Jesse doesn’t hesitate. He’s up the stairs in an instant, rattling the door of Madame Chao’s room. A smell of burning flowers seeps around the jamb, acridly sweet and almost rancid, like a fire in a funeral parlor. Madame Chao (who encourages Jesse to call her Big Sister) has smoked her evening opium. Madame Chao has a healthy respect for the poppy and is meticulous in her habit. She won’t touch the pipe before midnight or after dawn. And even now, Jesse knows, she won’t be incapacitated. But she might be dangerously slow. He calls out, “Big Sister!” into the darkened room. The creak of bedsprings. A lazy pendulum of footsteps.
Madame Chao’s face is an obscure history, written in parchment. She’s been running this house for more than two decades, but no one knows much about her. The squat brick house called Madame Chao’s has been here since before the rebels took Fort Sumter. It was here when the ’49ers arrived. It’s older than the Catholic church on Mission Street, Jesse’s father likes to say, and Madame Chao—well, Madame Chao is older than God. She blinks at him from the darkness: “Yes?”
He whispers Roscoe Candy’s name. Big Sister frowns and narrows her eyes. “Evil man. All right, I’m coming.”
She dresses quickly. Descending the stairs, she leans on Jesse’s arm. At the age of fifteen he towers over her, but she still makes him feel like a child. No one in the house questions Madame Chao’s authority. Visitors occasionally do, but they generally come to regret it.
Roscoe Candy might be an exception. Roscoe is making himself a big man in the Tenderloin. He has all the necessary traits: a high opinion of himself, contempt for his enemies, a small army of enforcers. And—of course—money. Money from the gold fields, Jesse has heard, acquired mainly through claim-jumping and intimidation. Not enough money to impress respectable San Francisco, but enough to make a big noise in the Tenderloin. Candy is buying saloons and whorehouses from Broadway to Market.
In the parlor, Jesse’s father stands unhappily at his post by the door. Roscoe Candy is on the sofa now, casually groping Ming. He has a hand up her silk chemise and a nasty grin on his face. He looks like a fat clown, with a striped schoolboy cap on his head and his red checked vest straining at its buttons. But he’s not a clown. He’s as tall as Jesse’s father, agile and strong despite his fat. Under his frock coat he carries a flensing knife of steel and bone ivory. He has made himself a legend with it, using it to disembowel more than one of his enemies. Men from the gold fields still call him Roscoe Gut-Cutter.
Jesse senses that his father both despises and fears Roscoe Candy. This makes Jesse ashamed and curious. Jesse wonders how he would take down Roscoe Candy, if he ever had to do such a thing. A hand with a knife in it is dangerous, his father has taught him. The hand as much as the knife. Watch the hand. Jesse would watch Roscoe’s hand. He notes that Roscoe is right-handed: That’s the hand he’s using to squeeze Ming’s breasts.
“Ming,” Madame Chao says, “stop bothering this man and go upstairs. Now!”
Ming escapes, careful not to show her relief. Roscoe Candy fixes his eyes on Madame Chao. “Shoot, she weren’t bothering me.” His voice is incongruously high-pitched, like the yelp of a small dog. “I like a little yellow girl now and then. Diddeys that would fit in a teacup, that one. Sweet little thing.”
“Not open for business,” Madame Chao says.
“Well, that ain’t the kind of business I want to conduct just now anyway.”
Candy and Madame Chao begin an earnest, low-pitched conversation. Jesse wants to know what it’s about, but he can’t make out the words. Madame Chao speaks soothingly but fingers the jade bracelet she wears around her left wrist: She’s nervous. Candy’s meanness simmers under his words like a kettle coming to boil.
Jesse sneaks another glance at his father, who seems relieved that Roscoe just wants to talk. His eyelids have crept back to half-mast. His mouth moves as if he is whispering to himself. It’s this last habit that worries Jesse most. Jesse knows his father is a working drunk and that liquor has been a part of his daily life since before Jesse was born. But it seems as if liquor affects him differently these days. It takes him deeper into himself. Maybe because of his age, Jesse thinks. His father is no longer young. Nor as fast as he once was. In body or mind.
But his father snaps to attention when there is a noise on the stairs.
Jesse follows his glance: Phoebe has come down from the attic room.
Jesse’s father has been careful to insulate Phoebe from the work of the house, though she is in no way ignorant of it. Madame Chao has been cooperative, maybe because she’s fond of Jesse’s father. Phoebe knows better than to come downstairs after dark or before the first light of morning. But maybe it’s first light now. The night has certainly seemed long enough.
Madam Chao looks up. Roscoe Candy looks up. Phoebe freezes on the stairs.
She’s eleven years old, dressed in her plain cotton nightgown, which is torn in places. Phoebe’s mother was a pretty mulatto woman whom Jesse barely remembers, and Phoebe’s skin is the color of wheat ready for the harvest. Her hair is dark and lustrous, and her eyes are brown. She has been having her female bleeding for three months now.
Phoebe seems startled to find a stranger in the parlor at this hour, and she turns away hastily. Jesse is horrified to see that her nightgown, long overdue for replacement, is torn from hem to thigh. Nothing Madame Chao’s girls would blink at. But Roscoe Candy lets out a long appreciative whistle. “I didn’t know you kept such girls here—I thought it was all yellow-for-the-white trade. Are you doing business I don’t know about?”
“No business,” Madame Chao says curtly. Madame Chao speaks eloquent English but puts on the patois for customers and people she doesn’t like. “Not business girl.”
“Everything’s business,” Roscoe says, smiling in a way that bares his teeth. His face is round, his features small. The devil’s face, Jesse thinks, as it might look if you painted it on an egg.
“Not for sale,” Madame Chao insists.
“Grooming her for some other customer?”
Madame Chao has no response.
“She’s just ripe,” Roscoe says plaintively.
Phoebe isn’t stupid. She turns and flees upstairs. Jesse looks at his father. His father gives him a warning look.
“Does she come with the house?”
“Not for sale. Not the girl, not the house. You have plenty of saloons, plenty of fuckhouses. This one is mine.”
Cornered, Madame Chao has thrown down the gauntlet. But she’s not defenseless. She pays protection to one of the Six Companies. Roscoe Candy ought to know that.
“Well, maybe I’m negotiating with the wrong person, in that case.”
Roscoe stands up. He heads for the door. Jesse’s father steps aside to let him pass. But Roscoe pauses and walks to Jesse, stands in front of him. Roscoe is nearly as tall as Jesse and twice his weight. Roscoe puts his chin up and pouts out his lower lip. “I don’t appreciate the way you’ve been staring at me.”