The Girl from Everywhere (13 page)

Putting on airs in the most typically outrageous fashion, he ran his hands over every bit of lace in the shop, demanded tea in a perfect imitation of a posh English accent, and then announced I needed a new set of clothes immediately.

“We’ve just arrived from London, where she had an entirely new wardrobe made, and look, look how she grows! What is this, burlap?” He rubbed a piece of cotton between his fingers. “We need a finer weave. Her parents feed her too much. I swear, a girl at liberty to eat what she likes is at liberty to grow as tall as she likes! But do they listen to me? I am only the tutor, they say, they do not hire me to know anything. No, not Chinese silk, it’s too inconsistent. Do you have any from Piedmont?”

The Tutor was a persona he took on sometimes, often in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whenever he and I were alone together in front of others. It was bossy, superior, and very entertaining. Kashmir picked words out of people’s mouths as easily as he did the coins from their pockets, but I had no idea where he’d ever met such a supercilious personality. He was pulling out all the stops. He flounced onto a couch and shook back his curls as the two women hid their laughter behind their hands. The sign outside proclaimed them the Mercier Sisters, Fine Dresses, and I learned their names were Nan and Emily.

Measurements were taken, and much was made of how this lavender trim set off my eyes, or the green would complement my hair. Then, of course, Nan noticed my muddy sandals.

“Simpleminded girl,” Kashmir said, shaking his head and tut-tutting. “She had a lovely silk pair when we left California, but she was battling a touch of mal de mer and an old salt convinced her the cure was to drink tea out of her right shoe.”

Nan, the older sister, shook with laughter, but Emily’s eyes were round. “And what happened to the left?”

“We served biscuits in it, of course.” Kashmir answered. “Only the lowest sort has tea without biscuits. Can you make up a new pair to match?”

We left the shop with the promise of a dimity cotton skirt and an embroidered jacket, a white-and-pink striped silk dress with a “modified bustle” of some description, and a new pair of silk shoes, all to be ready next week. We also had a drastically lighter coin purse, although Kashmir had only put down a deposit, with the balance to be paid on delivery. Once we’d left the shop I shook my head and whistled.

“Don’t worry,” Kash said. “Money is best spent quickly. You never know when someone might pick your pocket.”

“I never knew you had such a fine eye for fabrics,” I said as we continued up the street. “You should have been a tailor instead of a thief.”

“I have a fine eye for all things,
amira
, which is why I’m
a thief and not a tailor.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “I just hope I do those fine fabrics justice.”

He looked at me then, with one eyebrow up, and said something under his breath in what sounded like Farsi.

“I didn’t understand that.”

“You weren’t meant to.”

His expression—a peculiar half smile—embarrassed me, so I turned toward the shops on the other side of the street and pretended to be interested in the hats in a window. They were fantastically styled, with swooping brims and showy feathers.

“You don’t want those,” Kashmir said. “They’ve used albatross.”

“Ugh, really?”

“To a landsman, they’re very fashionable.”

“How did you learn so much about clothes, anyway?”

“Necessity. Clothes have always told most of my lies for me.”

“Ah.” We were both quiet for a moment, staring at the window. I could see his shadowy reflection outlined in the glass. “This isn’t what you usually do on shore leave.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I can’t deny it.”

“So what do you actually do for fun?”

A slow smile spread across his face. “I told you before.”

“Dens of iniquity?”

“Drinking, brawling, gambling. Think carefully,
amira
. You may regret it.”

“I’m counting on it.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

F
rom the milliners, I followed Kash to Fid Street, where we fortified ourselves with a dinner of potpies and watery beer at the koa-wood bar of the Anchor Saloon. When the cheering started next door, he drained his glass and stood. “Hurry up and get your drinking done, or we’ll miss the brawling.”

The Commissioner’s Saloon advertised boxing matches between sailors, only a nickel to watch. Kashmir elbowed me. “What do you think,
amira
? If we fight, we get in free.”

I dug out ten pennies, but only after pretending to give it careful consideration.

The next match was between a massive harpooner and a scrappy coalman. We placed our bets, Kashmir for the one, and I for the other, and I looked to be winning until
the coalman ducked a swing and the harpooner hit a cook in the crowd. Kashmir pulled me outside and we watched through the window as the ensuing brawl broke two tables, five chairs, and half a dozen noses.

“That’s more than a nickel’s worth,” I said, a bit breathless.

“Only the best for you!”

We found a more genteel atmosphere at the Royal Saloon, where the laughter spilling into the street was hearty but not raucous. We split another pint—the beer here was dark and strong—and sat at a tiny table in a dark corner, catching our breath and listening to a fat man tell a bawdy joke.

He roared at his own punch line, and so did the cadre of men around him. The bartender delivered another beer; the big man drained the rest of his glass and made a sizable dent on the next, wiping the foam from his thick mustache on the sleeve of his jacket. It was a fine jacket, with gold braid and epaulets on the shoulder above the thick black mourning band . . . an awful lot of epaulets.

Suddenly thrilled, I grabbed Kash’s wrist. “Kashmir—”

“I know. They say he comes here almost every night.”

We watched the last King of Hawaii drink with his
people. The jokes and the beer kept flowing, and about an hour in, Kalakaua bought a round for the entire bar in honor of his cousin, the late Princess Pauahi. Under the merriment was something familiar in his deep brown eyes as he stared into his fourth empty glass, and my thrill faded like an old photo.

“He dies of it,” I said under my breath. “The addiction.” I sighed. “Do you know . . . most people think his last words were ‘Tell my people I tried,’ but that was a novelist’s invention.”

“What were they really?”

“‘I’m a very sick man.’” I pushed aside my own mug, no longer thirsty. “We should get back to the ship.”

A shadow crossed our table. Kashmir sighed. “I wish you’d said that ten minutes ago.”

I looked up into a pair of angry, blackened eyes. The sailor looming over us wasn’t tall, but he was broad; his shoulders were twice the width of my own, and they moved under his shirt like a python constricting. The man was a stranger to me, but apparently not to Kashmir. “Where’s my money, darkie?”

I choked, but Kashmir barely raised an eyebrow. “Do I know you?”

“You got rich off my match last night at Commissioner’s.”

“Oh, was that you? I didn’t recognize you without blood all over your face.”

The man ran his tongue over his split lip. “That was me,” he said, speaking with the deliberate precision of a drunkard. “You bet against me. I threw the match.” The sailor leaned heavily on the table with his fists; his knuckles were raw. “I get a cut, that’s the deal.”

“We never made a deal.”

“Just give him the money, Kash.”

“Your mulatto’s talking sense.” He was nose to nose with Kashmir, and his breath was brandy fumes.

“It’s not his,
amira
.”

“It’s not worth a broken jaw,” I said through my teeth.

“No, but it was worth the dresses I spent it on this morning.” Kash placed his hands primly on the edge of the table. “Look, sir, I’m sure we can settle this like gentlemen—” Without changing his expression, Kashmir lifted our side of the table. The sailor went down, smacking his forehead against the wooden tabletop. He collapsed in a heap, covered in beer, and we leaped over him; Kash didn’t tell me not to run this time.

We had half a minute’s lead before the sailor stumbled
out of the bar and into the muddy street, screaming obscenities, blood pouring from his nose. Kashmir looked back over his shoulder and laughed. “
Now
I recognize you!”

Another thirty seconds, and patrons came tearing out after the sailor, including two members of the Honolulu police force, hastily shoving their red caps onto their heads. Kashmir and I splashed down a crooked alley, cut through the yard behind a laundry, and finally hid down a basement stairwell across from the Royal Hawaiian Opera House. We pressed into the shadows against a thick wooden door, trying to hear footsteps over the sound of our pounding hearts. Something wet started wicking up my skirt, and I hoped it was only water.

It had been quiet for a good five minutes before my shoulders started shaking.

“
Amira
. . . are you laughing or crying?”

“Both?”

He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close, my back against his chest. “Shh, shh, shh.
Negaran nabash, cher. Negaran nabash.
Shh.”

Whatever he said, I knew what he meant, and his tone was soothing. I took a deep, shuddering breath and wiped my nose on my sleeve. “I don’t know how you stay so calm.”

“I did warn you,
amira
,” he said, reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief. “But I’ve seen much worse.”

I dabbed my eyes with the square of silk and tried to steady my voice. “I didn’t realize how seriously you took your shore leave.”

“This was years ago. Before I came to the ship. Our friend back there wasn’t half as menacing as the Sofoor. The Street Cleaners.”

“Street Cleaners?” I refolded the handkerchief; it was monogrammed
B. L.
I traced the initials and wondered whose they were. “Not the type with brooms, then?”

“They swept you up like trash. If they caught you sleeping, you’d wake up in the refuse pits outside the city, with the dead dogs and the dung and all the other waste.” His chest rose and fell against my back. “We used to argue about it—what we would do if it happened to us. You could live a very long time down there. There was plenty to eat.”

For a while I had no words. In the silence, the incongruous sound of laughter floated from a nearby bar. “That’s . . . horrifying.”

“There were many who praised the shah,” he said softly. “Indeed, the city had never been cleaner.” He shrugged. “See? It could always be worse. For example, we could have
been facing the winner of the fight.”

The mirth stole back into his voice, but I couldn’t let go of the images of the pits, the waste of it all. I shuddered. “I’m glad you’re with us now.”

He laughed a little, then rested his chin on my shoulder. “Me too,
amira
. For many reasons.” His breath was warm on my neck, and I shivered again, but not from fear. For a moment, all I wanted in the world was to turn around, like Lot’s wife, like Eurydice, to see what was in his eyes, but before I could gather the courage, he gave me another squeeze and dropped his arms. I sighed with regret, and with relief. “Let me take a look. Count to sixty. If I don’t swear and start running, you can come out.”

“And if you do swear and start running?”

He flashed me his teeth. “Then wait ten seconds and start running in the opposite direction.”

He didn’t swear, and neither of us ran. We returned to the ship as dawn was breaking, and as we passed under a thick banyan tree, I learned that on land, the first sign of a new day is not sunlight but birdsong.

I climbed the gangplank with my eyes half closed, but I stopped dead at the top. The captain was sitting stooped on my hammock. Suddenly I was wide awake.

His hands were wrapped around a mug of his vile instant brew, and his eyes were so hollow as to seem blackened. They cut from me, to Kashmir, then back, taking in my flushed face and my dirty dress. “You smell like beer.”

“And you look like hell.”

Something—a shrug or a laugh, I couldn’t tell which—made the hammock swing. “Where have you been?”

“Exploring paradise.”

Slate raised an eyebrow, and Kashmir drew himself up. “We went to a pub for dinner, captain.”

“And stayed for breakfast?”

Kashmir grinned easily. “The food was good.”

“Hmm.” Slate tasted his coffee and made a face. Then he jerked his chin toward the hatch. “Better get some rest.”

“Aye.” But Kashmir hesitated; I shook my head just a fraction of an inch, and he left. Slate stared after him for a long time. At last he spoke.

“You and him?”

“What? No.” I kept my voice casual, but he narrowed his eyes and searched my face.

“Best not to get too attached,” he said finally, hunching his shoulders over his coffee and staring at the water.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re one to talk.”

He didn’t rise to the bait. I shifted my weight on tired feet, but he only sat there, blowing air over his coffee. He always brewed it hot to make it bitter, but he never drank it till it was cold.