“I’ll thank Rose when I see her tonight,” I said.
Pie and Morie exchanged a freighted look.
Morie wiggled in her chair, signaling we were moving on. “So, Pie-Pie.” Morie shuffled, taking her time. “What did Eugenie say of your good news?”
Pie nodded at her plate. “I suppose she was happy for me.”
Morie nodded in my direction. “Your sister, she has good prospects, no? ’Course, a girl’s engagement takes money.” I kept my eyes low, trained on Morie’s garnet wedding ring, its gold inlay and seed pearls winking as she shuffled. Her flesh having thinned, she wore it on her thumb. “It takes lots of money to make a wedding.”
Pie stared into me, eyes wide with warning. I stared back, trying to make out what I couldn’t see.
“But you aren’t officially engaged, not yet,” I said. “Sorry, Pie, but it’s true.”
“Shut the mouth, bird,” snapped Morie. Having dealt the cards into three piles, she clawed them back. “Tonight, we’ll go with you to see her. We’ll have the birthday, all nice, then we’ll tell Rose Pie’s big news. Tings must be said, and we will say them.”
“But Rose doesn’t want—”
“She wants! Always she wants,” Morie boomed, the color rising in her cheeks. “Well, I want.” She stabbed a bony finger to her chest. “This one, Pie, she wants.”
All at once I saw it. She was going to ask Rose for money for Pie’s trousseau and use it to pay off the Haj.
Morie grunted as she pushed back her chair. If she was threading a needle or lacing a boot, her hands stumbled and shook. But reaching for the bottle on the sideboard, she was sure. She gripped the neck of the aquavit with the authority of a cop seizing his nightstick and poured herself a glass—for her nerves. With the first drink, it was always love, a glad meetup with her sweetheart. With the second and even the third, she’d spin tales of the old country and we’d laugh along as Morie sang goofy songs from the homeland and cursed like a happy Swedish sailor. The fourth glass was when she turned lethal, turned to the boar-bristle brush.
Morie licked her lips and tossed her drink back.
“Skitstövel!” she spat. “What is dis!”
After she’d gone to bed—after, that is, the boar-bristle brush—I’d dumped the aquavit and filled the bottle with water.
As the glass shattered against the wall, Hank, Rose’s do-man, having knocked on the back door to no avail, marched into the dining room with Rogue at his heels.
“Whoa there, sister!” boomed Hank, tall and lean as a redwood, his boots shined to a high gloss, the gold buttons on his black livery jacket so snug they quivered as he spoke.
Pie touched Morie’s shoulder, quieting her.
“And how is the birthday girl?” Hank asked.
“I’m good, Hank.” I was so relieved to see him. “And you?”
Hank answered with a decisive nod, then took a piece of jerky from his pocket and slipped it to Rogue. The dog thanked him with a moan-dance. Hank reciprocated by kneeling on the carpet and showering the dog with kisses.
“He’s swish,” Rose once said, to which Morie replied, “Swiss? I thought black Irish?”
But I caught on. I always did.
Hank said he had presents waiting in the car. When he went to fetch them, I followed him outside.
“You all right in there?” he asked. “Looks like someone was about to blow.”
“Hank, Morie and Pie want to come with me tonight. Will Rose be mad?”
Hank lifted his cap and gave his scalp a good scratch. “Ack, you know the boss doesn’t like the whole kit and caboodle coming to the house. Attracts attention, and she don’t need that right now. The whole town’s in a boil with this Schmitz business, and the boss, well, she and Schmitz, they all got a bit of bother on that score.” Hank frowned, thinking he might have said too much. Being Rose’s do-man, his job was to protect the madam and her secrets. So long as I was one of those secrets, I was in with Hank. “Still, I know she’ll be glad to get an eyeful of you.”
“Will she, Hank? Will she be glad?”
“Oh, in her way, ’course.”
He opened the rear door of the car to show me the boxes hidden under a blanket.
“We got the full barrel for you ladies,” he said with pride. There were new dresses and matching evening coats in boxes wrapped with ribbon.
“Dresses? What ever for?” I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment.
“Oh, I expect you’ll find out tonight,” Hank replied. “Boss said to tell you to wear yours. I expect she’d like to see that it fits proper and all.”
There was a crate of saffron and lemons and other goods bound for the kitchen on the hill, and bottles of whiskey, always whiskey, for Rose.
The Deal
And what of these two women who made me? Their deal was struck early on. No one expected a madam—certainly not one as canny as Rose—to get stuck in the family way, and being an expert at subterfuge, she hid her pregnancy well. When the time for my arrival neared, Rose boarded a ferry to Oakland, hired a coach, and headed east to the Gold Country, to Auburn. There amid the dusty saloons and forlorn banks that only a couple of decades earlier had bustled with the gold that built San Francisco, I was born.
Ahead of her trip, Rose hired a lawyer to place ads in the Sacramento and Auburn papers, and in this manner found a widow with three small children living at the end of a dirt road.
I was just a few days old, asleep in a basket inside the coach. The children were playing with sticks in the yard. Their clothes were rags and they had bruises on their legs and arms.
The widow rushed to meet Rose as
