Ernest looked at Jewel, who seemed to be eating up the extravagant attention by so many rich and powerful patrons. Her cheeks, which earlier had been streaked with tears, now seemed to be positively glowing as she regarded the bidders. Some might have passed as handsome, ten or twenty years ago. Ernest thought about what Fahn had said about dogs admiring trees.
Ernest lost track of the sum after it passed one thousand dollars and the roaring and cheering all blended into a deafening hurricane of ribald commerce. The music, the bidding, the laughing, the shouting, the lavish fervor was intoxicating. But it was sickening, confounding as well. Being sold at a high price didn’t change the fact that a person was being sold like a head of cattle. His heart was numb when the auction finally died down and the last toast was offered. The ladies all sang “Good Evening, Caroline” as Jewel and the lucky winner ascended the stairs and waved goodbye, as though setting sail aboard the Mauretania.
Ernest chewed his lip and shifted uncomfortably at the thought of what they’d be doing hence. Jewel was the youngest of the Gibson girls, which left only him, an assortment of maids, and presumably Maisie, and Fahn, as the residents of the Tenderloin whose virtues remained somewhat intact. As he stared at the grand carpeted staircase and listened to the music, he might have daydreamed for hours if Miss Amber hadn’t poked him in the ribs. She handed him a heavy silver bucket with a bottle of wine, overflowing with chipped ice.
“What are you lollygagging about for? Follow them upstairs, and do it quick. And watch your step, that bottle of cuvée is a Ruinart ’82, the best in the house—probably worth more than you’ll make in two lifetimes.”
Ernest looked at the bottle and did what he was told. He trailed behind the couple, setting the bucket on a table just inside the door to their suite. The winning bidder thanked him happily and then shooed Ernest off with a ten-dollar bill as he unfastened his black suspenders and loosened his white tie.
Jewel stared back at Ernest with quiet eyes. She seemed neither happy nor sad, scared perhaps, just a little, but more resigned than anything else. She didn’t even blink as the cork popped and careened off the ceiling. Instead, she merely mouthed the words “Thank you” to Ernest as he closed the door behind him.
—
WHEN ERNEST LOOKED at the clock it read 2:37 A.M. He’d been busy all night, decanting wine, shining shoes, removing lint from the coats of guests, and fetching cabs as the party slowly wound down to the calm of intimate conversation and a gentle waltz rendered by Professor True. The piano man had loosened his tie and seemed to be playing in his sleep, eyes closed, bent over the ivory keys of his baby grand even as his fingers danced back and forth like puppets on strings.
The policemen had left hours earlier, but not before the girls showered them with wet, lipstick-stained goodbyes and Madam Flora slipped each officer a handful of folding money. She could afford it, as Jewel had brought in over a thousand dollars from a porcine businessman with a cleft in his double chin. If Jewel had objections to her suitor, she’d kept them masterfully hidden. Ernest thought of how she’d cooed and addressed him as though he were the man of her dreams—Prince Charming in a waistcoat one size too small.
“Thirteen hundred dollars was the winning bid. Not by a particularly handsome man, but at least it was a handsome sum,” Fahn had whispered as she collected empty wineglasses.
Ernest had never even seen a hundred-dollar bill, let alone held one. He felt the ten-dollar bill in his pocket, more money than he’d ever possessed at one time. At the Tenderloin, the cash and the stringent rules of polite society ebbed and flowed as freely as the whiskey and the bottles of Bordeaux.
“What’s the most anyone’s ever paid for one of these nights?” he asked.
“Well—if you can believe it, they say there was a man named Louis J. Turnbull who once bid five thousand dollars.”
“For who?” Ernest asked, wide-eyed. His jaw hung open, slightly. That was a king’s ransom. Ernest couldn’t comprehend that much money. He was making twenty cents an hour, plus room and board.
“You don’t want to know.” Fahn rolled her eyes.
“I do, actually,” Ernest said.
“For the one person who isn’t up for sale anymore,” Fahn said. “I know you heard about how Madam Flora retired. Well, some men didn’t think that certain restrictions applied to them, especially Louis Turnbull. He used to spend entire weeks with Flora. I don’t know if he was heartbroken when she stopped working, or just upset that there was something in the world his money couldn’t buy. Over the years he tried charming her with lavish gifts from around the world, but Amber put a stop to that.”
Ernest tried to imagine that kind of money.
“It’s a story for another time—rather ugly. Hey, I’m done in a few minutes. Give me a half hour to freshen up and get out of my uniform, then come up to the empty guest room on the fourth floor. I’m ready to collect on what you owe me.”
Ernest’s palms began to sweat, and his heart and stomach seemed to change places. He remembered her long kiss in the street—which had sent lightning bolts from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. That moment had filled his daydreams and had kept him awake at night.
He’d been haunted by her words: now…you owe me.
But Ernest lingered downstairs and pretended to be busy. Sure, he liked her—he definitely cared for her and was infatuated in a way that he’d thoroughly enjoyed. Yet he wasn’t certain about paying back whatever debt she was intending to collect.
A man’s raspy voice said, “You can’t avoid her forever, you know.”
Ernest looked over and saw Professor True peeking at him with one eye open. Then the old man smiled, shook his head, and kept playing with his eyes closed as he said, “Might as well go on up. She’s not gonna bite you or nothing, not that one for sure.”
“It’s not the biting I’m worried about,” Ernest said. “It’s everything else.”
Professor True chuckled and shook his head. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be your age all over again. Then again, back in those days, I was playing on street corners in Kansas City for pennies.”
Ernest wondered, “How long have you been working here?”
“Longer than you’ve been alive, son,” the man said. “Let’s just say that I came with the building. And I’ll be here, writing, playing, singing, as long as my fingers will allow. But you’re just stalling now, aren’t you?”
Ernest sighed in agreement and untied his apron.
“There you go,” Professor True said. “As a wise man with a funny collar and pointy shoes said, Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close up that wall—something like that. You know what I mean…”
Ernest didn’t, but the quote sounded like a verse he’d read in school. Probably Shakespeare. And as he took the long walk up the stairs and along the carpet-lined hallway, he heard the now-familiar giggles and laughter from behind closed doors, and the odd rhythm and helpless moans of men and women in the throes of pleasure or anguish—sometimes it was hard to discern which. He passed some of the upstairs girls as they were freshening up with new, painted-on smiles, or winding down. Some even kissed him on the cheek and bid him good night.
He brushed the hair from his eyes, cleared his throat, and gently knocked on the guest room door. Words from another play the older kids had once put on at the children’s home came rushing back—Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Ernest knocked again, and the door pushed open, slightly. Cautiously, he peeked into the room. One small paraffin candle was burning on a corner table. The window was wide open, and a cool breeze blew the curtains back like the sails of a ship with a broken mast, lazily drifting to nowhere in particular.
He called out Fahn’s name. Then he heard whispers.
“Out here, young Ernest, on the fire escape.”
Ernest smelled tobacco on the cool draft and heard another, familiar voice in addition to Fahn’s. He closed the door behind him, crept across the room, and held the curtains aside as he climbed through the open window and out into the early-morning air, which felt unseasonably warm.