Love and Other Consolation Prizes Page 9

  Ernest agreed and then spoke up. “Miss Amber said something about the carriage trade? Am I to polish the buggy or tend to the leathers?”

  The maids tittered in unison.

  Mrs. Blackwell smiled sweetly, showing off a dead tooth. She put her hand on his shoulder. “We don’t have any carriages, dear boy.”

  Ernest looked confused.

  “She calls this line of work the carriage trade because the horse-drawn carriages, the screaming steam locomotives, the electric trains, even the jangly motorcars now, come and go, bringing discerning gentlemen who all have business here. They come, they have a glass of cognac or some Baltimore rye or a Cuban cigar, they relax, they’re entertained, they attend to their business—and poof, they’re gone by morning. You do know what kind of house this is, don’t you?”

  Ernest nodded again, though he had no clue. He’d rarely left the confines of the boarding school. Then he heard music. Not the tinkling of piano keys in the grand parlor but the distant booming of bass drums that sounded like thunder. He heard crashing cymbals and brass horns screeching out a baleful tune.

  “Glory, not again,” Violet groaned. “They’re starting earlier and earlier.”

  Mrs. Blackwell guzzled the last of her coffee, wiped her mouth, and hung up her apron. She stretched her back and then clapped her hands. “Well, time to get saved, young man,” she said as she raised her eyebrows. “Come along.”

  Ernest followed everyone out the back door to the alley and onto the sidewalk, where he saw a banner with the Salvation Army insignia of Blood and Fire, and a brass band leading a march of smartly dressed women down the middle of Second Avenue. He squeezed to the front to get a better view of the crowd, which ranged three whole blocks, perhaps longer—a field of cotton, a crowd of white-haired matrons and grandmotherly women—perhaps one thousand strong. They carried painted signs that read END THIS VICE, FREEZE THE TOWN, and PUT AN END TO WAPPYVILLE!

  Leading the parade was a tall man, a minister by the collar he wore. And at his side was Mrs. Irvine in a black robe and a long, wide suffragist suit. She noticed Ernest and called out to him, urging him to leave, but he stood frozen in place as she joined a group of singers who belted out “Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Wretched.”

  As Ernest watched in awe, some marchers seemed divided, half of them praying and blessing the onlookers in the neighborhood, while the other half cursed and spat at the women on the sidewalk. Ernest looked up and down the street as shuttered windows opened and scores of women in negligees laughed and wheedled, or yelled back, heckling the protesters. Ernest’s jaw dropped as dozens of bawdy women slipped their knickers off and tossed them out their windows. Sateen bloomers and pantalets of every color cascaded down, occasionally wafting on the breeze, changing direction before delicately landing on the shoulder of a marching matron who’d recoil and cry out as though struck by burning oil or a poisoned arrow. One rotund, balloon-chested woman in particular strutted out onto her third-story balcony and unfastened her ladies’ waist—

  “Don’t look, young Ernest.”

  Ernest recognized her accent as he felt a pair of hands reach from behind to cover his eyes. Her warm fingers were nice against his cold cheeks.

  “You’re the girl from downstairs, aren’t you?” he asked, as he heard the marchers scream in horror, which only prompted more laughter and jeers from above.

  “Sorry I missed you at breakfast,” she whispered in his ear. “Mrs. Blackwell sometimes needs me to eat in the kitchen so I can keep an eye on what we’re making for lunch—to see that nothing burns or bubbles over.”

  Ernest sensed the crowd boiling. “Who are all these people?”

  “You’re living in the Garment District, young Ernest, but trust me, the only thing that ever gets sewn down here are oats of the most succulent and wild variety.” The girl laughed. “These crusades are organized by the Reverend Mark Matthews, along with the Mothers of Virtue, and the Rescue and Protection Society, plus a few die-hards from the Volunteers of America. They come marching down here to save our souls, plug slot machines, prevent drinking on Sundays, try and enforce all the blue laws, that kind of thing. Occasionally they drag someone off to be baptized in Lake Washington. But mostly, they just harass single ladies on the street, even the legit ones, for God’s sake, and they try and shame the police, which is nonsense if you ask me. Everyone knows that sin taxes fund half of City Hall.”

  This, of course, was news to Ernest.

  “They’re a mix of old biddies, cuckolded wives, and suffragists, who got the vote a few years back and then lost it when they tried to clean up the town. Which, as you can plainly see, only made them even angrier. Most of the district moved a few blocks south of us, even beyond Skid Row, but I guess that wasn’t far enough, so they just keep coming back down—at least once a month. They get spun up like a hornets’ nest, but all they really end up doing is ruining everyone’s beauty sleep—which, for the working girls and peacharinos, really hits ’em where it hurts.”

  Ernest heard the marchers shriek even louder. “What’s happening?”

  She laughed. “You do not want to see this. Trust me. It would scald your eyes.”

  Ernest couldn’t see a thing. She held on tight, and his imagination ran away with him, along with what must have been the rest of the woman’s clothing. Then his head reeled as he remembered the colorful women in Madam Flora’s entourage, the girls who all came downstairs yesterday, teasing him as they sashayed through the parlor.

  The crowd roared. Old ladies cursed. Young women whistled.

  “You just realized what kind of place the Tenderloin is, didn’t you?” the girl covering his eyes asked.

  “What makes you say that?” Ernest asked, though indeed he had. He sensed people running in all directions as the band stopped playing, the singers quit singing, and she gently pulled him closer.

  “Because I can feel you blushing.”

  Ernest removed her hands and turned around. He knew his cheeks were flushed with embarrassment. He felt bewildered, confused, but at the same time filled with strange joy and comfort. He hadn’t been this close to anyone, physically, since he was a toddler, and had never even held a girl’s hand in his, outside of dancing a waltz or a box step once or twice at a school gathering.

  She looked at him with a wide smile, brows raised, tawny eyes expectant.

  And he looked back, still holding her hands, which were small and pretty, but rough from working in the kitchen. She appeared to be a few years older, like Maisie, perhaps fifteen to his twelve. And she was a few inches shorter, even with her boots; slender with raven hair, tied in the back. Olive skin, like his, her eyes, dark, like his. Her odd accent now made sense—she was a Celestial, an Oriental. Her smile was radiant.

  “Konichiwa?” she asked. “Or do you still prefer ni hao mah? Hello, either way. I’m your downstairs neighbor.” She smiled again, beaming as she introduced herself.

  Hello, indeed. He thought the words, but they got stuck when he tried to speak with his heart instead of his brain, because she didn’t look anything like what he imagined a scullery maid might look like. He guessed she was Japanese. She dressed plainly, wore no makeup, but had a natural beauty that was hard to ignore. And she looked vaguely familiar.

  “You can’t place me, can you?” she asked. “Honestly, I didn’t recognize you right away either, but this tells me all I need to know.” She patted the hairpin that he’d slipped through the buttonhole on his coat.

  Ernest said, “I’m sorry. I don’t remember…”

  “It’s okay. It’s been what—seven years—since we came over together on that ship,” she said. “Oh, and are you still going to marry me?”

  Ernest furrowed his brow. Then he gasped as he remembered a group of children sitting in the hold of a cargo ship, a voice whispering in his ear, turning toward it to whisper himself. He remembered the Japanese girl among all the Chinese children, a girl with an odd name and a quick temper. As though he could ever forget.


  She covered her mouth and laughed, then put one hand on his waist, leaned forward, tilted her head, closed her eyes, and kissed him. Not a simple, polite peck on the cheek, but on the lips; it tasted sweet, like cotton candy at the fair, a blizzard of warm, sugar-spun snowflakes melting on his tongue.

  She stepped back, plum lips parted, silently appraising him. “You’ve never been kissed before, have you?”

  Ernest was speechless, eyes blinking, slowly shaking his head, his heart racing. He stood there, smiling like a happy fool, in the middle of the red-light district, which had fallen into a swirling mass of hysterical marchers, shrieking women, laughing ladies, hapless singers, lost band members, and the occasional idle policeman, who rolled his eyes and looked at the sky.

  Ernest willed his mouth to work. “What…was that…for?”

  Fahn pinched his cheek. “Remember what I said last night?”

  Ernest furrowed his brow and nodded.

  “Well, the cookies were a gift.” She smiled. “But that kiss was a favor. And now, young Ernest, you owe me.”

  WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

  (1962)

  T his is a love story, but so was the tale of Romeo and Juliet. That was the greatest love story of all time. And we all know how that turned out.

  Those are the words that Ernest read aloud to no one in the dusty, single-volume library of his mind as he lingered at a typewriter in his tiny apartment. The old relic he’d bought at Barney’s Pawnshop in Pioneer Square had cost ten dollars and smelled like cigarettes, rust, and machine oil. But it worked. Though he struggled to put down anything that might be of value to Juju.

  After he’d talked to her about the Tenderloin, the floodgates of his memory had been opened. So much, that he decided to try to write it all down—to contain his stray memories, to manage his wayward emotions. And yet he could barely get past the blank page that seemed like an acre of soil he could never properly tend. Weeds and other wild seeds would inevitably take root amid his labors.

  He had new respect for Juju’s profession as he sighed and removed his reading glasses. He thought about what he should say, could say, and what bits he might stitch together to hide the unsavory details of his and Gracie’s peculiar upbringing.

  He’d explained how he had ended up at the Tenderloin, and Juju had been enthralled, as well as shocked.

  “You mean they actually gave you away?” she had asked, stunned that the rumor she’d pursued had turned out to be true. “Like a barrel of apples or a bushel of corn. How could people do that? That’s beyond ridiculous, that’s cruel.”

  “It was a vastly different time,” Ernest had told her with a shrug. He’d come over on a ship with children who were later sold into servitude, so being given to someone of means, by whom he’d also been offered a job and a new life—that had seemed marvelous by comparison, a generous gift of circumstance. “The way I always looked at it,” Ernest had said, “if I hadn’t been taken in by Madam Flora, I might have wound up as a street kid, eventually sent to a poorhouse, or a reform school that was more like a jail, or worse…”

  “What could possibly be worse?” Juju had asked.

  Ernest had smiled sadly, feeling his eyes glisten as he patted his daughter’s arm. “If I didn’t end up in the Tenderloin, I might never have met your mother.”

  Now, he gave up trying to write. It was too late to attempt to rescript the past. Juju had already begun a comparative piece on what the world was like then and now, from the price of a gallon of milk to how women influenced politics. In addition, she’d tracked down dozens of locals who’d been to the AYP—those who were his age and older, men and women who could offer reflections and commentary on the two spectacles more than fifty years apart. The newspaper had named them Special Ambassadors to the Future.

  To Ernest, the fairs were merely bookends, sentinels carved from stone, rooted in bedrock, immovable. His life, Gracie’s life, was the mystery caught in between.

  That was worth writing about, if only to help Gracie remember the sweet moments, Ernest thought. Not old dirt and certainly not all this new stuff. Not the Cathedral of Science. Not the monorail. Not the Bubble-lift, Bubbleator, Bubble…whatever that elevator-thing was called.

  The idea for the fair had originated a few years ago, when Sputnik went “beep-beep-beep” overhead, launching the Space Race. America and Boeing, which was based in Seattle, had been dragged into the future. And what better way to showcase Seattle to the whole wide world (and especially to the Soviets, and the People’s Republic of China, and the North Koreans) than by hosting another epic world’s fair? That’s when the twinges of Ernest’s deeply buried, seismic nostalgia had begun to stir.

  Worried that an old news article—possibly even the one Juju had found—might drag him into the frenzy, Ernest had fortified his memories against a tsunami of queries and interviews that never came. With each evening-news broadcast that showcased the construction of the fair along with some old-timer who had been around back then, each starry-eyed, gray-haired recollection that came and went without a mention of his name, Ernest relaxed, relented, and embraced the comfort of his anonymity. If his life were a play, his had been a moment in the spotlight, and then an exit with no applause.

  He never suspected his older daughter would be the first to come calling.

  Ernest was still staring at the blank page when he heard a knock on the door. He thought that perhaps Juju had come back when he heard a familiar “Pssst!” from the hallway. Ernest sighed, unbolted the locks, opened the door, and was greeted by Pascual. Ernest noted that his friend was decked out in a dark black suit—his only suit. He also had on a tight V-neck sweater worn over a sharp, pressed dickie and a rockabilly necktie, which usually meant one thing.

  “Kuya, I’m heading up to the Black and Tan,” Pascual said with a wink.

  “I’m pretty busy…” Ernest protested.

  “That’s why I thought you might like to come along, brother—take a break. Besides, a single man our age is just a lonely guy looking for trouble. But a pair of dashing old gents—that’s respectable magic.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silver flask. “We can drink our way over.”

  Ernest was about to say no, that he’d much rather stay in and read a good book, when he remembered that he was supposed to meet Juju tomorrow at the site of the first world’s fair. Suddenly a strong drink sounded irresistible. He looked at his reflection in the cracked mirror on his bureau and straightened his tie. He adjusted the double Windsor. Why not? Ernest thought as he buttoned his cuffs and grabbed his coat and hat from a single hook near the door.

  Meanwhile his friend splashed a little whiskey in the corner of the hallway. “That’s for the demon.” Pascual grinned, looking like a fifty-year-old schoolboy. He offered the flask to Ernest, who took a large gulp, feeling the alcohol burn his throat. Then the two of them headed downstairs and out the front door into the cool night mist, which smelled like fetid leaves and the rotting pinecones that plugged up storm drains on every corner.

  They walked against the tide of swing-shift workers carrying their nighttime lunch pails to the docks and avoided getting run over by delivery bikes laden with Chinese food as they made their way to the neighborhood’s last great jazz club. As they approached, Ernest could hear live music over the sound of rubber tires on wet pavement.

  The Black and Tan had been around since the days of Prohibition, neatly tucked away in the basement of the Chikata drugstore and almost invisible on the corner of Twelfth and South Jackson. Ernest and Gracie had once seen headliners like Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway there, but the lounge had faded since its glory days. Now it was just a cover band who played, more black than tan. They did their best to re-create the bebop of yesteryear amid the footlights and velvet swirls of cigarette smoke.

  For hours Ernest sat in a tiny, faux-leather banquette, nursing a champagne cocktail, while Pascual had loosened his tie and danced the watusi with a cadre of inebriate
d Caucasian women half his age. Ernest watched the happy sway of their cotton print Woolworth dresses, their bouffant hair, which towered over his friend.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to dance?” The kind woman Ernest recognized as Dolores appeared, smiling. “Your friend tells me you’re a great dancer.”

  “I would love to,” Ernest said. “But I’m saving the last dance for someone else.”

  “Oh, is she here?” Dolores asked as she looked around.

  “Not yet.” He shook his head. “But I keep hoping she’ll come back someday.”

  Dolores regarded him with sad, puppy-dog eyes. Then she leaned down and gave him a warm hug and kissed his cheek before returning to the dance floor.

  Ernest smiled as he wiped the lipstick off with a napkin. He watched Pascual and occasionally chatted with the barmaids who vaguely knew him, until he ran out of cigarettes and grew restless. He waved goodbye to his friend, who didn’t seem to notice.

  Ernest walked home in a light rain, past all-night liquor stores and flower carts, around sailors in blue, and high-heeled streetwalkers with umbrellas who were arguing with the shore patrol, uniformed men who wandered the neighborhood in white helmets, twirling their chipped black billy clubs. Ernest drifted silently past the benign façades of mom-and-pop businesses he knew to be fronts for Chinatown’s many backroom casinos. He pulled his collar up to ward off the damp April chill, grateful it was only drizzling as he strolled beneath pools of streetlight, steering around mud puddles that reflected forgotten constellations and lonely stars of the northern sky. He wasn’t disappointed to have played Dean Martin to Pascual’s Jerry Lewis, because Ernest had needed a night out. He’d been burdened by memories all week, and now the past seemed more resplendent than the present. But the past was no-man’s-land. He gave five dollars to panhandlers in front of the Publix, then climbed the creaking stairs to his apartment, thinking again about how to tell Juju the rest of his story.