Love and Other Consolation Prizes(47)

The two of them continued snacking their merry way from storefront to storefront, sampling roasted peanuts, salted in the shell, and spears of juicy pineapple from South America. With Fahn at his side, Ernest felt a bit older—wiser, more prideful perhaps. In a month and a half at the Tenderloin he felt he’d learned more of the world than he’d ever seen or read about during his previous years at school. He’d been thrust into an adult realm of discovery and responsibility, though deep down he knew that he was just a kid, and Fahn was just a teenage girl, who seemed reckless with her heart. Ernest didn’t protest her affections, though he quietly wondered where Maisie was, what she was doing, and if she was thinking about him, even just a little.

“Oooh, this is what I was hoping to see!” Fahn squealed over the calliope music from a carousel and a parade of drummers and wailing bagpipers. She took his hand and led him past men demonstrating gold panning, around the Temple of Palmistry, to the crowded incubator exhibit.

An official-looking gentleman in a lab coat with a clipboard and slicked hair shouted, “See these pint-size prizefighters battle it out with a bottle for three rounds, while living in a futuristic machine that serves in loco parentis!”

“What is this place?” Ernest asked Fahn.

“Babies,” she said, clapping and hopping up and down. “You’ll see.”

The barker kept up his routine. “Right here, we’ve saved the lives of babes from every country—there’s a Russian, Italian, German, Syrian, even a little Parsee girl, a Siwash boy, and newborn Oyusha San—a Japanese maid that’s as cute as can be!”

Fahn eagerly paid for both of them as they were ushered past a plush red velvet rope, guided through a door and into a room where a dozen metallic and glass-walled contraptions contained infants. One had a painted sign attached that read: PLEASE, ADOPT ME!

Through the glass, Ernest could see the babies swaddled in blankets of pink and blue. Some cried, some stirred and wiggled, but most slept as nurses checked on them, adjusting temperature gauges on the incubators. At least Ernest thought they were nurses. Another man in a lab coat walked by, and Ernest saw tattoos on his forearm, which made him suspect that they might all be carnies, dressed up as hospital staff. It was impossible to know for sure.

“What do you think?” Ernest asked as Fahn lingered over the newborn Japanese girl. She waved to get the baby’s attention, but the infant didn’t stir. Ernest was reminded of his long-lost baby sister.

Fahn tore herself away from the sight of the infants and said, smiling, “I have an idea of what we should do next. It might not be your thing, but if you come with me and go along with it, you can consider your favor repaid.”

Ernest was quietly relieved, happy to leave this place, but still confused as she took his hand and led him out and past a stand selling hot roast beef sandwiches. They went beyond the pagodas of the Chinese Village, which was sponsored by Seattle’s Chinatown, to the very end of the Pay Streak, and into a garden with Oriental statuary and fountains and a large building with a sign that read TOKIO CAFE.

Fahn spoke in broken Japanese and English to the women who worked there. The staff all wore the same type of gown as Fahn, though of different prints and finer fabric. Their sleeves were longer, and they had wide, thick, pillowy belts cinched tight around their waists. Their faces were painted white, their lips bright red, and they managed to walk gracefully on what looked like the world’s most uncomfortable wooden sandals. He watched Fahn talk with an older woman who wore her hair up and seemed to be in charge. Fahn spoke until the matron smiled and laughed, pointing at Ernest, as Fahn handed her a silver dollar.

“Come,” the woman said. “Come with me—we help you.”

She led Ernest to the doorway of a small room with paper screens and woven mats, where she bid him to remove his shoes. Then he walked into the room, which was bare except for a single lacquered table, on which rested a vase, a solitary flower blossom, and a host of cups and wooden utensils he didn’t recognize.

“Your gaarufurendo,” the woman said. “She’s going to show you something special.”

Ernest bit his tongue and waited as the woman left and closed the door.

When it reopened, Fahn had returned.

She didn’t speak, but wordlessly acknowledged his presence with her eyes, smiling as she carried a black box and a teapot to the table. She sat, and nodded ever so slightly as she unpacked the container, lit a candle, and gently added rolled incense to a small flame that he realized she was going to use to heat water for tea.

Fahn sat across from him, upright, kneeling before a small kettle. She said, “I’m performing the chado—the way of tea. When I was a little girl in Japan, I used to watch my okaasan do this in the house where she worked. So I’ve always wanted to perform a real tea ceremony, like my mother—for someone special.”

Ernest smiled at her.

“My okaasan would say, ‘Water is Yin. Fire is Yang. And tea is a perfect expression of both.’?”

“Both?” Ernest asked politely.

“Both sides of life, hot and cold, light and dark, not as opposites, but as complementary parts of each other,” Fahn said, pausing, as though deep in thought. “Life is about balancing the good and the bad, the past and the present. Madam Flora may not realize it, but she has a certain balance about her. All her girls do. Everyone does.”