender-grey had been cleaned and pressed but was, I could see now, still ill-fitting. Meena tugged at the pleats and tisked.
I could never wear such a skirt, either, she said.
Either.
We need something modern, yes?
She continued measuring, height, hips, waist, neck to waist, and called out the numbers, sixty-six, thirty-six, twenty-three, eighteen and one-quarter. At some point during our talk a shop assistant had appeared and taken over the recording of numbers.
Mr. Bones, she said to him, What do you think of blue?
His head was bent, but I saw the flash of his glasses just then as he turned.
I hissed, Is that Doctor?
Her face went soft for a moment. Mr. Bones, she said, is not really a doctor. Are you, dearest? she called out.
I heard him chuckle. He had shuffled to a table against the wall.
Did someone tell you he was?
I thought back, and said, Morris.
He got his name setting a broken bone is all. He’s been patching people up ever since.
Myself included, I said. He put a poultice on my eyes. And Morris Cohen, I called out. You put leeches on his.
Her assistant made not even a chuckle this time. Instead, he rooted amongst bolts of cloth stacked on the table.
She smiled.
He can stitch, that one. He’s good with needle and thread. That blue one, Mr. Bones, she said, pointing, and he heaved the bolt onto the counter.
I was thinking navy-blue, sleeves straight, a high collar, like a suit jacket, like hers.
This was darker than navy and yet luminescent. She drew out a length and I saw that it was sheer, like the drapes over the walls.
Sleek, she said, with slits all around so you can dance. She had the pencil again and sketched in the notepad a thin city girl in a shift. She held it under my nose. Yes? And underneath it, something to pick up the colours of your hair.
She pointed to another bolt and it landed with a thump. I twisted away from the mirror to look at it. Almost a burnt orange. Not a colour I would choose. Then she draped the sheer midnight blue over it, and showed the effect of a glimpse of orange through it. I felt my chest tighten.
Some flashes of this paprika shade here and here, she said. With her pencil she indicated slits in the skirts. And here, she added, her palm against her own chest. You will turn heads. You will be most avant-garde. Come back here in—she rolled her eyes, counting to herself—one week for a fitting.
*
On the counter when I arrived home was a bundle of newspapers. Another gift of a lesson. This, it said, is how a newspaper should look. I yanked the string where I stood. Out spilled old copies of The South China Morning Post and North China Daily News, both weeks old, and I took them upstairs to devour them over dinner. The South China paper was out of Hong Kong, I discovered, and the North, Shanghai. In one was a photograph of a poor area in Shanghai and I saw a place very much as Vincent had described. It could have been taken in Lousetown, then transported across the Pacific and set down onto the page in place of a likeness of a street corner in Shanghai, they were that similar.
Inspired, I headed downstairs first thing in the morning to hammer out my first news story, the shooting of old Mr. George. I typed slowly, rubbing out errors with a round eraser I had found in another desk drawer. It had a hole in the middle, and I strung it through with cord and tied it to the edge of the typewriter for easier access. I reached for it often, smudges blooming where I pressed too hard. The third paragraph gave me trouble. It was easy to describe the shooting but difficult to describe Silver’s reasoning. I struggled with the wording so many times I had to resort to striking through again, or leave holes in the page from repeated rubbing with the eraser.
A man was shot dead in the Black Mountain Hotel dining room Sunday Night. Mr. Lloyd George, formerly of Wales, was seen descending the stairs naked as a wearing absolute little more than hat and shoes when a shot rang out, leaving him dead.
Sheriff Sylvester (Silver) Evans deemed the man’s appearance indecent and his own actions appropriate. Citing Insisting on Calling it Declaring Claiming moral defence on behalf of the town …
In the shop the next night I thanked Vincent for the newspapers, and resolved to set a tiny amount aside from the loan to order my own copies from all over Asia, Europe, and North America, to study their methods of news coverage and headline writing.
The mechanics I had to learn from him. He had arrived unexpectedly, which was the purpose of the keys, the cap crammed into a back pocket, a smock in his hands. I excused myself to go upstairs where I’d left my coveralls. I crossed the floor toward my cupboard, my stride catching for a moment when a beam of yellow shot up the hole. Vincent must have just switched on the lights in the pressroom.
I stepped into my coveralls, fastened the buttons, wondering what he was doing right then. I knelt by the hole, palms flat, face turned so that my left eye could scan the room below. All I could see was darkness. He might have switched the lights off again. And then I got the fright of my life when the darkness tipped back and his face looked up, directly at me. I scooted backwards to get clear of the hole, and crawled to the tub where I sat up, knees under chin, eyes closed, blood pounding. What if he saw me? I stood, composed myself, and headed downstairs.
*
We worked side by side, heads bent, composing sticks in our left hands, thumbing ingots of lead the size of baby’s toes. With our right hands we plucked type from the wooden trays, dropping them in place along the stick, left thumb pressing again.
Vincent’s fingers flew as he talked, reading my copy and following each line, dropping the type back to front. I was much slower, being new to this line of work—and taking several opportunities to glance up at the hole, relieved to see nothing from any angle, but wondering if that was because there was no one up there to see.
I was given the task of the larger fonts for the headlines. Even so, I misspelled several, unskilled as I was in the art of reading in reverse.
His hand darted out over mine and tapped on the misplaced letters. He took the composing stick from me, pulled out the incorrect type.
Then he showed me how my miscalculations had created a small hole in the page below what would be the centre fold, once it was printed and folded.
Not a big deal, he said. Insert one of these.
Vincent had already told me that most shops had images the size of postage stamps at the ready for just such instances: a bell at Christmastime, a boat in summer, even a call for advertisements, or an image that represented the newspaper, such as a star or a sun. I had thought at once of a bullet.
Which would you suggest? I asked now.
Surprise me, he said, then slapped the composing stick into my palm and headed for the door and his other job in Lousetown.
I ran a finger along the stick, then my lip. Salt. His. Then I raised the stick and, with the tip of my tongue touching the metal, tasted again.