Against the Day (64 page)

Surely
bringing Kit back here from the hardrock misery of the San Juans had been an
act of rescue, as much as bringing to the Christian faith the child of some
murderous savage one had been obliged to slay. So reason, what was passing for
it at Pearl Street, was brought into play, resulting eventually in a plan for
the whole family. Mayva would receive a monthly stipend for herself and Lake.
Frank would be offered a highpaying job when he graduated from the Colorado
School of Mines. Reef—“Who, actually, hasn’t been seen for a while
. . . .
Another itinerant
gambler—he’ll show up sooner

or later and turn out to be cheapest of all, the sort who’s
content with a modest jackpot he never expected to win.”

But
a voice, unlike the others that spoke to Foley, had begun to speak and, once
begun, persisted. “Some might call this
corrupting youth.
It wasn’t
enough to pay to have an enemy murdered, but he must corrupt the victim’s
children as well. You suffered through the Wilderness and at last, at Cold
Harbor, lay between the lines three days, between the worlds, and this is what
you were saved for? this mean, nervous, scheming servitude to an enfeebled
conscience?”

n the train trip east, Dally kept pretty much to herself,
there being nothing, as she quickly learned, quite like the rails these days
for cowboy poets, who along with confidence men, Rgirls, and pursethieves,
could be encountered on every train west of Chicago. They rode in the parlor
cars marveling hour on hour at everything that passed, introducing themselves
as “Raoul” or “Sebastian,” chatting up young prairie wives traveling to or from
husbands whose names seldom got mentioned. In the velvettrimmed observation and
dining cars everywhere, private and public, rolling and still, these birds
smothered appetites and curdled stomachs. Coffee grew ice cold in the cup.
Badmen out for mischief flinched, turned, and strode away, sleep crept like an
irresistible gas, and those Wild West poets just went raving on.

Seeing Chicago again—not that
anyone was asking, but if they had, she couldn’t have described very clearly
her feelings, and besides there wouldn’t be much time between trains to see
much. Somewhere in her head, she’d had this notion that because the White City
had once existed beside the Lake, in Jackson Park, it would have acted somehow
like yeast in bread and caused the entire city to bloom into some kind of
grace. Rolling through the city, in to Union Station, she found herself stunned
by the immensity, the conglomeration of architectural styles, quickening,
ascending, to the skyscrapers at the heart of it. Sort of reminding her of the
Midway pavilions, that mixture of all the world’s peoples. She looked out the
windows, hoping for some glimpse of her White City, but saw only the darkened
daytime one, and understood that some reverse process had gone on, not
leavening but condensing to this stone gravity.

·
    
·
    
·

In New York at
last
she stood out of
the traffic, watching shadows of birds move across sunlit walls. Just around
the corner, on the great Avenue, twohorse carriages curvaceous and sumptuary as
the beds of courtesans in a romance moved along, the horses stepping carefully
in mirrorsymmetry. The sidewalks were crowded with men in black suits and stark
white high collars, in the tangible glare of noontide that came pushing uptown,
striking tall highlights from shiny top hats, projecting shadows that looked
almost solid
. . . .
The women by contrast
were rigged out in lighter colors, ruffles, contrasting lapels, hats of velvet
or straw full of artificial flowers and feathers and ribbons, broad angled
brims throwing faces into girlish penumbras as becoming as paint and powder. A
visitor from quite far away might almost have imagined two separate species
having little to do, one with the other . . .

When
lunchtime rolled around, her first day in the City, Dally went into a
restaurant to eat. It was a cheery place, with sparkling white tile nearly
everywhere, and silver plate ringing against thick crockery. The unmistakable
churchsupper smell of American home cooking. Clean napkins were rolled and
waiting in the water glasses. By each long table stood a tall post with an
electric fan spinning up on top, and a little cluster of electric bulbs, each
in its glass shade, just below what she guessed to be the motor casing. No
cuspidors she could see, nor cigar smokers—no tablecloths either, though
the marble tops of the tables were kept scrupulously clean by girls in belted
white dresses and little black bow ties, and their hair neatly pinned up, who
moved about clearing dishes and setting new places.

   
“Looking
for a job, dear? Mrs. Dragsaw over there’s the one to see.”

   
“Well,
just my lunch today.”

“You
fetch your own, see that line yonder? You want me for anything, it’s Katie.”

   
“I’m
Dahlia. You’re from south Ohio, I’d guess.”

   
“Why,
Chillicothe. Not you, too?”

“No,
but I’ve been through there a couple of times, pretty town, lot of duck hunters
as I recall?”

“When
it wasn’t ducks, it was grouse. My Pa used to take us out all the time. Mostly
waiting and freezing, but how I miss it. Everybody in here’s a vegetarian, o’
course.”

   
“Oh,
woe’s me, had my mouth set for a nice
slab o’ that bull meat.
”

“The casseroles aren’t too bad
usually
. . . .
’ve you got someplace
to stay, Dahlia?”

“Managing,
thanks.”

   
“Thin
ice in this town, ’s all I meant. One step to the next.”

   
“Katie!”

“Bug
in
h
er
britches today. Well—you know where to find me.”
She withdrew into the hygienic brilliancy of the establishment.

Dally found a modest hotel for young
ladies whose rent would not eat up her grubstake too fast, and set about
hoofing the pavement looking for work. One day up in the theatre district after
a job as an organ tuner’s apprentice that didn’t pan out, owing, as far as she
could determine, to her lack of a penis, she happened to see Katie coming out
of an alleyway with just as glum of a look on her face. “One more turndown,”
Katie muttered. “How do I get to be Maude Adams at this rate?”

   
“Oh
I’m sorry. Same just happened to me.”

“It’s New York. Disrespect was
invented here. But why do they have to go on about a girl’s age?”

   
“So
. . .
you’re an actress.”

“Working days clearing tables at
Schultz’s Vegetarian Brauhaus, what else would I be?”

A couple days later, they were in a
chop suey joint down on Pell Street, discussing the job situation.

 
“Artist’s model,” cried Dally, “really? that’s so romantic,
Katie! Why didn’t you take it?”

“I know it’s work and I should’ve
jumped at it, but I always had my heart set on the stage.” There were worse
ways to make your living in this miserable town, worse than most folks could
imagine, Katie assured her.

Apart from the chop suey, which was
more of an uptown fad, the place smelled like serious cooking. Wood ceiling
fans turned slowly, stirring the smoke from tobacco, peanutoil and possibly
opium, rippling the hanging strips of red paper which displayed the day’s menu
in Chinese lettering. There was sawdust on the floor and motherofpearl inlaid
in the ebony furniture. Lanterns, silk banners, gold dragons, and bat images
all around the room. Regulars sat eating shark fin, sea worm, and perfumed ham,
and drinking pear wine, surrounded by dozens of white folks in their good
clothes all gobbling away at giant plates of chop suey and calling, often
rudely, for more.

In glided a squad of young Chinese
men, all in step, silent, sporting dark American suits and pomaded haircuts
with short to nonexistent sideburns, heading for the back of the establishment
while the uptowners continued unbroken their heedless chattering.

“Mock Duck’s boys,” Katie whispered.
“The real article. Not like the playactors you’ll be dealing with.”

“If
I get the job,” Dally reminded her. “Sure you don’t want it instead? Even if
there is no stage?”

   
“Dear,
you’re
exactly what they’re looking for.”

   
“Wish
that sounded more reassuring, Kate. What’d you tell them?”

   
“Oh
. . .
I sort of suggested you had acting
experience?”

   
“Ha.
Sheriffs and bill collectors, maybe.”

   
“Toughest
house there is.”

As the crowd was beginning to thin
out, “Matinee starts in a couple o’ minutes,” said Katie. “Come on, we’ll use
the shortcut.” She took Dally’s arm and steered her toward the rear exit. Mock
Duck’s boys had gone all invisible. Outside, the girls proceeded through narrow
streets among a scurry of Chinese tradesfolk and daytime errandrunners, guided
presently by the helpful screams from up ahead of what proved to be a
presentable young American blonde
en déshabillé
,
struggling with two local toughs, who apparently wished
to drag her down into a manhole. “That’s Modestine. She has to take let’s say a
short vacation,
and you’d be replacing her.”

   
“But
they’re—”

“They’re actors. White slavery as a
real racket is recommended only for those who thrive on constant worry. Here.
Say hello to Mr. Hop Fung.”

Hop Fung, done up all in black,
glowered at them and started to fuss in Chinese. “That’s hello,” Katie
whispered. The enterprising Celestial had begun his career as an ordinary
lobbygow or tour guide, but Chinatown was too close to the Bowery to insulate
him for long from the allures of show business, and soon he was dreaming
up—literally, for his office in those days was an opium “joint” off Pell
Street—short melodramas that showed a sure instinct for what would catch
the fancy of the Occidental rubbernecker. “Chop suey stories!” he informed
Dally and Katie. “We give them plenty! Hot and spicy! O.K.? Start tomorrow!”

   
“No
audition?” Dally wondered, and found Katie tugging on her sleeve.

   
“Little
tip,” she muttered, “if you’re serious about being in the business—”

   
“Red
hair! Freckles! Audition enough O.K.!”

Which is how Dally found her way into
the whiteslave simulation industry and the tunnels of Chinatown, began to learn
some of the allbutimpenetrable signs and codes, a region of life withheld, a
secret life of cities that those gypsy years with Merle had always denied her
. . . .
Every morning she commuted down on
the Third Avenue El, had coffee at a wagon parked under the tracks, and
strolled on to Hop Fung’s office to review the schedule of comediettas, which
tended to change from one day to the next, being careful near the corner of
Mott and Canal to look up down and sideways, for here was the headquarters of
Tom Lee’s tong, the On Leong—and trying to keep clear

altogether of Doyers Street, which was a kind of noman’sland
between the On Leong and their deadly rival tong the Hip Sing, who were based
at the corner of Doyers and Pell. The two organizations had been fighting in
earnest since around 1900, when rogue gunman Mock Duck arrived in town and
threw in with the Hip Sing, presently burning down the On Leong dormitory at 18
Mott and taking over Pell Street. There was no telling when armed
unpleasantness might flare up, or where, though Doyers seemed the preferred
battleground, the bend halfway along being known as “the bloody angle.”

By now she had moved in with Katie,
who lived in a midtown Irish neighborhood between the Third and Sixth Avenue
Els. Within a couple of weeks, she had uptown visitors gaping from their tour
charabancs in amazement, ladies from out of town clutching their hats, as if
pins might fail in the duty assigned them. Neighborhood pedestrians who might
or might not be part of the show stood as in a
tableau vivant,
making no
move to intervene. “O you fiends!” Dally cried, and “Spare me!” and “If your
mothers but knew!” to all of which her abductors only grinned and cackled more
hideously, dragging her toward the ineluctable iron hole in the street, making
sure to pick up for later reuse any items of attire “torn” from her person,
these being in fact lightly basted together before each performance, in order
purposely to come away and add an element of “spice” to the show.