scarlet cutaway. “He’s a damn crimp.” Muldoon yammers at a gang of drunks like a tobacco auctioneer pitching a bid on a bale. A gold earring flashes against his swarthy neck. “A slaver for them clipper ships, he is. Kidnaps them stinkin’ fools right off these streets.”
Daniel circles around Jessie and slings his arm around Zhu’s shoulders, grinning down at her. Zhu smiles back, her lips trembling. Daniel. He looks so young and innocent in the gaslight, his dark hair spilling over his high starched collar, his pale skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. His eyes glisten as if slick with tears, and the premonition strikes her a second time, strikes her hard. He’s going to die.
They stride by an establishment, the Lively Flea, and Zhu runs to the swinging doors, peeks in. Is Wing Sing here? Where is she? As Zhu searches the crowd, she glimpses a row of stages, the acts performed there. A brown-skinned woman, naked except for a mask, lies at the hooves of a stud pony. On the next stage, another masked woman grapples with a huge dog, the beast’s tongue lolling. An ivory-skinned woman tangles her limbs with a man the color of onyx, and on the next stage a white woman tangles with a brown woman. There’s a woman and a bull calf, a woman and another dog, a woman embracing what looks like the corpse of a man contorted in rigor mortis.
Men guffaw or stare, transfixed. Zhu turns away from the lurid spectacle, stunned and horrified. Someone lurches toward her, and she backs away, fingers pressed to her throat. She darts out into the street, but Daniel and Jessie are nowhere in sight. She dashes down toward the wharves where the surf sprays saloons situated on docks built out over the water.
Alphanumerics strobe in her peripheral vision.
“Heads up, Z. Wong,” Muse whispers.
And there she is, tottering painfully along the waterfront.
Wing Sing.
Zhu would know her moon face anywhere, her delicate cheekbones, her tall slim figure in apple-green silk, only a slight swell in her belly to show that she’s pregnant. Zhu can see her bound feet from here, wrapped in white binding, strapped into peculiar little shoes the size of a child’s shoe. A green satin bandeau binds her forehead, her thick black braid swings down her back. She leans on the shoulder of a blond woman. Li’l Lucy? No, the blond is much too thin. Wing Sing and her companion duck into a Stick commercial building cantilevered precariously over the shifting waves—Kelly’s Saloon & The Eye-Wink Ballroom.
Suddenly Jessie’s hand grips her elbow like a vise. “Let’s don’t go in here, missy.”
“Why not?”
“Nothing but trouble in Kelly’s.”
“But I need to see Wing Sing. It’s urgent.”
“Yes, indeed, let’s go in.” Daniel sweeps past them, opening the swinging doors. “I need a nip. Just a tiny one, of course. I don’t need the drink when I’ve got the Inca’s gift.”
But Jessie balks, her face taut with tension.
“Do not tell me the Queen of the underworld is shy tonight,” Daniel says. He impatiently holds the doors open for them.
“I got a bad strange feeling,” Jessie says. “A premonition. Missy, please. Let’s wait for the chit to come out.”
Zhu glances at the grandfather’s clock behind Kelly’s bar. Nine minutes after eleven. She has less than an hour to return downtown, catch the cable car up California Street, and find the intersection at Mason. Find the tachyonic shuttle. She can’t miss her rendezvous, not this one.
“Jessie, I can’t wait.”
“In a hurry?”
“Yes! I told you. I’m leaving tonight.”
“Leaving for where?” Daniel demands. “I thought you were coming with me to Paris.”
“I’m leaving for the future,” she says, impatient. “For my Day in the future.”
“Jar me, missy,” Jessie says. “Enough is enough.”
“I thought you believed me.”
“Sure I do. Like I believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.”
“What about everything I’ve told you?”
Jessie shrugs. “Tall tales like Mr. Wells.”
“What about my mollie knife?”
“I was sippin’ evil absinthe that night. So were you and Mr. Watkins.”
Zhu is silent. Of course she’d never touched the absinthe. What if Jessie is insisting on a reality that’s different from what she remembers? What if she’s entered a different timeline and she doesn’t know it?
“Come, my little lunatic,” Daniel says, laughing. “Let’s have a toast to the future. Miss Malone? Come along. It’s on me.”
“On you, indeed. What about my rent, buster?”
“Let’s discuss the rent over a shot of rye.”
“Get in there, Z. Wong,” Muse whispers. “Find Wing Sing now.”