“In this district? I mean: here? Near this house?”
She nodded once.
“Is your father here?”
She closed her eyes and I watched her control the composition of her face; it stayed as smooth as a painted picture. She shook her head.
“Your father is dead?”
She nodded once.
“How is it, do you think, that your husband and father did not survive this country, yet your mother and you, if she is like you, are tough as alleyway weeds?”
“Weeds?”
“Strong flowers.”
“Woman is strong flower. Yes. You are some of woman, maybe?”
“Because I survived? Yes, maybe I am. Though I am, as I think you have seen, mostly man.”
“Not see!”
“Oh, no?”
She giggled. She covered her mouth and recomposed herself. “Not see much.”
“You mean there’s not that much to see?”
She shook her head, then waved her palm at me, as if we were friends who played at teasing one another. “Plenty enough,” she said, moving her hands to her mouth, then walking toward the stove.
I closed my eyes and reached up to soap my neck. I felt her fingers take hold of the soap, and I sank back toward her. She poured achingly hot water over my shoulders and I keened.
“Not so strong flower?” she said.
“Strong enough, I hope.”
She scrubbed with a flannel cloth at my shoulders and, when I leaned forward, my back. I leaned against the tub again, waiting to see if she would come around and wash my chest. She did not.
“So may I invest a few dollars for you and the children? I predict no risk.”
“Chun Ho give own some money Gongsi Fang.”
“Who?”
“Oh! Take care of Chinese man, woman, baby. Many help us. Many is fang—many Chinese people, one bunch.”
“Group?”
“Group.”
“This fang helps people from China?”
“Sure. Rooms to live. Money. Funeral Chun Ho father. All the time. Group.”
I lay back again and closed my eyes. From behind me, she reached to scrub at the underside of my left arm, and then along the elbow and forearm, and then the palm and knuckles; she reached for my right arm and did the same. The sound of the roaring stove drowned out the crashing of wheels, the shrieking of infants, the barking and howling of dogs — and I felt as a child while this child-sized woman with strong hands and powerful silences rubbed me clean.
“Sure,” she said. I opened my eyes to find her large, dark eyes directed at the water that lay above my groin.
“I am bobbing to the surface,” I said.
She fetched me a towel, then removed herself to the small table at which she and her children ate, and on which she folded laundry.
I stood to dry myself, and Chun Ho said, “Flower.”
When Mrs. Hess had partaken of what her clients agreed was Lydia Pinkham’s in ruby port wine, her dignified carriage grew famously erect; she looked, in fact, as though she might tip over from carrying herself all but on the balls of her feet in their patent leather slippers. Her mammoth bosom rose and fell rapidly at her prow as if a powdered creature transported into the parlor for applause. She blinked her eyes a good deal and spoke quite slowly, though I could not tell whether to herself she sounded quick and nimble of tongue. Malcolm seemed as spifflicated as she, though he did seem to recognize me, and to turn his face toward the woman to his right, who, at that instant, yawned.
“You’ve an admirer there, all right,” a stocky man said as he lit his cigar. It was fairly apparent that he had set his sights on the slight, ruddy girl for whose company Malcolm had paid. I wondered what salary his insurance firm gave a boy who at best might be a clerk, that he might spend so much money on liquor and whores.
Because it was the end of the working night, Mrs. Hess’s servant, whom we knew as Delgado, made his tour of the downstairs rooms, dimming the lights. He carried a short, thick truncheon in his coat and, although he was of stringy build and quiet demeanor, I had never seen a man stand up to him. Mrs. Hess sat beside Malcolm, on the other side from her girl, and soon she was snoring demurely; that would change, I knew, and we would all be treated to great, gasping noises unless Delgado removed her to her quarters in the back of the house.
Malcolm was pinching the girl’s jaws with his hand, squeezing hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. I watched Delgado approach him from the rear of the sofa.
“If you must be a whore, you whore, then have some manners while you’re at it,” Malcolm said.
The stocky man said, “Do not address her in that wise. And drop your hand from her face.”
“By jockies!” Malcolm said, trying to stand. The girl rubbed her face, and Malcolm gave up, sitting back, his fists raised, his eyes closed, stupid with drink.
“Sir,” Delgado said.
“What is it?” the boy asked, his eyes still closed.
“It is time to retire, sir.”
Malcolm opened his eyes. Delgado’s suggestions were almost always accepted.
“A cabriolet, sir?”
Malcolm said, “Awoke.”
Delgado turned to me. I said, “He means to say he’ll walk, I think. But here.” I held up some coins, and Delgado came around to accept them for Malcolm. “Send him home. He’ll never make it on his own. He’ll be lucky, any rate, if he’s admitted at home.”
“You know the gentleman, sir?”
“His father and I are, you might say, associates in trade, Mr. Delgado.”
Delgado raised his sparse brows, took the coins, and lifted Malcolm from the divan as if he were a frail boy instead of a bulky cross between child and adult man.
“You might have a word with the father about the comportment of the son,” the stocky fellow said.
I turned to him and stared. He dropped his eyes and attended to the girl whose face Malcolm had bruised. The stocky man addressed her with exaggerated concern, and she shrugged her shoulders and made to smile; it looked more like a leer.
I walked to the foyer, where I found Delgado about to descend the steps with his charge. “Allow me, Delgado,” I said. “If you’ll help me stuff him into the carriage, I’ll escort him home. What I gave you for fare I hope you’ll use for a drink.”
“Mr. Bartholomew,” he said. He inclined his head an inch. I had heard a rumor that on a Portuguese cod fisherman, somewhere off the English coast, he had cut a man very badly with a gaff and, while the fellow bled, Delgado had used the hook to keep the crew from coming to the man’s assistance. According to the story, he had never said a word, from start of fight to death by exsanguination.
It was a mild enough night, but I took the blanket from the driver and laid it on Malcolm’s shoulders and chest, more as a stay against his soiling his clothing if he took sick than as a protection from the night. We made our way south and west through the smells of coffee and bread and, once, the sour stink of a brewery.
“Mr. Face,” Malcolm said.
“You’ll be forgiven tonight,” I said. “But Delgado will remember.”
“Ooh,” the boy said, and he affected to laugh. “Mr. Face,” he said again.
I placed the thumb and forefinger of my left hand on his nostrils and pinched; the while, I clasped his lips between the thumb and forefinger of my right. He began to struggle, so I slapped with elbow and forearm upon his chest, and he went crimson. I squeezed and then let go with both my hands. “Don’t call me that a third time,” I said.
He began to go very pale, and I knew that he was about to heave his night’s drink. “Driver!” I called. “To the curbing, if you please, at once!”
While Malcolm leaned out to the right, I climbed down from the left, gave the driver his instructions and his fare, and I made long strides to escape the sound of the boy’s blubbering and spew.