The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (44 page)

“Why
did you take her jewelry, Miss Cameron?” Zhu demands. “I told you I happen to
know her mother gave it to her.”

“I
beg your pardon, but I did not take her jewelry. Selena came to the home the
day after the rescue. She had a warrant for Wing Sing’s arrest. All quite
legal. She claimed the girl stole the jewelry from
her.
”

“But
she didn’t, I tell you!”

“And
I believe you. I believe Wing Sing. But the madam demanded that the girl hand
over the jewelry or face arrest. I would have had no choice but to surrender
her to the police. Before you know it, the highbinders would have bailed her
out or Selena would have gone to the jail and dropped charges. Either way, the
highbinders would have seized custody of her again. They would have taken her
to another parlor, perhaps even to another city, and we would never find her
again. It’s a common tactic of these people. Miss Culbertson lost many girls
that way.”

Zhu
heaves a huge sigh. “So you handed the dowry box over to Selena?”

“Of
course. I am truly sorry, but I assumed it was better to give up some trinkets
than to lose this young soul.”

Zhu
takes Wing Sing’s shoulders. “There, you see? Miss Cameron didn’t steal your
jewelry. You might as well say Selena did. I’m going over to Terrific Street
right now and fetching it back. If I do, will you think about going back to the
home with Miss Cameron?”

“I
not scrub floor,” Wing Sing says, pouting.

“Perhaps
Miss Cameron could find something else more uplifting for you to do. Isn’t that
right, Miss Cameron?” She doesn’t hide the sarcasm in her voice, and Cameron
curtly nods. “Remember what I told you before, Wing Sing. You’ll never find a
husband and wear your dowry if you stay in a place like this. Even Rusty won’t
tolerate you staying here for very long.”

The
girl frowns, but Zhu can see that she’s listening, considering Zhu’s plea.
“Okay, Jade Eyes. You get my dowry back, maybe I go.” Fiercely to Cameron, “But
I not wait tables.”

Zhu
turns to Cameron. “If she agrees to go, I’m begging you to take her back.”

“Of
course. I am a Christian.” Cameron sweeps out of the crib, Andrews trailing
behind her like a bodyguard. “Good luck, Miss Wong.”

Zhu
steps out, too, and finds Jessie standing just outside the door, another shot
of gin in her hand. “I heard every damn thing.”

“Then
you know I’m not drawing up a contract till I get Wing Sing’s dowry from Selena
and the girl decides what she wants to do.”

“Why
does this kid mean so much to you, missy?”

“Because
I can’t go home again till she does, too.”

*  
*   *

Zhu
strides up Montgomery to Terrific Street. The morning sun sears her skin. The
Block’s fine microderm will protect her from sunburn, won’t it? It’s supposed
to. Still, Zhu feels as if she’s burning up. She slides her cuff up her arm,
stops dead in her tracks. Her hand and wrist exposed below the cuff are browned,
much darker than the skin covered by cloth.

“Muse,”
she whispers, “why is my skin tanning?”

Flicker
of alphanumerics in her peripheral vision. “Your skin is not tanning, Z. Wong,”
Muse whispers.

“Excuse
me, yes, it is. Does my Block need replacing?”

 “I
show no indication that your Block needs replacing. I show no indication that
your skin is tanning.”

“I
can see it with my own eyes!” Careful. A passing milkman swivels his head at
her.

“Must
be an illusion,” Muse whispers, the bland synthetic voice in subaudio mode. “You’re
tired.”

“That
doesn’t help me, Muse. You’re supposed to help me. You’re supposed to guide me
through the Gilded Age Project, and you’re not. Why is that?”

“You’re
very tired,” Muse says.

No
kidding, she’s very tired, spending half the night with Daniel, then rousted
out of bed at dawn by Jessie. She leans against a streetlight, suddenly feeling
ill. Bile rises in her throat, and her pulse pounds in her stomach beneath the
corset. Her clothes feel too tight.
Lend the gray silk dress to Wing Sing,
she’s your size.
No, she’s not. Zhu is
not
the same size as Wing
Sing. She’s not the same size
she
was months ago, not anymore. She’s
been piling on fat from all the rich food Jessie feeds her. Some mornings she
aches from the gluttony.

One
morning, as Zhu retched in the water closet, Mariah asked casually, “You in the
family way, Miss Zhu?”

“Certainly
not,” she snapped. But she fled to her bedroom and checked the contraceptive
patch behind her right knee. The patch was still bright red. Meaning it was
still effective, though of course she never planned on having an affair during
the Gilded Age Project. The contraceptive patch blocks her menstrual cycle
completely. She’s had no menses at all. She still has no menses. But Mariah’s
question and her bulging belly sent a chill through her. She couldn’t possibly
be pregnant. She didn’t eat a bite that day, pleading dyspepsia, and the next
day she felt much better, trimmed by fasting, restored.

“Muse,”
she whispers now, “why are you tormenting me like this?”

“I
am here to advise you, Z. Wong, and to monitor the progress of your project.”

“Then
advise me about my attempt to regain the girl’s dowry from Selena.”

“Proceed
at once!” Muse urges. “Hurry!”

Oh,
excellent. Hurry. Muse is defective, malfunctioning. Someone has sabotaged the
Gilded Age Project, sabotaged her. But why? She’ll file a full report when she
returns to her Now. She’s got six months behind her and three months to go till
the Chinese New Year when she’s scheduled to step through the shuttle and
return to her Now. She’s still got time to take Wing Sing back to Nine Twenty
Sacramento Street. Time to convince her to stay, time to settle her in. Time to
have a word with Miss Cameron about what she’s got a right to require of the
girl, especially now that Wing Sing is pregnant. Time. Nine months of time,
altogether, that’s the duration of the Project. Nine months, as long as it
takes to bring a child to term.

As
she strides up Montgomery, realization punches her in her swollen stomach. Nine
months. A coincidence? Or some plan of the Archivists, a plan hidden from her?
She wasn’t supposed to connect with a man like this. She wasn’t supposed to
fall in love. In love? Is she in love with Daniel J. Watkins?

No,
she can’t be. He’s the quintessential Victorian man, with his arrogance and ignorance
about women. He’s a monster with his cocaine and alcohol habits, his mental and
physical abuse of her. He’s the kind of man women will rebel against throughout
the twentieth century, first by winning the women’s vote, then by claiming women’s
equality in the workplace, in the universities, in the bedroom. And the
struggle won’t end in the twentieth century. Zhu has witnessed herself how long
the struggle goes on and on.

“Daniel’s
going to die,” she whispers to Muse, her heart heavy with longing, “and I can’t
save him. But I want to. Call me a crazy idealist, but I want to.”

“Everyone
dies,” Muse whispers back.

Zhu
trudges uphill to Terrific Street, steeling herself.

*  
*   *

The
red light is burning brightly at Selena’s, the front door flung open, music
blaring. The parlor is crowded with white men. From the conversation Zhu
overhears, a convention of distillery owners from Philadelphia are visiting the
Napa wineries and touring the San Francisco restaurants. Today, the gentlemen
are sampling Chinese. Selena is only too happy to accommodate their tastes.

Zhu
slips through the party. Selena’s girls lounge about in silk slips, their satin
robes flung open, their theatrical white makeup creating Kabuki masks of their
faces. Should she take advantage of this huge diversion, break into Selena’s
room, rummage around? But the madam has probably placed the rosewood box in her
safe, and the safe will surely be well hidden. Better to confront the madam,
get it over with.

“Hey,
Selena,” Zhu says, tapping the madam on her shoulder. “I’ve come for Wing Sing’s
dowry box.”

The
madam whirls around indignantly, abandoning a sprightly conversation with a
pock-faced gentleman. “Get out my house, you.”

“Not
till you give me the girl’s jewelry. You’ve got no right to it, and you know
it.”

“No
right! You got no right to steal our girl. Chee Song Tong pay gold for her. Mr.
Gong!” she yells. “Mr. Gong, look who here. You don’t got to go look for her.
She come to you.”

Hatchet
men stroll out of the kitchen, flush with drink, their fingers oily from fried
wontons, each with a moll hanging on his arm. The eyepatch wipes his hands on
his companion’s satin robe and shoves her away. The fat man throws the rest of
his drink down his throat, the wiry fellow gobbles his wonton.

They
surround Zhu.

She
tenses, positioning her hands, crouching, summoning her strength. Yeah. Forget
the skirts and corset and button boots, she can fight anyone anytime, anywhere.
The hatchet men haven’t seen her in action, now have they? Not yet.

The
eyepatch thrusts his face at her, running his eagle eye over her cerulean
dress. “Pretty girl. And I thought you a good girl, Jade Eyes. You say you want
to talk of family with little sister-friend, not go to
fahn quai
. Not
help
fahn quai
steal our girl. Then you come back here, looking for her
gold? This not good, Jade Eyes. What can we do about this?”

“I
say put her to work,” Selena says. “Girl for girl. That fair.”

“No,
Mr. Chee want blood payment,” the eyepatch says. He reaches into his jacket,
takes out a long, curved knife. A butterfly knife. “We teach the people of Tan
not to steal from Chee Song Tong.”

The
fat man and the wiry fellow grin, as if killing Zhu would be more gratifying
than turning her out. Go figure nineteenth century men.

“Blood
payment?” Selena shouts. “Fools! Not enough pretty Chinese tail in this town. I
pay much gold for her myself, girl for girl. I get one on Jessie Malone.”

Zhu
finds herself silently thanking the despicable madam as the hatchet men circle
around her, considering their possibilities. The eyepatch is as cold as ice.
Any trace of a friendly connection between them has long since vanished.

But
they’re drunk, Zhu sober, and she seizes a spittoon, dashes the foul contents
on the eyepatch, his fellow gangsters, and Selena. People start screaming, and
the house maids and the bartender block the front door, the cook blocks the
kitchen door. Zhu dashes up the stairs. Think! What did Cameron say before the
raid and rescue of Wing Sing?

“Muse,”
she whispers, “didn’t Cameron say there’s a trapdoor?”

“Southeast
bedroom,” Muse whispers. “Goes to the roof. Narrow gap between the rooftops. Fire
escape goes down from the next roof over. A butcher shop. Go, go, go!”

She
dashes up the second flight of stairs, clatters down the hall. Dead end! She
races down the other way, finds a third flight of stairs to a half story tucked
around the corner. She finds the southeast bedroom, the door unlocked, dashes
in, and locks the door behind her.

There,
in the ceiling, a pull and a trapdoor like the entrance to an attic. That’s it!
Zhu slides a chair over, climbs up on the rickety seat. The chair wobbles with
her frantic action, sending her skirts swaying.
Damn these skirts! Careful,
don’t break your neck!
She gives the pull a good yank and the trapdoor
flips open, revealing blue skies above. A cast-iron stepladder gracefully
telescopes out and down. Bootheels pound down the hall outside the bedroom. She
scrambles up the stepladder onto the roof, pulls the ladder up behind her,
slams the trapdoor shut. In a corner of the rooftop, she spies a barrel
half-filled and no doubt heavy with dried-up tar. She half-scoots, half-rolls
the barrel over the trapdoor, tearing a seam in her armhole.

Then,
her heels sinking into the warm tar, she ventures to the roof’s edge. There’s a
gap, all right, maybe two feet, between the house and the butcher’s shop. That’s
supposed to be narrow? Oh, man! Her head swirls with vertigo to look down. She
pulls off her button boots, tosses them over, lifts and gathers her skirts, and
works up a good run, pure fear propelling her.
Help me, Kuan Yin.
She
leaps, her skirts billowing, and tumbles onto the next roof, blunting the impact
of her landing with a practiced roll of her hips.

She
leaps to her feet, untangling the skirts from her knees. The stink of offal and
blood from the butcher’s shop nearly makes her retch. She pulls on her button
boots, finds the fire escape. Breath ragged in her throat, heartbeat pounding
in her chest, she climbs down as quickly and quietly as she can. A butcher
leans out of a window as she passes by, his hands smeared with blood and
gobbets of flesh, his knife dripping.

She
drops down into an alley half a block from Broadway, which bustles with
traffic. The cries of the ragpickers rise over the clatter of fine carriages.