Pie went every day to the refuge and worked with the nuns. Bobby did chores for the orphans at the Ladies’ Protection, and at the house he fixed what needed fixing. He made extra money hiring out for day work with Monster. In the evenings, we visited.
If the women weren’t going out to the roller derby or The Chutes or to see the occasional client, if they didn’t feel like singing, they gathered in the parlor, and Bobby and I joined them, to listen to Miss Sophia read from a novel.
Sophia had been engaged once to a French poet.
“What happened, Soph?” I asked.
“Ah, baby, he quit me.”
“Quit, Soph? You mean he left you?”
“No, baby. He died quit.”
He may have died, but Sophia’s poet gave her a love of reading that stuck. She insisted that new clients bring her a poem at the start of things. Capability told stories of how, in the days of The Rose, Sophia’s clients stood in bow ties and suits at the foot of her bed and recited poems of love as she, a paid listener, lounged before them in her silk underthings.
Mercy claimed that Sophia often serviced her customers with a book in her hand. She read constantly—in bed, and every evening as we gathered in the parlor. Sophia would wiggle her hips in anticipation of the next chapter of whatever novel or play she decided to read aloud, the springs in the parlor settee gonging as she robustly acted all the parts.
That summer, Sophia taught me of the Greeks and D’Annunzio and Cavafy and Balzac; she introduced me to Chekhov, Tolstoy, Pushkin. These are the great men, she noted, the men who understand women.
September arrived, ushering in San Francisco’s real summer, with dry, warm days and balmy nights. While Tan and I traded more crates in the basement for food and supplies, Sophia began to read aloud Anna Karenina.
Whenever he could, Bobby sat with me on the sofa. Given the circle we were in, we decided it was fine to hold hands. He had a way of holding my hand, his thumb working my palm, that sent shivers through me. I had never been happy before. And like every happy person, I was certain I had discovered happiness. Here, with the only gang I would ever belong to.
Now, the women approached life in a literal way. For instance, they believed what was happening to the characters on the page was unfolding in real time, much as their lives were unfolding. They had long ago decided to live in the present and therefore they had no compunction about interrupting Sophia as she read.
“Hurry up, Karenin,” warned Valentine, “ ’fore Vronsky gives her a bang she won’t forget.”
“You know, you’re ruining it. My reading,” Sophia complained.
“Go on, girl. I’m fully engaged,” Valentine insisted, and she pulled on the waist of her skirt to give herself some air down there.
“Engage yourself si-lent-ly,” Mercy insisted. “And without all that flapping.”
“If this is a book about sex, why are there no pros in it?” Cap wanted to know.
At which point I shocked them by asking, “What is it like?… I mean, do you mind, do you hate, you know, working?”
Sophia sat up. “What was that, belle? Someone tell me, what did the child say?”
“Honey V’s wondering if we hate turning tricks,” Valentine boomed. “Or was it more like, do we miss it?”
They looked to each other, deciding how much to say.
Cap spoke for the group. “Darlin’, it’s like this: nobody here is some little bitty poor froufrou. We’re the best, you know? At least, I am.” Smiling at her own joke, Capability flicked her nails. “Now, there was a time, well, there was a time, I wasn’t this.”
“That would be a long time ago,” Mercy piped in, chuckling.
“Hush. I’m talking to the child,” Cap said. “Darlin’, don’t you worry about a thing. We may not have chosen it, but no one here is getting dragged from their mama’s tit. Here is where we belong. And you’ve taken good care. Mighty good care. We’re just keepin’ easy, waiting for Rose to give us the word. You know, when you’re part of a house, you can’t be dancing solo. You probably don’t know that. We’re just sitting time—va-ca-tion-ing.” She paused, studying me through her long lashes. “Oh my, now I’ve misplaced your question.”
“That’s all right,” I said, feeling my face getting warm. Now that I’d made a thing of it, I wanted them to quit bothering.
“I don’t think, by the look on you, we did right here,” Valentine declared. “What is it, darlin’, you want to know?”
“What is it?” Bobby whispered. “Can you tell me?”
I couldn’t say, the words felt too dangerous. Company. Happiness. Love. I was afraid that having discovered that these exotic places exist—and they did feel to me like places, where one might visit and linger, and even rest, and like a house or a city—they could just as easily vanish. Here one day, then crushed.
The Difference between Want and Desire
The aftershocks may have lessened, but the rumbling carried on. The quake was my great teacher. Those early days with all of us together in the gold house taught me that on every street corner, in every shop, stable, and basement, is an entire world—of kings and paupers, rulers and ruled, and folks just getting by. I was starting to comprehend that knowing a fact is far less useful than knowing where to put it—where it belongs, in the greater chain of things. I wasn’t sure if Rose was right—that leading is lonely, but a necessary loneliness. I was newly acquainted with the notion that want is a far lesser thing than desire.
Want is a ripe peach or a new dress;
