Turn away from the oppression of the colored races. Turn away from cruelty to God’s creatures.”
“Thank you,” Zhu says and hands the leaflet to Jessie. Alphanumerics flicker in her peripheral vision.
“Heads up, Z. Wong,” Muse says urgently.
Striding along the waterfront, there she is.
Wing Sing.
Zhu would know her moon face anywhere, her delicate cheekbones, the bow of her mouth. Her tall slim figure in the gray silk dress, a Newport hat pinned over the shiny black braid that swings down her back. Wing Sing strides freely on fashionable lady’s button boots with daring broad square toes. Beside her strides a blond woman. Li’l Lucy? Maybe, though if she is, Lucy has lost a lot of weight. Wing Sing and her companion duck into Kelly’s Saloon & Eye-Wink Ballroom.
Is this the way it’s supposed to be? Of course Zhu gave the gray silk dress to Wing Sing. Of course Zhu wears a sahm of apple-green silk. She had the garment custom-made at Lucky Gold Trading Company so she can be comfortable during her pregnancy. It’s nine minutes after eleven. Zhu has less than an hour to return downtown, catch the cable car up California Street to the intersection at Mason. She can’t miss this rendezvous. Not this one.
“Let’s have a drink!” Daniel declares and charges in through Kelly’s swinging doors.
Jessie grips Zhu’s elbow, her face taut and pale. “Let’s don’t go in there, missy.”
“Why?”
“I got a bad feeling. What do you call it? A premonition.”
“Hurry,” Muse whispers.
“Jessie, I can’t wait.”
Daniel charges back out and sweeps them into Kelly’s. “Come along, ladies. It’s on me.”
Crummy bar, smoke and sawdust. The four bruisers sashay in through the swinging doors, Harvey strolls in with Muldoon the crimp, and they all exchange ribaldries with the barkeep, Mr. Kelly himself. Now three hatchet men drift through the swinging doors. The eyepatch turns his glittering eye on the crowd.
Wing Sing stands joking with a gang of sailors, who shout prices and what they’d like her to do to them. Zhu takes her arm, leads her to the table where the skinny blond sits.
Zhu peers. “Li’l Lucy? Is that really you?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Miss Wong. I know, I’m so ugly,” Li’l Lucy says sadly, concealing her bony face and black-rimmed eyes behind a fluttering fan. “Hop is awful hard on a gal’s bloom.”
But Wing Sing is hard, contemptuous. “Just look at you, Jade Eyes. Fat with your baby, huh?”
Zhu studies Wing Sing’s slim belly. “You will be, too. Fat with your new daughter.”
Li’l Lucy giggles but Wing Sing is furious, her eyes slick with tears. “No, no, I not make baby. I lose Rusty’s baby, my monthlies stop. Hop stops monthlies, that why singsong girls smoke hop. Maybe hop make me lose baby, too. Anyway, good for the biz.” Wing Sing reaches over and slaps Li’l Lucy on her sallow cheek. “Shut up, you. I sad.”
Li’l Lucy stops giggling.
“You so clever, Jade Eyes,” Wing Sing says. “Have fancy explanation for everything.” She leans so close, Zhu can smell the sickly sweet reek of opium on her breath. “You know what ‘Wing Sing’ mean in the tongue of my village?”
“It means ‘everlasting life,’” Zhu says impulsively. Now how did she know that?
“So clever, like I say. You think I want to live forever? Like this? Huh.” Wing Sing’s face is a mask of sorrow. “Forget it. I go off and die.”
Daniel strides to Zhu’s side, glancing coldly at Wing Sing and Li’l Lucy. “You’re supposed to come and have a drink with us, miss.”
“So what you want with me, Jade Eyes?”
This is when Zhu is supposed to give the aurelia to Wing Sing. For the future. For Wing Sing’s daughter. Wing Sing will get pregnant again. She must.
“The aurelia,” Muse whispers in her ear. The monitor isn’t helping. The monitor is defective. She’ll have to think for herself.
Zhu turns away from them all and bows her head.
“Why, Muse?” she whispers. “Why should I give her the aurelia? Wing Sing never had it. I have it. And Wing Sing isn’t pregnant, I am. If the aurelia is an enigma, a time anomaly with no beginning and no end, what difference does it make who gives the aurelia to Chiron in 1967? Maybe Donaldina Cameron had a premonition when she asked if the old green-eyed Chinese woman in the holoid is me.”
“The aurelia,” Muse repeats stupidly, as if the monitor is jammed.
“What difference does it make under the resiliency principle? The principle Chiron is so afraid of? If, under the resiliency principle,