The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (28 page)

“Jar
me,” Jessie whispers, staring. “Missy? Zhu? Is that you?” For a moment, the
person standing before her, heaving for breath, is a puzzle. A riddle that
don’t make sense. Well, tan her hide, it
is
Zhu! “What in the blue
blazes do you think you’re doing, gadding about dressed like that? You could
get arrested.”

“For
impersonating a man, I know.” Zhu shrugs and smooths back her hair, yanking the
fedora over her head. “Sorry, Miss Malone, but I had some business to attend
to.” She laughs softly at Jessie’s astonishment.

“Don’t
you dare laugh at me.” Jessie shakes her finger at her. “How dare you gad about
in peasant’s rags?
You,
my servant, my bookkeeper, my trusted. . . .oh,
I don’t know what to call you! What will people think to see you?”

“It’s
no reflection on you or the business,” the chit says, climbing into the
backseat with Daniel.

“Like
hell it ain’t!”

“No
one saw me, Miss Malone. Can we get out of here? Please?”

Jessie
clucks to the geldings who canter off, magnificently terrified.

She’s
so rattled, it’s all she can do to drive and the nighttime traffic is a fiddler’s
bitch. She pulls up at a traffic jam on Montgomery. Looks like an accident, the
tangle of a beer wagon and the beery driver of a cab. The horse screaming in
pain, how Jessie hates that. The passenger in the cab is climbing out, pushing
up his sleeves, spoiling for fisticuffs.

As
she steadies the geldings, waiting to pass by, Jessie glances back.

It
isn’t just that Zhu is skinny. The girl is muscular and angular, built like
some creature other than a woman. She doesn’t slouch her shoulders, doesn’t bat
her eyes. She has no hips to speak of in those denim trousers. She’s so slim,
Jessie often frets about her health. She is bold and forthright, almost
intimidating in her directness, and nothing much intimidates the Queen of the
Underworld. She holds her head up, doesn’t simper or defer. She moves and acts
unlike any girl or woman—rich or poor, lady or whore--Jessie has ever met
before.

“I’m
still a-waitin’ your explanation, missy.”

“I
bought some clothes.”

“Those
ain’t clothes. You got perfectly fine clothes. I bought you the mauve silk
myself.”

“Which
I love. Thank you, Miss Malone.”

“Then
why the coolie’s getup?”

“So
I can walk around Chinatown without being noticed.”

“Jar
me.” As astonished as she is, Jessie is ever practical, and what Zhu says actually
makes sense.

Zhu
peers out the window at the street corner where Jessie whipped the thugs.
“Daniel’s got trouble.”

“Hmph!
I daresay Mr. Watkins has got more trouble than you or I know.” Jessie clears
her throat. “I saw you fightin’ with them thugs. How the devil did you learn to
do that?”

“I’m
trained in the martial arts, Miss Malone,” she says matter-of-factly. “Where and
When I come from, I served as a soldier for years.”

“A
soldier!” Jessie guffaws. Scrawny little Zhu, a soldier? Jessie owns a
magnificent painting of the mythical Amazon, her thick loins girded with a
leopard skin, her curls bound up in a leather thong, her left breast shockingly
amputated so that she may more accurately aim her bow and arrow at the enemy
horde. The Amazon clutches her weapon in gleaming curvaceous arms. Zhu, an
Amazon? “You ain’t no soldier, missy.”

“But
I am.”

“Where?
When?”

“In
China.” Zhu gives Jessie such a penetrating look that a chill goes up Jessie’s
spine and coils at the back of her neck. “In a time far from your Now.” She
bends over Daniel’s sprawled form, pulls out a handkerchief, and dabs at a cut
on his jaw, a wound on his head.

Then
she does something truly lunatic. Jessie has seen this sort of thing before, a
hardcore rummy who talks to the air, his brain gone soft with drink. Not a
pretty sight. But Zhu doesn’t touch a drop, as Jessie well knows. They had a
little spat about that at breakfast this morning.

“Muse,”
Zhu mutters to no one in particular. “Check our coordinates. Advise regarding
evasive action.”

A
tiny voice—like the whisper of a spirit from the Summerland—hovers over Zhu.
“Assailants are regrouping, Z. Wong,” the spirit’s voice says.

“Muse,”
Zhu says in a warning tone, “you will comm in subaudio, please.”

“Advise
immediate evacuation of this sector,” the spirit says even louder.

The collision
is cleared, the injured horse unhitched and led away, and traffic slowly moves
forward.

“We
need to get out of here, Miss Malone,” Zhu commands.

“Jar
me,” Jessie moans, her pulse pounding in her throat. “What did I just hear?”

“Don’t
worry about it. That’s just Muse.”

“Your
muse, did you say?”

“Yeah,
exactly. My. . . .my guardian angel.”

Jessie
gasps. An Amazon with a guardian angel is living right under her own roof? She
must consult with Madame De Cassin at once! “Mother of God,” she mutters and
crosses herself, a gesture she has neither made nor meant in over thirty years.
She means it now.

Zhu
hooks a hand over her shoulder. “Jessie, please! Get off Market Street. Go
now!”

The
Queen of the Underworld knows how to move fast. “Hah!” she cries to the
geldings, turns a sharp left at Montgomery, trots up Post. She reaches into the
glove box, pulls out the vial of smelling salts, tosses the vial over her
shoulder to Zhu. “Give him a good whiff. That’ll bring him right around.”

Daniel
mutters, “Father.” His voice is slurred and furious. “Cared more about your
gold than her, damn you.
Damn
you!”

“Ssh,”
Zhu murmurs. “We’ll talk about it later. You’ve got to sober up, Daniel. Pull
yourself together.” Her voice is that of a sweetheart, pleading.

Jessie
arches her eyebrow. Sure and there’s no mistaking that throb in a woman’s voice,
that trill of passion, of unreasonable devotion. A sweetheart! Have they been
carrying on right under her nose? She don’t much like that notion. Zhu is her
servant. She has no right to fraternize with the boarders. She has no right to
do anything save what Jessie permits or directs her to do. What if they argue
and Daniel, with his business and his cash-flow restored, winds up leaving? No,
she’ll have a word with Zhu.

Besides,
a love affair between them rubs Jessie the wrong way. If it ain’t true
courtship leading to marriage, a man should pay for it. That’s Jessie’s rule.
She is not at all pleased that Daniel has not availed himself of her girls’
charms. His aloofness is an insult. No, he’s the kind of man who prefers to
play with hearts, taking advantage of waifs and strays the likes of Zhu Wong
who was ruined by love before. It’s a damn shame. Daniel, in Jessie’s
estimation, is less moral than her johns. Family or sport, that’s the only
choice a man ought to make. And if it’s sport, darlin’, he must pay.

Zhu
hands back the smelling salts. “He’s too far gone for that. You would not believe
the booze he’s poured down his throat in the past few hours.”

“Oh,
indeed I would, missy,” Jessie says, pulling the rockaway over to a curb and
reining in the geldings. “Mr. Watkins is the adventurous type. Likes to try
every hooch in every joint, that’s his game. He really ought to stick to
champagne. Champagne is good for the ticker. Look at me, solid as a rock. A
steady diet of champagne, that’s what I say.”

“No
more goddamn champagne,” Daniel mutters.

“Come
on, then,” Jessie says, heaving herself down from the driver’s seat and
hitching the geldings to a post. “Haul him out.” She’s gotten more drunken men
up on their feet after a carouse than she can shake a stick at. “Let’s walk him
around. Maybe he’ll chuck it up. He’ll feel much better then.”

“Wait,
I’ve got something else,” Zhu says. “Under the Tenets, I’m not supposed to
share our technology with you people, but hey I’m already a criminal, so what
the hell.” She searches her pockets.

What
can she mean? A criminal for impersonating a man or a criminal for something
else? From her tone of voice, Jessie believes she means something else and watches
her curiously, struck again at her oddness. Like a little man she is, though in
fact Zhu is taller than a lot of men Jessie knows. Why does she seem so
mannish? Perhaps it’s her wiry strength, yet with the quick feminine grace of a
cat. Feminine? What does feminine mean? Odd as Zhu is, Jessie finds her
intriguing in a way that her own girls with their lace and their lushness and
their simpering ways cannot match. Jessie isn’t sure what Zhu is. Like something
out of that nutty novel, H. G. Wells’s
The Time Machine
. Some fantastic person
out of a fantastic world, familiar yet vastly strange.

Zhu
takes out a vial of liver pills. Or at least it looks a vial of liver pills to
Jessie, pressing her hand to her side with a little groan. Zhu taps one out and
breaks the pill over Daniel’s face. What on earth? A mist spreads, like when
you step on an old puffball mushroom in the woods, dispersing fairy powder with
your toe. The mist floats gently over Daniel’s face, his slack mouth.

Now
he bolts up like a man dosed with strychnine, his cheeks blazing red. His eyes
gleam like a wild creature’s, the snarl of his drunkenness lingering. A spasm
twists his face, a face that Jessie has grown a bit too fond of. Some deep,
nameless anxiety wells in her as she watches him burst into this unnatural wakefulness.

She
feels that strange disquiet, too, watching Zhu with him, coaxing him, comforting
him. Seeing them in the backseat together, knowing that Zhu loves him before
she herself may know it, fills Jessie with fear. She can smell it beneath her
patchouli, a sharp stink of fear. This woman and this man plunge toward some
catastrophe they cannot see.

But
why? And how? And what?

“What
in hell did you just do to me?” Daniel pushes Zhu’s hands away. “Witches,
that’s what you are, the both of you. The madam and the mistress. Harpies!”

“Watch
your trap, Mr. Watkins,” Jessie says.

“Women!
You’re all the same. You want me for your slave, your lapdog, your pet pony.
I’ll have none of it. Prince Albert is right. The procreative process is merely
a necessary evil for the civilized man. What you do, Miss Malone, is pander to
the lowest animal instinct of which man is capable. It is beneath me, madam.”

“Oh,
you’ll come around one day, Mr. Watkins. Your little gentleman friend won’t
respect your tired old morality. He’ll want his due soon enough.”

“You
know nothing, madam, of my morality or my cock. That’s the one decent thing
Rochelle did for me, besides dancing the cancan and not dosing me with the pox.
She made my destiny clear.”

Zhu
studies him in her peculiar way, as if her very eyes are taking photographs.
“And what is your destiny, Daniel?’

“To
be your master, and you my slave,” he says, sweat trickling down his face. He
shoves her off the seat. “Go on, slave. Kneel before me. Worship me.”

Jessie
is sure Zhu will jump out of the rockaway and flee as nimbly as she jumped in,
but she does no such thing. She kneels before him on the rockaway’s floor, her
face dazed, her shoulders shuddering as if some evil thing possesses her.

“Damn
it, missy, he’s jagged,” Jessie cries and reaches for the horsewhip. Can she
threaten him or is he beyond threats? She’s never seen a man in such a state!
Pie-eyed and wobbly, yet dangerously alert. White-knuckled with the violence
alcohol unleashes in men, yet quick with the capability of sobriety. “What did you
do to him? What was that mist?”

“It
was just a neurobic. A stimulant from my Now. Didn’t help him much, though, did
it?” she murmurs gazing up at him, as if she could move him by her will alone.

You
cannot move men by your will alone!
Jessie wants to shout. She
suddenly recalls that he packs a derringer. And a Congress knife.

“What
can I do for you, Daniel? What would you have me do?” She lays her cheek on his
knee.

He
starts as if she has slapped him, and the ugly spell is broken, his eyes slick
with contrition though his mouth is still hard. He rubs his forehead, squeezes
his eyes shut, and growls to Jessie, “Give me your flask, madam.”

“No,
no, he’s had enough,” Zhu protests, but Jessie gladly hands over the flask of rum.
Better to have the man drunk again than to encourage this dreadful mood.

He
gulps the liquor, grimaces.

Jessie
is aware that she’s trembling. As if the three of them have leapt over some
hurdle, barely clearing some invisible edge.

“I
want sport,” he says petulantly like a bad little boy. “I want to see some
sport fitting for a man.”

“We
should go home,” Zhu says. “You promised me we would after your last drink.
Haven’t we seen enough violence for one night?”

”Sure
and perhaps our Mr. Watkins is still excited after your run-in on Eddy Street.
Sure and he wants more.”