The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (47 page)

Mr.
Harvey and his poolroom are another story. Harvey has been as intractable as a
Hun and twice as dangerous. Resolution fills Daniel’s heart as he walks to the
county courthouse on Mission Street, a fine granite building rendered in a worthy
classical architecture. Now he’s feeling very righteous, sir, as the crusading
knight must have felt. The power and the might of the law are on his side. His
bootheels click across the marble floor, and he finds a clerk who assists him
in filling out the documents. He did not need his clever mistress after all,
well, he shall be sure to tell her so. Mr. Daniel J. Watkins hereby forecloses
the mortgage on behalf of Mr. Jonathan D. Watkins of Saint Louis on said
property, 412 Water Street, Sausalito, California, presently occupied by Mr.
Nicholas S. Harvey, debtor. He will not be intimidated by a ruffian barkeep. He
pays an extra fee to have the notice delivered by messenger boy. There could be
a handsome profit in the Water Street property as long as poolrooms remain
legal in Sausalito. Now, there’s justice. Perhaps some rich gambler from the
green cloth circuit will show an interest and take the property off his hands.

He’s
feeling
much
better, gold coins jingling in his pocket. He jogs back
across Market, sprints three blocks to Montgomery, and up four flights to the top
floor of the Monkey Block and Dr. Mortimer’s clinic. No more huffing and
puffing, sir, he’s as spry as an athlete. Though his breath does whistle in his
nostrils, his lungs are on fire, and his heart pounds like a drum in his chest.
He taps out a ciggie to refresh himself, drags on it deeply, relishing the sharp
stab in his chest. Now there’s a proper draw for a gentleman.

He
knocks on the physician’s door. No answer. He checks his pocket watch. Well. He
is
ten minutes late for his appointment. Dr. Mortimer not only promised
him a letter of introduction to Jeremiah Duff, but hinted that a judicious use
of the physician’s new telephone might be in order, too. Splendid proposition.
Daniel eagerly looks forward to speaking on the telephone with Mr. Duff. Even
letters of introduction can be ticklish, rife with hesitation and awkwardness,
but an actual voice transmitted over electrical wires—now there is a
magnificent way to communicate.

Still
no answer. This is not like Dr. Mortimer, who usually sprints to the door
before Daniel can lay his knuckles on the glass. He tries the doorknob. Not
locked. The door fans open with an eerie creak.

“Dr.
Mortimer?” Daniel does not like this stiff feeling of intruding. He certainly wouldn’t
like another man to barge into his suite. “Dr. Mortimer?”

The
first thing he sees and smells is the bright blood spilling from Mortimer’s
nose onto the pale green paper of his writing pad. The physician slumps over
his walnut desk, one arm hanging limp, the other flung across the desk as
though attempting to seize something or ward something off.

Murder.
Shock explodes up and down Daniel’s spine. Touch nothing. He knows enough about
modern police procedure to know that. He circles behind the dead physician and around
the desk, confounded by this heinous crime. But why? Who? Someone demanding the
cure? Wanting the cure, needing the cure? Someone lacking money, like poor old
Schultz?

Then
again, nothing seems disturbed besides the physician himself slumped dead over
his desk. The charts, the shelves of stoppered jars filled with preserved body
parts, the side table where the physician kept his supplies. The mirrored tray
dusted with white power, dappled with reddish brown stains. All of it quite the
same.

Daniel
strides to the side table, pulls out the drawer. Catches his breath. The drawer
is stuffed with vials of cocaine and a good quantity of gold and silver coins.

Murder
or. . . ?
This is what an aneurysm looks like, idiot,
one of his voices tartly
informs him. Ah, now his voices are dispensing medical advice. Why does this
particular voice sound so much like his mistress? “You’re not a doctor, Zhu,”
he says out loud.
No, I’m not,
the voice says,
it’s common knowledge
about this drug in my Now
. “Please,” he begs and struggles to remember. Did
they actually engage in some variation of this conversation one tempestuous
night? It seems so familiar. Or is it just his mad imagination?

He
takes ten vials from the drawer and tucks them in his pocket, reluctantly
leaving the rest of the vials and the coins. He does not approve of thievery,
sir. He dutifully deposits five dollars in the drawer. The good physician would
have required fifteen, but now that he’s dead, Daniel thinks five is a fair
price.

Go
straight to the police, that’s what he should do.
But if there’s no foul
play, sir,
says another voice, persuasive, confiding,
if it’s not really
murder but just the fellow’s bad luck, why should you go to the police?
Surely
Dr. Mortimer has family and friends who shall miss him and seek him out. Why should
Daniel pick up the pieces? Indeed, on further reflection, he does not want his
presence here today known by the police at all. Not that he’s done anything wrong,
certainly not. But Mortimer is of no further use to him, now is he? He returns
to the drawer. Mortimer has no further use for any of the vials or, for that
matter, the coins.

You’re
not hurting anyone,
the confiding voice assures him,
and
anyway where will you get more?

Daniel
tiptoes out, gently closes the door. Damn bad luck—he didn’t get his letter of
introduction or his telephone call to Jeremiah Duff. However. He’s got rather
more pocket change and an excellent supply of the Incan gift. But still no
means to ease his soul.

*  
*   *

The
cable car on California Street climbs straight up Nob Hill, aiming its prow toward
the stars whirling in the heavens above. Truly the stars do dance above marvelous
Californ’. Daniel has never seen anything like it, not even after his third
glass of absinthe at La Nouvelle-Athenes. There, the stars would droop and
smear, staining the night sky over Paris with blots of dull orange, and his
fancy would turn to the sordid enticements of Rochelle. But in this night sky,
the stars are frantic. Sparkling, wheeling, dancing across a dark infinity.

He
snuffles gently, nursing the fluid in his nose. The cocaine he appropriated
from Dr. Mortimer’s clinic has elevated him to new heights of health and
well-being. By God, the stars are dancing! Gripping the pole, he leans off the
platform as far as he can as the cable car jolts up the hill to the Art Association.

“Careful,
Daniel,” Zhu calls to him. Proprietary, like a wife or a mother.

“Am
I the only one in costume, then?” he demands, ignoring her and flipping up his
eyepatch.

Everyone
on the car chuckles because everyone on the car is in costume. There are nymphs
and Roman soldiers, Buffalo Bills and winged fairies. An astonishing Egyptian
pharaoh has stained his face blue and escorts a queen with a green-stained face
on his arm. The royal couple is loaded with gold and gems that look real. You
cannot get that glitter and gleam off a facet made of paste, Daniel is quite
sure. There are several Dresden shepherdesses and their burly squires clad in
varying degrees of authenticity and taste. An excellent mermaid with long
silver hair, her lower limbs crippled by her gorgeous satin tail. She is
carried in the brawny arms of two strapping bouncers adventurously clad as
fishermen. One of Jessie’s rivals? Miss Malone cannot keep her eyes off the
gleaming scales.

Daniel
himself has stooped to this absurd swashbuckler’s getup with a real sword, a
scarlet sash, a swooping hat, and the eyepatch. Not particularly original.
Several other pirates loll about on the benches of the cable car in preliminary
stages of inebriation. Yet he has been willing to engage in the pretense for the
sake of the Artists’ Ball. The ladies he has agreed to escort have not,
however, engaged in the pretense and he is mightily displeased with them both.

Jessie
Malone is costumed as Jessie Malone, the Queen of the Underworld. Now, what
kind of fool costume is that? She has pressed all her gorgeous flesh into a sparkly
black dress of extraordinary shape and texture bedecked with black beads of
jet, black sequins, black loops of satin, and frilly black lace. Her diamonds,
by God, he had no idea she owned such treasures. He took one look at her jewels
as they all stepped out of 263 Dupont Street and promptly returned inside to find
Schultz’s abandoned Smith and Wesson, which he’d discovered going through the
deceased fellow’s things. Daniel packs that pistol now along with his derringer,
the Congress knife, and the real sword from the tailor. Armed robbers, sir, you
never know where you may confront them on the night of a Big Celebration in the
city.

Rocks
the size of gumdrops sparkle on Jessie’s knuckles. What they call a dog collar,
a band of captive stars, encircles her neck above a bosom worthy of the Queen of
Babylon. Earrings to knock your eye out dangle amid her riot of golden curls.
And bracelets? He remembers how his mother had a bracelet, a plain silver band
she wore on a wrist as thin as the bone beneath the skin. Jessie has stacked
each of her ample arms with more bejeweled gold bracelets than Daniel has ever
witnessed on one arm, let alone two.

As for
Jessie’s disguise, she has proposed that it shall be the Mask of Tragedy and Comedy,
one side of the mask black and grieving, the other white and rejoicing, all of
it set upon an ivory and ebony handle. She holds the mask over her exquisitely
painted face the way a lady holds a fan, coquettishly flipping the thing
between Comedy and Tragedy, permitting only fleeting glimpses of the mask
behind the mask.

Ah,
well. Jessie will be Jessie, and ever shall she be.

But
his mistress? Her disguise is completely improper and unacceptable.

Zhu
wears her denim sahm, felt fedora, tinted spectacles, and straw sandals. She
has plaited her long black hair into a peasant’s queue. Her disguise worked
well enough when she posed as his manservant strolling along the Cocktail
Route. It is hardly satisfactory for the Artists’ Ball.

“What
in hell are you doing, going dressed like that?” he demanded, outraged, before
they stepped out the door.

“I’m
going as a t-porter,” she said, attempting a joking tone. “A time traveler, to
use Mr. Wells’s terminology. A woman of the future. I told you I actually dress
pretty much like this every day in my Now. I
did
tell you that, didn’t I?”
She looks worried.

Of
course she did. His little lunatic says she likes disappearing in a crowd. What
sane woman would ever want that? Perhaps H.G. Wells could make some hay of it,
but Daniel would have liked to titillate the Smart Set by squiring the
notorious madam on one arm, his lovely Chinese mistress on the other. Jessie as
Jessie, very well, but Zhu costumed as a royal concubine clad in jade satin. Now
that would have been something.

But
Zhu got her way.
She usually does,
laughs one of his voices.

Daniel
abandons the pole and squeezes onto the bench beside her. “I am deeply unhappy
with your crude charade, miss.”

“I’m
deeply unhappy with your cocaine habit, Daniel. I’m deeply unhappy with your
drinking.”

He
claps his hand to his forehead. “For the thousandth time, I am cured of the drink.”

His
irritation spirals quickly down into anger. She is as plain as a pretzel except
for one small detail he notices for the first time in the gaslight of
California Street. He spots it at once. So does Jessie, seated beside Zhu.

“What
on earth have you got there?” he says.

“Say,
missy,” Jessie says.

Pinned
to Zhu’s collar is the most charming bauble Daniel has ever seen, rendered in
the Art Nouveau style with dazzling genius. A golden butterfly with diamonds
and bits of multicolored glass. A nude woman poses at the center, a lovely slim
thing like a dancer. He’s mesmerized by her languid little face, and he reaches
to touch the brooch at the same time as Jessie, his hand colliding with hers.

Zhu
shields her collar from them both, holding her hands over the treasure.

“Sure
and what is that?” Jessie says, prying one of Zhu’s hands away.

“It’s
called an aurelia,” Zhu says.

“Where’d
you get it?”

“You
like it?”

“It’s
blowed in the glass. But it hardly suits your costume. Here, let me wear it,” Jessie
wheedles. “Look, I gotta a little vacant spot on the neckline of my dress.”

“Nope.
I can’t let it out of my sight.”

“Hmph!
You can look at me all night. Oh, do let me have it.”

“Why?
The diamonds aren’t much and the rest is just glass.”

“Why?”
Jessie says. “You are forever asking why. Why why why?”

“Why?”
Zhu says.

“Because
she’s a nude and I gotta have it.”

“How
about you, Daniel?” Zhu says. “You like it, too?”

“It’s
corking,” he says and means it. “Quite decadent.”

“Decadent
how?” she says urgently, as if his answer will prove something to her.