parlor, trying to read the label. Li’l Lucy hasn’t had more than a third-grade education. “Go. . . .gold. See? I know ‘gold!’ Tray. . . .tray. . . .”
“It says Lucky Gold Trading Company. Now hand it over.”
“Why, that’s in dirty ol’ Chinatown. Did you order somethin’ from a Chinaman’s store? Oh, I bet I know. You got yourself some of them pink silk bloomers everybody’s talkin’ about. Can I see? Oh, please, please?”
“It’s not, but would you like pink silk bloomers?”
“Oh, yes, and Miss Malone keeps promisin’, but you know what a skinflint she can be.”
“Give me my package, and I’ll buy you pink silk bloomers.”
“You would do that for me?” Tears start in Li’l Lucy’s eyes. “You really would?”
“Of course.” Zhu looks away, embarrassed. Li’l Lucy is like a beaten animal. The slightest kindness overwhelms her. “Is your bedroom empty?”
“Help yourself.”
Zhu runs upstairs with her package, finds Li’l Lucy’s room, and locks the door behind her. She dared not request delivery at the boardinghouse. If Jessie intercepted the package—and Jessie has to know everything that goes on at her private residence—she would never understand. Instead, Zhu told the clerk at Lucky Gold Trading Company to deliver the order in her name to the Mansion for a manservant employed there. Now she tears at the string, rips the package open.
There, in the crisp brown wrapping paper, is a pair of loose trousers made of soft blue denim and a long matching tunic, specially cut nice and loose to her measurements. It’s called a sahm, the customary garb the men of Chinatown wear. There is a pair of cloth slippers with straw soles, too. She tears off her hat and veil, the cloak, the shirtwaist, the strangling collar, the skirt, the underskirt, the slip, the bloomers, the garters, the stockings. She unlaces the corset and tears it off, breathing gratefully.
“You must maintain authenticity, Z. Wong,” Muse says sternly.
“Buzz off, Muse. I don’t need a corset in a sahm.”
She slips everything on. What freedom! Is this really the freedom she so casually took for granted three long months ago before she stepped onto the bridge in the Japanese Tea Garden? Yes! Everything feels so loose and easy. The sleeves of her new tunic hang inches below her fingertips, concealing her feminine hands. She unwinds her braid from around her head and lets it hang down her back like a queue. She rummages in the package. Joy! The clerk didn’t fail her. She takes out the soft, charcoal-gray felt fedora with a high crown and a broad brim. A Western-style hat like many men in Chinatown wear. She pulls the brim down low, concealing her brow and her eyes. She rummages in the package again. Ah-ha! The final touch. Spectacles with round lenses tinted a beautiful watery shade of sea green. She pushes the spectacles up her nose. Between the hat and the glasses, she conceals nearly half her face. Conceals her gene-tweaked eyes.
She stands before Li’l Lucy’s mirror, slouching her shoulders, lowering her chin. She looks crude and common, just like a slim Chinese man. She could pass for any one of the tens of thousands of bachelors who crowd Chinatown. She looks anonymous.
Excellent. Exactly what she wants.
Zhu hides her clothes in a corner of Li’l Lucy’s closet, then silently pads downstairs. Her slippers whisper on the Persian carpets. Li’l Lucy sits again at the calliope, the half-empty whiskey bottle on the bench beside her. Between Myrtle and Pichetta, the parlor is tidy again and fragrant with fresh roses and lilac water.
Daphne the door maid, a robust German woman with a harelip, has materialized at last. She heaves herself onto the couch and gulps a mug of beer.
The doorbell rings. Li’l Lucy leaps up, adjusts her slip, checks her face in a gilt-framed mirror, and smooths away tears from her eyes.
“Company, girls!” Daphne yells and slaps Li’l Lucy’s sagging butt as she ambles to the door.
Two women stumble out of their bedrooms and down the stairs, cursing, pulling on silk chemises, hands fluttering at their hair.
“I ain’t had more’n four hours of sleep today.”
“I ain’t had more’n four hours of sleep this year.”
They laugh and groan, striding past her. Someone bites into a clove, releasing spicy scent. Zhu bends to examine a brass spittoon. The women pass her without a single glance.
As if she were invisible.
Very excellent.
* * *
Zhu treks down Dupont Street to a completely different neighborhood along this thoroughfare. From a block away, she spies the tumbledown Stick-Eastlake