The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (40 page)

“Aaaand
this just in! At Saratoga in the sixth, Saratoga in the sixth, it’s Diamond Jim
Boy, Diamond Jim Boy at the finish line, gentlemen! Just a moment. Her
Majesty’s Aristo to show, aaaand Baggage Smasher to place!”

Men
shout and scramble to the croupier’s table. Others groan and punch their
neighbors, seize their beards, or stare stoically into their whiskeys.

“Say,
mister, what’s a fine gentleman like you doing in a joint like this?” says a
sardonic voice. “That’s awfully game of you.” Daniel turns and confronts the
handsome, rough-looking kid with his dark hair curling over his collar and his
big hands. No soiled fisherman’s togs for Jack London this time. He wears the
rumpled tweedy jacket and trousers of a college man, a disheveled collar and
tie. He spies Zhu, and his eyes widen. He tips back the shot in his hand.
“Awfully game of you, too, sister.”

“Mr.
Jack London,” Daniel says, “may I present Miss Zhu Wong.”

“Charmed,
Miss Wong.” Jack London’s smirk hints at the crude thoughts he must surely
entertain. To Daniel, “Never figured you for the broad-minded type, mister. My
congratulations.”

“Miss
Wong is an employee,” Daniel says stiffly.

“Of
Miss Jessie Malone,” Zhu finishes for him.

“Really,
now.” Jack London raises his eyebrows. “You’re a sporting gal, then?”

“Hell,
no, I’m the bookkeeper.”

“You
don’t say. Rest assured, Miss Wong, when the revolution comes to America, all
we wage slaves will cast off our chains of bondage.”

“Which
revolution do you mean, Mr. London? The Internet revolution? The ebook
revolution? The telespace revolution?”

“Huh?
Why, the communist revolution with blood and guns to back it up,” Jack London
declares, “though I don’t suppose you’d know a thing about that.”

Daniel
watches in amazement as his mistress laughs derisively and shakes her head.
“Oh, the Chinese people will engage in just such a revolution, though in time
they’ll wind up with a rich and powerful elite and the oppressed poor
stratified anew, just like in the bad old days. As for the United States of
America, the revolution you speak of, Mr. London, will never come to pass.
Though there will be times when your people will exchange their personal
freedom, free enterprise, mobility, and independence for a semblance of security
amid an ever-shifting rhetoric of crisis and an ever-expanding government.
Fortunately for Americans, your free democracy is so resilent, your people will
take back their power from that ever-greedy government bureaucracy again and
again.”

“You
must forgive my little lunatic,” Daniel says to Jack London.

But
Jack London throws his head back and laughs. “She’s a genius. And much too good
for you, mister. Let me have her.”

To
Daniel’s continuing amazement, Zhu smiles. “What is this place, Mr. London?”

“Miss
Wong, this here is a poolroom,” Jack London says. “No, there’s no pool table.
The technical definition is an establishment for organizing a betting pool,
hence, a poolroom.” He smirks and offers her his arm. “Buy you a drink?” She
slips her hand around his elbow, and he escorts her through the frantic crowd,
Daniel trailing after them. “See that guy over there working the telegraph?
Picks up race results from tracks all over the country. And those
guys?”—pointing at the rows of tables, the money changing hands—“they make
book. And those guys”--he jerks his thumb at the crowded bar--“make sure the
chumps stay good and loaded, all the better to separate them from their
hard-earned scratch.”

“What
a racket,” Zhu observes tartly.

“You
said it, sister.” Jack London grins at her so wickedly, the green-eyed monster
of jealousy stirs in Daniel’s heart. “San Francisco and Oakland outlawed
poolrooms in ’94. Too corrupt, they said. Fleecing the working stiffs out of
their dough, they said. But the board of trustees of the fair burg of Sausalito
were persuaded—persuaded generously—that the sport of kings, a shot of rye, and
marvelous view of the bay go hand-in-hand.” He winks at Daniel and juts his
chin at something behind Daniel’s shoulder. “Why, here’s the esteemed proprietor
of this fine establishment. Say, Mr. Harvey, I’m placing ten eagles on
Argle-Bargle to win in the fourth at Pimlico. What do you think?”

Daniel
whirls and confronts the scourge.

Harvey
is a tidy little gent with small hands and pared fingernails. His mother may
have once loved him for his pleasant nose and mouth, well-shaped cheeks and
forehead. But no one loves him now for his dead-white skin of a habitué of late
nights. His black hair curves in a great, greasy roll cascading from the
dead-white forehead and falling down his scrawny neck. A black beard spreads
over his weak chest like a fur bib. Worse of all are his eyes—huge, bulging
things mismatched and strangely shaped, dark bags of flesh beneath them and
glassy staring pupils within them, the right wandering toward the left.

“So
yer the fuckin’ son,” Harvey says in acidic whine.

Zhu drops
Jack London’s arm and hurries to Daniel’s side.

“Say,
Harvey,” Jack London says. “This gentleman is square with me.”

But
Harvey hears nothing, not even that Argle-Bargle has just won at Pimlico.
“Heard you had a pretty face,” he says and pushes Zhu aside, shoving his ugly
mug up to Daniel’s. In his little right hand gleams a Bowie knife, a long evil
thing made for killing and skinning, the cutting edge of which he presses
against Daniel’s throat. “This here poolroom’s mine, Watkins. Your rich daddy
ain’t got a thing to do with it. Fuckin’ go back to Saint Louis. We don’t want
your kind around here.”

Before
Daniel can attempt to whip out his Remington and plug the bastard in the gut,
Jack London’s big hand closes around Harvey’s. A gang of hard-faced men steps
up behind Harvey, fists clenched.

“Say,
now, Harvey,” Jack London says in a genial tone. “I’m telling you, Mr. Watkins
is a pal of mine and Joaquin Miller. What’s your gripe?”

“He
means to take my property away from me, that’s my fuckin’ gripe.”

“Now
why would he do that?” Jack London says, his hand still over the grip of the
Bowie knife.

Daniel
stands very quietly, thanking Jack London with his eyes. Zhu’s hand on his arm
a steadying influence. Thank God for friends. If he escapes Harvey’s with his
person intact, perhaps he’ll go to church again, make a donation. And stand
Jack London for a drink.

“His
daddy loaned me money to buy my land and my digs, only I ain’t sendin’ no gold
back to no Saint Louis,” Harvey says.

“Is
it a legal debt?” Jack London wants to know.

“Did
I sign fuckin’ papers, you mean?”

“That’s
what I mean.”

“Hellya.
How else do ya think I set this place up?”

“You
don’t say.” Jack London mulls that over. “Has Mr. Watkins cheated you in any
way?”

Harvey
snorts. “No rube from Saint Louis gonna cheat me.”

“Then
you should repay the debt like you agreed to.”

Everyone
in the poolroom stops and stares.

“What
if the fuckin’ train gets robbed and the fuckin’ gold don’t get there? What if
his daddy don’t credit me proper?” Harvey makes a show of being reasonable, but
he’s no actor, and it doesn’t work with Jack London. That deranged gleam
returns to his popping strange eyes. “Anyhow, it’s my establishment, ain’t his.
I puts in the sweat every goddamn day, and I takes the losses. So I takes the
gains, when they come.”

“Harvey,
old son,” Jack London says, “I fear you’re going to have to repay Mr. Watkins
his legal due.”

“Says
who?” Harvey presses the knife blade tighter against Daniel’s throat.

“Says
me. That’s the way the system works, at least till the revolution comes,” Jack
London says, pulling the knife and Harvey’s hand away. Daniel is relieved to
see that London is superbly strong. As strong as Daniel used to be before the
drink debilitated him.

“Aw,
shit, Jackie.” Harvey yanks his hand and his knife out of Jack London’s grip
and lurches back to the bar. The shouting crowd closes in around him. He turns
and smiles, a dreadful gap-toothed sight. “I am going to kill you, Mr. Watkins.
Mark my words. I am going to fuckin’ kill you.”

Jack
London shakes his head. His smirk, so sardonic before, now is cold. “So you
are
a capitalist, Mr. Watkins. I knew it.” He stalks out of Harvey’s poolroom.

December
5, 1895

The
Artists’ Ball

9

Prayers
in the Joss House

“Rachael?”
Jessie murmurs in the dawn. “My sweet innocent angel, is that you?” She tosses
and turns, unable to find comfort in her cashmere bedclothes. Her side aches.
Her head aches, too, which never ached before. Everything has become strange these
days since Zhu Wong came to live at the boardinghouse.

Why
can’t Jessie see things as she wishes they were? Why can’t she receive the gift
of a second glass of absinthe? Toss, turn, toss, turn. Everything tossing and
turning. Why can’t she see what she wants to, anymore?

It’s
no use. She lurches out of bed, goes to her window, throws open the watery
glass. The city is waking, milk wagons and vegetable vendors rattling on their
rounds. She hears horses neigh, a donkey honk. The
ssh-ssh
of the street
sweepers’ sprinklers and brooms. She gazes out further, to her view of the bay.
The fishermen have set out to sea, the last straggling trawlers cutting through
the shifting darkness between the graceful shoulders of the Golden Gate. To the
east, the bay shimmers and dawn’s glimmer shines from behind the Oakland hills,
soon to grace them all with sunlight. She breathes chilly air with the scent of
eucalyptus, the stink of the city night blown clean and clear.

Why
is her heart so dark on this beautiful dawn?

Sure
and it was another lively night at the Parisian Mansion. A trio of the local bulls
stopped in for midnight supper and stayed on for drinks and smokes, then for a
ride in the saddle. Chong was beaming. His terrapin makes even hardened beat cops
randy. “Is my secret spice,” he boasts. Plus, Jessie got herself a new girl, a
lovely thing with flaming red-gold hair and such bad teeth she never smiles,
though the gentlemen tried to persuade her all night. Good racket. Who knows
what’ll boost the charms of a fallen angel? She says she’s seventeen but, without
her face paint, she looks like a schoolgirl barely out of diapers.

Schoolgirl.
Jessie’s gorge rises. “Rachael?” she calls out. “Is that you?”

The
bulls enjoyed her hospitality for free, of course. The law has been leaning on
her more and more these days, not to mention the bench. His honor the
railbird’s touch for twenty eagles at Ingleside was just the beginning. Mr.
Heald regretfully informed her that her monthly civic contribution had
increased by as much, and he still had the nerve to ask her to play the skin
flute.

These
days.

Strange
times are a-coming,
Madame de Cassin said. Bad luck is a-coming,
Jessie feels it as surely as she feels the winter coming. She presses her fingers
lightly to her liver pulsing beneath her skin. She needs a dose of Scotch Oats
Essence just to lace up the corset, and she’s having Mariah lace her up tighter
and tighter. Wasp waists are all the rage in Paris.

She
closes the window, latches it. Fiddle-dee-dee. Is the Queen of the Underworld a
lady to succumb to vapors and apprehensions? She sure as hell is not.

“Jar
me,” she says out loud to no one but herself, “what diamonds shall I wear to
the ball tonight fit to knock their eyes out?”

Sure
and that’s all it must be, this anxiety, for tonight she’ll attend the annual
Artists’ Ball. What the bohemians call their Mardi Gras, a wee bit of cheer in autumn
instead in spring like them lively folks down in New Orleans. The ball is
always held at the San Francisco Art Association, the beneficiary of the
mansion old man Hopkins abandoned high atop Nob Hill. It’s the first bash of
the Season after which the holidays begin. Mr. Ned Greenway assigns everyone to
preferred lists and lesser lists, upon none of which Jessie Malone ever
appears. Mr. Greenway is a fat little snob and a bore. He’s merely a champagne
importer, after all, not some touchstone of taste. He ain’t been civil to her
since she procured her own supplier of Napa champagne, scoffing at Greenway’s
outrageous markup on his imported French. That’s the real dope on why he’s so
standoffish. Once she sat down with a blindfold on and compared vintages for
herself. Is French champagne better than her Napa bubbly? Not hardly. Not to
Jessie.

Nob
Hill, Snob Hill. That’s the mocking moniker the maids and butlers and tradefolk
call the place when they take their ease south o’ the slot. A jest among
sporting gals, too. Snob Hill, rising high to the sky, is a rat’s nest of
mansions perched cheek by jowl on a peak too small to fit them all. The city
seat of the Social Set, though the Silver Kings, the Sugar Kings, the Railroad Kings,
the Sundries and Dry Goods Kings, and all their lovelorn scions think nothing
of descending from their gilded perch for an evening’s frolic at a congenial
locale like the Parisian Mansion. Imagine--some of them kings of industry are
worth ten million dollars while a factory worker earns a buck a day.