“Ah, yes,” said Rose, seizing the topic with vigor. “You’ve been chatting with Eugenie Schmitz.”
“The girls saw them just this morning,” bragged Morie. “Eugenie gave Vera a nice present of hankies and—”
“Did the mayor mention his troubles?” Rose seemed keen to know.
Pie allowed herself a little laugh. “Well, as usual, Vera cut through. She assured the mayor he was headed for jail.”
“Ha! And how did Handsome Gene take that?” Rose shifted her gaze to me, but I kept on pretending to be engrossed by one of her leather-bound books.
“The mayor seemed… resigned,” Pie admitted.
“I doubt very much he’s anything like resigned,” Rose declared. “Gene Schmitz will fight this case and anything else they try. We’ve done quite a lot of business together over the years, and I’m fond of him. You would do well, girls, not to judge a person who uses a few tricks or wiggles to climb. Why shouldn’t he? That’s called ambition and it’s built this country. But Gene, ah, Gene, he’s got his hand caught in the cookie jar one too many times. In that, he’s worse than crooked; he’s foolish.”
“But somehow—” Pie said, thinking of Eugenie.
“Somehow has been tried, dear. Even in this town, there’s only so much one can do to fix a mess.” Rose sighed wearily. “But you girls aren’t here to talk politics.” Rose motioned for Tan to refill her cup. “I was surprised, Morie, that you insisted on coming tonight. Something about big news.”
Over the rim of her second whiskey, Rose saw Morie and Pie exchange worried glances.
“Come on, ladies, out with it. Does it have to do with this fella of yours, Pie?” Rose urged. “Mister Buttons and Bobs.”
“James,” Pie corrected.
“You have your sights on marrying him, is that it?”
“That’s it!” Morie erupted, embarrassing herself. “James proposed!”
“Well, he promised to… in a year,” corrected Pie, who was honest by default.
Rose’s gaze shifted from Pie to Morie, and back again. “What’s this? Your young man proposed to propose?” She scoffed. “Is that your news?”
Pie shot a dire look in my direction. To think that Rose and I had said the same thing. “James is a serious person,” Pie insisted, sitting higher on her stool.
Rose shrugged. “Ah, well. In a year, we’ll know what the young man is made of, though by my lights he’s shown you already.”
“He’s honest and reasoned,” Pie said.
“And it’s reason you want to marry? Well, reason you will have. And, oh, will it have you.” Now Rose’s voice, a honed instrument of pleasure, dropped into the low registers, where it was most lethal. “You won’t hear me championing marriage. Marriage for a pretty girl is no better than a promise of servitude, yet all agree it’s what she should want. No, sir. My girls are free. They come and go; they have money in their purses. They have skills—”
“They are prostitutes,” blurted Pie, defender of love. She raised her snout in the air like a proud spaniel.
Rose smiled without showing her teeth. “May I remind you, miss, it is these same prostitutes who put the food on your table and that pretty dress on your back.”
Pie looked at her hands and nodded.
“Ah, well,” said Rose. “Let’s be jolly, eh? Elsa, how goes it with your playing the numbers? I forget, is it the church ladies you bet with? Are you winning these days?”
Morie, her face crimson, looked as if she were being forced to drink hot tar. “Yes, yes, I have won,” she sputtered. “At times… I have been lucky.” Morie searched Pie’s face for a way forward and, finding none, inhaled sharply and sealed her mouth.
I wondered what Rose knew. Had she heard about Morie’s debt to the Haj? It seemed likely Rose had eyes everywhere—same as Satan and God.
Rose observed the jeweled rings on her hand. “You know, Elsa,” she said, “Caruso came from nothing: a mechanic’s son. He is that rare creature, an artist with a capital A. Yet for all his gifts, he suffers from nerves.”
“Oh, not him too.”
“Truthfully, I don’t know how he’s going to perform. The man thinks San Francisco will be the death of him. And who’s to say he isn’t right? He’s heard all the dark rumors and he believes every one. Did you know we are a city overrun by murderers and ladies of the night?” Rose chuckled. “On the train ride west, he had his valet step off to buy him a pistol. He spent the rest of the trip learning to shoot from the back of the caboose, como un bandito.” Rose stuck out her pinkie as she sipped her drink.
Morie tried to regain a bit of ground. “Someone needs to show Don Caruso the finer parts of our city,” she declared.
“My thought exactly,” Rose agreed. “Last night, I sent two of my best girls to Caruso’s suite at the Palace.” Rose paused, deciding if it was indelicate to say more. She shrugged and went on. “My girls tell me he is keeping that gun very close. In. The. Bed.”
Morie batted her chest with her palm, feigning delicacy.
“Oh, come, Morie, are we not all students of human nature?” Rose laughed. “You, calling me behind my back hora this, hora that?” Rose flashed her very white teeth, seducing Morie into having a joke on herself. “Pie, that dress looks very well on you,” she went on, setting her whiskey aside and nodding to Tan, who once again handed her the plate of cake, along with a starched napkin.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Pie said. “I love it.”
“It loves you, dear.” Rose nibbled her cake like a rabbit. “And what about you, Vera? I see you’re intent on hiding from us in that ugly frock. You’re not in love with your new dress?”
“I don’t care about dresses.”
“Oh, flicka!” Morie gasped. “Rose, ignore Miss Sarah Bernhardt!”
“Ignore at your peril,” Rose said. “Child, what book are you pretending to read?”
I examined the cover. “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”
“Why that one? Did someone tell you to look at Khayyam?” Rose seemed truly
