summer dresses and gentlemen in top hats and checked vests snack from picnic baskets right on the street corners, uncork wine bottles. A crowd congregates around a tall fountain made of gray marble cherubs, dipping cups and glasses into a sparkling fluid spouting from the cherubs’ mouths.
“What is it?” Daniel exclaims.
“Help yourself.” A gentleman with a face blooming scarlet dips his hand. “Happy Fourth of July!”
Daniel scoops up a palmful of cheap champagne from the fountain, astringent bubbles tickling his nose as the wine slides down his throat. The strapping porter grins and plunges his face right into the champagne cascading from a cherub’s mouth. That’s San Francisco in the Year of Our Lord, 1895, Daniel thinks. Champagne for all.
A ferocious clanging cuts through the celebratory din. A spectacular red and black fire wagon with polished brass fittings, a gigantic brass cask of water, and intricate pumping equipment thunders by, pulled by wild-eyed blowing steeds whose prancing hooves show off their skill at negotiating city streets beyond the capability of the ordinary nag. Boys cheer and whoop and chase after the frantic fire wagon.
“Happens every Fourth, mister,” says the porter with a malicious grin. “Some blighter lands a rocket on somebody’s roof, and the whole joint burns down. Ha, ha.”
“Burns down!” What about Father’s commercial building on Stockton Street? Daniel suddenly wonders if Father’s tenants have any inkling he’s here. But how could they? Father felt that taking them by surprise was the best strategy and, after his last pleas for payment, he had wired no one. Still, Daniel feels uneasy. It’s the noise and confusion, he tells himself, the smell of gunpowder, the lingering aftertaste of puma piss. He takes out a handkerchief, wipes sticky champagne off his palm. “Let’s get going.”
“Sure, mister.” The porter stops in his tracks, holds out his hand. “But first, that’ll be two bits for unloadin’ you from the ferry.”
“Oh, very well.” Daniel searches his jacket pocket. He blew too much cash at the First and Last Chance Saloon, that’s a fact. But he’s got more. He reaches into his vest, his fingers searching for the smooth Moroccan leather of his boodle book. He’s got a few treasury notes, but Father warned him no one honors paper currency in the West. A gentleman needs coins, gold preferably, and he’s got several dozen in the coin pocket of the boodle book. Now where is the blasted thing? It seems to have migrated someplace.
Daniel searches, puzzled, and pats his pockets, reaching here and there. Nothing? Nothing! “Damn,” he mutters.
“Something the matter, mister?” That malicious grin again.
With an awful sinking feeling, Daniel knows the boodle book and its contents are long gone. “Seems I’ve lost my dough.”
“Cashed in your chips on the trip out, did ye?”
“No, I haven’t gambled since. . . . No. That bird. The little bird I left the ferry with.”
“Oh, her? Good ol’ Fanny, she’s a hummer, ain’t she?”
“By God, are you telling me she’s a dip?”
“Fanny Spiggot? Ha, ha. Faintin’ Fanny, that’s what we call her. A’ course, a smart young gentleman like yourself wouldn’t fall for her racket, now would ye?”
Daniel fights the anger and disgust welling in his chest while the porter sticks his mug into the stream of champagne for another guzzle. Naturally, he didn’t carry his whole kit and caboodle in the boodle book. He’s not some bumpkin. He’s stashed a few gold coins in his ditty bag. Then there’s the trunk with the deeds and papers, a bit of the art he acquired in Paris. He’s not wiped out.
Still! Still! The lousy little bitch, he could take her slender neck in his hands and twist it. Women! They’ll steal your soul if you give them half a chance.
The porter reels up from his guzzle, flushed and shiny-eyed. He’s drawn his own conclusions from Daniel’s sudden dejection. He proclaims with high spirits, “Hell with the two bits, mister. Where ye bound? It’s the Fourth of July. Welcome to San Francisco!”
“Thank you,” Daniel says humbly.
“Next time, I’ll charge ye twice.”
The porter lugs the trunk, Daniel takes the bags, and together they fight the festive crowd up Market Street. At last Dupont appears to the north. The porter turns right up a gentle incline that might as well be an Alp, for all Daniel cares. By God, he’s dry. And exhausted. Thank heaven Father cannot see him in this ridiculous predicament.
He and the porter enter another part of town, and the traffic, the sounds and the smells, the mood and