The Harlot’s Pen (16 page)

Violet swallowed the taste of sand, turned, and walked back into the parlor, her hands shaking and a smile plastered across her face.

* * * *

Kate could hear Sharon and Violet squabble. That was not to be tolerated. She sighed, wondering if the moon was full. Sharon had her period, which meant that Lily would be next, and of course Rose’s spells were far more likely at that special time of the month. Kate gave the girls the first day of their period off from whoring, but they still had to work at making the parlor lively. Violet hadn’t been at the house long enough to get in schedule with the other girls, so she would be the main whore for the next couple of days, and Kate didn’t want her walking around with a sour face and a chip on her shoulder. She rose to get Moses to put a stop to the nonsense when she saw Sharon stalk back into the parlor.

As the door shut she heard Moses’ voice, low and menacing. He was on edge too, after Rose’s injury, and he would take it out on Violet.
Well, let him. She’s got to learn sooner or later.
She nodded to Sharon, who had poured herself a whiskey in a cordial glass, and stood sipping it at the side table. In a moment Sharon’s color returned, and she made her way over to the poker players. “Deal me in, gentlemen. I’ve got a hankering for a game!”

Violet was next, with a foolish mask of a smile. Kate rose. “Violet, I was just thinking of something. Samantha’s out on an errand for me at the moment. Could you go to the kitchen and fetch a tray with some nice sliced peaches for us? It’s so warm tonight, a little refreshment would be nice.”

Violet looked at her gratefully and went back out the parlor door. A task would give her a chance to compose herself properly. Any man who saw her with that horrid smile would run a mile in the opposite direction. Kate had to wonder, not for the first time, if she’d done the right thing by taking her on, principles or no principles. But with Posie gone, Rose out of commission, and the other two on the rag, this was no time to be picky. As soon as Violet returned with the peaches, she would have to go check on Rose. Doc Simmons was discreet, but he was also an apothecary, and would know opium the moment he smelled it.

* * * *

Gold came bouncing into the card parlor about nine. Violet had just prepared the fruit tray and followed a few steps behind him into the room. Thin, wiry, with his black hair slicked back and his large brown eyes shining, he took Sharon and Lily’s hands and bent over each, kissing them lightly. Both girls giggled, and he smiled a wide grin back. “Am I too late for a card game? I am dying for a card game with my beautiful girls,” he said in his heavy accent.

“Never too late,” Lily smiled. “Are you dying for a drink, too?”

“But of course,” he said jovially.

“What’re you so excited about?” Lily asked, handing him a short whiskey.

“Oh, nothing. Just everything is going my way for once.” He knocked on the bar. “Where’s my tall dolly? The one with the black hair and the big
tetas
?”

“There’s two like that,” Kate answered from across the room.

“Oh, my beautiful Spanish Kitty, of course. If I was looking for you, I would have said, ‘Where is the gorgeous madam of the house, commander in chief?’”

“Commander Kitty! I like that. But here’s your dolly, with the big titties. You’ve got to learn to say ‘titties
,
’
not ‘
tetas!’”

“Oh, but all the workmen say ‘
tetas.’”

“That’s cuz it’s Spanish for ‘titties,’” Sharon said.

“Aha! Thank you, lovely Sharon.” Turning back to Kate, he said, “Well, since you are Spanish Kitty, I will say ‘
tetas’
for you, and ‘titties’ for my tall giantess of a dolly. Violet, how are you, my mountain of titties woman?”

Gold had them all laughing, and Violet watched as Kate headed out of the parlor as soon as Violet was seated at the card table. She picked up a deck and started dealing a rummy hand. Two young men, strangers to Violet, had been flipping the cards and betting on the positions of their landing, and they joined to be dealt in. Sharon stayed at her poker game, and Lily quickly tossed back a whiskey as soon as Kate walked out and winked at a short, older gent, who escorted her out of the room. As Lily walked past Kate’s abandoned note pad she reached down, without breaking her stride, and made a mark on the pad. Kate would know to charge her gentleman at end of the month.

Violet won the first hand, and the second as well. “You’ve got luck on your side tonight,” Gold said. He knocked three times on the table.

She smiled. “Superstitious?”

“Careful,” he corrected. “Tonight, things are good. Tomorrow, you never know.”

Someone had put an opera on the Victrola, and Gold listened for a moment. He put his head back and closed his eyes, and in a moment began to sing with the tenor. The room activity stopped as he sang, his rich voice making syrup of the Italian. Then he stopped, smiling. “That Mister Caruso is a master. Now, do you think Miss Kitty can spare you for a bit? I don’t see her, so I cannot ask her.”

Violet shook herself free of the trance his singing had brought. “That’s quite all right,” she said. She had just seen Lily handle the same situation. “I will just leave her a note letting her know where I am.”

She allowed Gold to lead her from the room, stopping to jot a note on the pad. As she looked up, she saw Sharon watching her, eyes narrowed. Violet hesitated. “Come, my mountain woman. Let me bury my face between your titties!” The room’s laughter accompanied her out the door.

Upstairs, Gold was undressed even as she untied her sash. “Off, off, off!” he said, encouraging her to speed up her undressing. He was fully charged as soon as she was naked, and with reverence, he put action to his earlier words.

Once he was finished, he lay back on her pillows, his hands behind his head. “Tell me, mountain woman, why are you so smart?”

“How do you mean?” Violet asked.

“You speak better, you are more refined. Even more refined than Miss Rose, the ghost.”

“She’s not a ghost.”

“No, I misspeak. She has a ghost inside her. She has suffered. You see her neck. There are many in my country with terrible scars, too.”

“Where are you from, Gold?” Violet was happy to skirt the subject of her own past.

“Georgia.”

Violet burst out laughing. “Well that explains your southern accent.”

Gold smiled. “Georgia, Russia.”

“You’re Russian?” She felt a little shiver, thinking of Mrs. Whitney. Was Gold a communist?

“I am a Jew. Jews are never from the country they are born in. They are Jews. But to America, yes, I am Russian. Georgia is a beautiful place, in the south, just like your Georgia is in the south, but for Russia, where it is miserable and cold, Georgia is the place of vacations,
dachas
for the rich aristocrats.”

“Were you a rich aristocrat in Georgia?”

“No. I was a Jew. But I was rich, yes. Like here, there my family had many clothing stores. No land, it was against the law for a Jew to own land, but stores, oh yes. But the revolution put an end to all that.”

Violet was quiet. The revolution that brought power to the workers put an end to the lifestyle of the rich, but drove the workers into grinding poverty as well. “So you came to the States?”

“Yes, as I told you, I have been here a very, very long time. I still have the thick accent, but I have in all other ways become an American. I am a citizen because I love this country. Even though I am very angry at the government some times.”

“We all are.”

“Yes, but when you are born here, you feel the right to be angry. When you immigrate, you feel that to be angry is to be ungrateful, and you are very, very grateful. And the government feels that an angry immigrant is a danger. They rounded up three thousand immigrants in January, all because they were angry at how the workers here were treated.”

“I know. I was furious. They accused them of being part of the CLP.”

“You know about that? You are a mysterious whore!”

Violet paused, knowing that she had to walk a very fine line. “I do know about it. I have had my share of problems, too. I used to, well, I was working to improve the minimum wage for women, because they make so little in a week that they can’t feed their children. And the people on the Commission say it’s because they’re working for pin money, when they’re not. So that’s how I know about this.”

Gold looked at her very intently. “I knew you were special. You are very deep for a whore. You know, I pay my workers fairly. I saw much suffering and have suffered here too, and I don’t want to see my workers in pain. It is hard, though, when the competitors make a better profit and can charge less for the clothes, because they don’t pay their workers. Me, I would rather get less profit. But not too much less profit, or I can’t afford my lovely mountain of a dolly!”

Violet smiled at him and rose to get dressed. “Oh, once more, my dolly!” Gold said. Violet lay back down. She would be sure to make a second mark on the Kate’s notepad when they went back down.

* * * *

Tuesday afternoon dawned clear and bright and a bit cooler than Monday had been, bringing relief to the overheated tempers at El Verano Resort. Violet rolled over in bed and listened to the clock chime noon. It had been a strange night with Rose’s spell, Caleb’s passion, Sharon’s snappish comments, and Kate’s disappearance for long periods of time from the salon.

She thought about Gold’s remarkable journey from Georgia, Russia, to Sonoma, California. What gumption it took to leave everything one knew, family, friends, wealth, and travel half way around the world to a country where you didn’t speak the language, were barely welcome, and your money and education counted for naught. And yet, thousands of people did just that, year after year, the “huddled masses yearning to be free,” and the not-quite huddled as well. Gold was anything but a huddled mass, she mused as she lay under the sheet, looking at the ceiling.

She knew him intimately, now, his circumcised penis, his energy, his pale skin covered in parts by tufts of black hair. Strange to know so many men carnally when before it had been almost scandalous that she had known two men without the benefit of marriage. And Gold had very, very progressive ideas when it came to labor, women, and even some outlandish ideas about equality amongst the races. He lay on her bed, spent after his second bout, and talked about his dreams of a Utopian society. She’d meant to just agree, stroke his arm a bit, smile, and send him on his way, but instead she found herself challenging him.

“If workers and bosses are equal, how will businesses get started?” she’d asked. “Aren’t some people just smarter than others, just like some are taller, some are blonder, or have musical gifts?” She smiled at him, thinking of his singing, and identifying the singer on the record as well.

“Sure, lovely, some are beautiful, like you, and some are homely, like me, but we need to look past that to true equality under the skin.”

“If there aren’t any capitalists, who will start businesses? If landlords can’t make money, who will rent to people? If smart ones can’t get education, who will be our scientists and inventors?” She sounded to her own ears like Sam, Sam after he joined the board of Nathan-Dohrmann.

Gold stroked her hair. It had come unpinned in their frolic and lay spread like a black veil over her pillow. “I am a capitalist, dolly, and yet I believe in my equality with my workers.”

Violet believed in equality, and she told him so.

“Then why are you arguing with me, beauty?”

“Because equality isn’t the same as, I don’t know, sameness, I guess. And because if I’ve learned anything in the past six months, it’s to question everything.”

“And thusly do you prove your merit,” Gold had said, in his strange, formal way. Violet could not imagine a greater compliment.

When they had returned to the parlor, Kate was still absent. Relieved that she would not be chided for spending too much “after eight” time in conversation, she diligently made another mark next to Gold’s name on the pad to show that he’d gotten two rounds with her. Kate would just have to collect from him some other time, as she did not reappear until it was closing time, and Gold had long gone.

Now, as Violet dressed, she thought about Sharon. She would have to put things right with her. It would not do to have an enemy in such a small household.

She went down to the kitchen and found Moses and Sharon talking quietly at the breakfast table. They stopped when she walked in, exchanged glances, and Moses stood up. He nodded to Violet in response to her “good morning” and left the kitchen, leaving Sharon at the table.

“I don’t want you to be mad at me,” Violet said, immediately broaching the subject. Sharon flicked her eyebrows and then went back to her cornbread and coffee without answering. “What is it, Sharon? You have to tell me.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything, Violet. But I will say that you think you’re mighty superior to us with your education and your writing and your conversations. But you ain’t superior. You’re just luckier in life, and I don’t know why you’re slumming it here with us, but we don’t like it.”

“Really? Who’s we?”

“All of us. Believe me, we know that you didn’t spend years on the street getting beat up, raped, jailed, and used up before you landed here like the rest of us. You’ve been living on easy street, and you’re just pretending to be a whore so you can write about us. But you ain’t a real whore. You’re a wolf in whore’s clothing!”

It was only by supreme self-control that Violet didn’t laugh at the metaphor. It would have cemented Sharon’s view of her, and Violet knew that there was more than a grain of truth in what she said. But there was a lot of falsehood, too.

She sighed. “I know you feel that way, but only part of what you say is true. I also have a history and a past. But you’re right, I have an education, and I do like to write stories. Something I wrote got me in a lot of trouble, and a lot of bad things happened to me, but nothing like you’ve been through. At least not in quantity. But that’s no reason to be mean to me. I’m not taking work from you. I’m not hurting you. And I’m only writing about people to help get higher wages for women, nothing else.”