Love and Other Consolation Prizes(60)

“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.

He remembered reading about cherry saplings that had arrived in Washington, D.C., gifts from Japan to President Taft’s wife—two thousand trees in all. Most had been blighted with some type of disease, the damage had spread, and now all the young trees had been dug up and destroyed before they took root.

Pity, Ernest thought. The young trees in Seattle were marvelous to behold, finally coming into their own, a season away from bearing fruit. They reached toward the sun, potential waiting to be fulfilled.

“What’s the surprise? That you’re going to try to be the next Gibson girl?” Maisie asked. “You told bigmouthed Rose, so now everyone knows your plan. Word’s probably spread all through the neighborhood, all the way to Aberdeen by now.”

It was only a matter of time, Ernest thought, frowning.

Fahn had been practicing her Japanese tea routine for months. And she always managed to work, clean, and polish the silver within close proximity of the upstairs girls, hoping to improve her already formidable social skills. Fahn had taught herself to charm and flirt, following Jewel around and borrowing her books, like The Evolution of Modesty by Henry Havelock Ellis.

“Tut, tut.” Fahn brushed away the comment, parroting Madam Flora. “A lady does not confirm or deny idle gossip; doing so is like wrestling with a pig: you both get dirty, but the pig enjoys it.” Then she revealed an apple she’d stolen from the cart down the street and took a nonchalant bite. She offered the purloined fruit to Ernest and Maisie, who both declined, frowning. They waited for a convoy of Sternberg trucks to pass, then a trolley, and then they crossed the street.

“No matter,” Fahn said. “We’re almost there.”

As they trundled up the sidewalk, Ernest felt bad for stepping on so many delicate buds that dotted the pavement. But he quickly forgot his worry when they rounded the corner and saw the shining brickwork and polished windows of the hotel that had been named after America’s latest international adventure—the Panama Canal. Workers from Seattle—and everywhere for that matter—had been shipped out to carve a channel from the Pacific to the Atlantic, battling malaria and jungle rot the whole time. Ernest had read in the newspaper that many scientists were worried that the balance of life in each ocean would be forever disrupted when the two systems met. The idea seemed familiar to Ernest, a mixed-breed boy in China, a half-breed in Seattle. He wondered if Fahn ever felt the same way. If so, she never showed it. He also wondered if Maisie felt out of place in this part of town, which Fahn called Nihonmachi.

“Here we are,” Fahn said, out of breath from marching up the steep hill of Sixth Avenue. “Welcome to the Panama Hotel.”

“And…what exactly are we doing here?” Maisie asked, slightly winded.

“Don’t be such a Friday face, I didn’t bring you all the way up here just to show you the hotel. I brought you here to show you what lurks beneath—the Hashidate-Yu, the finest Japanese bathhouse in Seattle.” Fahn made a grand flourish with her hands, like a magician revealing a stage-crafted mystery, then pointed to a set of steps that led below the street.

Ernest had walked past the steam baths in Pioneer Square that the Scandinavian sailors from Ballard all favored, as well as the other Japanese baths whenever he’d run errands to this part of town—the Shimoju, the Naruto, the Hinode. But he’d never dared enter—he wasn’t even sure what a public bathhouse was, or how it worked.

“Goodie for you, Fahn, but what are we doing here?” Maisie asked, her expression a mixture of displeasure and wariness. “Are we even allowed?”

“That’s the beauty of the sento,” Fahn said. “Everyone’s allowed—men and women, the rich and the poor. Follow me. I came here when the hotel first opened last month. I wanted to share it with you; it’s lovely and feels wonderful. I used to go to an onsen bath each week when I was a little girl in Japan—this is almost as good.”

Ernest followed the two girls down the stairs and through the double doors. He felt a rush of steam and humidity hit his face, making his shirt feel damp and heavy. He inhaled the scent of soap and fresh laundry as he paid twenty cents to get in and took the bath towel and washcloth he was given. He removed his footwear at the behest of a sign. There were a handful of Japanese patrons milling about.