Love and Other Consolation Prizes(27)

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)



This 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.