Mariah whisks bottle and bucket away. “I love them dagos, don’t you? I told Chong he’s got to cook a special dago spread tonight. Minestrone, melon and prosciutto, yellow squash fried in butter. Veal parmigiana.” Jessie’s lips are still buttery from her breakfast, but her eyes shine with gluttonous anticipation. She knows of more different kinds of dishes than Zhu has ever eaten in her whole life. “Tortellini with pine nuts and heavy cream. Rigatoni in marinara sauce with shredded beef. Macaroni casserole with fontina cheese. That dago bread they bake in North Beach dipped in olive oil. Macaroons and nougat, spumoni with candied cherries. And red wine, missy! We must have plenty of red wine with a spread like that. Make that twelve cases, will you?”
Jessie pops the cork on another champagne bottle. My fog-cutter, she calls her breakfast libation. When she comes to the table particularly haggard and groaning, she tartly informs Zhu that a lady never feels good in the morning. Mr. Ned Greenway, tastemaker for the Smart Set, said so himself. Zhu asked Muse to search the Archives for the quotation. It turns out Ned Greenway said that a gentleman never feels good in the morning. Mr. Greenway does not approve of champagne for ladies. Jessie loves to twist the truth to suit herself.
Jessie splashes champagne into her goblet and tops off Daniel’s. Daniel usually starts his day with half a pound of grilled bacon, an oyster omelette from the secret recipe Mariah pilfered from the chef at the Palace Hotel, and coffee heavily laced with French brandy. Today, however, Daniel and another boarder, one Mr. Schultz, a gentleman who books arrivals and departures for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s China Line, have joined Jessie in quail and champagne.
Zhu studies them as they tuck into their rich food, feeling queasy just watching them. The only nourishment Zhu takes before noon besides black coffee is a glass of orange juice that she or Mariah squeeze fresh every morning. “No wonder you’re skinny as a flea knuckle,” Jessie complained, offended that Zhu wouldn’t try the quail.
“Go see Mr. Parducci on Union Street,” Jessie tells her now. “And chisel him down, he charges too much.” She drains her goblet with alarming speed. “Then go check up on the Mansion for me, missy. I’ve got errands to run before I make my appearance today.”
“I hear the two-year-olds are running at Ingleside,” Mr. Schultz says, grinning.
“You hush,” Jessie says, but Zhu has already figured that Jessie is off to gamble on the horses at the brand-new Ingleside Racetrack out beyond the Western Addition. Jessie is crazy for the colts and shrewd at betting.
The front bell rings, and Mariah goes to answer the door. From her place at the table, Zhu glimpses a sweaty boy in an American Messenger Service uniform, handing over a letter. Mariah brings the letter in to Daniel. He takes it with a contemptuous glance, quickly slips it in his vest pocket.
He catches Zhu’s furtive observation as he reaches for his champagne. She can feel her face burn, a pulse beat in her throat. Daniel Watkins is arrogant, rude, condescending, and bold. He acts as if he’s entitled to whatever he wants. He’s completely unlike any man she’s ever met. He smiles mockingly at her discomfort, and she casts her eyes down. She can just about hear Sally Chou’s sardonic laugh. “Think with your brain, kiddo, not with some other part of your anatomy.” She abruptly turns away and studies the abundant table to conceal her embarrassment.
The table—beautifully set with china and crystal, linen and flowers—is totally foreign to her. A relic out of some museum. And the way Jessie and the others linger over their plates, discuss dishes, extol the virtues of taste and texture? Surely such behavior is odd, quaint, and self-indulgent. Before the Gilded Age Project, Zhu well remembers how often she ignored the aching hollow in her stomach on many a long night, ignored the gritty water, the nutribeads like chalk between her teeth, the nutribars resembling the packaging they came wrapped in—which in fact was edible after you steamed off the germs and the grime. It’s immoral to dwell on food beyond one’s nutritional requirements, uneconomical, and incorrect. The closest the Daughters of Compassion ever came to feasting like this was when there was the occasional surfeit of millet gruel which they scooped out of Styrofoam cups while squatting around a trash fire.
She’s not squatting around a trash fire now.
Zhu picks up a