The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (61 page)

The
local guys seize Harvey’s thugs, including the one with the can of kerosene.
The landlady’s son pulls out a pistol and trains it on them. “Don’t you move or
I’ll blow your friggin’ heads off!” he warns. The newsboys pile on Harvey and
gleefully pummel him with their fists till the bulls pull them off and handcuff
the lot. A paddy wagon gallops up to the scene and hauls them off to the
cooler.

*  
*   *

“We
don’t have to hide anymore?” Daniel says, leaning heavily on her shoulder.

Firemen
dash in and out of the boardinghouse, tamping out the blaze with admirable efficiency,
saving the place from the certain annihilation most blazes of this nature
inflict on the ill-starred buildings of this day. Zhu breathes a huge sigh of
relief. She likes the landlady and her son, who have both been kind to her and
Daniel in spite of the cloud of disrepute they’ve brought with them.

“Muse,
is there anyone else Daniel must hide from?” Zhu whispers.

Muse
posts a string of statistics in her peripheral vision. “Negative. My analysis
indicates that Daniel’s opponents will go to prison for fifteen years.”

“We
don’t have to hide anymore,” she tells him.

“The
luck of the Irish has smiled on us today!” Daniel crows. “I’m going to book us
a room at Lucky Baldwin’s Hotel straightaway. We shall eat, drink, and. . . .
Well, we shall eat and be merry, by God. I cannot think of anyone else I should
want to be merry with besides you.”

She
smiles, her heart bursting with joy, hoping this hell is over and all she has
to do is live out the rest of her life. Whatever that amounts to. If she’s
trapped in a Closed Time Loop, if she has to live and die, live and die, over
and over, then so be it. She accepts that.

Daniel
hails a cab. A smart black brougham halts for them, and they board and
collapse, laughing, on the plush leather seat.

“My
angel,” he says, cradling her in her arms.

“I’m
not an angel, Daniel.”

“Oh,
yes! Yes, you are.”

“No!
I’m not an angel and I’m not a whore. I have intelligence and passion, strength
and perseverance. I am capable of abstract thought, intellectual
accomplishment, and artistic expression. Just like you, sir.”

He
ponders that as the brougham trots up Fifth Street to Market. “What shall I
call you, then?”

Zhu
smiles. “You may call me a Woman.”

14

High
Tea with Miss Anthony

When
Zhu and Daniel step down from the brougham at Market and Powell and stroll to
the entrance of the magnificent Baldwin Hotel, Zhu sees Jessie Malone walking
into the lobby. Actually, Jessie isn’t walking. She is being alternately led,
pushed, pulled, and yanked by Madame De Cassin and a smiling Mariah. Mariah,
smiling? Zhu can’t remember the last time she saw Mariah smile. Or if she’s ever
seen Mariah smile.

“Jar
me,” Jessie complains to her bullying companions. “If women go into politics,
they’ll wind up as jackassed as men.”

“You
don’t like some man telling you how to run your business, now do you, Miss
Malone?” Madame De Cassin says. As always, the spiritualist wears her dashing
black riding habit and boots.

“So
why do you tolerate some man deciding the laws governing your life?” Mariah
says. She looks like a totally different person. Zhu blinks, wary, fearful for
a moment she’ll suddenly see all reality change and Mariah will be unsmiling
and stern in her customary maid’s uniform. When Zhu looks again, though, Mariah
is still smiling and still wearing a blue French-cut jacket with burgundy silk
braid and fancy geegaws like military decorations, matching blue button boots,
a blue Caroline hat, and a sweeping burgundy skirt.

“We’ll
all wind up in Napa Asylum,” Jessie declares. “We’ll all start a-smokin’ them
vile cigars and a-growin’ them billy goat beards.”

“Well,
hello, Miss Wong,” Mariah calls out. “And Mr. Watkins, good to see you up and
about. We have all been quite worried about you.”

“You
have?” Daniel says incredulously.

Zhu
smiles. She’s overhead his little altercations with Mariah many, many times.

“We’re
delighted that you’re coming to the meeting,” Madame De Cassin says. “We
welcome gentlemen, of course, but you’ll have to keep your trap shut.”

“Meeting?”
Daniel says, glancing at Zhu, his eyebrows raised. “Trap shut?”

“The
meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association,” Mariah says
proudly. “I have been attending the meetings of our local chapter for some
years now.”

“And
I’m the one who first persuaded Mariah to attend,” Madame De Cassin says. “We
spiritualist brothers and sisters support woman suffrage, along with equal
opportunities for all of our American brothers and sisters. And we despise
cruelty to the humble beasts among us.”

“You
do?” Daniel says, and Zhu returns his look of amazement. She never knew that
nineteenth century spiritualists were in the forefront of the equal opportunity
movement and the hue and cry against cruelty to animals. She knows now.

“Most
certainly,” Madame De Cassin says. “Our souls are all equal in the Summerland.”

Jessie
turns to the spiritualist, her eyebrows arched in surprise. “Is that so?”

“Yes,
indeed,” Madame De Cassin says.

“So
that’s where our Mariah was always sneaking off to,” Daniel whispers to Zhu.

“Miss
Anthony herself has honored our town with a visit to raise support for the
state referendum,” Madame De Cassin adds.

“What
referendum is that?” Zhu says.

“The
one that shall pass a constitutional amendment giving women the vote in
California,” Mariah says, beaming with excitement.

“Indeed,
the measure will be on the ballot this November,” Madame De Cassin says. “You
must persuade your gentlemen friends to vote for it, Mr. Watkins.”

“Perhaps
I will,” he replies with a diplomatic diffidence that suggests to Zhu he has no
intention of doing any such thing. Or maybe not. Maybe she’s misjudging him
again.

“And
who is this Miss Anthony?” Zhu says, aware of the spiritualist’s tone of awe
when she speaks her name.

“Why,
Susan B. Anthony, Miss Wong,” Mariah says. “President of our association.”

“Mother
of God,” Jessie moans, “we’ll all start lyin’ and cheatin’ and stealin’ just
like men. We’ll all start dishonorin’ the precious sanctity of the family.”

“Miss
Malone,” Madame De Cassin says, “you do all of that now.”

Jessie
is indignant. “I do not lie, cheat, or steal!”

Zhu
and Daniel join the throng of women sweeping into a downstairs salon, which is
set with dining tables and chairs. The sideboard offers hot tea, cream, sugar,
scones, bread pudding, candied violets, and a large Lady Baltimore cake shaped
like a shamrock and iced with green butter frosting.

“What,
no champagne?” Jessie complains.

“Cake
and no champagne,” Daniel whispers to Zhu. “Positively barbaric.”

“The
temperance movement supports woman suffrage, too, doesn’t it?” Zhu says,
recalling the signs and demonstrations she’s witnessed all over San Francisco.
She tries a candied violet. The vile thing tastes just exactly like purple
sugar. “They wouldn’t approve of champagne or sherry at this high tea, would
they?”

“Quite
right,” Madame De Cassin says, helping herself to tea and a scone. She licks
her lips. Zhu gets the impression that the spiritualist wouldn’t mind a nip of
sherry with her tea, herself. “However! Miss Anthony has asked the WCTU and
other temperance interests not to meet in California this year as they’d
planned. The liquor interests are keen on defeating the woman suffrage referendum.
They’ve invested a bundle of money into the campaign against it.”

“The
liquor interests,” says Mariah scornfully, “exploit the friendship between
temperance and woman suffrage every chance they get. What drinking man who
beats his wife and whose wife hates his habit wants to let her have a say-so in
the government? Let alone a vote to go dry?”

She
aims an evil look at Daniel, who fusses with the lace on Zhu’s cuff.
Hmm.
How will he vote?
Zhu wonders.

She
finds a table for her and Daniel, helps him sit. He’s still so frail and weak.
She hurries to the sideboard and fixes up a tray of tea and scones and bread
pudding. Jessie, Madame De Cassin, and Mariah join them.

Now
a plump young blond woman plunks her tea things on the table and sits next to
her.

Zhu
stares, disbelieving. What wonderful new reality has she found herself in, now
that she didn’t die on the Chinese New Year? Maybe living in a Closed Time Loop
won’t be so bad, after all.

“Li’l
Lucy? Is that really you?”

“Just
Lucy is fine, Miss Zhu.” Lucy looks radiant and fresh, with neatly combed
yellow hair, a scrubbed face, and a high-collared gray cotton dress. “I met
this wonderful fellow, a business man in shipping, not a sailor. He loved me at
first sight--though what a dreadful sight I was! He helped me kick the booze
and the dope. I do declare, Miss Wong, I shall never go back to the sportin’
life.” She giggles, and it’s the same old giggle, only the girlishness is real.
She touches Zhu’s arm. “We got married last week--can you imagine?—and bought a
house in the Western Addition. Oh, it’s a very small house and the neighborhood
is still so rough. But I do believe Randolph and I will make a go of it.” She
glances enviously at Zhu’s belly. “With luck, I’ll look just like you come
autumn.”

As
Zhu exclaims over Lucy’s good fortune and congratulates her, a tiny, tightly
corseted and veiled lady sits tentatively beside Mariah. Fanny Spiggot smiles
nervously at the assembled company, avoiding Daniel’s eyes.

Mariah
says, “Welcome, sister,” and smiles. Though she switches her handbag to her
other arm.

Now
a tall, elegant lady in a pompadour thickly streaked with white sweeps into the
salon and seats herself beside Lucy. “Good afternoon, ladies,” Donaldina
Cameron says with a dour look at Jessie and Zhu. She hesitates, clearly
pondering whether she should be seen in such questionable company, but the
other tables have all been filled up with attendees. Cameron shrugs—Zhu knows
from her own experience this proper lady is much tougher than she looks—then
studies Daniel’s face for a long moment. “Have we met before, sir?”

Zhu
glances at Daniel as he coughs into his napkin. “I believe you must be
mistaken, miss,” he says. Then whispers in Zhu’s ear in an insinuating tone,
“Her special friends call her Dolly.”

Zhu
punches his arm. “Yeah, and how would you know?”

He
chuckles. “Never you mind. That was a long time ago.”

Suddenly
Mariah cries out and leaps to her feet. She ushers a stately woman into their
midst, bidding her to sit in the last seat available at their table.

The
stately woman joins them. White hair pulled back in a severe bun, a pince-nez
planted on her eagle’s beak of a nose, her stern face ravaged by sun and by
age, her stout figure clothed in stiff black silk—everyone hushes at the sight
of her. But despite her austere appearance, the woman’s eyes sparkle with
warmth, deep compassion, and a keen intelligence.

Zhu
catches her breath. Susan B. Anthony is a formidable woman, but her evident love
for her fellow women is the most striking thing about her. Miss Anthony studies
everyone at the table, one by one, never losing her polite smile. But her
assessment of each flashes subtly across her stern face.

Zhu
glances around at their table, too. Okay. A notorious Irish madam getting on in
her years. A young German former hooker. A cockney pickpocket still plying her
trade, though probably not as skillful at it since
she’s
getting on in
her years. A French spiritualist who conducts fake séances and soaks her
clientele for money over their grief and guilt. A Scotch missionary who does
good works, yes, and also presses her rescued child captives into righteous
hard labor. And a Chinese bookkeeper. That would be her. A Chinese bookkeeper
from six centuries in the future who is pregnant by and unmarried to the young
American gentleman seated next to her who is a recovering drug and alcohol
addict.

What
a motley crew! Zhu has no doubt that Miss Anthony, with her penetrating eye,
intuits much of what the people seated at this table are all about. Even Zhu,
from six hundred years in the future.

“Sure
and we’ll all be growin’ them smelly mustaches,” Jessie says, with a tart look
at Miss Anthony’s plain face and stout figure. Jessie is up to her usual
escapades. Today she’s resplendent in a tightly corseted green silk gown,
enormous Colombian emeralds draped around her neck, dangling over her
décolleté, and decorating her wrists and her fingers. There will of course be a
bash for Saint Paddy’s Day at the Mansion tonight, and Jessie will reign over the
celebration. Chong will surely bake rye bread, make his own mustard, and cook
up a wonderful corned beef platter with all the trimmings. She sniffs. “As sure
as I’m Miss Jessie Malone, the biz is the biz, and I’m advisin’ you to watch
out for this political biz.”