“I’d like to make a suggestion,” said Ruth. “You may not like it, but then again, it’s not a place Holborne or any officer of the San Francisco Police Department would be likely to go. Cain took me there. It’s in Chinatown. We can sleep there. They have little rooms.”
Carrie frowned and then ventured nervously, “This place, Ruth: it isn’t an opium den, is it?”
“As a matter of fact it is an opium den. Among other things. But you needn’t worry. The opium eaters will be far too torpid to give us much trouble. And as for any lurking white slavers, we’ll have Lyle to protect us.”
In spite of the reactive gapes and shudders which followed Ruth’s proposal, not a single one of its recipients spoke up in opposition to it. It was, after all, the most reasonable choice from a menu of severely limited options. And the tearoom on Dupont Street was very convenient to their purposes; it was only eight short blocks from the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero.
They would spend the night tucked away in the heart, or, if one wishes a less benign description, the viscera, of Chinatown, and then Molly and Maggie and Lyle and Jane would rise early and catch the first morning ferry to cross the bay.
And if Ruth were lucky, the tearoom’s kitchen would remain open late into the night. Because upon her previous visit to this place with Cain, she’d discovered that she had quite a taste for authentic Chinese cuisine.
___________
All of We Six had been to Chinatown before, but excepting Ruth’s luncheon there with Cain, there hadn’t been a visit since the Plague. Now, as they climbed Dupont with halting steps and wide-eyed gazes, each appearing equally exotic to the neighborhood’s denizens due to their unfamiliar Caucasian countenances and their strange Occidental garb, they felt as if they’d just disembarked into a place out of time and ken. The street was chockablock with crowded structures whose original architectural purpose had been shanghaied by the necessity of reduction and compartmentalization into smaller and smaller spaces. The side streets were dark narrow alleys with opened doors that afforded smoke-clouded glimpses into rooms congested with men crouched over fantan tables. There were staircases that went up and those that went down, and every block was overhung with a plethora of balconies and logia, which to the squinted eye might remind one of a street in Venice.
The fully dilated eye was confronted by colors of every shade and hue: in the bright iridescence of the clothing; the green and yellow and sky-blue and vermilion of the richly painted walls; the gold which outlined the cornices and eaves and window trimmings; and the variegation of intense color to be found in the signs bearing bold but inscrutable Chinese logograms. There were red and gold lanterns hanging from every ceiling and assemblages of fat cobalt-blue pots of red saffron and pink tulips. Some of the buildings were dilapidated and crumbling beneath their decorative ornamentation, like old women with youthful souls.
Molly nudged Maggie to note a little pigtailed man in an orange Mandarin jacket. She wanted to say that this was the same jacket she’d seen their friend Mirabella Prowse wear a couple of weeks earlier. But Molly wouldn’t even attempt to voice the observation, for she knew she wouldn’t have been heard. The air was too full of the clamor and clatter of too many people in too small a place, all hailing and railing and singsonging and wheeling and trundling their carted wares, seemingly oblivious to the inconvenience of their crowded circumstances.
Maggie, who had a sensitive nose, pinched both nostrils. There were pungent wafts in the air of fresh-caught Pacific crayfish and squid and flounders and sole, the rank odor of fast-ripening produce, the strong aromas of sandalwood and smoldering punk and exotic dishes being prepared in upper rooms and vented out into the street.
“Here we are,” announced Ruth. “Up these stairs.”
“Has it a name?” shouted Jane over the din.
“Places like this don’t have a name.”
“Oh God,” said Maggie and Molly at the very same time. Yet Carrie, for once, didn’t seem worried at all. Lyle was holding her hand.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Zenith, Winnemac, July 1923
Sister Abigail Dowell looked her five newly appeared choir members up and down disapprovingly. She reserved her frostiest glare for the male interloper who stood among them. “Sister Lydia isn’t going to like this.”
“Isn’t going to like what?” asked that very referent, stepping out of her private office accompanied by her choir director, Sister Vivian.
“Well, everything,” replied Sister Vivian’s assistant. “They’ve missed the last two choir rehearsals and we’ve got full dress at six o’clock.”
Sister Lydia rolled her eyes. “I know we’ve got full dress at six, Abigail. I’m the one who scheduled it.”
“And who is this person?” said Abigail, pointing at Lyle indignantly. “He can’t be here.”
“He’s my brother,” said Jane.
Sister Lydia turned to Vivian. “Fix this, Vivian.” And then to We Five: “So nice to have you all back, even though by the looks of all that luggage, one or more of my sweet young songbirds may be getting ready to fly the coop.”
“I’ll find out what’s going on,” said Vivian. “Abigail, please go and prepare the rehearsal room. We’ve got to familiarize these girls with the two new hymns before the dress rehearsal. Run along now, and let me handle this.”
A brief moment later, both Sister Lydia DeLash Comfort and Sister Vivian’s officious assistant had departed the outer office, leaving Vivian alone with We Five Plus One.
“Just tell me,” said Vivian, “that if one or more of you is leaving, you’ll wait and do it after tomorrow morning’s celebration.”
“We’re all leaving, Vivian,” said Ruth. “But not until after the service.”
“So you aren’t the only one thinking about enrolling in the University of Winnemac. Your sisters have decided to join you.”
“It’s far more complicated than that, Vivian,” said Jane. “We’re all leaving — you’re right — but for different reasons.”
“Tell me that this has nothing to do with the rumors.”
“What rumors?” asked Maggie.
“That Sister Lydia’s Square Deal Ministries is in financial trouble. Because let me just say this at the outset: the organization may be floundering, but it certainly isn’t foundering. Sister Lydia — I love her bushels — but she doesn’t have much of a head for business, and sometimes she doesn’t plan for things very well. We aren’t nearly ready for the celebration tomorrow. The varnish on some of the pews isn’t even dry. We’re still waiting for five pipes for the organ. They’ve apparently gotten lost on their way from Cincinnati. And there seem to be problems with the new wiring; lights keep flickering on and off. On the other hand, the Sister’s done all this advance publicity and everybody who is anybody in the state of Winnemac is going to be here tomorrow, and she’s convinced it will be an utter disaster if we don’t go through with it. And just when you think she’s got enough to worry about already, this is when you’ve decided to turn in your choir robes!”
It was decided that Vivian could be trusted. We Five knew how fond their choir director was of Sister Lydia’s Quintet of Songful Seraphim, and especially how fond she was of one of the singers in particular: Ruth. And so it was explained to Vivian that, yes, Ruth would be enrolling in the University of Winnemac in the fall, and that Carrie planned to do the same. She was going to study music. Jane and Maggie and Molly and Jane’s brother Lyle would be going somewhere entirely different: to the northern woods of Minnesota.