The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (16 page)

“Stay
calm, Z. Wong,” the monitor said.

“I
am
not
staying calm. I’m getting the hell out of here. No way in a
million years will I prostitute myself. And I’ve got a duty to rescue Wing
Sing.” She felt terrible about abandoning the defenseless girl, for whom she
felt a rush of protective loyalty. A teenager forced into prostitution?
Tricked? Sold by her mother?

She
was just a kid.

“Take
it easy, Z. Wong,” Muse insisted. “This is the turn of events. I cannot verify
your presence in this residence, but neither do the Archives refute it. So deal
with it. Try some of that brandy on the nightstand. It’s probably quite good.”

“’This
is the turn of events’? That’s all you’ve got to say?” Zhu snapped. It was almost
as if Muse were encouraging her to abandon the project. But why? Was Muse
testing her?

“You
don’t know San Francisco in 1895,” Muse continued smoothly. “You could get
yourself killed out there. Please review the Closed Time Loop Peril of the
Tenets of the Grandmother Principle.” The monitor posted the text in her
peripheral vision.

That
shut her up. She paced around the room while Muse rattled on about the
technopolistic plutocracy and how employment during the hyperindustrial era
closely resembled servitude. As if that was supposed to make her feel better.

“Imagine
taxes so high people’s incomes were halved,” Muse argued. “Imagine housing
costs and living costs so high that the rest of people’s incomes were consumed
by daily expenses. That it was normal to assume debt in excess of one’s
personal resources. That was the heyday of the technopolistic plutocracy. The
woman who bought you is a small operator.” Muse added, “She’ll come after you
if you run away. She knows this town. She knows the police. She could get you
thrown in jail. You don’t want to go to the Pest Hall, the jail for Chinese.
Trust me, you don’t. Besides,” and this, Muse’s final argument, clinched it,
“you’re more valuable to her for your intelligence. Convince her of that, and
she won’t force you into prostitution.”

In
the morning, Jessie Malone unlocked and entered Zhu’s room and introduced
herself. Splendid in a lavender shirtwaist and billowing skirts, she reeked of
patchouli oil and booze. She had Mariah bring in a tray with fresh-squeezed
orange juice and coffee with cream and sugar. The black maid silently regarded Zhu
with sympathetic eyes.

“I
got a feeling about you, missy,” Jessie said in a blunt manner that Zhu liked
in spite of herself. “There’s something I see in you. Maybe you can tell me
what it is.”

Zhu
reprised her alibi, embellishing the story with a British education in Hong
Kong. She declared, “I didn’t sell myself to him, Miss Malone. I have no
intention of selling myself here.” The passion she summoned uttering those
words surprised even herself.

“Did
it for love, what a shame,” Jessie said, circling her, appraising her as if she
were a cut of beef. “Jar me, you are a skinny one. My johns don’t much cotton
to skinny ones. You ain’t got the consumption, eh? No pox? No clap? No plague?
No worms?”

Chastened
by her argument with Muse, Zhu quickly established that she was fit and
capable. “My name is Zhu.”

Jessie
tried it out. “Shoo? Zoo?”

“It
means ‘pearl,’” Zhu said.

“Then
I’ll call you Pearl.”

“Also
‘pig,’” Zhu laughed.

Jessie
liked that, too. “I’ll call you Pearls Before Swine.”

“Call
me Zhu.
Zzsh.
Zzsh
. Zhu.” She demonstrated the buzzing noise.

Zhu
proceeded to pull a copy of
Poems of Pleasure
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox off
a bookshelf and read from it. She set out a column of numbers, added them, then
divided the result by five.

Jessie
Malone didn’t miss a beat. She produced a written contract, crossed out some
clauses, scribbled in others. The contract stipulated that Zhu agreed to work
for Jessie as her personal servant for a term of two years, during which time
Zhu would earn back the hundred dollars in gold and reside, rent free, at the
boardinghouse.

“But
what am I to live on?” Zhu asked, amazed at the document.

“I’ll
feed ya. You got a bed.”

“What
about clothes? I’ve got nothing but these. What if I need medicine?” Zhu cast
about for other necessities. She needed to get her hands on some cash. If young
women were so easily bought and sold in San Francisco, maybe she could buy Wing
Sing from Chee Song Tong. “Jewelry,” she tried again. “Books? Entertainment?”

“Lordy,
now her highness wants jewels and the theatre.”

“Come
on, Miss Malone. Pay me a salary.
Some
thing.”

Grumbling,
Jessie scribbled in a monthly stipend of five dollars and added six months to
the term.

And
Zhu signed. She never held a pen like this in her life. You dipped the tip in a
pot of ink. She offered her handshake, and Jessie took it. Pulling herself
together after the dreadful first day and even more dreadful first night of the
Gilded Age Project, Zhu advised Jessie--with all due sympathy and a charm she
didn’t know she possessed—that the corpulent madam really ought to loosen her
corset because the undergarment could be causing her internal organs to
hemorrhage.

*  
*   *

Now Zhu
scrapes back her chair from the dining table, strides out of the room. Her face
burns with anger. She won’t tolerate abuse from Jessie, not in front of Daniel
and Mr. Schultz.

Jessie
chases after her, catches up with her in the foyer. “Hell, I’m sorry, missy,”
she says. “I know you don’t drink. You’re damn near the only one around here
who don’t.”

As
the gentlemen drift from the dining room to the smoking parlor, the madam’s
eyes pool with sorrow, contrition, and genuine perplexity. A jumble of passions
plays across her face. Jessie is only forty years old, but she looks like a
centenarian from Zhu’s day. She slips a gold coin into Zhu’s palm. “You know I
like you. You’re a smart kid. You’re different from the rest of the girls. In
the time you’ve been here, I’ve come to depend a lot on you. Honestly, I don’t
know what comes over me.”

“You
want them to know you control me. It gives you pleasure. That’s what comes over
you.”

Jessie’s
cornflower-blue eyes widen. “Lordy, am I as terrible as all that?”

“You
are,” Zhu says and pockets the precious coin.

Jessie
smiles at her bluntness. “I’m the Queen of the Underworld, and I take crap from
no one, no how.”

“And
I don’t take crap from you, Miss Malone. I will order your red wine, and I will
check up on the Mansion, including Li’l Lucy. But I am my own woman, and I have
my own business affairs in San Francisco. Don’t you forget that.”

Jessie’s
eyes turn dark and suspicious, then shrewd. Zhu braces herself for Jessie’s
challenge, but she only says, “Never met a chit like you, Zhu. You can’t be
more than sixteen. That’s why I paid through the nose for you.”

Zhu
wants to say that she’s thirty. She wants to boast that she can expect to live
to one hundred twenty years and more. That even a bumpkin like her from a
jerkwater town like Changchi has been gene-tweaked, edited, Blocked, jacked for
telespace, and morphed. But she swallows her boast. It’s not Jessie’s business
how old she really is.

“I’m
older than you know,” is all Zhu says.

*   *  
*

Zhu
climbs the stairs to her room, intending to change her morning dress into
suitable outing togs, when Daniel confronts her in the hall.

His
suite is on the north side of the house. He has no business on the south side.
He smells of tobacco, liquor, a cologne evocative of some exotic spice. He
doesn’t hurry down the hall like the other boarders do, but purposefully steps
in her path, his expression inexplicable.

“Good
day, Mr. Watkins,” she says and attempts to pass him, but he stands in her way.
The tension she always feels around him rises in her nerves, making her clumsy.
She had a man friend once in her early twenties, but their brief relationship
couldn’t survive the rigors of the Cause or Zhu’s dedication to the Daughters
of Compassion. She isn’t totally ignorant of sex. Still, she can’t explain why
his glance makes her heart lurch. “Mariah’s not in. I believe she went out to
the apothecary.”

“I
am not here to see Mariah. I am here to see you.”

“Is
Miss Malone troubling you for the rent? I’m just the bookkeeper, there’s
nothing I can do.”

“Miss
Malone does not trouble me. You trouble me, Miss Wong.”

“Oh,
indeed?” She ducks around him, hurries down the hall. “But why?”

Close
behind her, he catches her wrist. “You are not who you claim to be. The runaway
mistress of a British gentleman, by way of Hong Kong and Seattle? I think not.”

She’s
speechless. He stands over her less than a hand’s breath away. She is acutely
aware of his physical presence, bristling and insistent. Paranoia rushes
through her, and her heart knocks in her chest. He and Mr. Schultz are forever
regaling her with questions at the dining table, and she isn’t sure her answers
are always correct. Damn the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications for
rushing her through the training!
The shuttle will be ready in two days,
Chiron told her.
It’s vital that you go on the t-port at once. Muse will
fill you in
, Chiron told her. Yes, well. Muse seems to have forgotten just
exactly why she’s here.
The Pest House, the jail for Chinese. Trust me, you
don’t want to go there.
She’s a Chinese woman without family or allies or
documentation in San Francisco, 1895. A wealthy white American man could do so
many bad things to her.

“I’m
sure I don’t know what you mean, sir,” she says, polite and deferential,
casting her eyes down.

Daniel
just stands there, boldly examining her.

“Won’t
you tell me what you mean?” she persists. If she’s made errors, she’d better
find out about them. She’d better consult with Muse and correct them.

“Mr.
Schultz works for the China Line. He says you do not know the proper name of
the ship that supposedly brought you from Hong Kong to Seattle.”

“Why,
it was the
Wandering Jew
, sir. I told you that.”

He
shakes his head. “The
Jew’s
port of destination is Cuba, not Seattle.”

She
can only stare. How could the Archivists have been wrong about the name of her
ship? They knew all sorts of tiny details—that a runaway Chinese girl would
seek refuge in the Japanese Tea Garden on the Fourth of July, 1895, for
instance. What kind of damn fool did Chiron take her for?

“Go
to your room,” he says, “and I shall follow.”

He’s
got something on her, and she knows it. The immigration authorities would be
very interested in a Chinese woman without proper papers. Under the Exclusion
Act of 1888, a Chinese woman like her is strictly forbidden to enter the United
States except under specific circumstances. Proper connections. A husband. A
family. And documentation. Above all else, documentation.

Does
he mean to turn her in, collect a reward? She knows he’s got family assets in
town, but he’s hard up for cash. Is that what this is all about?

She
takes out her key and unlocks the suite, misgivings pounding in her heart. They
enter the small parlor she and Mariah share. Mariah is as secretive as Zhu and
considerate beyond the bounds of courtesy. She has created her own aesthetic in
the homey room—handcrafted oaken chairs, rustic colorful braided wool rugs, wood
carvings of farm animals, black iron tools set before the brick fireplace. One
day, the country look will be considered as significant a form of interior
decoration as Jessie’s Victorian excesses, the carved animals highly prized
antiques. But in this Now, Mariah’s parlor is merely provincial, reflecting the
tastes and means of the American lower classes.

Zhu
gestures to a chair for him, seats herself.

“I
said, in your room.”

It
occurs to Zhu that he’s drunk. “We can talk here, Mr. Watkins. I told you,
Mariah went out after breakfast. She won’t be back for a while.”

“In
your room,” he repeats. He stands over her, asserting his physical presence. Is
he threatening her? Oh, yeah.

Zhu
is no weakling. After years in Changchi, in the fields, in the factories, she’s
strong and muscular. During the campaign, the Daughters of Compassion insisted
on self-defense training for all comrades. She could hold her own in combat
with this man, despite his superior size and weight. She turns this assessment
over in her mind, readying herself, bracing herself. He thinks he can push her
around, does he? Mr. Daniel J. Watkins, entitled to whatever he wants?

She
leaps to her feet and poises her hands, taking a fighting stance.

He
circles her curiously. She balances herself, turning to face him.

He
seizes her arm, faster than he ought to be after brandy and champagne, and heaves
himself at her, using brute force. The single-mindedness of his assault
astonishes her, and they stagger back together, she tripping on the damn skirt,
he bullying against her like a locomotive.