Ernest began to wonder how many beautiful young women had journeyed down the plum-colored corridor. How many like Maisie had walked past the slender tables adorned with Oriental vases full of fresh flowers, past the rosy cheeks of painted cherubs that adorned the inside of the arched ceiling and peeked out from the ornately carved lintels. Ernest smelled the flowers and noticed thorns on the roses. Remembering Fahn recovering in her bed, he reached out to one of the stems, jabbing his thumb directly onto one of the briers. He felt the sharp, distracting, invigorating pain; he watched the warm trickle of crimson. He wiped the blood on his handkerchief before wheeling the serving cart to the double doors and reaching for the knocker. He paused, closed his eyes as though making a wish, and then made his arrival known. He heard footsteps, then the door was opened by yet another servant.
Part of Ernest had expected to find Maisie strewn across a bed, half-naked as if from a scene out of One Thousand and One Nights, guarded by turbaned eunuchs with scimitars. He was relieved to see that she wore the same dress as last night, the same shoes, though her hair was now down and her lipstick had long since faded. She sat on an ornate chair, hands on her valise, smiling casually, slightly impatient, as though she were waiting in the lobby of a bank perhaps. Ernest cocked his head as he noticed a sparkling strand of tiny diamonds draped around her neck.
“There you are. You’re right on time.” Maisie stood and smoothed the creases of her dress with a tremendous sigh, like that of a tree bent by the wind, now leaning back toward sunlight. She approached the breakfast cart, tore off a piece of stritzel, dipped the pastry in the whipped cream, and then popped it in her mouth, chewing and giggling.
She smiled as she spoke with her mouth full. “Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove. That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, woods or steepy mountain yields.” The line from the poem was something the Gibson girls liked to recite.
Ernest straightened his tie. “Shall we go?”
The servant who had begun pouring coffee stopped and stood at attention. Ernest heard humming as Mr. Turnbull strolled out of an adjoining dressing chamber.
Ernest nodded to the man, who looked to be a hale fellow in his early fifties. He wore a short beard, the color of honey, tinged with silver. Turnbull was already dressed in a dark brown suit with a waistcoat and starched white collar.
“Oh, there you are. This intriguing young man must be Ernest,” Mr. Turnbull said. Ernest noticed that Maisie’s wealthy sponsor had tattoos on his forearms, a sailor’s résumé peeking out from beneath his buttoned shirtsleeves. There was something odd about the fellow—a familiarity, perhaps. Ernest tried to reconcile where he’d seen the man. Had this gentleman been to the Tenderloin unbeknownst to Ernest?
Ernest furrowed his brow as Mr. Turnbull thanked Maisie, kissed her on the cheek, and said, “Until next time. Don’t forget my offer, dear.” The servant escorted Maisie out and then closed the door behind them before Ernest could follow. Mr. Turnbull reached for the newspaper and found his seat behind an enormous mahogany reading desk. He sipped his coffee, smiled, and sampled a meringue cookie. Brushing away crumbs, he gestured for Ernest to help himself to the breakfast offerings.
“Oh, what a world we share,” Mr. Turnbull remarked as he looked up from the page.
“I’ll show myself out,” Ernest said.
“Nonsense. Stay a moment.” The man tapped the paper. “Look at this. Ballington Booth, the former head of the Salvation Army, went to London and told everyone that we are rapidly approaching the end-times. Fire and tarnation! For some reason every generation thinks the world is coming to an end. What do you think, young man?”
Ernest was sorely confused. And weary. I must still be dreaming, he thought.
“I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking me,” Ernest said. He kept his anger in check, but his patience was thinning. He needed to get Maisie home. He needed to check on Fahn.
“The arrogance astounds.” Mr. Turnbull shook his head as he looked up and asked, “How did you sleep last night?”
Ernest heard himself say, “Quite poorly.”
“That’s too bad. I, on the other hand, slept like a lamb. It’s the bedding, made from the finest Japanese silk. And of course, I would be lying if I said the company was not…remarkable.” The peculiar old man set the paper down and broke into a singsong rhyme: “Round as an apple, eyes deep as a cup, the whole Mississippi can’t fill them up.” He looked up at Ernest with a wink. “My apologies to Mother Goose…”
“I’m sorry, sir…”
“No, no, no…I am the one who needs to apologize, young man, that we haven’t met sooner. You see, we have something deeply, profoundly in common, you and me.”
Ernest waited impatiently as the man took another bite and then continued.
“Young Margaret told me how you two met at the fair in the wake of President Taft’s visit—how you came to find yourself in the employ of the magnificent Florence Nettleton. I insisted that she tell me all about this person she ran from my doorstep to say goodbye to. Flora always found the most amazing people to bring into her fold.”
Ernest couldn’t help but notice that as the man spoke of Madam Flora, the twinkle of admiration grew from a spark to a flame. It was an odd respect that he proffered, mingled with his infatuation.
Mr. Turnbull kept talking, rambling, drumming his fingers on his desk as he spoke. “Ever since my late wife, Millie, left this world, I have been…consumed with Flora Nettleton, despite her being the Mother Jones of madams—you know, the wrinkled old bird who likes to chirp, ‘Women don’t need the vote to raise a little hell.’ Well, maybe Mother Jones is right though, because Madam Flora is one heck of a woman.” The man stroked his beard and took a deep, clarifying breath. “Pity that she’s so unavailable now. She was a smart one though, perhaps the smartest woman I’ve ever known. That’s why I’m not surprised she cornered the market on you that day at the AYP.”
Ernest began to wonder what Maisie might be doing downstairs. Perhaps she was outside, kicking the tires of the motorcar by now.
“The point that I’m trying to make,” Mr. Turnbull said, “is that I wanted to meet you in person, to see the good things—the promise, in a young man like yourself, especially from someone of such humble, provincial beginnings.”
“Because I was won at the fair?” Ernest asked. He couldn’t understand where this was heading.
“Not just that.” Mr. Turnbull laughed as though he’d been crystal clear and somehow Ernest hadn’t been paying attention. “I wanted to meet you—yes, you—because you came to this country as a lowly child from the Far East—from a territory that was rent asunder, torn apart by war, by rebellion.”
“Because I came from China?”
“Exactly. Now we understand each other. I called my executive secretary and had him look up the manifests at one of my offices this morning, and lo and behold.” Mr. Turnbull took another sip and then pointed at Ernest with his cup of coffee. “There’s a decent chance, young man, that you came over on one of my ships. What are the odds?”
Ernest opened his mouth, about to speak, and then closed it. His head spun, and lurid memories returned. Images of the unsavory men in China, the ship’s doctor, the blackbirders who’d passed themselves off as merchants, silk-clad girls in cages, Jun and the other boys who drowned after they were transferred to the care of smugglers.
“I was on a few of those voyages myself,” Mr. Turnbull said, as he casually tugged up his shirtsleeves, revealing a blur of faded ink.
Ernest remembered a morning in a cemetery.
Refugee children waking up.
Being herded away from his ruined village.
The sound of gunfire. A man in an elegant coat.
Louis J. Turnbull.
Ernest stared at the man as he kept speaking.
Louis J. Turnbull was the man who was not my uncle.
The rich man went on and on about his business ventures in the Orient, the ships he built, the fleet he owned, the precious cargo they’d carried.
Ernest could almost smell the smoke, the fetid mud, and his mother’s peculiar fragrance before she wandered off to die.
“Now look at you.” The man slurped his coffee as Ernest woke from his strange memory. “You’re an upright figure, a model citizen, as Western as can be. I know what you are thinking—that you should thank me…”