by age, her stout figure clothed in stiff black silk—everyone hushes at the sight of her. But despite her austere appearance, the woman’s eyes sparkle with warmth, deep compassion, and a keen intelligence.
Zhu catches her breath. Susan B. Anthony is a formidable woman, but her evident love for her fellow women is the most striking thing about her. Miss Anthony studies everyone at the table, one by one, never losing her polite smile. But her assessment of each flashes subtly across her stern face.
Zhu glances around at their table, too. Okay. A notorious Irish madam getting on in her years. A young German former hooker. A cockney pickpocket still plying her trade, though probably not as skillful at it since she’s getting on in her years. A French spiritualist who conducts fake séances and soaks her clientele for money over their grief and guilt. A Scotch missionary who does good works, yes, and also presses her rescued child captives into righteous hard labor. And a Chinese bookkeeper. That would be her. A Chinese bookkeeper from six centuries in the future who is pregnant by and unmarried to the young American gentleman seated next to her who is a recovering drug and alcohol addict.
What a motley crew! Zhu has no doubt that Miss Anthony, with her penetrating eye, intuits much of what the people seated at this table are all about. Even Zhu, from six hundred years in the future.
“Sure and we’ll all be growin’ them smelly mustaches,” Jessie says, with a tart look at Miss Anthony’s plain face and stout figure. Jessie is up to her usual escapades. Today she’s resplendent in a tightly corseted green silk gown, enormous Colombian emeralds draped around her neck, dangling over her décolleté, and decorating her wrists and her fingers. There will of course be a bash for Saint Paddy’s Day at the Mansion tonight, and Jessie will reign over the celebration. Chong will surely bake rye bread, make his own mustard, and cook up a wonderful corned beef platter with all the trimmings. She sniffs. “As sure as I’m Miss Jessie Malone, the biz is the biz, and I’m advisin’ you to watch out for this political biz.”
“Indeed.” Miss Anthony turns to her quizzically. “Are you a working woman, Miss Malone?”
“Hmph! You bet!” Jessie jabs her elbow into Mariah’s ribs. Mariah ignores the jab, and Zhu wonders how many times Mariah has ignored Jessie’s intrusive elbow.
“May I ask what line of work you are in?” Miss Anthony inquires, taking the cup of tea Madame De Cassin has served her.
“I own whorehouses, Miss Anthony. A high-class parlor and some lousy cribs.” Jessie tosses her blond curls defiantly, eagerly seeking a shocked look on Miss Anthony’s craggy face. “I’m what they call a madam.” She raises her voice in case the elderly suffragist is hard of hearing. “A whore, Miss Anthony. They call me the Queen of the Underworld.”
Zhu coughs, and everyone else at the table coughs, cringes, or blushes. But no shocked look appears on Miss Anthony’ face. On the contrary, she leans forward, her eyes sparkling with interest. “And how, may I ask, did you get started in that line of work?”
Donaldina Cameron rolls her eyes, Madame De Cassin pats Cameron’s arm sympathetically, Lucy nervously sips her tea, Mariah gazes stonily into the distance, and Daniel circles his arm around Zhu’s shoulders protectively. No one is joking. Not now.
“Line of work! The biz is the biz.” Jessie brays with laughter. “You really want to hear my pitiful sob story, Miss Anthony?”
“Indeed I do!”
Jessie pulls a flask from her purse, uncorks it, knocks back a swallow. Zhu smells expensive brandy.
“Once upon a time, I was a little girl,” she begins sarcastically.
But the table hushes, the meeting seems to hush all around them, too, and Jessie’s eyes glisten.
Oh! Zhu thinks, holding her breath. The story I’ve never heard.
“Once upon a time, I was a little girl with a littler girl to take care of. My sweet innocent Rachael was younger by a year and a half, but Mum liked to say we was twins ‘cause we looked so much alike. ‘My sweet angels,’ Mum called us. ‘My little mermaids.’ We lived at Lily Lake on the Oregon side of the border. Sure and we swam in that lake every chance we got from the time we could stand up and walk. That’s the way I thought of us. We walked, we swam, we ate, we slept, Rachael and me. Like two sides of a coin.