Rain. Order two new aprons.
Kate Chopin!”
Eliza picks up a slim volume from an array of ladies’ magazines on Pearly’s parlor table and turns it over in her hands.
Pearly looks over from where she stands planted by the foot of the stairs, her hand on the new electric lever that flicks up and down.
“Do you know her?”
Pearly flicks the electric lever up. Parlor lights flash on.
“I’ve read some of her magazine pieces. Actually, she’s from St. Louis, not far from where my people . . .”
Eliza trails off.
Have I said too much? I’ve not told anyone I’m from Missoura.
Pearly pushes the lever down. The parlor settles into semi-darkness. Pearly doesn’t pick up on Eliza’s comment.
“Lou brought quite a number of books from Seattle in her luggage. I’m not a reader, but Lou sure is.”
“Borrow it?”
“Why, Lizzie, you do amaze me sometimes. I’d never have thought you’d read such radical writings. Full of illicit thoughts, or so I’ve been told. Lou’s finished it already. Left it for me, but I’ve got no time for reading. You go ahead. Take it.”
Pearly flips the lever to the up position again. The parlor illuminates. Eliza tucks the volume in her satchel.
What wonders will this new electric invention open up? Eliza thinks. It won’t be long before kitchens will be electrified. Electric lights! Electric mixers! Maybe even electric ovens!
Eliza bristles with excitement about this newest luxury, and blushes at other thoughts that race through her mind as she walks back to the Moonstone. The Awakening. Eliza likes the sound of the title. And Eliza likes Lou, another of Pearly’s girls, now housed in one of the two downstairs rooms at Mrs. Brown’s. The “trade,” as Pearly calls it, has heated up.
Eliza hears a hushed sob as she closes the heavy parlor door behind her. She looks left, then right.
“Why, Lou!”
“It’s nothing, you need not bother.”
Lou’s head bends forward, her sandy hair unloosed from its barrettes and clips.
“Can I help?”
Lou raises her chin and looks at Eliza from behind blackened eyelids.
“Lou! Whatever has happened?”
“Perils of my line, you might say. Not that you’d know.”
Lou descends into low sobs. Rain pummels her hair. Eliza notices Lou’s coat is threadbare, and her elbows jut out at right angles as she wipes her swollen eyelids.
“You’d never know about it, you and all you high society ladies. You don’t know what it’s like to get a walloping from a fella, now do you?”
Eliza reaches for Lou’s soaked shoulder. Lou pulls away. “Just leave me alone, will you? I’ll take care of myself.” Eliza starts to say something, but refrains.
We are all of us wounded.
Eliza continues up Broadway, careful to raise her skirt above the ankle as she crosses the muddy street. She raises her umbrella high above her head and repositions it to ward off the driving rain. Her hands are cold. She blows warm air on her free hand before switching the umbrella to the other hand. Her boots sink into the mire, and the scent of horse dung clings to the leather long after she brushes the caked mud off later in the day.
Broadway teems with activity, even at this early hour. Eliza crisscrosses the street twice, once to avoid a team of horses dragging a sledge full of railroad equipment, and another to peek into Mr. E. A. Hegg’s portrait studio. She determines to make an appointment this week. And she can well afford it. But there’s a note on the door: Closed until further notice.
Hmph. I’ll check again another time.
She forgets about Lou by the time she reaches the Moonstone.
Eliza devours The Awakening later that night, and all in one sitting. She relates to so many of Kate Chopin’s heroines. And this Mrs. Pontellier! Eliza resolves to re-read the slim volume again within the week.
And all thanks to Pearly!
Eliza knows Pearly is quite an unlikely friend. Her only other friend had been a devout Methodist. And they had never talked of intimacies.
But Pearly is, dare I say it, a dear friend to me. I wonder how else she will enlighten me.
Eliza anticipates her visits with Pearly at Mrs. Brown’s Boarding House, and never misses a Sunday, the only day of the week that Rose, Cilla, and Lou don’t take company.
At first, Eliza had felt uncomfortable gracing the parlor of a bordello with Pearly, but after several months of lonely moonless nights in her lodgings above the Moonstone, Eliza gladly accepted Pearly’s offer, and the visits have become a staple on weekend nights, and not just on Sundays anymore.
Eliza knocks at Pearly’s door most Friday and Saturday nights now. Shorty swills with the boys, and Pearly craves Eliza’s companionship. And Shorty always escorts Eliza home around closing time before going back to Pearly’s. It’s what Shorty calls “a swell arrangement all around.” His Scottish burr elongates the r’s and his eyebrows arch like a cat’s above his deep-set and penetrating eyes. And why would Eliza refuse, when Pearly offers titillating conversation and warming aperitifs?
Eliza dulls to the goings-on in the upstairs bedrooms on Friday and Saturday nights.
Who am I to judge another?
When customers arrive, Eliza bends to her knitting; she avoids eye contact with all but most. A heavy stomp on the rear staircase signals a customer departing straight into the alleyway; within a quarter hour an ever-flippant Rose or regalesque Cilla descends the inner stairway to welcome new clients, whom Pearly has regaled with bawdy stories while plying them with weak whiskey, one dollar per shot. Eliza recognizes many of the regs; they are regs of hers as well.
Men from Soapy’s gang make beelines to Rose’s and Cilla’s rooms, but Eliza never sees Soapy himself.
A real loner, Eliza thinks. And I’ve heard tell he has a wife and three children back in St. Louis. So why is he here in Skagway?
Eliza doesn’t have answers to her questions. Soapy avoids the Moonstone, too, but Eliza knows the answer as to why on that point. Frank Reid and his cronies preside over the Moonstone’s front room, and from what Eliza hears, Reid and Smith mix like oil and water.
A scuffle at the Empire Café last week emphasized the fact that tensions are rife. The air bristles with tension, and not a day goes by without an incident. Theft. Graft. Even murder. Eliza stays at the edge of the troubles. She chooses instead to ply men with sugary treats.
Eliza’s never spoken to Soapy Smith. She nods to him whenever he passes, and he raises his hat. There are so few women in Skagway that it’s no wonder she’s noticed, she thinks.
And now that I’m a looker! Eliza chortles. Me? A looker?!
“Money and good manners make the gentleman,” her aunt used to say.
Her aunt’s words ring in her ear, but Eliza thinks this adage shallow.
From what I hear, Jefferson Randolph Smith is no gentleman. He’s on the run from something, or someone. I’ve got a bad feeling about him.