The Drop Edge of Yonder (18 page)

"A word of advice," Stebbins said, pouring a drink. "Choose an alias. Especially in San Francisco. Anything but Admiral Doom. Admiral Death has more punch. Think about it. After all, death is what people out here know about. Death and gold. Never Doom. Doom is the last thing they want to hear about."

They both turned to watch Delilah as she looked over at their table and began another song:

She sang the next verse in Portuguese, or maybe it was another song altogether, stretching out the vowels and ending each verse with a melancholy wail that traveled slowly up from her belly to her throat. By the time she finished, several men were openly weeping, unable to control their buried longings and fears. One man shot his pistol at the ceiling. Others stood on their chairs and cheered, throwing coins and nuggets on the platform, which were scooped up by the musicians, who took half for themselves before they handed the rest to Delilah.

Zebulon watched her weave slowly through the crowd, as if her fragile and weary body was struggling against a strong wind.

"How amazing!" she said to Zebulon as she sat down. "You've Joined the German navy And become an officer as well. Although your uniform does need some repair." She poured herself a drink. "Is it true that the Germans have plans to take over California and Oregon, as well as Mexico and Alaska? Or is that the English?"

He stared at her, shocked by how much weight she had lost and the deep lines around her mouth and eyes.

"I know," she sighed. "I don't bear close inspection. A girl's joie de vivre can so easily vanish when she has to sing for her supper." She shook her head. "And what about you? You don't look so well yourself."

She looked across the room where a waiter, no more than four feet tall, was maneuvering his way towards them, holding a tray over his black gnome-like head.

"I was hoping someone had stepped on him," she said wearily as the dwarf placed a bottle of whiskey and two glasses on the table.

Nodding at Zebulon, the strange dwarf spoke to Delilah in Portuguese.

"Toku is confused about you," she said to Zebulon. "I don't know why. Why don't you tell us, Toku? We have no secrets at this table. Very few, anyway"

The dwarf pointed at Zebulon.

"Tell your friend to stay away from games of chance," he said with a clipped English accent, "or he'll end up in a ditch. If you know what I mean."

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

He shrugged and picked up his tray. "You know very well what I mean."

"Do you plan to keep our appointment?" Delilah asked.

"When I am ready. Not before. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find three guinea pigs? And not just any three guinea pigs. They all have to be the same age and color. And then there's the state of the moon, and various other elements that you have no knowledge of. If you ask me once more, or even look at me in the wrong way, you will find yourself talking to a stone wall."

He turned and walked back across the room like a drunken sailor navigating his way across a rolling deck.

"A friend of yours?" Zebulon asked.

"He used to be some kind of pet or court jester for the Captain of an English ship," she explained. "When everyone went off to the gold fields, he stayed behind. When he heard me sing, he told me that he had known me in a past life. He's African. Every time I ask him what tribe he's from, he tells me something different - Baule, Bwiti, Pygmy. Whatever he is, he has strange powers and sees things other people can't. I suppose I have an addiction for second-sighted people."

She started to gulp down a shot of whiskey, then thought better of it. Standing up, she steadied herself on the back of her chair, then slowly made her way out of the room.

'E KNEW HE SHOULD LET HER GO, BUT HE FOLLOWED HER anyway, keeping out of sight as she stumbled out a side door into an alley ankle-deep in mud. Once he thought he had lost her only to have her reappear and turn into a courtyard.

He stood in the shadows as she knocked on the door of a wooden two-story house with narrow windows protected by iron bars. Once again he felt presented with a choice. In the past, he had set his course by his instincts and certain signs: a shift in the wind, a campfire on the horizon, tracks in the snow But now he felt only fear.

When the door opened and Delilah disappeared inside, he continued down the alley to the waterfront. He could ride south to Mexico, he thought. But he had already made that journey. And now there was a bounty on him. Wanted. Dead or alive. He would be better off trying his luck in the gold fields. He had taken enough from Dorfheimer for a decent stake. Or he could go on the drift, up to Oregon or Alaska. He knew how to exist hand-to-mouth. Riding fence, rounding up cattle, busting horses - none of it mattered as long as he was free and unknown. He looked out at the harbor where anchor lights were blinking from hundreds of ships. The whole place was on the gallop with orders to fill. If one direction didn't work out, there would be ten more.

The hell with her, he thought, then returned to where he had left her. He rolled a smoke in the courtyard, then stubbed it out and knocked on the door.

A Chinaman opened the door, staring at him through spectacles the size of bird eggs. A long black queue fell past his waist and his reed-like body was covered with a silk maroon robe.

Zebulon followed him into a claustrophobic low-ceilinged room lit by sputtering candles. In the dim half-light he made out a couch and a row of armchairs filled with shadowy figures that he figured were women for hire.

"You want?" the Chinaman asked and snapped his fingers.

A pubescent girl no more than fourteen rose up from a chair, clacking towards him on wooden sandals, a loose yellow shift hanging from her bony small-breasted frame.

"Young delight," the Chinaman said. "Small buds. Like peaches. Good for the heart."

His voice was oddly precise, as if he had learned English from a missionary

"I'm lookin' for a woman," Zebulon said. "A mix. Not white or black. A long tangle of black hair."

The Chinaman shook his head. "Delilah not for sale."

"Not to buy," Zebulon insisted. "To talk."

The Chinaman smacked his hands together as if killing a mosquito. "Twenty dollars. But no touch. Only smoke."

After Zebulon paid, he followed the Chinaman into a back room that smelled of burned chestnuts. A low table held a lamp and several bowls filled with black opium paste. Emaciated men lay on their sides on narrow tiers of bunks, their heads resting on polished blocks of black wood. Delilah lay on a lower bunk, inhaling a long bamboo pipe lit by an old Chinese woman wearing a black high-necked dress.

"Are you dreaming me?" she asked with a smile as he lay down beside her. "Or am I dreaming you? Or are we being dreamed by someone else?"

She sucked at the pipe, then slowly exhaled.

"Where's my necklace?"

It took him a while to remember. "Stolen."

"I'm not surprised. Everything else has been stolen or taken from me. The only thing left is to invest in loss.... Do you ever ask yourself who belongs to whom...? Or why? Or why- it is that most people prefer to rush towards their death rather than step out of the way?"

The old woman offered him a pipe, then held up a long wire with a smudge of opium resin on the end. After he lit the resin, she motioned for Zebulon to inhale. He repeated the procedure several times until he turned on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

Delilah's voice drifted over, like a leaf on a slow moving river. "If she rubs your feet, you'll float in the air."

He wasn't floating. He was a frog pinned beneath a giant thumb until he moved a finger back and forth in front of his eves.

"I betrayed Ivan," Delilah said. "And I betrayed you. But if you had stayed on the ship, Ivan would have killed you. He tried it before. In New Mexico. Or was it Turkey?"

He remembered being a small boy and watching an eagle feather drift down from a blood-red sky and then land gently on his head.

"It's a sign," his Pa said after he shot the eagle. "I'm damned if I know what it means. Only that it's better not to think about it."

"Are you aware that dark spirits are searching for us?" Delilah asked. "For Ivan.... And for me.... And for you.... That's all they know how to do. They hunt for prey, and when they find it they swallow it, as if they intend to take on who they kill."