Authors: Kaki Warner
“This is a legitimate theater company, missy. We don’t take on whores.”
“I am not a whore,” she said with stringent emphasis. An unwed mother, perhaps, but not a whore. There was a big difference.
An oddly disappointed look came into his dark eyes. “You sure?”
“That I’m not a whore? Of course I’m sure.”
The very idea.
The stub drooped. With a sigh, he turned back to her application.
As Daisy waited, she tried to regain her composure by studying the old playbills pinned to the wall behind the desk. Some of the names she recognized from earlier times when her mother, a frustrated singer herself, would declare a holiday from farm chores and take her to nearby Quebec City to see the latest theatrical productions passing through.
“Someday it will be you up on that stage,
ma petite cherie
,” her mother would say. “It will be the name ‘Desiree Etheridge’ on the posters out front.”
Daisy smiled, filling her mind with the lovely images her mother had painted so many years ago—the flickering light and oily smoke from the lamps along the front of the stage, the rapt faces of the audience staring up at her, the musicians poised, instruments ready, that hush of expectancy as she opened her mouth and the first glorious notes—
“Says here you got a kid.”
Daisy blinked. The images dissolved. Reality pressed like a weight against her throat. “Yes, a daughter.”
“Where’s her pa?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
“West.”
That narrow-eyed look again. “We
are
west, missy. It don’t get any more west than San Francisco.”
Reminding herself how much she wanted—
needed—
this chance, especially since that scene last night with the mayor’s wife’s second cousin’s son had gotten her fired from the Spur, Daisy hid her irritation behind a smile. “Australia.” At least that was where the bounder had been headed when he’d left over two-and-a-half years ago. Afraid her patience would stretch to the point of snapping if these useless questions didn’t end soon, she said forcefully, “I am a vocalist, Mr. Markham. A good one. I can read music, I play the piano fairly well, and I also have a four-octave range and a—”
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Never mind all that. Can you
sing,
girl, and loud enough to reach the back row of the balcony?”
Daisy let out a deep breath. “Yes, Mr. Markham. I can sing.” And she showed him—right there in his tiny office, without music, accompaniment, or proper acoustics—just how powerful her voice was.
She got the role.
A
role anyway. She wouldn’t know which until she returned the next day to audition for the director and the owner of the theater. But it was a start. Hopefully it would pay well enough to support her and her daughter and cover the raise in pay Edna Tidwell demanded to watch Kate while Daisy was working. If she needed more, Mr. Markham said she could help with the sewing chores in wardrobe.
A few minutes later she left the Elysium Theater, a bounce in her step. Mr. Markham turned out to be a nice man after all, in a middle-aged, cranky sort of way. And he seemed to like her voice. Daisy smiled, remembering the astonished look on his face when she hit her high notes. That nasty stub had almost fallen from his mouth. And he had been most insistent that she return the next day, making her promise twice before he let her leave. It would feel good to be singing real music again. Saloon songs had been no challenge at all.
It’s really happening,
she thought as she turned off Broadway onto Powell Street, taking the long way back to the boardinghouse to avoid the dangerous waterfront area.
I’ll be singing on a real stage!
She giggled then laughed out loud, startling a drunk dozing behind a refuse bin outside a garment maker’s shop. “I’m going to be a star,” she called gaily to him as she hurried by.
She had dreamed of it, prayed for it every day since she had seen her first musical puppet show at a traveling fair fifteen years ago. To be able to sing arias rather than lewd ditties or maudlin ballads, to fill a hall with her own voice, singing music composed by the masters ... she still couldn’t believe it.
At Commercial Street, she turned left, hoping it was still too early in the day to bring out the worst of the criminals that prowled the shadowed alleys like rats hunting fresh meat. A few blocks farther, she turned onto her street and breathed easier. Here on the fringes of the red light district, the saloons and gambling dens catered to a richer, cleaner clientele and the brothels were a little more discreet. Dirt and mud gave way to cobblestones, and the row houses were less shabby, although each year more of them boasted the red-painted doors and lamps that identified them as houses of ill repute. Perhaps if she did well in the theater company, she could land a bigger role that would bring in enough money to move Kate to a safer neighborhood, maybe one with parks and other children to play with.
“Daisy,” a woman’s voice called.
Looking over, she saw Lucy Frisk waving from the front stoop of a narrow four-story building that rented rooms by the hour—a bordello, although a clean one, run by a nattily dressed Southern gentleman named Stump Heffington, who had lost everything in the Rebellion, including the greater portion of his left leg. As procurers went, he was benign. Having learned the value of contented workers during his slave-owning years, he treated his girls passably well. They considered themselves lucky to be in his employ and, by and large, were a clean, friendly lot. Lucy, in her early twenties and nearest in age to Daisy, always had a kind word for Baby Kate whenever they passed by.
“Hello, Lucy,” Daisy called back, angling across the street, delighted to have someone with whom to share her wonderful news.
Five years ago, when she had first arrived in San Francisco with her parents, she would have been shocked to find herself on such friendly terms with a harlot. But since then, she had lost both parents to a mudslide, fallen in love, had her heart broken, and borne a child. In other words, she had grown up. And although she might still be a farm girl from Quebec, she had learned to value friends whenever and wherever she found them.
“You hear about Red Amy?” Lucy asked as Daisy neared the steps.
Daisy could see she had been crying. “No. What?”
“The Indian got her. Took all that pretty red hair clean off her head then stabbed her twice through the neck. Damn bastard scalp-snatching sonofabitch.”
Daisy pressed a hand to her throat. “She ... she’s ... ?”
Lucy nodded and swiped at a tear. “Deader ’n a carp. Third this month.”
Daisy stood in stunned silence. Red Amy was the youngest in the house and one of her favorites, mainly because Daisy often saw a shadow of herself in the trusting, hopeful look behind the girl’s lovely brown eyes.
“I’m thinking of dyeing mine.” Lucy fingered the flowing, straw-colored tresses that were her best feature. “He don’t seem to like dark hair as much as blond or red. The Indian in him, I guess. Yours ain’t as light as mine, but I’d keep an eye out anyway, since he seems partial to young, pretty ones like you. Watch out for Kate, too, with those blond curls of hers.”
“But she’s just a baby,” Daisy protested, fear coiling in her chest. “Why would he go after a baby?”
“Probably wouldn’t,” Lucy said quickly, giving Daisy’s shoulder a reassuring pat. “I’m just saying keep her close, is all. And keep an eye on that Widow Tidwell while you’re at it. There’s something about that woman ... something that ain’t right.”
Daisy needed no warning on that score. When she had first taken a room in Edna Tidwell’s boardinghouse, the woman had seemed kindly enough. Having lost her own daughter to smallpox, she had been almost heartbreakingly grateful to have an infant to take care of again. But over the last months as Kate neared her second birthday, which was the same age as Edna’s daughter when she’d died, the woman had started acting strange ... almost angry that Kate had survived while her own child hadn’t. She’d upped her price several times, even though her care of Kate had grown sloppier and sloppier. Daisy suspected she might be drinking. Plus, Edna had started keeping company with a man Daisy didn’t altogether trust. Bill Johnson seemed friendly enough, but there was a coldness about him ...
Daisy shook off that worrisome thought. “Don’t worry.” She patted her coat pocket. “I’ve got my Remington Double Derringer, remember.” Kate’s father had won the palm-sized, double-barreled .41-caliber rim fire pistol in a poker game. Considering it more of a toy than a weapon, he’d given it to Daisy. Now she carried it everywhere she went—as much for protection as sentimentality. It was the only thing he’d given her, except for Kate.
“Thing’s useless unless you’re up close,” Lucy said. “Does Edna know you’re looking for someone else to watch Baby Kate?”
“I’m afraid to tell her until I find someone. If she learns of it beforehand, she’s liable to toss us into the street. Then what would I do?”
Like most big cities, San Francisco was overrun with war widows and lost children trying to escape the terrible excesses of the Reconstruction. Some were able to hire on as servants in rich neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and Nob Hill. The unlucky ones sank to new levels of depravity in the brothels and opium dens along the Barbary Coast. Many died of despair or disease.
Daisy was more fortunate. She had a talent. After her parents died, rather than squander what money they had left her, she had used that talent to support herself as a saloon singer. But then she had gotten pregnant, and when she could no longer work in the Silver Spur, that money had supported her until Kate was born. But within a week of her birth, Daisy was back at the Spur, begging for her job back. Considering the other options open to a young woman with a child and no husband, Daisy considered herself lucky to find work, even if it was singing in a smoky saloon.
And after today, luckier still.
“You can always work here, if you get tired of the Silver Spur,” Lucy offered. “You’d make more money. And Stump likes big titties.”
Daisy snorted. “I wish I could give him mine. They’re a lot more trouble than they’re worth.” Hopefully after tomorrow’s audition, she would be valued for more than the size of her bosom. “Besides, I don’t work at the Spur anymore.”
“You don’t?”
Grinning at Lucy’s look of surprise, Daisy told her about the audition. “I am now working at the Elysium Theater on Broadway.”
“Doing what?”
“I’ll know tomorrow.” Glancing up at the gray sky, Daisy realized it was growing dark. “I better go. You know how cranky Edna gets when I’m late.”
“Be careful,” Lucy warned, that sad look returning to her tear-reddened eyes. “Fog’s coming in and that always brings out the crazies.”
DAISY SLEPT BADLY THAT NIGHT, PARTLY DUE TO EXCITEMENT, but mostly worry.
Kate was teething, Edna Tidwell was acting even more nervous and furtive than usual, and her gentleman friend, Bill Johnson, had never taken his eyes off Kate throughout the meager supper Edna had provided. Daisy awoke tired but resolved that as soon as the audition ended and she knew what her salary would be, she would find another place for her and Kate to live.
She adored her daughter. But there were times when the weight of responsibility for another life—even one she treasured—almost overwhelmed her. After her daughter’s birth, the realities of survival had forced Daisy to set aside her naive hopes of singing on the legitimate stage. Such dreams were not for a woman on her own with a daughter to raise.
So with grim determination she had put those girlish dreams away, pushing them so far to the back of her mind they hardly ever resurfaced to pester her with lingering “what-ifs” and half-formed yearnings. In the months since, she had spent every night at the Silver Spur Saloon, pretending she loved being surrounded by drunken fools and shifty-eyed gamblers. And if the smoke often burned in her throat and eyes, and the bawdy remarks and lewd stares made her skin crawl and her temper flare, she reminded herself at least she was singing, and contented herself with that.
Until now. Now all those hopes and dreams had surged to the surface again, and despite almost two years of hard-won experience, she was daring to believe again.
It was a heady feeling.
Moving quietly so she wouldn’t wake Kate, Daisy brushed her long light brown hair into a smooth twist, and wiped every speck of dust off her best dress—a yellow gingham that she’d once been told brought out the fire in her hazel eyes. After leaving her daughter with Edna, she set off for the Elysium, praying this would be the last time she would have to relinquish Kate to her landlady’s erratic care.
Mr. Markham met her at the back door with a fresh stub in his teeth—“fresh” being defined by the length and dryness of the un-chewed portion of the cigar. Since the ends were never lit, she figured he must break the cigars in half so he would have twice as many butts to chew. A disgusting habit, but less irritating to her throat than smoking would have been.
“About time,” he said, locking the door behind her then towing her by the arm down the unlit hallway behind the stage.
“I’m early,” Daisy protested, almost trotting to keep up. He was quite a bit taller than she and solidly built, and the hand gripping her wrist was broad and strong. Suddenly uneasy, she realized the building seemed ominously quiet, the hall narrow and dim. Was anyone else around? Would anyone hear her if she screamed? “What’s the rush?” she demanded, digging in her heels so forcefully she almost pulled him off balance as she yanked her arm free.
He turned to blink down at her, his expression one of surprise. “They’re waiting.”
“Who’s waiting?”
“The director and owner.” His eyes narrowed. The stub came up. “You better not be thinking to back out on me, missy. I went to a lot of trouble setting up this audition and I won’t be made a fool of.” He reached for her arm again.
She stepped back. “I have no intention of backing out, Mr. Markham. But I don’t like being dragged down a dark hallway like a sack of potatoes either.”