The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (48 page)

“Well,
there she is”—he touches a fingertip to the tiny golden woman—“a woman borne
away by an insect. The lowest creature on earth, though of course a butterfly
is beautiful.”

“Go
on.”

“Well,
I’d say that the aurelia is Woman herself swept away by the brute force of
destiny.” For a moment the cable car is silent except for the deep metallic
humming of the cables churning beneath them. “That is all.” He needs another
spoonful of Mortimer’s private mix for more inspiration. “Oh, and she looks just
like you, miss.”

“No,
she doesn’t!” Zhu looks horrified. “She’s white, Caucasian. A Gibson girl.”

“I
beg to differ. She is golden, just like you. Look at the slant of her eyes, her
slender figure. She is you.”

“Where’d
you get it?” Jessie asks again.

“In
a totally unexpected place. I’m thinking Chiron knew that from the start,” Zhu
replies. “So that means the aurelia must be an enigma. A time enigma.”

“Who
is Chiron?” Daniel demands, enraged. She belongs to
him.
“Where is this
Chiron?”

“Not
where, when. The red-haired man Chiron,” she says to Jessie, who nods. Jessie
has heard about this man, apparently. “From six hundred years in the future.”

*  
*   *

The
cable car grinds to a halt at the crest of California Street, finding level
ground at the peak of Nob Hill. Daniel helps Jessie down, but Zhu leaps off on
her own, as spry as a boy. Daniel stands breathlessly and looks around. These
astonishing mansions of the fabled rich—from mining, railroads, banking, sugar,
so much money Daniel’s teeth ache—are really only town houses, and half the
time the houses are empty. The original builders or the builders’ heirs are off
to New York, Europe, or their country villas down the peninsula with acres of
lawns for privacy. Not much privacy atop Snob Hill. These mansions rub elbows
with each other and everyone else passing by on the street.

Daniel
crosses the street to the Hopkins mansion. They say old man Hopkins never lived
here at all, though he poured a fortune into the monstrous construction. Part
cathedral, part Mansard, part Gothic, a dark moodiness like a German castle, a
hint of Queen Anne with all the excesses and none of the frivolity. The place
is atrocious, in Daniel’s opinion. After the old man died, the widow moved East
and took up with her interior decorator. Daniel has heard the rumors along the
Cocktail Route. Young spunk. Knew which side his bread was buttered on. The
widow died a couple of years ago, and the interior decorator inherited
everything. He built another bigger, gaudier house over in Massachusetts, felt
no need to hang onto this one. He donated the whole kit and caboodle to the San
Francisco Art Association, which took up residence in a gleeful flash.

Hence
the shindig, quite a show-off for the bohemian crowd. There’s Ned Greenway, he
of the rumored twenty bottles of champagne a day, dressed like Puck, a wreath
of laurel leaves crowning his sweaty pate, a tremendous white toga billowing
around his girth. As if one should aspire to drink twenty bottles of champagne
a day. Daniel sniffs disdainfully. A good snort of the Incan gift might do the
tastemaker a world of good.

He,
Jessie, and Zhu sweep into the foyer beneath candelabra all ablaze. Forests of
asparagus fern sprout in every corner, smilax drapes the walls. Fresh flowers
everywhere, from banks of orchids surrounding the polished dance floor to rose
petals floating in the champagne cocktails. The baroque ballroom is sheer chaos
as the orchestra strikes up a mazurka. Filters rotate over the gaslights,
sending a kaleidoscope of colors over the dancers. Jewels wink in abundance,
masks bob with ostrich feathers, pale curves of flesh abandon modesty.
Sideboards groan with punch bowls and platters of food rivaling the offerings
along the Cocktail Route. Daniel smells terrapin in sweet cream. Huge parlors
converted into galleries are hung with a profusion of oil paintings,
landscapes, still life, some sculpture. All rather dull to Daniel’s eye but
with the exciting scent of fresh oil paint, chalk, newly cut stone. Revelers
throng around the exhibitions, offering shrill critiques and chattering like
monkeys.

A
nabob costumed as Louis XIV strolls in, leading a donkey dyed green upon whose
back perches the nabob’s mistress. She is costumed, so to speak, as Lady
Godiva. By God, she’s naked as a jaybird, for all Daniel can see, but for a
pair of lady’s riding boots fitted with green spurs. The mistress’s own ample
golden locks, generously supplemented with fake curls, conceal her, more or
less. She does not look very happy about her charade, as her wrists are bound
and lashed to the donkey’s cinch. His face livid with drink, the nabob
announces, “It is she who spurs Green Jealousy. Feast your eyes. The other
gentleman surely did.”

Zhu
clucks her tongue and shakes her head, and ladies of the Smart Set avert their
eyes. “Really, Duncan,” exclaims a leading social maven, “we shall not be a
party to this disgraceful spectacle. And poor Bernice”—Daniel is guessing
that’s the nabob’s wife—“in the very next room.” She gathers up her chums and
steers them away.

“Ah,
but that’s why everyone comes to the Artists’ Ball,” Daniel says, laughing. “To
witness disgraceful spectacles.”

“In
my Now,” Zhu says, “she’d sue his ass for all he’s worth.”

“My
diamonds is bigger,” Jessie murmurs, watching the maven sail off with her
ladies.

Fortunately,
no one pays Zhu any attention. But Jessie turns plenty of heads, as much for
her bejeweled bosom as for her reputation, and Zhu hovers behind her like a
shadow, her face drawn and dark. Suddenly Daniel feels frazzled and claustrophobic
in the crowd. Panic gathers in his throat like too much rotgut.

“Miss
Malone.” He takes her aside, and Zhu huddles with them. “I was supposed to
receive a letter of introduction to a gentleman who’s attending the ball tonight.
He’s a gentleman I need to meet.”

“Yeah?”
Jessie says, grinning with delight as she blows kisses at her best clients,
their scandalized wives by their sides, and waves excitedly to other wealthy
madams who shamelessly promenade around the ballroom. “Who’s the gentleman?”

“Why
do you
need
to meet him?” Zhu quizzes him.

“His
name is Jeremiah Duff,” Daniel says, ignoring his mistress. Her concern is
touching, yes, and also quite tiresome.

“Jar
me,” Jessie says, paying attention at last. “You want to speak with Jeremiah
Duff? You’d best gather your wits about you, Mr. Watkins. That dope fiend is no
gentleman.”

He
gestures her to keep the bray of her voice down. “He is prominent in Society,
is he not?”

“Prominent,
hell,” Jessie declares. “Jeremiah Duff made a killing in the silver mines.
Never touched a pick or a shovel in his whole lousy life. Oh no, he shipped
booze up into them hills for them poor sufferin’ miners, that’s what Mr. Duff
did. Married himself to Elaine Hennessy, heiress to the dry goods fortune. A
proper lady if I ever did see one, with her white cotton gloves and black
cotton stockings. If she was more of a slut and less of a shrew, her husband
wouldn’t come to me.”

“Then
you would recognize him if you saw him?” Daniel says, greatly encouraged.

“Dope
fiend?” Zhu says, her voice rising, too. “What does she mean, Daniel, dope
fiend?”

Fortunately,
so many other revelers are shouting and laughing and drinking that no one pays
them any attention. The orchestra strikes up a rousing waltz, and the pharaoh
and his queen wheel onto the dance floor.

“Recognize
him?” Jessie says. “Darlin’, Jeremiah Duff visits the Parisian Mansion every
Thursday evening at seven. Used to ask for Li’l Lucy. Left that girl black and
blue. Maybe he’s the one who left her with the pox, too. He likes my new
redhead well enough. At least she listens to me about douching. The biz is the
biz.”

Hope
soars in Daniel’s heart, which is beating a trifle too rapidly. “Could you
introduce me? Please?”

“Oh
hell, why not?” Jessie says. “Then you shall owe me a favor, Mr. Watkins.”

The
madam strides off, Daniel following, Zhu dogging his heels, protesting and
nagging him. Jessie moves fast for a woman of her size, positively sprightly in
spite of the wasp waist imposed by her corset. She sashays, bold as you please,
up to a tall, gaunt man in an immaculate black tuxedo, a simple black satin
mask tied over his eyes. Daniel feels like a fool. He should have had the sense
to do the same. By God, a silly pirate. He must remember that the next time he
attends the Artists’ Ball.
If there is a next time,
sneers a voice in
his head. Before he knows it, he is being presented to Jeremiah Duff. Jessie
knows how to be gracious.

Duff
looks him critically up and down. Good thing Daniel has lost the paunch. Duff
has the stringent look of a man who disapproves of the plump Ned Greenway type.
They exchange gentlemanly salutations and retire to a secluded corner buffered
by three marble monoliths. There’s an air of conspiracy about Mr. Duff.
Splendid.

Zhu
sidles up next to them. There’s no graceful way to get rid of her. “My
manservant,” Daniel says. “At my beck and call.”

“Useful,”
says Duff and whips off the mask. He looks Zhu up and down, too, with the same
blunt appraisal. He apparently doesn’t mind her looks, either, in the disguise.
“Speakee English, boy?”

“Yessir,”
she mumbles in a low voice and averts her face.

Daniel
heaves a sigh of relief. He must remember to behave nicely to her later
tonight.

“Indeed,
very useful,” Duff says. “A faithful Chink can pick up the goods for you in
Tangrenbu. I may want use of him, myself.” Duff is a skeletal man with a
receding hairline over a high bulging forehead, a complexion like white wax,
and pale brutal eyes. The kind of mouth that never smiles, the mustache drooping
regretfully down the long, stern face. Did his mother ever love
him?
Daniel sincerely doubts it. “Been taking Dr. Mortimer’s cure, have you?”

“Religiously.
sir. Puts me off the drink well enough, but I’m at my wit’s end about the
nerves. Plus, the ticker goes too fast at times. Gives me a bit of a pain
through the chest.”

“Don’t
sleep much, either, eh?” Duff scrutinizes him. Brutal eyes, yes, but thorough.
Daniel appreciates the stringency, the conspiratorial huddle. “What did you say
your age is, sir?”

“I’m
nearly twenty-two.” Daniel catches a glass of champagne and a clever little
pastry from a tray sailing by on the shoulder of a harried waiter.

“Twenty-two,”
Duff says, ignoring the tray. “When I was twenty-two, sir, I trucked goods into
the mountains. Even higher than the Gold Country, that’s where the Comstock
Lode lay. Even higher, even harder, even crueler than the hills. I wore a
burlap shirt, sir, and denim like your coolie here, and padded cotton crawling
with lice.” He casts a baleful glance at Daniel’s silk and satin pirate’s
costume, the spit-and-polished black leather boots. “We climbed rocks, sir. We
ate stone soup when winter came to the mountains.” Another baleful glance at
the champagne and pastry in Daniel’s hands. Daniel hastily sets both delicacies
down on a side table. “We ate squirrels when we could catch ‘em. With no
campfire, we ate them raw. Have you ever tasted raw squirrel? Tasted raw
squirrel’s brains, raw squirrel’s intestines?”

“No,
Mr. Duff, I have not had that privilege.” Daniel swallows hard.

“You
young men with your petty troubles, your women, your drink, and your drugs.”
Duff surveys the whirling party, contempt pulling at his features. “One day I
fell, sir. A slip on the ice. Oh, I had slipped many times before. But
that
slip did me in. I fell down that cliff like a son of a bitch and shattered my
goddamn leg forever.”

Duff
raises his right leg, showing Daniel his boot with the heel built up three
inches high and a brace that disappears into the leg of his trousers. “That’s when
I started on the medicine, sir. I had to. Pain all the time.”

Daniel
murmurs, “I am truly sorry.”

Zhu
is watching and listening, her slanted green eyes wide behind the tinted
spectacles.

“I
took whiskey to the miners,” Duff says. “God knows they needed it. I make no
apology for it. My wife and her people”—he spits this out—“enjoy chastising me
for the source of my wealth. Take pleasure in suggesting my injury was God’s
punishment for bringing them whiskey. Well, sir, there are punishments and
punishments.”

“Real
estate is hardly a better enterprise,” Daniel says, cringing when Duff’s frown
deepens. A shiver of panic runs through him. Is he, in his bourgeois pirate’s
costume, losing his friendly connection to the inestimable Duff?

“I
took them whiskey,” Duff says, ignoring him. “I took them good whiskey, but I
never touched a drop of it myself. No, sir, those were our goods. When we
needed the fire of alcohol of warm us in the cold, we drank puma piss. Not a
drink a fine young gentleman like yourself would know a thing about.”

“Ah,
puma piss,” Daniel says. “Terrific rotgut. Homebrew, tobacco juice, and a dose
of strychnine. Gave me astonishing visions.”