Ernest looked at his daughter, and Juju’s expression seemed to say, Why not?
Despite the cloudy sky, it was a pleasant summer evening. The avenue was clear and the streetlights were flickering to life, reflecting gasoline halos in the wet pavement that surrounded them. Neon shimmered on the damp sidewalks, and gulls bobbed happily, picking out scraps among the litter. As they walked across the street, Gracie slowed and then stopped in the middle. She looked around, her face suddenly flushed with confusion. She pulled the scarf from her head and dropped it to the ground. Ernest felt a jolt of déjà vu as Gracie froze, a statue staring up into the sky as rain began to fall.
“Ma, what’s wrong?” Juju asked.
Cars rounded the corner, slowed down, honked, and then swerved around them, bathing the street with their headlights. Ernest dropped the bag of takeout and caught Gracie, as her legs buckled and she collapsed in his arms.
CLOUDY DAYS
(1910)
Ernest was bringing in large tins of coal oil on a rainy Tuesday night when he heard a racket from the third floor. At first he presumed that the banging, door slamming, and caterwauling was Madam Flora having another one of her bad moments. But as he set the tins down and ascended the grand staircase, followed by Fahn and Professor True, Ernest heard a heated argument that included a man’s voice. And when Ernest reached the landing, he saw Miss Amber down the long hallway, a baseball bat in hand. In her largest, reddest wig, she towered over one of the Tenderloin’s new customers, yelling at the man, who stood in a doorway. A gaggle of the upstairs girls still in various states of undress joined in on the shouting match like a chorus of hectoring, henpecking furies. Their voices echoed off the wallpaper that had been painted with doves.
Outnumbered, the man’s barks turned to yips as he muttered, “You’re all just a bunch of two-bit harlots anyway.” He hastily collected his hat and necktie and stormed away. Some of the girls threw shoes and hairbrushes after him, and the objects bounced off the walls, the man’s head, or both.
Miss Amber cursed and hollered back, “I don’t ever want to see your face again. The last man who caused a stir under my roof ended up in jail. Try explaining that to your boss. Or your wife!”
Ernest and Fahn found Maisie in the hallway; her cheeks were flushed with emotion. “What happened?” they asked her.
“That jerk got jealous. He wanted Jewel to be his steady.” Maisie shook her head and stared daggers in the man’s direction as Professor True followed him downstairs to make sure he found his way out. “And when Jewel laughed and said no thank you, he slapped her around, started yelling, calling her names. He shoved her head into a wall. Luckily Miss Amber keeps a close eye on all the new gents these days.”
Ernest could barely remember the man’s face, let alone his name. Since Madam Flora’s health had been failing, business had been slowing as well. Her presence as hostess, emcee, and ringmaster for each evening’s entertainments was a crucial ingredient of the Tenderloin’s magic. Without her showmanship, a haunting sadness had settled over the place, and customers seemed to sense it. They were staying away. Plus her numerous treatments and clinic visits had been costing a small fortune, even though they’d done little to ease her slide into madness.
In response, Miss Amber had been forced to open the Tenderloin’s opulent bedroom doors to strangers. Before that, new customers had been allowed only in the company of a trusted regular, someone vetted and vouched for. Now Professor True, sometimes with Ernest’s help, had to toss out a belligerent drunk at least once a week. Ernest felt he’d aged years in the past few months. He was no longer a simple houseboy but seemed to have inherited a man’s responsibilities, always on guard, protecting members of their odd little family.
“That fella got lucky,” Maisie said. “Miss Amber only brought her bat. One of these days she just might shoot a man, or cut him where it counts. A creep like that could end up singing castrato at Squire’s Opera House.”
“It’ll get better,” Fahn said. “Madam Flora’s bound to come back to her senses.”
Ernest hoped for the best, but he wasn’t so sure. Their matron had been having more bad days than good. And even her good days were not the same. She’d occasionally dress up and preside over a Friday evening gala, or introduce a guest poet, or a famous cellist who was in town to play with the symphony. But her time in the spotlight was always tenuous, and her smile barely masked the disquiet that lurked underneath.
As Ernest scratched his head and looked up and down the crowded hallway—at the working girls coming and going in their elegant dresses and silk changing gowns—he couldn’t help but wonder. Perhaps the right patron could actually change things. Perhaps that person was Louis Turnbull after all. Surely he wasn’t the only one who had imagined Flora’s old paramour might be the answer to the complicated riddle the Tenderloin had become. But no one mentioned the man’s name—at least not in the presence of Miss Amber. Though his gifts kept arriving—cases of Bordeaux from Chateau Latour, a floor-length coat of Russian sable, an oxblood vase from China, a painting by someone named Sargent.
Does Louis Turnbull even know about Madam Flora’s fits of madness? He must—surely—gossip travels fast. Maybe Turnbull thought he could rescue his lost love from the ghost of a woman that Madam was becoming. Or perhaps he thought her condition was exaggerated in rumors spread by jealous rivals for her affection.
“Okay, get back to work, ladies. I’ll take care of everything here,” Miss Amber said as she clapped her hands. “You too, young man.”
Ernest nodded and slipped by Miss Amber toward the servants’ stairs and past the open door to Jewel’s bedroom. He peeked inside and saw that Madam Flora was already there, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding the girl, dabbing at her black eye and bruised cheek with a hand towel from the washbasin.
Ernest stepped aside as Maisie slipped into the room and sat next to her mother, who was still in her sleeping gown, with curlers in her hair. Madam Flora put her other arm around Maisie, gently kissing her forehead.
“My ladies are my world,” Madam Flora said as she held both girls and gently rocked back and forth. “No one will ever hurt you again. I promise.”
SUNNY DAYS
(1910)
Madam Flora was true to her word. The Tenderloin went back to its regulars-only policy, despite dwindling business. And there were no more incidents. Now the only disturbance was the occasional evening when the house was too quiet—just the ironic sound of Professor True playing “Everybody’s Doing It Now.”
But at least spring had arrived. The morning fog had become a memory, and the rain took a brief, unexpected vacation, leaving sunshine to look over Seattle in its absence. As Ernest walked outside, he marveled at the smell: thousands of sakura florets had filled the air, swirling on the breeze like pink snowflakes. The flowering buds came once a year, and for only a week or so, but they meant rebirth, another beginning. Just like the new hotel that had opened on the corner of Sixth and Main—where Fahn, Maisie, and Ernest were heading.
“Follow me, I have a little surprise for the both of you,” Fahn had said, as she led Ernest and Maisie through Chinatown, past apple carts and fishmongers, to the thriving Japanese neighborhood to the north. There they wended their way through the flowering cherry trees. Ernest loved the trees’ cycles of beauty and then repose, unlike evergreens, which stood constant and dull by comparison.