Love and Other Consolation Prizes(76)

Ernest now realized this had all been part of Maisie’s education, calculated planning by Madam Flora and Miss Amber. And as he regarded a long line of theatergoers paired up beneath dark umbrellas, he saw that tonight’s featured production was At the Old Cross Roads, a show about the child of an octoroon. It was an odd happenstance, since a crib joint called the Octoroon House sat four blocks away on the fringes of the Garment District.

Ernest had always wondered about that place. Almost as much as about Weed’s Pharmacy on Jackson Street. He glanced at his reflection in the shop window as he motored past. Weed’s was where the girls went each month for illegal discourses on womanhood and how to avoid pregnancy. Mrs. Irvine and her group often stood outside the store with signs on Sunday afternoons, protesting.

—

WHEN ERNEST FINALLY arrived back at the Tenderloin, he expected to see preparations for a grand send-off for Madam Flora and Miss Amber. Yet all he heard were honking cars and music from nearby saloons. The upstairs girls were all in their rooms with customers. And the servants had busied themselves elsewhere. Their absence spoke more than a pretend smile ever could, and revealed how much resentment had built up toward their once beloved leader and her business partner.

The only people who said goodbye were Mrs. Blackwell, who held an umbrella for Madam Flora, and Professor True, who was there to help with the luggage, as moisture from a sudden downpour fogged up his glasses.

Ernest expected Miss Amber to ask about Maisie or Louis Turnbull, but all she said was “King Street Station. Be quick about it.”

Madam Flora said nothing.

At the nearby station the Empire Builder was waiting, the flagship locomotive of the Great Northern Railway, a midnight train bound for Chicago. In the City of Broad Shoulders they’d switch trains for New York, where they would board an ocean liner, and then sail beyond the horizon of the Americas.

Ernest watched as Madam Flora, eyelids drooping from laudanum, boarded a Pullman car designed for sleeping, while black porters, all named George, helped with the luggage. After Madam Flora and Miss Amber were aboard, he stood on the platform as others blew kisses and crowds of well-wishers waved at the departing train with a flurry of white handkerchiefs.

Ernest watched Miss Amber disappear without so much as a glance in his direction, or back toward the Tenderloin. He lingered long after the train had departed and the station became as quiet as a library on Sunday morning, nothing but the sound of the rain and the occasional clip-clop of a leather heel on the marble floor.

When Ernest finally walked back outside, he saw that all the cars had stopped, idling in the street, as a team of horses nearby grew restless, braying in their harness. Ernest stepped to the roadster and climbed atop the running board to see what the commotion was. He saw a crowd of people in front of Billy the Mugs, a popular saloon where men drank buckets of beer and often fought in the alley. The vaudeville musicians in the basement had also come up to the street. The fiends who haunted the stoop of a nearby drugstore had even stopped their begging to watch.

Despite the rain, another crowd had gathered on the opposite sidewalk: finely dressed women, holding folded newspapers above their heads to keep their hats from getting wet. That’s when he spotted Mrs. Irvine and a dozen other matrons from the Mothers of Virtue, protest signs in hand, warning of the evils of John Barleycorn. The ladies were mixed in with uniformed men and women from the Stranger’s Rest and Olive Branch Missions a few blocks away. But the crowds weren’t shouting at each other. They were silent as a tintype photograph, luminescent in their intensity as they stared at someone between them in the middle of the street, a woman—a girl.

Ernest recognized her immediately from a block away. He recognized her despite the rain, despite the flickering glow of gaslights and the veering, reaching, clawing shadows cast by the headlamps of the motorcars that honked and veered around her.

Fahn.

She was naked. Barefoot. Limping down the middle of the street in the pouring rain.

Some men whistled, others heckled and jeered, laughing.

The missionary women gasped, clutching their pearls.

Ernest felt his heart in his throat as he pushed his way through the crowd, running toward her, shouting her name. But she was confused and didn’t seem to recognize him. Her skin was so pale she looked cadaverous, dazed, staring ahead in the direction of the Tenderloin. The street was littered with cigarette butts and broken glass from discarded bottles of beer, and her feet were cut, bleeding, leaving ruddy footprints on the pavement. Ernest removed his coat as she fell to her knees. He wrapped the long woolen shell around her shoulders. Her wet, tangled hair reeked of smoke. She held out a clenched fist and slowly opened her fingers like flower petals blooming. She stared down at a handful of quarters, then dropped them. The bits of silver clattered to the pavement and rolled away, skittering toward the gutters and the feet of a group of women who were crossing themselves and saying silent prayers.

Ernest looked up at the ladies, many of whom shielded their eyes with their hats or their scarves, receding into the shadows. “Help me!” he shouted as he heard bells in the distance. “She’s hurt! Help me get her to a doctor.”

The women stared back in silence, shaking their heads with pity.

“Call a doctor!” Ernest shouted again. Then he saw Mrs. Irvine. She looked him in the eye and said, “The wages of sin.” Then she turned her back and disappeared into the crowd.