Deep Purple

by Parris Afton Bonds

  The protuberant eyes blinked in surprise. “Never thought I’d see the day you’d be lifting a glass. Miss Rose.”

  “I didn’t either,” she said grimly, wrapping her hand about the empty glass he sat before her.

  “Pour Rose a whiskey,” Mary said, coming to her side. “And none of that cheap rot-gut either, Ollie.”

  Jessie downed the glass’s contents in one swallow. Her breath caught in her windpipe like a cork, and a deep flush engorged her skin a bright crimson. Her eyes watered. For this, at least, she was thankful. The potency of the drink disguised the real reason for the tears that coursed down her cheeks.

  “What is it, honey?" Mary asked as Ollie poured another drink at Jessie’s direction. “One of the men here do you wrong? They're all heartbreakers, you know."

  Jessie's stony gaze met Mary’s in the mirror behind the bar.

  “They're weak bastards.” She tossed off the whiskey as if she had drunk all her life and spun the glass away. “Good night,” she rasped and began what seemed like a long journey toward the saloon’s swinging doors.

  Somehow she found her way to the Russ House, though she would have sworn her befogged mind played tricks on her— mischievously echoing footsteps behind her that belonged to the night’s darkness and the hill’s ghostly breezes. She thought for certain she would pass out and sleep away the misery that writhed inside her like a parasitic worm. But her lids were glued open. Her pupils stared unseeingly at the water-stained ceiling while her pulse hammered out the word Brig seventy-two times a minute, four thousand, three hundred and twenty times an hour.

  Her blood sang of Brig’s betrayal. Her heart collapsed and expanded in the cyclic rhythm of the pain that besieged her. Visions of Brig and Fanny twisted together in passion stormed her brain. Her fingers knotted about the chenille spread beneath her still fully clothed body.

  It would have been better had she known that Brig loved Fanny. But as it was, he had sold his love for Jessie for thirty pieces of silver . . . and gold and copper and whatever riches from Godwin property the Roget mines produced.

  And how long before Fanny produced? she wondered in her agonized stupor and began to laugh in small hiccough-like gasps.

  Sleep finally released her from her torment, and she did not awaken until past noon. One look in the mirror at the swollen eyes and still-flushed cheeks—and the thick, fuzzy feeling of the caterpillar tongue—replayed the events of the night before. She left the boardinghouse early to spend the afternoon walking in the fresh air, hoping to clear the whiskey cobwebs from her mind.

  She made a stop at the Company’s Bank, depositing her wages for the week, window-shopped at Schuenfeld and Hayman’s Furniture Store, and stood beneath the striped awning of Seamans and Sons’ Jewelry Store. But she wanted neither furniture nor jewelry. Her desultory footsteps took her by the Assayer’s Office—the Office of Heartbreak, it was called. A humorless smile curled her lips. That was where she should be working.

  At last she made her way to the Crystal Palace. “You’re early,” Salome said, looking up from the mirror as she applied the carmine lip rouge from the cosmetic pot.

  Jessie began to change into the black satin spangled costume, careful to keep her back to Salome and the mirror, for after all that time she still had not adopted the careless attitudes of the other women. She still suffered embarrassment when disrobing before the others. ‘‘I left early.”

  Mary came in and surveyed her, hands on hips. “You look worse than you did last night. Come on down and have a drink before you go on duty.”

  Jessie consented but found the drink no better than it had been the night before. There was nothing, she thought, that could alleviate her misery. The suffering she experienced was as real as if she had taken a barber's razor and slashed her wrists. She left the glass three-quarters full and took her place at the monte table early.

  At first she was able to concentrate. Then her thoughts began to drift and slide like the cards beneath her fingers. At one point the jack of spades turned up Brig's face as she fanned out the cards. The evening became a blur as she moved from table to table. She thought about going back to the bar for a drink after all. She wanted to wipe her mind insensible with alcohol.

  Tumbleweed was not at any of the tables she presided over, but it seemed the Oriental waited for her at the fan-tan table, watching her. Her hands became more unsteady under his scrutiny. She wondered if he could see her weakness. She hated herself for her weakness. Yet she could not help herself . . . nor her hate.

  When break came at ten, she went to the bar. The men made way for her, shouting good-naturedly down its length while the nearer ones claimed her attention with either tales of woe or stale jokes. Vacantly she listened, smiling at the times when it seemed a proper response was in order. Ollie reluctantly poured her three straight drinks of bourbon. “You’re gonna be sick, Miss Rose,” he cautioned sotto voce.

  “That’d be wonderful,” she told him, never looking up from the dark liquid in her chipped glass. "Then I wouldn’t feel anything else.”

  However, she did not become sick, and the last half of her duty that evening seemed to go easier with the drinks to drown out all thought but the cards before her.

  Still, as she wended her way back to the boardinghouse at five that morning, her numbed brain picked up the sound of footsteps that dogged her own.

  CHAPTER 34

  “Whatever sorrows you’re trying to drown in that alcohol will only keep popping to the surface like a cork, baby.”

  Jessie looked up from her glass into the mirror above the dressing table. Dan stood in the doorway behind her. “I'll be sober enough to deal the cards by eight.” It was true, for over the past few weeks she had learned to “hold her liquor,” as the men at the bar termed it.

  The Irishman pulled up a chair and sat next to her. He turned her face toward the mirror. “Look. Look at yourself, Flora. There’s no happiness in that face. No laughter in the eyes. No smile curving the lips.”

  His forefinger reached out to outline the bow of her upper lip. “If you’re determined to forget whatever it is that's bothering you, there is something better than alcohol.”

  She frowned in an effort to focus and understand what the saturnine face was saying. Her lids narrowed. “Just what is it you’re talking about, Dan?”

  “When you go on break, meet me at the cage,” he said, rising. “And bring your shawl.”

  She gave the conversation little thought after he left. But curiosity and her dislike for the taste of liquor—and her utter misery—prompted her to go to his office when her break came. He took the shawl from her cold hands and placed it around her shoulders. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Not far. Over to Hop Town.” He opened the door and ushered her out through the crowded saloon.

  She knew by now that Hop Town was Tombstone’s Chinese community. As many as five hundred Chinese, legacy of the railroading-building era of the previous decade, inhabited this downtrodden area, a place even more depressing than the tent cities scattered about Tombstone’s outskirts. Hop Town comprised a little over a square block of twisting, dividing back alleys. A depression hung about it like acrid smoke. She had even heard tales that a tunnel, part of the Mountain Maid Mine, snaked its way beneath the settlement. She hung back now, and Dan said, “It’s all right. We're safer in Hop Town than drinking before the Crystal Palace’s bar.”

  The shanties in Hop Town all looked alike—all windowless weather-beaten frames that seemed to lean together for support. At that time of night the streets were empty but for two or three Chinese males who scurried in pigeon-like gaits to some unknown destination. She was reminded again of the Oriental who came into the Crystal Palace every night to play fan-tan at her table, though he was so unlike these small inconspicuous men of Hop Town.

  Dan paused before one shabby structure that looked just like the rest and knocked softly. The door cracked. Slit eyes peered out at them. ‘‘Ling Chuey,” Dan t
old the man.

  The eyes disappeared, like the Cheshire cat she had read about as a child. An uncomfortable feeling seeped through her skin, and she shivered despite the almost balmy March night. Dan put his arm about her. ‘‘It’s warmer inside.”

  It was more than warm inside when they entered, the door’s tinkling brass bell chiming their presence. A stifling, cloying warmth pervaded the room and made her feel as if her lungs had collapsed. She drew deep breaths, looking about her. By the colored lanterns suspended from the low ceiling the room did not look as dilapidated as its exterior. Black-and-red carpets decorated with dragons and serpents that seemed alive covered the walls and floors. Scattered about were fringed cushions and small, oblong tables with exquisite ivory carvings or small boxes enameled with jade.

  From a doorway partially shielded by a green silk screen a small man in a black silk robe and cap glided into the room. His yellow skin, like parchment, was stretched tightly across the high cheekbones. The small eyes of jet regarded her closely before he bowed, his hands concealed in his bell-like sleeves. ‘‘Ling Chuey,” Dan said in a respectful voice she rarely heard him use, “I have brought a friend who would be interested in the Golden Dreams.”

  Ling Chuey nodded. ‘‘A thousand celestial pardons, but—the woman is worthy of your trust?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The Chinese bowed once more. “Then come with me, please. The House of the Golden Dreams would be most honored to entertain one of your friends, Mr. O’Rourke.”

  Jessie followed the Chinese down a narrow, dimly lit hallway and through another door that opened onto a descending staircase. Tallow candles in tin sconces on either side of rocky walls illuminated the three wooden steps. It was much cooler inside the tunnel, and as she followed Ling Chuey down the sloping passage, she could feel the uneven and rough walkway. Every so often a candle lit the dampness that clung to the walls and low ceiling.

  Ling Chuey abruptly veered into an offshooting passage that opened into a large room whose walls were banked with tiers of platform-like bunks. Thirty or forty Chinese males reclined on these, since there was scarcely space to sit upright. Their heads lolled, their eyes rolled back; they seemed to Jessie in a state of semi-consciousness. Some mumbled in a singsong chant. Others lay with a snakelike tube running from drooping lips to filigree bowl. A few glanced at her without curiosity.

  Here and there she counted maybe four or five beautiful Chinese women, as small as children almost, who appeared to be heating the pipe stems over black-and-gold-filigree burners or molding some claylike substance between nimble fingers before passing the bowls back to the smokers.

  She stared unbelievingly about her before Dan tugged at her arm, bidding her to follow him and Ling Chuey, who passed through a doorway almost hidden between the tiers of bunks. “It’s all right,” Dan whispered at her ear. “The Chinese emigrants are relieving their miserable existence with opium. Ever hear of it?”

  She shook her head negatively as she followed the little man ahead of her along the short passage. In a much smaller room whose walls were covered with gold brocade was a low black enameled table encircled by red and green silk-tasseled pillows. On the table a stick of incense burned low in its jade container.

  Dan directed her to sit opposite him at the table. With a bow. Ling Chuey vanished, and Dan began to talk in a soft persuasive voice as he lit the wick of the filigree burner.

  “Opium relieves your pain, my dear girl. Eases the misery in the most pleasant of ways. It’s like . . . floating.” His gaze penetrated her. “Would you like to try?”

  The palms of her hands began to perspire. Each day it seemed she sank deeper in her depression. Anything that would help . . . and something that actually felt pleasant . . . could it be any worse than the burning alcohol she imbibed?

  Still, there was something furtive about the place. As though he sensed her hesitancy, Dan said, "If there was anything repugnant about opium, I certainly would not smoke it. It’s frowned upon by certain segments of our society because they're simply afraid of it. Those people are afraid to experience anything beyond themselves.” All the time he talked to her soothingly, quietly, until the sweet tang of the incense filled the room.

  Sitting with her legs folded to one side, she carefully watched as he inhaled the substance. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “Most pleasant sensation. Flora.”

  After a moment he passed the pipe to her. She stretched out a tentative hand, wary, but wanting something that would take her beyond the emptiness that assailed her. “Draw in on the pipe,” he instructed. “Like a man does a cigar. Try to feel it here, expanding in your chest. Then slowly let the smoke rise out of your body. Whatever pain or sorrow or suffering you have, Flora, I promise it will drift from your body like the smoke.”

  She sensed what she was about to do was forbidden, dangerous, and for that reason, she was intrigued all the more. For a precious few moments something was drawing her outside her misery, if only curiosity. What did she have to lose?

  With the pipe's tip at her lips, its tubing coiling about her like a serpent, she could smell the deep sweet vapors. Slowly she inhaled, as Dan had instructed. At first she felt nothing, then the scratchiness of the smoke as it exploded into her lungs.

  Her breath wheezed through her windpipe, and a small smile curved Dan’s fine lips. “Try it again,” he prompted. “The next time will be easier . . . and much more enjoyable, I promise you.”

  She raised a brow and experimentally drew on the stem once more. The smoke surged into her lungs, abrasive, yet after the initial contact, softening. After a few moments, a serene, silky sensation webbed its way through her mind, and, gratified, she sank into the pillows, passing the pipe back to Dan. Exhilarating feelings wafted through her, leaving an afterglow of warmth as they passed.

  Through the wisps of redolent smoke, she watched the recumbent Dan across from her, the drooping lids, the slack mouth, and she knew that he was experiencing the same depths of pure, exquisite sensation to which she was succumbing. Yet he seemed to withhold himself on some plateau that she was quickly verging past.

  She did not care why he only partially experienced the pleasures of the pipe. The fact was he had introduced her to something far better than she had known in all her lonely life . . . in all her life of loving Brig.

  In addition to her visits with Dan to the opium den, Jessie now escaped once or twice a week on her own. Ling Chuey politely took the bills she passed him at the door and escorted her to the small chamber. She knew she was safe through the morning’s early hours with those strange people—that come noon Ling Chuey would gently remove the pipe from her lax fingers and send her on her way to the boardinghouse.

  The fresh air and the bright sunlight would restore some clarity to her head on the walk back to the Russ House, and she slept off the last of the drowsy effects before going to work in the evenings. Now the steps that dogged hers no longer frightened her, for she was sure they were a product of the heavenly opium.

  Miss Cashman never mentioned her late-afternoon arrivals, but a frown of concern would crease the New Englander’s long face. ‘‘You feeling all right, Flora?” she sometimes shouted, and Jessie would have to shout back into the woman’s ear trumpet, for everyone in the boardinghouse to hear, that she had never felt better.

  After a while Jessie sensed that even Dan seemed concerned for her. One evening he called her to his office after she had gone on break. “Ling Chuey tells me you often go alone, Flora. Perhaps too often.”

  She arched one brow. ‘‘I can take care of myself. Besides, I might point out you haven’t cut down on your visits.”

  “Ahh, but I know exactly where to stop,” he said, exhaling on his cheroot in much the same manner he did on the opium pipe. “I know how much my body will take.”

  "Why do you smoke it—the opium?” She tilted her head to one side. “What are you running from, Daniel O’Rourke?”

  He puffed quietly on the cheroo
t, and for a moment she thought he was not going to answer her. Then he said, “From myself. You see, Flora, the golden smoke makes me forget the desire I have for men . . . an unnatural desire, my provincial parents thought. Are you shocked? No, I thought not. In some ways the opium elucidates . . . makes you see things as they really are—oneself included.”

  In spite of Dan’s words of caution, she continued to visit the opium den. She realized she was courting danger, but she cared not. Sometimes she even wondered if she did not actually enjoy the duel she played. Over a period of time she came to know more about the mysterious operations of Hop Town.

  Behind the facades of the Chinese restaurants, Soo Sin’s Parlor & Games of Chance, the laundries, the bakeries, there existed a darker underworld of child slavery, prostitution, and, of course, the forbidden opium dens. Now she knew why Dan disappeared for days at a time—and where his diamond pin went.

  Through the opium den's underground doorways she occasionally overheard the rattle of the dice and the triumphant exclamations of the Chinese gamblers. Occasionally she would glimpse a small child, stooped with the burden of the trays of food she carried, scurrying down the darkened halls like a mine rat. Dan explained that in order to feed all the hungry mouths in the household the impoverished Chinese were sometimes forced to sell a child to the Westerners who trafficked in child slavery.

  Walking through the town—seeing the thin, yellow faces of the children, the bent shuffling figures of the women with their bound feet, the hopelessness that stared out of the eyes of the men—she would cry out inside at the injustice, the injustice of one race to another, of one human to another.

  And then she would think of Elizabeth Godwin—and Brig— and she would hurry on to the House of the Golden Dreams to find her oblivion.

  CHAPTER 35