In the far corner, a man coughed. He’d been there all along, hidden by piles. He was seated behind a large desk, silently, steadily counting stacks of money.
“Martin, I remind you, you are not here,” Rose said.
Martin dropped his head and continued on, his lips moving like bellows in and out as he tallied what I assumed must have been the previous night’s haul. When he reached a certain number of bills, he tugged a band off his wrist, wrapped it around them, and set that stack aside. I figured four or five of those stacks would answer Morie’s debt, and who would miss them?
Rose waved her fingers in front of my face, forcing me to turn away. “Why do you need money?” she asked. “What more could you want that I don’t provide?”
The question threw me. There was so much I needed that she didn’t provide, and none that I would admit. “I just do,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to see ahead of me. “And Pie?” she asked. “What about your sister? If you leave, I wouldn’t be bound to pay for them, you know. Do you want to see Pie out on the street?”
“Pie is marrying James,” I said quickly, and though it was true, true enough, it made my stomach ache to give up Pie like that.
“Marry James, so she says,” Rose replied. “But you know as well as I, a lot can happen in a year.” As Rose pondered my situation, she fingered her pearls, the beads on her ever-present abacus. “Tell you what: let’s talk then. In a year, if you insist, we’ll make a different arrangement.…” Her voice trailed off. “This, I can promise you, is not what I planned.”
“What did you plan?” I asked, forgetting why I was there and remembering only that I wanted to be with her. For as much as she wasn’t anyone’s mother—not mine, not really—she was so familiar, familiar in my bones, the only one I’d ever met who felt like me.
“When you left me with Morie, what did you think I’d become?”
“Honestly?” She sighed. “I figured you’d be cared for, and away from this—” She waved her hand and her pearls chinked like a thousand tiny bells.
“Cared for like a beast, shod and fed,” I muttered, then louder, “How do I know you’ll stick to your part?”
“Listen to you. My word. Hank!” she shouted.
He must have been waiting with an ear to the door, for he came right in.
“Hank!” Rose bellowed. “This one here, she wants to know if I stand by my word.”
“You are the word, mum. Everyone knows that.”
“That’s right, everyone knows.” Rose shook her head. “All right, then.”
“You need me,” I said, making a last desperate stand. “You don’t know it, but you do.”
“Anyone I need, I can buy,” she said. “But”—she held up a finger—“if I find otherwise, I’ll call on you. How about that. Are we agreed?”
I did not agree, and worse, I’d failed: my pockets were empty. Even so, I was dismissed. The way we’d come, down the labyrinth of halls and doors, is the way we went, with Hank warning, “Now, Miss Vera, you made your deal with the boss and you don’t want to be niggling. You want to show her you’re made of solid stuff.”
I dared myself not to cry. But the tears were at the gates, clogging my throat and stinging my eyes.
I figured now Hank would take me home in his car. My heart sank as he steered me toward the rig, where Tan was waiting, holding General’s reins.
Hank opened the buggy door, and there was the girl, Lifang. She’d placed herself at the center of the narrow bench and had no intention of sharing.
“Move over,” I croaked, my voice clotted.
“Now then, you two,” warned Hank, “girls ain’t cats, and girls behave. You got that?” Hank banged the door shut.
Lifang shifted a fraction, her fingers, the bare beds polished to a gloss, gripping the bench.
I sat heavily, shoving her the rest of the way with my hip. Tan put General into a choppy trot while Lifang and I stared out separate windows onto our mutual disappointment. We didn’t dare look at each other. Still, being a tough girl is a lonely business; it took a fellow tough girl to comprehend how difficult it was to stand before the madam, flagrant with your wants, only to be sent packing.
“I hate cats,” I whispered.
“I love them,” she countered, wiping her tears with the sleeve of her dress.
Lifang took her father’s hand as she stepped from the buggy at the corner in Chinatown where he’d fetched her. Without a backward glance, she disappeared into the crowd. In a few days, he would collect Lifang again, take her on the ferry to Oakland, then east to Sacramento, where she would be safe; Rose had it all arranged. Tan and Lifang were being sent away. Looked at in a certain light, it was a promotion.
“Stupid gurrl,” Tan hissed at me, his hand on the door. “She don’t want you.” And with that, he slammed it shut.
Block after slow block, Tan proved to me his rage by whipping the poor horse.
I felt every blow on General’s back, and, alone in the buggy, I wept. I was ashamed—of myself for wanting, and of Rose, for being so much less than I’d hoped. I couldn’t very well return home empty-handed, but home was where we were headed. With every sting of the whip, every lurching clop of General’s hooves, we made our slow dread creep to Francisco Street.
Tan pulled up a block from the house. He didn’t bother to offer me a hand as I climbed down. I suppose I wouldn’t have accepted it anyway.
Tan kept his eyes on the road, his neck sunk into his shoulders. “Rose is no place for you,” he said.
“You said she didn’t want me.”
“Nahh, same-same.”
I thought of Lifang and her tears; she
