A-Splendid-Ruin(76)

I stayed to the outskirts. I walked casually, my hands in my pockets, trying to blend in, and no one seemed to look twice at me. When I thought I saw someone I recognized, I moved quickly away, or slowed to walk behind someone else. I saw no sign of my uncle or my cousin. The camp was larger than I’d imagined, and more crowded. Obviously the only way to find them would be to walk through, and I was not that stupid. If Shin was here, there was no good way to find her.

A blasting horn from an automobile behind me made me start and jump out of the street. The car bounced jerkily over the cracked road, no doubt on important business. Automobiles all over the city had been hired or requisitioned by the military and the government, and this one too held soldiers, and a man I recognized, though I’d only seen him once, at the Palace Hotel. But he loomed large in my mind, so often had he been mentioned. I could not forget him. Abe Ruef.

The car pulled to the side of the road. Abe Ruef got out. He crossed the street, and hailed someone, who emerged from a corridor between tents.

My uncle.

That distinctive hair, that red gold that splintered in the sun, though it was disheveled and unoiled—and his ragged jacket was so uncharacteristic that it took me a moment to convince myself it was really Uncle Jonny. I dodged out of sight behind a decapitated lion guarding a broken stairway, but I could see them if I leaned just so. I watched the two of them talk.

My uncle gestured to someone behind him, and brazenly, in public view, Mrs. Dennehy joined them, clad in a plain skirt and shirtwaist, with diamonds around her throat and that diamond on her finger throwing reflections on the side of the nearby tent. She twined her arm through my uncle’s, proprietary as she’d been that day in Union Square while my aunt, half-mad, poisoned by laudanum, suffered in her dark room. Now, the three of them smiled and laughed—worry-free, unchanged by events, untouched—and my resentment and anger churned so hot I broke into a sweat.

They spoke for a few more minutes, then Abe Ruef returned to the car, and the soldiers drove him away. My uncle and Mrs. Dennehy disappeared. I sat by the headless lion and tried to calm myself.

Now I knew my uncle was alive, as was his mistress. There, at least, was something to focus on. If my uncle existed, there was a way to clear my name and get back my money. There was a way to punish the man who was truly responsible for my aunt’s death. I rubbed the gold button in my pocket. It had truly brought me luck. What of Goldie, then?

I could not leave after that. I stayed out of sight and watched people move about the perimeter of the camp. At the asylum, I had grown adept at waiting, and I did that now. I watched as the sun set, and the oil lamps and lanterns began to light, and women gathered at the communal kitchens. When it became dark enough that I knew they could not see me outside the perimeter of lamplight, I moved farther up the stairs, hoping for a broader view, and was rewarded with a full sight of the kitchen, women crowded about a stove. The flash of blond hair glowing golden struck me with its familiarity, bringing with it a mix of emotion I hadn’t expected. Anger, yes, but also a wounded, bewildered pain. Why I should still feel that, after so long, after everything she’d done to me? To think that I had ever trusted her at all or ever wanted to be her friend . . .

Goldie wore men’s overalls with a shirtwaist. She lifted a sloshing bucket, set it outside the tent flap, and called for someone. There was something about the way she called, her posture, her imperiousness, something that told me just who I would see, and I was right. Shin, who came to grab the bucket of water and took it away.

Shin. Thank God.

Shin, alive, and still with the Sullivans. I had hoped for that, but now I wondered what exactly it meant. I saw none of the other servants, not Au or Nick or Petey. How, after everything, after helping me, could Shin still work for them? Not only that, what did it mean in terms of helping me again?

I was puzzling over that, as well as how I might meet with her, when a shadow approached Goldie, and then resolved itself in the light, and I realized I was looking at Ellis Farge.

I had not forgotten him, of course, or his role in my commitment, but I’d thought him just one of Goldie’s pawns. I’d never expected to see him again. More than Ellis himself, I mourned the opportunity that had been a lie, and the part he’d played in letting me believe such a thing could be possible for a woman. I’d wondered what he’d done with all my sketchbooks. Thrown them in the fire, I imagined. How readily I’d believed him when he’d said I had talent. Now, the thought of him raised only humiliation, and I could not bear to think of his false admiration, the flattery I hadn’t seen through, and that evening at Coppa’s . . . my God, that evening, when I’d drawn on the wall and shown them all the extent of my dilettantism. I was glad that Ellis had smeared it. If the restaurant was still standing, I hoped it had been wiped away.

I had not expected to see him now with Goldie, in this camp. She’d said there was an attachment between them, I remembered. Had that been true? What kind of an attachment?

Now, they spoke briefly, and then he left her again, and I put him from my mind. He was not the problem I had just now. My problem was getting to Shin.

The camp took on the look of Mark Twain’s mining camp story. Glowing tents, soft talk, campfires. Carefully I made my way to the line of latrines. The stench was nothing compared to the asylum, and it was easy enough to wait there—at some point, everyone must use them. All I had to do was stay out of the way. The shadows behind the temporary buildings were dense; I waited where I could see up the line. The camp grew quieter and quieter. I grew more and more anxious. It would be dangerous now to make my way back to town. I would have to find a place here to spend the night, and hope that I would not be caught, but it would be worth it if I could talk to Shin.