The Gilded Age

8

A Miraculous Cure at Dr. Mortimer’s Clinic

“To Death,” Daniel toasts Mr. Schultz, “in marvelous Californ’.”

“Mira muerta, no seas inhumana, no vuelvas manana dejame vivir,” croons the singer through his grinning papier-mache skull mask. Ricardo, the one-eyed guitarist, dreamily strums along.

“To el Dia de los Muertos,” Schultz says, raising his shot glass. “Sehr gut, nicht wahr? Speaking of muertos, Danny, got myself in a bit of a fix.”

“A matter of life or death?”

“You might say.”

Daniel pours two more shots from a dust-furred bottle of mescal, smiling at the drowned worm at the bottom. Authentic, all right, this splendid rotgut with the disconcerting effect of making everything appear as ominous and strange as a nightmare. A more decadent drink than the Green Fairy, if such a thing is possible. And, like absinthe, the taste is vile.

He and Schultz lounge at a table in Luna’s, finishing their fifty-cent Suppers Mexican. Frank Norris’s recommendation amply deserved. The restaurant is quaint, with bright peasant pottery, dried gourds, silver trinkets, and red-and-white checked tablecloths. The singer’s skull mask is quite a fright, though Daniel’s dyspepsia is mostly caused by the Supper Mexican. Remains of their scorching hot dinner lie scattered in the colorful crockery—spicy pork sausages, tortillas, chiles rellenos, frijoles fritas, salsa, sweet tamales. Daniel could never have dined on such a fine feast in Saint Louis. Or in Paris or London. Only in marvelous Californ’.

Schultz sighs and knocks the shot back, licking salt off the rim of his glass. “I’ve been given the boot.”

“Things crummy in Far East shipping?”

“Things are bang-up in Far East shipping, just not so bang-up for me.” Schultz pours himself another shot. Just a small one.

Daniel’s tongue has become quite numb. “Why so, old man? You seem to have been doing well enough. Plum position and all.”

“Can’t control the drink, and that’s the truth of it. God knows I’ve tried. You and I, we start in on the brandy at breakfast.”

“Don’t I know it, sir,” Daniel says. “Not to mention Miss Malone and her accursed champagne.”

“She’s forever pouring me another and adding it to my bill.”

“Brushes her teeth with the bubbly.”

“At any rate,” Schultz says gloomily, “showed up corned at the office one time too many. Not that the old man doesn’t do it himself. He just manages to hold his liquor better, is all.”

“Plus he’s the old man.”

“Guess we’ve all got an old man somewhere.”

“By blood or bad luck.”

They laugh unhappily.

“Lousy bit, Schultz.”

“At any rate.” Schultz’s mustache stiffens. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any paying work for hire, do you, Danny? Help out a pal? I’m not asking for a handout, you know. I’m no beggar.”

“Wish I did.”

“You just sold that property of your vater, though, didn’t you?”

“It was only a patch of worthless weeds way out on Geary Street. Nothing much going on out there in the Western Addition, and I daresay that will be the fate of it for some time. The other lot has got no takers, and the rest of the deadbeats are giving me grief. That old fool Ekberg on Stockton Street has stalled me for weeks. As for Mr. Harvey in Sausalito, the good gentleman sent thugs as his answer to my request for payment. They followed me, Schultz, while I was taking my stroll along the Cocktail Route and worried me up quite a bit.”

Daniel would rather not confess that his mistress, costumed in coolie’s clothes, gave Harvey’s thugs a run for their money while the thugs gave him a goose egg on the noggin, sore kidneys, and a bad scare. Not to mention he’s spotted suspicious characters skulking around the boardinghouse. He’s taken to sneaking in and out of the tradesmen’s door rather than promenading out the front. It’s an unhappy way to live. He’s been screwing up his courage for weeks to go and confront that damnable Harvey himself.

“Perhaps you need a manager.”

“A bodyguard is more like it.”

“Can’t help you there. No good with a pistol or fisticuffs, I fear.” An ugly look of envy curdles Schultz’s large, puglike features. “Still, you’ve got some scratch anyway. Me, I haven’t got one thin dime. And I still can’t quit the drink.” He knocks back the shot, toys with the bottle. “I’m weary to my bones of it. What I need is a cure.”

A cure.

They both contemplate that possibility as the singer launches into another melancholy ballad, “Esta alegre calavera hoy invita a los mortales para ir a visitar las regions infernales.”

Daniel knows no Spanish, but the meaning leaps right out at him--we invite you mortals to visit hell. Mescal, by God—now he is comprehending Spanish. He doesn’t know Schultz quite well enough to confide his darkest secrets, but Daniel is no fool. He knows exactly what Schultz is talking about. A cure. He knows he behaves like an ass when he’s stinking. Look at how he treats his mistress—his ugly words, his uglier actions. Shoving her about. Having his way with her whenever they’re alone without asking her if she wants it. He hasn’t struck her—not yet—but he cannot promise himself that will never happen. Not when he’s stinking.

He’s not sure where his cruelty comes from. Even less sure why she allows him to get away with it when she has amply demonstrated she’s no whore or dimwit. Indeed, he would venture to say—only to himself, of course—that Zhu possesses more intelligence than ten gentlemen strolling along the Cocktail Route. Oh, she has her peculiarities. She claims she’s from the far future like a creature out of Mr. Wells’s novel, which only makes him angrier with her when he’s stinking. Then she goes temperance on him. Drinking’s going to kill you, she says, tears lingering on her lashes. Lunatic, he shouts at her. Off to the loony bin with you.

He awakens after every binge feeling soiled, stupid, and contrite.

He’s been binging every day. Brandy with breakfast, sir, to start.

But those are his scruples. What about his physical constitution? His vibrant health, which he’s always taken for granted, is no longer so vibrant. He suffers frequent nosebleeds and a sore throat. Paunch has started thickening his middle, and his gut is frequently on the blink. His hands, of all things, tremble. And the headaches. His head aches something fierce when he awakens. Relief only comes when he’s got his morning brandy under his belt.

But it isn’t only his scruples and his physical constitution. He is plagued by odd feelings. Melancholy and guilt. Strange memories of his father and mother intrude on his peace of mind. And so on and et cetera till he cannot abide this anymore. Weary to his bones, indeed. There must be something he can do.

“Know of a cure, then?” Daniel says cautiously.

“Well, sir, I heard a fellow talking about it at the Bank Exchange. Dr. Mortimer’s Miraculous Cure for dipsomania. Guaranteed, money back and all. There’s the trick for me—money. The cure costs an arm and a leg, but is well worth it. Or so the fellow said.”

Daniel tries to overlook the unfortunate fact that this hot tip was imparted in one of the busiest bars along the Cocktail Route. “This Dr. Mortimer, he’s in San Francisco?” He apportions the last finger in the bottle between himself and the worm. “To the handmaiden of Death,” he toasts the worm.

“Ja, Dr. Mortimer’s got his clinic in the Monkey Block,” says Schultz, succumbing after a short struggle to the last drops of mescal. He seizes the bottle and empties the remnants, worm and all, into his mouth. Suddenly he looks green and dashes out of Luna’s to the gutter where he noisily airs his paunch. The scowling maitre d’ and a scullery maid dash outside with buckets of hot salt water and vigorously splash the pavement clean. Mr. Schultz’s antics are a terrible reflection on their fine establishment.

Daniel picks up the tab—a dollar for two splendid Suppers Mexican. A dollar fifty for the terrific rotgut. A penny each for the maitre d’, the waitress, the singer, and the guitarist. He reluctantly counts out coins. He’s not exactly flush, himself. He strides out past Schultz on his hands and knees, heaving. What won’t a drunk do, Daniel wonders, to stiff his pal for the bill?

* * *

Daniel hurries down Columbus to where the avenue intersects Montgomery Street and veers south into the financial district. Two roughnecks in fishermen’s togs, caps pulled low over their coarse faces, fall in step behind him. He sprints like a schoolboy for half a block till he reaches his destination and ducks inside the four-story monstrosity—the Montgomery Block. Affectionately known as the Monkey Block.

He stands hidden just inside the door, watching, as the roughnecks stride by, disappointment plain on their faces, sniffing about like bloodhounds. Hah. From Mr. Harvey again? This has gone too far. He fingers his Remington pistol. Perhaps he should employ Schultz after all, just for show. Then he reconsiders. Perhaps he should have his mistress dress as a coolie and accompany him to Harvey’s as his manservant. He hates to admit it, but the little lady can fight with her bare hands.

He takes a deep breath. The dose of fear has cleared his head like a whiff of smelling salts. He feels dizzy, though, and slightly ill. By God, he could use a drink. He looks around the cavernous lobby, inhales the scent of mold. He’s heard plenty of tales about the place, sipping Pisco Punch at the Bank Exchange or dining on chicken Portola at Coppa’s Restaurant, both establishments right across from him on the other side of the lobby. Halleck’s Folly--that’s what they called it when the hulk was built--was once the largest commercial building on the West Coast and a prestige address, though no one knew if the hundred offices would ever be fully leased. Up and down went the fortunes of the Monkey Block as commerce and fashion went their fickle ways. It’s quite cheering, he thinks, the contemplation of history. To know that other men of means, wit, and dynamism lost their fortunes to the whim of chance makes Daniel feel like less of a dunce. Perhaps bankruptcy isn’t such a sin, after all.

The law firms, stockbrokers, and mining companies that once filled the spacious suites have all departed for the fancy new skyscrapers on Market Street. Now the Monkey Block has become a hotbed of bohemians. In a massive effort of will, Daniel declines a visit to the Bank Exchange for a quick one and climbs the white marble stairs. His footsteps echo off high ceilings, and sunlight cascades through enormous windows at the end of each hall. Painters, musicians, and writers appreciate the spaciousness and light of these old rooms. Good history here, too. The great Robert Louis Stevenson visited the place in 1888 before setting off for the South Seas.

He peers in an open door. A man poses a woman draped in white muslin before another sun-drenched window. Daniel gawks. Is she in her birthday suit? The artist’s model laughs at his startled expression. “Come on in, sir,” calls the painter. “Do you collect art?”

“I do, but it will have to wait for another time.”

He climbs the stairs again and walks past billboards depicting palms, staring eyes, mystic triangles, astrological signs. Ah, this must be the hall of fortune-tellers. Then calligraphy on gilt and red signs, drawings depicting the weird little legs of the ginseng root. He glances in the door and spies a Chinese herbalist bending over huge straw baskets of roots and barks and sticks and God knows what. A wicker tray offers lizards, serpents, and other unidentifiable reptiles split open and dried like beef jerky. Down the hall, a billboard of a man’s body, his internal organs and nerves and blood vessels on display and lines and arrows drawn all over him purporting to show the currents of the body’s energy. Myriad needles are poised at certain junctures. Acupuncture. Daniel believes that’s what they call this strange science. Brr, needles. Not for him.

Then there are tailors with their bolts of cloth and dead-faced mannequins, and dealers in goods too old to be new and too new to be antiques. He finds another open door yielding to a spectacular room. The floor on the next story has been torn out so that the ceiling is a full two stories high—thirty or forty feet! A cast-iron staircase winds up to that ceiling, and the room is entirely lined, floor to ceiling, with books. Books, books, and more books—some crumbling and dirty-looking, quite a few more finely bound in leather with gold and silver leaf glinting on their spines. Daniel has never seen so many books.

“What is this place?” he whispers to a bespectacled clerk who passes by with an armful of books.

“Why, this is Mayor Sutro’s private library,” the clerk whispers back. “He’ll have a million books before long.” He shoos Daniel out and shuts the door.

Third floor, fourth floor. He huffs and puffs up the stairs. Zhu claims chain-smoking is what causes his shortness of breath. What nonsense. He taps out a ciggie, lights it. It’s this indolent life he’s led in San Francisco, lazier than his time in Paris. That’s what has stolen his breath. Dust has gathered along the baseboards of the fourth floor, and quite a few of the suites are vacant. Other gentlemen, apparently, are not so willing to hike up four flights of marble stairs, and the Monkey Block boasts no elevator like the skyscrapers on Market Street. Perhaps, when his business picks up, Daniel himself could establish an office here. There’s a happy thought—Daniel J. Watkins, Esquire, etched in gold letters on a glass door. But what is he? A real estate broker, a spinner of pictures, a dreamer, a drunk?

No! Not a drunk. Not anymore.

And there, at the end of the hall is the sign for Dr. Mortimer, Physician.

Daniel hesitates before knocking, suddenly unwilling to confess his distress to a total stranger. He could simply cut down. Skip the brandy for breakfast. Hell, do not breakfast with Jessie Malone at all. The Queen of the Underworld is a terrible influence. He ought to take coffee and toast and Mariah’s fresh-squeezed orange juice in his suite. And stay away from the Cocktail Route, lay off the Green Fairy, not to mention mescal and Pisco Punch. He ought to purchase a bicycle. Bicycle riding, that’s the ticket. Fabulous for the health, they say. Put him right in no time. A two-wheeler with one of those silver bells, a horn, and a silver flask. A flask, of course. He licks his lips. By God, he’s dry.

As though sensing his presence through the smoked glass, the physician bounds out into the hall. “Hello there, sir! Either you’re lost or you’ve come to see me, and both may amount to the same thing.” He makes a show of sniffing Daniel’s breath. “Ah, here to see me, then. Here for the cure. Of course, you are. Come in, come in!”

Daniel recoils. What unpardonable rudeness from a total stranger. From anyone else, that would warrant a good pop in the trap. But this is the good doctor with the cure.

Dr. Mortimer seizes him by the sleeve and practically flings him inside, shoving him down in a burgundy leather club chair. A full skeleton dangles from an iron rod in the corner. Hand-colored lithographs of bodily organs line the walls as Mortimer seats himself at a spartan walnut desk. Bile rises in Daniel’s throat. The opposite wall is even less comforting—stoppered jars contain decomposing organic matter moldering in formaldehyde. Daniel compares the preserved rot to the lithographs, identifying a brain, a kidney, a curled intestine. He cannot identify the rest. Does not want to try.

“Now then, young sir, let’s get down to business.” Mortimer is absolutely blazing with healthful energy. He’s in his early thirties, perhaps, with a receding hairline, a neat French mustache, and penetrating brown eyes sparkling with deep sympathy. Those eyes notice Daniel’s distress, and the physician leaps to his feet and fetches a cut-crystal glass of water. He’s got an excellent physique, Daniel notices, trim and wiry beneath his well-cut brown serge suit, his slim waist nicely cinched. He hands Daniel the glass and seats himself at the desk again, making a show of whipping out a clean new file and snapping it open to a questionnaire. He dips his pen in an inkwell, poised to write. Smiling, rosy-cheeked, and bright-eyed.

Daniel tips the glass to his lips. Water is the last thing in the world he wants. Poor old Tchaikovsky and his cholera. But he sips, encouraged by Mortimer’s energy and kindly purpose.

“I shall need to take your vital statistics,” Mortimer says and spits out questions. “Mhm, twenty-one years of age. Mhm, Saint Louis. Ah, real estate, you don’t say. Splendid.” His lively eyes flip up from the questionnaire and regard Daniel acutely. “Now then, young sir. Drinking every day, are you?”

“I fear so.”

“When do you start?”

“At breakfast, of course.’

“And continue till night?”

“Well into the night.” Daniel kneads his forehead. Mescal is leaving a nasty ache behind his eyes. He licks his lips. If only he had a shot, one little shot. Of something. Anything.

“Hung over now, are you?”

“What in bloody hell do you think?”

“Splendid. Got the shakes? Mhm.” Scratch, scratch of his pen. “Bowels loose? Nosebleeds? Dyspepsia? Aches and pains? Unpredictable moods? Melancholy? Seeing things?”

“Seeing what things?” Daniel snaps.

“Well, I don’t know. Things crawling just out of the sight of your eye. People out to persecute you.”

“No, nothing like that.” Were the roughnecks in the fishermen’s togs merely his imagination? No, Harvey’s thugs are hardly imaginary. The goose egg on his noggin is still tender.

“Splendid. Beat the wife?”

“Not married.”

“Beat the mistress?”

The mistress. Daniel is silent. His mistress says she’s from six hundred years in the future, and she sees things. She’s insane, quite insane, slipping her eyes to the side when she thinks he’s not watching, muttering to herself. Speaking in voices. He remembers the first time he heard one of her lunatic voices, which she managed to project with the facility of a professional ventriloquist. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. What does he see in her? She’s Jessie’s servant. A Chinese servant, one of the lower races and a woman, an inferior to him in every way he can fathom. Yet he’s seen her heal the crack in a man’s skull. Seen her fight off thugs with her bare hands. Seen her, for that matter, add and subtract columns of numbers that would make his head swim. The mere sight of her excites in him the snake of lust and, when he’s stinking, she robs him of his sense and good graces. With her gentle strength, she entreats him not to harm himself, while he harms her so much with his cold fury, his assaults on her womanhood. In so many ways, she’s better to him than his own--

Better than his own mother, is the thought he wants to finish. You see? he berates himself. He thinks too much when the drink is in him. Thinks and thinks till he’s half-mad.

“Can you help me, Dr. Mortimer?”

“Can I help you?” Mortimer flings his pen down, caps the inkwell. He leaps to his feet, sprints over to the chair, pulls up a stool, and straddles it. He leans intently into Daniel’s face. “Young sir, I am not a moralist. I am not a temperance worker. I am a physician, and I know very well how the cares of our modern life weigh heavily upon us all.” Mortimer sighs deeply. “Do you know how man used to live? Man did not live in these accursed cities, filled with bad air and noise and poxy women. Man did not live subjected to the factory boss or the financier. No, man lived in the country, in the field, in the forest. In the jungle! In paradise, young sir. Man was free. He worked as he pleased, took his ease when he wanted, ate healthfully and abundantly. And man in these blissful times had another healthful amusement besides the hunt, the games, the songs, the virgins.”

“What other amusement was that?”

Mortimer moves closer, and Daniel can smell lavender cologne over the athletic smell of his sweat. “In our very own New World, south of the border, is a marvelous plant known to the glorious gold-drenched civilization of the Incas. It is the sacred plant of their heathen goddess which they harvested readily from their jungle paradise and used extensively in arcane ancient rituals.”

Daniel gulps more water, still thirsting for a drink. Perhaps less so, now.

“Mere Indians were not the only ones to acquaint themselves with the divine plant,” Mortimer says. “It was the conquistadors, those stern men of swordsmanship and domination, who discovered the divine plant for the rest of the modern civilized world and laid it at our feet. For they knew it to be a healthful boon.”

“I never heard of such a thing,” Daniel says.

“Young sir, the divine plant has found its way into our American cities in manifold ways. The dockworkers of New Orleans were among the first to partake of it. An observer I know personally has witnessed the increased endurance, the remarkable persistence, the stamina, the building up of sheer strength, the suppression of appetite, not to mention the cheerful disposition—without drink, mind you--among those hardworking men.”

“Without drink?”

“Without drink, young sir, and laughing in the sun.” Mortimer leaps to his feet, sprints around behind his desk, and produces charts, diagrams, ink drawings, more lithographs. “The divine plant is a stimulant, understand that, and as a stimulant not only does it produce all the salubrious effects I’ve just mentioned, but works as a cure for anemia, bronchitis, debility, la grippe, sore throat, angina pectoris, and lung troubles. Gastric carcinoma, pneumonia, typhoid fever, all these ills have been cured. Not to mention shock and sexual exhaustion.” He leans over the desk, and directs his blazing brown eyes into Daniel’s dazed gaze. “Melancholia? Of course! Need I add the cure for dipsomania?”

“I must try it!” Daniel cries.

“The cure is guaranteed.” Mortimer sits and folds his hands. “But, of course, living life is up to you, young sir. Dipsomania of your sort is a powerful disease. If you feel compelled to return to the bottle after the divine plant of the goddess, there is not much more I can do for you.”

“I understand. Please! Let me try it.”

Mortimer leaps to his feet again and leads Daniel to a side table. A wide flat mirror is set into the sort of silver tray a woman might use to display her perfume bottles. Mortimer reaches into a drawer, takes out a vial of fine white powder and a straight-edge razor blade. He spills a little mound of powder onto the mirror and chops at it like a Chinese cook preparing vegetables. In this fashion, he rearranges the powder into long, fine lines. Now he takes out a straw made of silver with cunning little designs of snakes entwined around the shaft.

“You ingest the cure like this,” Mortimer says and, with a vigorous inhalation, promptly sniffs up two lines of the powder through the straw. “You try it now. Take one nostril, then the other,” he says, coaching.

Daniel does as he’s told. A short blast of pain assaults him and the new discomfort of the astringent powder flying up his nose. A bitter taste pools at the back of his throat.

Medicine. By God, why must medicine always taste so dreadful?

And then sheer energy careens into his brain, a short blinding moment, a vertigo. The whole world reels and spins. And then the moment of reeling blindness passes into a sheer wash of pleasure, of strength, of good health and stimulation. Bliss, vigor itself, this sacred gift from the heathen goddess!

“Dr. Mortimer, I am cured!”

“Well now, well now,” the physician murmurs, clearly pleased. “Would you like a prescription?”

“Of course! How much?”

“Five dollars, please.”

It only takes money, that’s what poor old Schultz said. Daniel counts out coins. The proceeds from the sale of the Western Addition lot are flying out of his boodle bag like pigeons startled from a roost. Well. He shall spend no more cash on the Cocktail Route. He is cured of that expensive hobby.

“What is this divine plant of the Incas, Dr. Mortimer?” Daniel asks as he hands over the money.

“Young sir, the heathens plucked leaves right off the miraculous tree and chewed them as a cow chews her cud.” Mortimer hands over a receipt, a tiny silver spoon, and three vials of the white powder. “As you can see, the sacrament comes in a refined form these days. We physicians call it by a scientific name.”

“What name is that?”

“We call it cocaine.”

* * *

Cured!

In the space of an hour, Daniel has reclaimed his soul, restored his health and his sanity. Miracle! Invincible, he feels positively invincible. This must be how a Titan feels, thundering across the primordial world, fearing no one, shrinking from nothing. His blood soars! The pathetic stupor of mescal for lunch and brandy for breakfast is long gone. A god of the ancients he is, his muscles mythological, his brain swooping like a hawk. His eyes take in the splendor and the squalor of Montgomery Street in one omniscient glance as he steps out onto the sidewalk.

And what a sight it is—the proper plain-faced ladies suffocating in their corsets, sweating in their heavy dark dresses. The painted chippies pathetic in their shame, but colorful and lively. The bloated men of all classes leering at the women, filled with their self-importance and stupidity. All of them drunk, of course, from fine gentleman to roustabout. And the celebrants of el Dia de los Muertos, lunatics cavorting in their death’s-head masks, making mockery of the grim ultimate solution to all man’s ill’s.

Not Daniel J. Watkins. He is restored from the Dead!

He stands at the corner of Columbus and Montgomery. The weird angle of the streets suddenly appears to him as a fork in the road designed by the Devil. He must choose his path. How he has longed to choose his path! And suddenly his path is clear. He will settle Father’s paltry real estate dealings. He will make the deadbeats pay or quit the premises, make them settle their accounts one way or another. As is only right and proper.

And then?

Then he is desperate to figure out how to make photographs project on a wall in a sequence so that the persistence of vision will make each image a whole, make images move and dance like life itself. Indeed, designs for such a gizmo dance through his newly stimulated mind. Flip the images like a deck of cards? Or wrap a roll of photographic paper on a spool and spin it? And if such a feat could be done? Why, the story of civilization could be told in pictures. The mighty empires of Europe and the East. America’s hardscrabble story, every sacrifice and adventure and great love. How many thrilling stories could be shown in pictures if only one could figure out how to make static images come alive.

Dr. Mortimer’s cure is a rousing success. Daniel can think more clearly than he has in days. In years! His heart throbs with a glowing pleasure, and thoughts of sin swell in his mind. A happy side effect, according to Dr. Mortimer, encouraged by healthful radiance. He could take care of his vile need at once, for a red light glows in a little window on the third story of a commercial building two doors down. But Daniel J. Watkins does not pay for it.

Where is his mistress? He must see her at once.

He dashes downtown to Sutter Street, barges into the Parisian Mansion. There he finds Zhu and Jessie Malone conferring in the parlor, Li’l Lucy weeping. Several other sporting gals stand around with troubled faces. The ugly little Peruvian maid watches from the sidelines with a look of smug triumph.

“Please, Miss Malone,” Li’l Lucy cries. “Give me a chance. Just one more chance.”

“Your jig is up, Li’l Lucy,” Jessie says. “And don’t say I didn’t warn you, neither, because I did. I’ve warned you over and over till I’m blue in the face. I’ll not have a poxy girl at the Parisian Mansion. The biz is the biz.”

“We can try to treat her symptoms,” Zhu argues. “The disease goes into remission. It’s not her fault, Miss Malone.”

“And whose fault is it, then, may I ask?” Jessie snaps her fingers, and the Peruvian maid scurries over with a goblet of champagne.

“I was just saying today to a fine lady that you’re fair, Miss Malone. Don’t make me regret those words.”

“She knows she gotta douche, and she don’t do it. She ties one on and passes out.”

“Please, Miss Malone,” Li’l Lucy whimpers. “Please.”

“Have you heard about a method of protection called condoms?’ Zhu says. “The girls should use them. You could practically eliminate your problems with disease, not to mention pregnancy.”

“Missy, if this is one of your gadgets from six hundred years in the future, I am sure we cannot just go down to Kepler’s Sundries and pick up a few.”

“Actually, you can,” Zhu says. “I read an article in The Argonaut just yesterday. I know you loved newfangled things, Miss Malone, and this is the latest thing in the French brothels. Really, I don’t know why you don’t already use them as a regular practice in your business. My spirit Muse tells me that condoms have been around since the 1700s.”

“Sure and what is this thing, exactly, and what’s it made of?”

Daniel listens closely, his face heating up at his mistress’s frank talk.

“A condom is like a glove or a sheath that slips over the gentleman’s member and catches his bodily discharge. His person doesn’t touch her and his discharge doesn’t enter her,” Zhu says with nary a blush or a giggle, though all the sporting gals present burst into uproarious laughter. “In your Now, unfortunately, the thing is made of sheep’s intestine.”

“Sheep’s intestine!” Jessie sputters. “If you think any one of my gentlemen is gonna put a sheep’s intestine on his jockey, you’re nutty, missy.”

Daniel can tolerate no more delay. “Mistress, I need to see you.” To Jessie, “Is there a room we may use?”

“Sure and take Li’l Lucy’s room. She ain’t needin’ it no more.”

“Please, Miss Malone,” Li’l Lucy wails and falls on her knees. She crawls to Jessie, reaching up for Jessie’s hands. “Please, please.”

Daniel wants no more of this sordid little drama. He seizes Zhu’s elbow, leading her upstairs. She points out Li’l Lucy’s room, and he practically drags her there. The room is frilly and cheap, reeking of lilac cologne, cigarette smoke, spilt whiskey, and other odors he’d rather not identify. He locks the door.

“What is it?” she snaps. “I was in the middle of business.”

“You were in the middle of the brothel’s business, my angel. I want you now.”

She stares at him, astonished. “Want me for what?’

He shucks off his jacket and vest and drops his trousers, his manly virtue tumescent. By God, he shall spill his precious bodily fluids any moment. “Need you ask?”

She shakes her head. “Well! You never ask me. I come from a Now where there’s precious little romance or tenderness. And since I’ve come to your Now, so help me, I want romance. I want tenderness. And you. You’re such a brute. Such a man of your times.”

“I shall buy you candy and flowers, if that’s what you want,” he growls, advancing on her.

“Candy and flowers.” She gives an exasperated little laugh. “In all this time, it’s always the same. I don’t why I let you get away with it, but I do. It’s like the Gilded Age Project has subverted me. You wait till you’re stinking and then you launch your attack. You never ask me,” she repeats, her tone accusing.

“I’m not stinking now,” he says imperiously.

She regards him curiously, taking her time.

Those slanting green eyes of hers, the bright green irises not at all like Mama’s deep sea eyes. Quite alien, they are. Which suddenly excites him more than he’s ever felt toward her before. Toward any woman. “I need you, my angel.” You never ask me. Well, he’s turning over a new leaf. “And I’m asking you. May I please have the pleasure of your company? You know how much I adore you.”

He’s hoping she will laugh and rip off her jacket, but she doesn’t. No, she sidles toward the door, clearly contemplating escape. “This isn’t supposed to be happening. None of this is supposed to be happening! Muse?” she speaks to her infernal spirit. “What are the probabilities of this happening? Why?”

He can stand it no longer! He has been a gentleman—sort of—and he is definitely not stinking. He seizes her, tears off her jacket and shirtwaist, ripping the silk. She silently struggles—or perhaps she abets him—but he is invincible, he is a god. She is a tiny writhing thing in his hands. He spins her around, seizes the laces of her corset, rips apart the knot, and pulls and pulls as tightly as he can. She gasps in pain.

They want to feel pain. Oh, this is splendid! He can circle her entire waist with his two hands. He whirls her around, presses her down on Li’l Lucy’s bed. She is wide-eyed, distraught with lust, in a trance of sinful ecstasy.

“Please, miss, may I?” He tears down her bloomers, her hands on his. Is she resisting him or assisting him? He doesn’t know or care. “I know you hate it, but you must help me now.”

And he takes her, feeling every sensation as he’s never felt the sensations of the carnal act before. Divine plant of the goddess! Sacrament! He plunges, he rocks, strange-smelling sweat filming his skin. He hears her gasping, feels her moving beneath him. The dreadful moment of sexual transport overcomes him like a seizure, an epilepsy of sensuality, a small death.

He rises off her and falls back on the bed, spent for the moment. How he hates that spent feeling. And her? She leaps up, reaches urgently behind her and tears open the too-tight laces. She gasps again. No matter, he thinks, no matter. She’s a woman. She isn’t supposed to like it.

“Damn you, Daniel,” she says. “When I’m around you, it’s like I’m possessed.”

“Thank you, my angel,” he says ironically and now she does laugh, a little bitterly. The quick heave of his breath subsides, and the fingers of a headache squeeze the backs of his eyes. The supreme brilliance of the cure is beginning to fade.

Fade! He could weep with disappointment. He wants this exultation never to end. He sits up, hands shaking, and retrieves his jacket. Ah, the vials, the clever silver spoon. Trembling and weak, he uncaps a vial, dips the spoon. Unsure of his technique, he awkwardly inserts the spoon into his nostril and inhales as vigorously as he can.

She watches him, openmouthed. No doubt she’s never seen such strange behavior before. Well, tit for tat. She engages in some mighty strange behavior herself.

Ah, the bitter sting in his nose, on his tongue, and the bitter fluid gathering in the back of his throat. And then that sweet bloom of power, the radiance of health.

“Daniel,” she cries, “what in hell are you doing to yourself now?”

“Tut tut, watch your language, miss.” He does not like that prudish expression on her face, doesn’t like it at all. “I went to Dr. Mortimer for the cure.”

“The cure?”

“The cure for dipsomania. I shall be a slave to drink no more.” His eye wanders to Li’l Lucy’s nightstand, to a carafe of whiskey. He takes out the stopper, sniffs. Dreadful booze the whore swills, but he tips the carafe anyway, floating a taste on his tongue, which has suddenly gone quite dry. Ah, just the slightest touch of relief. The divine plant of the Incas is too strong for the evils of rotgut. Still, the effect is very nice, a soothing counterpoint to his jumpy nerves. He puts the carafe down. That’s right. He can put the drink down anytime he wants to. He is cured.

“And what is this cure?” she insists in that tone of hers.

“It is the divine plant of the Incas. Dr. Mortimer says the scientific name for it is cocaine.”

She claps her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God. You can’t. You mustn’t!” She strides up to him, bold as you please, and holds out her hand. “Give me the vial. Give it to me right now.”

“I should say not!”

She tears off the remnants of her shirtwaist, exclaiming over the rough treatment he gave the garment, shifts her eyes to the side, muttering in her strange way to her infernal spirit. “Which is it, Muse? Am I supposed to rescue Wing Sing from the tongs or rescue him from himself? Calculate the probabilities, damn you! Tell me what to do!”

Oh, splendid. She is quite insane, well, he’s already established that. After all her scolding about the drink, the ciggies, the buttery feasts, now she scolds him about his very salvation? It’s too much. Too much.

He splashes water on his face from Li’l Lucy’s wash basin, pulls on his clothes, and heads out the door without saying goodbye as she exclaims over a button he tore off her jacket. The second spoonful of the cure produces somewhat less of an effect than his glorious first taste at Dr. Mortimer’s clinic. Still, it’s a fine feeling, this exuberance. Encouraged, though ever so slightly disappointed, he strides through the parlor, past the little drama he witnessed on his way in, still unconcluded. By God, weeping whores.

Daniel J. Watkins will not linger in a sordid place like the Parisian Mansion. This is a place for the weak among men, the ones who exhaust their precious essence on degraded creatures like Li’l Lucy. He will do no such thing. He heads out, striding vigorously down Market Street, bound for the ferry to Sausalito. Invincible once more, clear-headed and powerful. He knows what he must do. He must confront that bastard Harvey, once and for all.

“Daniel! Daniel!”

Zhu hurries after him. Her face is flushed, the black ribbons of her Newport hat streaming behind her. She wears her mauve silk, his favorite dress, which is most becoming with her golden skin, black hair, and emerald-green eyes. With a sudden pang, he realizes he does adore her. But the realization does not overwhelm him in a maudlin way like when he’s stinking and dwelling on the lack in his life. No indeed, in some peculiar fashion he cannot quite explain, Zhu Wong has changed his life. Changed him irrevocably. Perhaps her entreaties are what inspired him to seek the cure. And his fate—this great fate he felt so powerfully on the Overland train—has subtly altered.

But how? Everything seems to be shifting and changing all around him.

That she clings to this lunacy about being from the distant far future has a certain charm, an insouciance. Yet her lunacy is not the raving of the savagely ill, whom he has seen in Paris, but rather is supported by her quick intelligence, an extraordinary knowledge of things a woman should not rightly know about, and, of course, her clever accoutrements. The mollie knife. Her spirit voice, which he’s beginning to suspect is not a spirit at all, but some scientific invention he hasn’t heard about.

He pauses, permitting her to catch up.

“Where are you going in this state?” she demands.

“To Sausalito. It’s high time Mr. Harvey squared his account with me.”

“You’d better not go while you’re so high.”

“High?”

“Intoxicated.”

“For the last time, I am not intoxicated. I am cured!”

“Cocaine is a powerful narcotic, Daniel. Trust me, you’re intoxicated.” She looks him up and down and sighs. “Don’t go alone, then. I shall accompany you.”

At earlier time, he would have scoffed. Not now. “Ah, but can you fight in those lady’s clothes.”

“I can fight.”

“And you’ve got your mollie knife on your person?”

“Always.”

Now he looks her up and down, wondering where in her feminine attire she could have stashed the infernal thing. Her slim, wiry figure suddenly looks out of place in those clothes. It’s as if he’s never really looked at her before. “And you can cleave a man’s skull with that thing as well as heal him?”

“Oh, yeah.” She clears her throat. “Certainly.”

“Very well, come along. In truth, I could use an ally. We’ve met Harvey’s thugs before, have we not, miss? Just do not interfere in my business, you understand?”

“I’m forbidden to interfere in much of anything,” she says, suddenly sad. “Under Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle.”

“Ah, the Tenets you keep talking about. But I believe you mean the grandfather clause,” he says, proud to show off his knowledge now that he’s not stinking. See how the cure encourages his intelligence? “And after all your talk, miss, about social reform and caring about others who haven’t got enough to eat.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I’ve heard the talk from politicians in the Dixie states. The former slaveowners just cannot give up the ghost. They want to use what they call grandfathering to deny the vote to the progeny of former slaves and pack in the uneducated Caucasian vote. Quite a movement. They claim they shall have passed amendments to several state constitutions by the turn of the century.”

She looks at him askance, rolls her eyes to the side the way she does, then laughs. “Oh, my! Not the grandfather clause. The Grandmother Principle. It’s a guideline for t-port projects, rules set out for me by slavemasters you can’t possibly know about.”

Hah. Daniel detests the notion that she could have masters besides himself. Who, for instance? Jessie Malone? Very well, once he secures more capital, he shall buy whatever term remains on Zhu’s contract from the Queen of the Underworld. Perhaps they could leave 263 Dupont Street behind, he and Zhu, find a proper house of their own. Wouldn’t Father split his gut over that? His only son, living in sin with a Chinese woman. But clearly she doesn’t mean Miss Malone. What masters could she mean?

“I am your only true master,” he declares.

“I knew you were going to say that. But you’re wrong. I belong to no one. Perhaps not even to myself.”

She says all that with such a melancholy look that he takes her hand. “My poor little lunatic. Let’s go before I lose my nerve.”

Hand in hand they stride toward the waterfront past another parade for el Dia de los Muertos. Roughnecks on horseback, wearing skull masks, toss bottles of tequila, mescal, and beer back and forth amongst themselves, hooting and hollering. The horses roll their eyes, bridles frothing. Daniel escorts Zhu to the ferry building where the San Rafael bobs at the dock, a black and white steamer more modest in size than the Chrysapolis, but possessing more elegant lines.

They stride up the gangplank and board. Two dozen bruisers in tawdry togs crowd the deck, feisty with booze, puffing hand-rolled ciggies stinking of cheap tobacco. Daniel heads for a deserted, wave-spattered spot on the prow, towing Zhu by the hand after him. The cold salt air whips his face and the ripe scent of the sea, of mysterious distant destinations, fills his senses. This isn’t supposed to be happening. Her words haunt him. And puzzle him.

“All right, suppose you spell it out exactly what you mean by the Grandmother Principle.”

“It’s a closely guarded secret.” She giggles charmingly. “Or it’s supposed to be.”

“But you can tell me, my angel. Indeed, you must.”

“Well. As I told you and Miss Malone, I’m from the future.”

“Six hundred years in the future. You still ought to claim a million years. It’s much more believable, on account of Mr. Wells.”

“Nevertheless, six hundred years it is. And we only recently got this new technology like you only recently got electricity and telegraph and telephones. In some ways, tachyportation is no more amazing than those technologies. And a good deal less practical, as it turns out. It’s more like early space travel, something that doesn’t directly benefit people. A huge financial investment with no immediate return for society at large. Oh, they wanted everyone to think the world would benefit but, really, only the technopolistic plutocracy did. Or perhaps the LISA techs deceived themselves.”

“Zhu, my darling,” Daniel says. “If you want me to concede that a woman like you actually has a brain, I willingly concede. But I cannot comprehend a word you just said.”

She smiles. “Never mind. Just know this—the LISA techs shut down the tachyonic shuttles a few years after I was born. Why? Because t-porting released dangerous pollutants into the timeline.”

“Pollutants. Like bad water?”

“Exactly like bad water.” She gazes over the waves, searching the bay as though she’s looking for something that’s supposed to be there and isn’t.

He watches her uneasily. That peculiar ache scrapes behind his eyes again. So soon? He starts to reach for his vial and spoon the way he reaches for his ciggies. At her sharp glance, he reaches for his ciggies instead and lights up, cupping the match against the wind. She actually helps him, despite her protestations against his smoking.

“Better a coffin nail than the cure?” he jokes.

“You got it,” she says seriously. “Anyway, the Grandmother Principle states that a t-porter cannot t-port to the past and murder her own lineal ancestor. Her grandmother, for instance. Because if the t-porter could do that, she would not exist in the first place to go back and do the deed.”

“I think I see.”

“It’s what we call a paradox. A time paradox. Well, the Tenets go on from there. All the way down to whether a t-porter like me gets killed in the past and winds up trapped in a Closed Time Loop. A CTL, they call it. If I should die here in this Now, I would always have to be born in my Now, make the t-port, die in the past, and then be born again in the future with no hope of a normal life. No closure, ever. Like a torturous revolving door, I suppose.”

“Revolving door?”

“Oh, sorry. That’s an invention after your time.” She frowns. “No one knows what becoming trapped in a CTL must feel like. Theoretically, a CTL has no beginning and no end, it just is. If that’s true, then where or when would your consciousness begin? A t-port project before mine called the Summer of Love Project was undertaken to remedy the nearly fatal pollution caused by an infamous CTL.” She shakes her head, the ribbons on her Newport hat streaming in the sea breeze. “Anyway, Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle says I can’t get involved with you, Daniel. Not like this.”

“Sounds more like your grandmother than your Grandmother Principle. Though I do admit I’m a beast and a cad and a very evil man.” He pretends to bite her neck.

She refuses to acknowledge his jest. “I’m not supposed to help you, not supposed to harm you. I didn’t t-port here for you, Daniel, I t-ported for Wing Sing.” She looks him in the eye. “You must believe me, your so-called cure is worse, much worse, than the rotgut.”

“By God!” He smacks his forehead with the heel of his hand. “There is just no pleasing you, miss.”

“Don’t worry about pleasing me. Worry about not killing yourself.”

“I worry about nothing. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

She still refuses to laugh. “I don’t understand what’s happening, and Muse can’t or won’t explain. I’m afraid Muse is defective or malfunctioning. Or worse. Sabotaging me.”

“Miss, please.” Daniel catches her hands. “Really, this is too much. Only men possess the muse. Only great artists. Women do have not the capacity.”

“Don’t be such a man of your day, Daniel,” she says annoyed and pulls her hands away. “Women have every capacity. Wait till you see the twenty-second century. Hah! The greatest women artists and writers and holoid makers of all time lived then. Magda Mira, the death cult writer, and Kiku Tatsumi, the telespace artist.”

“I do believe I shan’t live to see the twenty-second century.”

“If you keep going like this, Daniel, you sure as hell won’t live to see the twentieth century.”

The San Rafael unceremoniously bangs against the dock, knocking them both off their feet.

* * *

Daniel takes Zhu’s hand again and they stride down the gangplank onto the dusty shores of Sausalito. It’s a homely port—raw streets pocked with potholes, railroad tracks laid in unsightly grooves right up to the ferry docks, a stinking slough thick with bilge. Importers transport apples and lumber down from Washington State on these tracks. The waterfront teems with saloons. Daniel smells the reek of booze, hears the guffaws and shouts of brawlers. The two dozen bruisers reel off the steamer, heading for the rowdy district. Painted chits promenade, right at home on these raw streets.

Daniel spies a cheerier sight on the hills—a spectacular Queen Anne mansion and, farther up, a French provincial, and farther up still, something huge and Georgian. Sausalito may be a shipping port and a train terminus, but the burg is also a playground for the rich of San Francisco. The prestigious Pacific Yacht Club is down the shore, and several large and lovely hotels with lyrical names like Casa Madrona and Alta Mira are stationed well away from the riffraff. Many rich gentlemen’s mistresses live in those mansions and in those hotels, sequestered from Society’s scrutiny.

“By God, I need a line and a drink,” he says and, dropping Zhu’s hand, practically sprints into Pete Fagan’s Saloon. He slaps down a silver bit and orders a shot of whiskey, which the barkeep delivers in an eye-blink. He knocks the whiskey back, goes and sits at a table. He fetches out his vial and his spoon, dips out a snort.

Zhu takes a seat opposite him, ignoring the stares of the other patrons, and watches him snort away. Her eyes are moist. Well, that was Mama’s old trick, too. Neither his mother nor Zhu Wong nor any other woman will ever sway him with teary eyes. I’ve always been good to you, Danny, haven’t I? How he tried to please Mama, no matter what. And what good did it do?

“Tears in your eyes,” he goads her, sudden anger fevering his blood. Or maybe it’s the whiskey. Or the line? “Just like every whore I’ve ever met. Trying to ruin me.”

She refuses to rise to his challenge, but instead peers at him intently. “You change so quickly. I hardly know you from one moment to the next.”

“Trying to ruin me. Just like Mama.” He regrets the words the minute they escape his lips.

“Now, wait. I thought you loved your mother and pitied her because she was always in pain. A good woman like her.”

“What a fine example of womanhood. Yes, she would have ruined me, too. She was always stinking after taking that blasted Montgomery Ward iron tonic. Probably why she allowed herself to be beguiled by common men. No wonder Father beat her. Now I understand. She was just a whore, after all her airs of being a fine lady.” He grins at her stunned expression. “Don’t look so startled, miss. She even got herself in the family way with another man and carried his bastard.”

“Wow, you mean you’ve got a sibling?” she asks, her eyes sparkling with greedy interest. Women always have such an avidity for sordid family matters. “Brother or sister?”

“Carried, I said.” He lurches to his feet. “Time to find Mr. Harvey.”

He strides out of Fagan’s, his blood simmering as he stalks down Water Street. Between the snort and the shot, he’s ready to face the Devil himself. He reaches in his pocket, grips the Remington. Where is that lousy son of a bitch Harvey?

And there, a commercial building emblazoned with the hateful name—Harvey’s. Pioneer architecture, all straight lines and weathered wood, the plainness relieved only by a row of craftsman’s gingerbread along the eaves with several scrolls knocked out like rotten teeth. Why on earth did Father ever extend credit to this hooligan on this piece of crap? Blood pounds in Daniel’s ears as he climbs the front stairs, Zhu hurrying behind him, and confronts a haze of tobacco smoke, the stink of cheap booze, and pandemonium.

A boy bounds past him and brushes him aside, nearly knocking Zhu off her feet. “Say, now!” Daniel cries, but the boy clatters down the stairs and sprints down Water Street. Inside, men are yelling, flushed and gesticulating, striding back and forth across the barroom, or gathered around a long table at which croupiers sit in shirtsleeves and vests, taking coins, scribbling notations in their green leather ledgers. A wizened little operator sits at the end of the table, bending over a telegraph set. Next to him a burly red-haired fellow with muttonchops like great flaming wings on his face announces the latest news from the telegraph operator in a voice that manages to soar over the din.

“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 f*ckin’ 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. F*ckin’ 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 f*ckin’ 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 f*ckin’ 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 f*ckin’ train gets robbed and the f*ckin’ 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 f*ckin’ 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.