Love and Other Consolation Prizes(91)

“She’s not interested in the parlor life,” Professor True had grumbled, shaking his head. “She’s just running an ordinary crib.”

Ernest had bid each of the remaining Gibson girls farewell as they descended the grand staircase one last time. Their mournfulness, like their expensive perfume, lingered long after they’d departed. As Ernest hugged Jewel, last to leave, he knew that of all the upstairs girls, he’d miss her the most.

“And where are you off to?” he asked.

“Ladies’ choice.” She held up a stack of cards and letters, bound with a red ribbon. “I’m going to check into a fine hotel, order a bottle of wine, draw a nice long bubble bath, put my feet up, and slowly read all the marriage proposals I’ve received in the last year. One of them is bound to be a keeper. Though to be honest, Ernest, if you were a little bit older, darling—you’d be my first pick.”

“And if my heart were my own…” He smiled.

Jewel put a gloved finger to Ernest’s heart. “But it’s not, is it?” She planted a long, lingering kiss on his surprised lips. Then she kissed Professor True on both cheeks as he walked into the room. She smiled, grabbed her suitcase, and bounded down the steps.

“That one will do just fine,” the Professor said, fanning himself with his hat. “Give her enough time and she might get herself elected mayor.”

“She’s got my vote,” Ernest said.

“Mine too.”

The working girls will keep on working one way or another, Ernest thought. If not, there’s the White Shield Home in Tacoma, a refuge he’d suggested to Fahn. But she had other plans. Besides, she couldn’t bear to leave the neighborhood.

As sunset approached, Ernest helped Professor True and a group of colored men load the piano up a steep ramp and onto a flatbed hay truck, where they covered it with a canvas tarp and long stretches of heavy rope.

“Time for me to fly, young man—wish I could take you with.”

“And where might that be?” Ernest asked.

“Vancouver, British Columbia, for a month of gigs at the Patrician nightclub. Then we head east to Chicago. I’ve never been, but I’ve heard things—some good, some bad, but sounds like there’s plenty of work. I hooked up with a hot band traveling through town led by a man named Ferdinand LaMothe. He just lost one of his crew—married a local girl—so off I go in his place…” Professor True reached up and pulled part of the canvas away from the keyboard and played a one-handed stinger on the piano, which was already slipping out of tune.

Ernest said, “Good luck. I’ll be right here with Fahn. I guess we’re sticking together for a while.”

Professor True raised an eyebrow and climbed into the back of the truck. Then he smiled as he sat down on a bale of hay and began singing “Movin’ Man, Don’t Take My Baby Grand.” The truck drove away in a cloud of dust, leaving behind streets that were less crowded than ever before, and eerily quiet, with just the distant clanging of a trolley and the chatter of gulls to keep Ernest company.

Alone in the house now, Ernest walked back upstairs and peeked into Miss Amber’s room, which had long been vacant. It was now empty, the window cracked. He went to Madam Flora’s master suite, which was also bare except for tea stains on the wall. He sighed and finally, reluctantly, went to say goodbye to the room that had been Maisie’s, then Fahn’s. In the hallway, he paused where some of the ladies had been piling up the things they were leaving behind. There was a small mound of discarded clothing, broken hatboxes, and empty tins of makeup. Ernest took his raffle ticket from the AYP out of his shirt pocket and left it behind on the pile.

Then he went back downstairs, retrieved his suitcase, and stepped out into the mist. He looked up at the four-story edifice that had been his only real home. As the gaslights flickered to life, he found a dry spot beneath the awning and sat alone atop his valise. He listened to the patter of the rain as it showered the streets, turning the dusty pavement black and luminescent. He surveyed the boarded-up buildings, the darkened neon signs as he patiently waited for Fahn, who showed up twenty minutes later. She was soaking wet but beaming.

“I got a job!” she shouted. “Two actually. I got hired as a waitress,” she gushed. “But when the owner found out I spoke English, she also referred me to the Japanese Language School—that’s what took me so long. After a tour and a short test, they hired me on the spot. It’ll probably take me a year to make what the upstairs girls were earning in a month, but it’s a fresh start, and you have your savings. They even suggested using me to reach out to some of the displaced girls in the neighborhood.”

Ernest cocked his head.

“Well…” Fahn said. “I had to lie about where I’d worked. But Mrs. Blackwell said she’d cover for me. She gave me a marvelous reference. And since I told them we had a motorcar, they said they’d pay us to use it to retrieve some of the girls.”

“We?” Ernest asked. “You told them about me? About us?”

“I had to,” Fahn said. “A single woman arouses a certain suspicion around here—I couldn’t risk that, not right now. I doubt they would have hired me. And it’ll be tough for us to rent an apartment together unless we play along, even here in the colored neighborhoods. So I told a fib. There was no other way, not out there in the real world. I hope you don’t mind me pretending to be Mrs. Ernest Young, at least for a while?”