The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (37 page)

Third
floor, fourth floor. He huffs and puffs up the stairs. Zhu claims chain-smoking
is what causes his shortness of breath. What nonsense. He taps out a ciggie,
lights it. It’s this indolent life he’s led in San Francisco, lazier than his
time in Paris. That’s what has stolen his breath. Dust has gathered along the
baseboards of the fourth floor, and quite a few of the suites are vacant. Other
gentlemen, apparently, are not so willing to hike up four flights of marble
stairs, and the Monkey Block boasts no elevator like the skyscrapers on Market
Street. Perhaps, when his business picks up, Daniel himself could establish an
office here. There’s a happy thought—Daniel J. Watkins, Esquire, etched in gold
letters on a glass door. But what is he? A real estate broker, a spinner of
pictures, a dreamer, a drunk?

No!
Not a drunk. Not anymore.

And
there, at the end of the hall is the sign for Dr. Mortimer, Physician.

Daniel
hesitates before knocking, suddenly unwilling to confess his distress to a
total stranger. He could simply cut down. Skip the brandy for breakfast. Hell,
do not breakfast with Jessie Malone at all. The Queen of the Underworld is a
terrible influence. He ought to take coffee and toast and Mariah’s
fresh-squeezed orange juice in his suite. And stay away from the Cocktail
Route, lay off the Green Fairy, not to mention mescal and Pisco Punch. He ought
to purchase a bicycle. Bicycle riding, that’s the ticket. Fabulous for the
health, they say. Put him right in no time. A two-wheeler with one of those
silver bells, a horn, and a silver flask. A flask, of course. He licks his lips.
By God, he’s dry.

As
though sensing his presence through the smoked glass, the physician bounds out
into the hall. “Hello there, sir! Either you’re lost or you’ve come to see me,
and both may amount to the same thing.” He makes a show of sniffing Daniel’s
breath. “Ah, here to see me, then. Here for the cure. Of course, you are. Come
in, come in!”

Daniel
recoils. What unpardonable rudeness from a total stranger. From anyone else,
that would warrant a good pop in the trap. But this is the good doctor with the
cure.

Dr.
Mortimer seizes him by the sleeve and practically flings him inside, shoving
him down in a burgundy leather club chair. A full skeleton dangles from an iron
rod in the corner. Hand-colored lithographs of bodily organs line the walls as
Mortimer seats himself at a spartan walnut desk. Bile rises in Daniel’s throat.
The opposite wall is even less comforting—stoppered jars contain decomposing
organic matter moldering in formaldehyde. Daniel compares the preserved rot to
the lithographs, identifying a brain, a kidney, a curled intestine. He cannot
identify the rest. Does not want to try.

“Now
then, young sir, let’s get down to business.” Mortimer is absolutely blazing
with healthful energy. He’s in his early thirties, perhaps, with a receding
hairline, a neat French mustache, and penetrating brown eyes sparkling with
deep sympathy. Those eyes notice Daniel’s distress, and the physician leaps to
his feet and fetches a cut-crystal glass of water. He’s got an excellent
physique, Daniel notices, trim and wiry beneath his well-cut brown serge suit,
his slim waist nicely cinched. He hands Daniel the glass and seats himself at
the desk again, making a show of whipping out a clean new file and snapping it
open to a questionnaire. He dips his pen in an inkwell, poised to write.
Smiling, rosy-cheeked, and bright-eyed.

Daniel
tips the glass to his lips. Water is the last thing in the world he wants. Poor
old Tchaikovsky and his cholera. But he sips, encouraged by Mortimer’s energy
and kindly purpose.

“I
shall need to take your vital statistics,” Mortimer says and spits out
questions. “Mhm, twenty-one years of age. Mhm, Saint Louis. Ah, real estate,
you don’t say. Splendid.” His lively eyes flip up from the questionnaire and
regard Daniel acutely. “Now then, young sir. Drinking every day, are you?”

“I
fear so.”

“When
do you start?”

“At
breakfast, of course.’

“And
continue till night?”

“Well
into the night.” Daniel kneads his forehead. Mescal is leaving a nasty ache
behind his eyes. He licks his lips. If only he had a shot, one little shot. Of
something. Anything.

“Hung
over now, are you?”

“What
in bloody hell do you think?”

“Splendid.
Got the shakes? Mhm.” Scratch, scratch of his pen. “Bowels loose? Nosebleeds?
Dyspepsia? Aches and pains? Unpredictable moods? Melancholy? Seeing things?”

“Seeing
what things?” Daniel snaps.

“Well,
I don’t know. Things crawling just out of the sight of your eye. People out to
persecute you.”

“No,
nothing like that.” Were the roughnecks in the fishermen’s togs merely his
imagination? No, Harvey’s thugs are hardly imaginary. The goose egg on his
noggin is still tender.

“Splendid.
Beat the wife?”

“Not
married.”

“Beat
the mistress?”

The
mistress. Daniel is silent. His mistress says she’s from six hundred years in
the future, and
she
sees things. She’s insane, quite insane, slipping
her eyes to the side when she thinks he’s not watching, muttering to herself.
Speaking in voices. He remembers the first time he heard one of her lunatic
voices, which she managed to project with the facility of a professional
ventriloquist. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. What does he
see in her? She’s Jessie’s servant. A Chinese servant, one of the lower races
and a woman, an inferior to him in every way he can fathom. Yet he’s seen her
heal the crack in a man’s skull. Seen her fight off thugs with her bare hands.
Seen her, for that matter, add and subtract columns of numbers that would make
his head swim. The mere sight of her excites in him the snake of lust and, when
he’s stinking, she robs him of his sense and good graces. With her gentle
strength, she entreats him not to harm himself, while he harms her so much with
his cold fury, his assaults on her womanhood. In so many ways, she’s better to
him than his own--

Better
than his own mother
, is the thought he wants to finish.
You
see?
he berates himself. He thinks too much when the drink is in him.
Thinks and thinks till he’s half-mad.

“Can
you help me, Dr. Mortimer?”

“Can
I help you?” Mortimer flings his pen down, caps the inkwell. He leaps to his
feet, sprints over to the chair, pulls up a stool, and straddles it. He leans
intently into Daniel’s face. “Young sir, I am not a moralist. I am not a
temperance worker. I am a physician, and I know very well how the cares of our
modern life weigh heavily upon us all.” Mortimer sighs deeply. “Do you know how
man used to live? Man did not live in these accursed cities, filled with bad
air and noise and poxy women. Man did not live subjected to the factory boss or
the financier. No, man lived in the country, in the field, in the forest. In
the jungle! In paradise, young sir. Man was free. He worked as he pleased, took
his ease when he wanted, ate healthfully and abundantly. And man in these
blissful times had another healthful amusement besides the hunt, the games, the
songs, the virgins.”

“What
other amusement was that?”

Mortimer
moves closer, and Daniel can smell lavender cologne over the athletic smell of his
sweat. “In our very own New World, south of the border, is a marvelous plant
known to the glorious gold-drenched civilization of the Incas. It is the sacred
plant of their heathen goddess which they harvested readily from their jungle
paradise and used extensively in arcane ancient rituals.”

Daniel
gulps more water, still thirsting for a drink. Perhaps less so, now.

“Mere
Indians were not the only ones to acquaint themselves with the divine plant,”
Mortimer says. “It was the conquistadors, those stern men of swordsmanship and
domination, who discovered the divine plant for the rest of the modern civilized
world and laid it at our feet. For they knew it to be a healthful boon.”

“I
never heard of such a thing,” Daniel says.

“Young
sir, the divine plant has found its way into our American cities in manifold
ways. The dockworkers of New Orleans were among the first to partake of it. An
observer I know personally has witnessed the increased endurance, the
remarkable persistence, the stamina, the building up of sheer strength, the
suppression of appetite, not to mention the cheerful disposition—without drink,
mind you--among those hardworking men.”

“Without
drink?”

“Without
drink, young sir, and laughing in the sun.” Mortimer leaps to his feet, sprints
around behind his desk, and produces charts, diagrams, ink drawings, more
lithographs. “The divine plant is a stimulant, understand that, and as a
stimulant not only does it produce all the salubrious effects I’ve just
mentioned, but works as a cure for anemia, bronchitis, debility, la grippe,
sore throat, angina pectoris, and lung troubles. Gastric carcinoma, pneumonia,
typhoid fever, all these ills have been cured. Not to mention shock and sexual
exhaustion.” He leans over the desk, and directs his blazing brown eyes into
Daniel’s dazed gaze. “Melancholia? Of course! Need I add the cure for
dipsomania?”

“I
must try it!” Daniel cries.

“The
cure is guaranteed.” Mortimer sits and folds his hands. “But, of course, living
life is up to you, young sir. Dipsomania of your sort is a powerful disease. If
you feel compelled to return to the bottle after the divine plant of the
goddess, there is not much more I can do for you.”

“I
understand. Please! Let me try it.”

Mortimer
leaps to his feet again and leads Daniel to a side table. A wide flat mirror is
set into the sort of silver tray a woman might use to display her perfume
bottles. Mortimer reaches into a drawer, takes out a vial of fine white powder
and a straight-edge razor blade. He spills a little mound of powder onto the
mirror and chops at it like a Chinese cook preparing vegetables. In this
fashion, he rearranges the powder into long, fine lines. Now he takes out a straw
made of silver with cunning little designs of snakes entwined around the shaft.

“You
ingest the cure like this,” Mortimer says and, with a vigorous inhalation,
promptly sniffs up two lines of the powder through the straw. “You try it now.
Take one nostril, then the other,” he says, coaching.

Daniel
does as he’s told. A short blast of pain assaults him and the new discomfort of
the astringent powder flying up his nose. A bitter taste pools at the back of his
throat.

Medicine.
By God, why must medicine always taste so dreadful?

And
then sheer energy careens into his brain, a short blinding moment, a vertigo.
The whole world reels and spins. And then the moment of reeling blindness
passes into a sheer wash of pleasure, of strength, of good health and
stimulation. Bliss, vigor itself, this sacred gift from the heathen goddess!

“Dr.
Mortimer, I am cured!”

“Well
now, well now,” the physician murmurs, clearly pleased. “Would you like a
prescription?”

“Of
course! How much?”

“Five
dollars, please.”

It
only takes money, that’s what poor old Schultz said. Daniel counts out coins.
The proceeds from the sale of the Western Addition lot are flying out of his
boodle bag like pigeons startled from a roost. Well. He shall spend no more cash
on the Cocktail Route. He is cured of that expensive hobby.

“What
is this divine plant of the Incas, Dr. Mortimer?” Daniel asks as he hands over
the money.

“Young
sir, the heathens plucked leaves right off the miraculous tree and chewed them
as a cow chews her cud.” Mortimer hands over a receipt, a tiny silver spoon,
and three vials of the white powder. “As you can see, the sacrament comes in a refined
form these days. We physicians call it by a scientific name.”

“What
name is that?”

“We
call it cocaine.”

*  
*   *

Cured!

In
the space of an hour, Daniel has reclaimed his soul, restored his health and
his sanity. Miracle! Invincible, he feels positively invincible. This must be
how a Titan feels, thundering across the primordial world, fearing no one,
shrinking from nothing. His blood soars! The pathetic stupor of mescal for
lunch and brandy for breakfast is long gone. A god of the ancients he is, his
muscles mythological, his brain swooping like a hawk. His eyes take in the
splendor and the squalor of Montgomery Street in one omniscient glance as he
steps out onto the sidewalk.

And
what a sight it is—the proper plain-faced ladies suffocating in their corsets, sweating
in their heavy dark dresses. The painted chippies pathetic in their shame, but
colorful and lively. The bloated men of all classes leering at the women,
filled with their self-importance and stupidity. All of them drunk, of course,
from fine gentleman to roustabout. And the celebrants of el Dia de los Muertos,
lunatics cavorting in their death’s-head masks, making mockery of the grim ultimate
solution to all man’s ill’s.

Not
Daniel J. Watkins. He is restored from the Dead!

He
stands at the corner of Columbus and Montgomery. The weird angle of the streets
suddenly appears to him as a fork in the road designed by the Devil. He must
choose his path. How he has longed to choose his path! And suddenly his path is
clear. He will settle Father’s paltry real estate dealings. He will make the
deadbeats pay or quit the premises, make them settle their accounts one way or
another. As is only right and proper.