A proper family, Jenny quips grimly in her head, that’s a guarantee of happiness.
“I begged him on my knees,” admits Sosthenes with a grandiloquent gesture. “It was said to be a sort of quarantine for the young—a house of refuge from the corruptions of the City, so that delinquents could be reformed before they fell into serious crime.”
How could Jenny have paid regular visits to this poor excuse for a father? Brought him a share in her earnings? “Did you ever see the skin on her back?” Blanche demands.
His face crumples like a page. “We didn’t know what it was like in that place,” he says. “We had so little notion—”
“Scarred,” she interrupts, “like the hull of a goddamn boat!”
Tears are scoring his cheeks now, which gives Blanche a certain satisfaction.
Durand and Portal, waiting for Sosthenes some yards away, are looking daggers at her.
How did Jenny mislay her rage? Blanche wonders. She had a talent for starting a row but none for holding a grudge, it seems. She kept her chin high, her scars covered up, her gun in her pocket. Bicycled past the Industrial School regularly, and instead of burning the place down, she just tossed gumdrops and lozenges over the fence.
The father takes Blanche by the hand; she flinches from his hot grip. “Jeanne was unmanageable, uncivilizable,” he confides. “Un enfant sauvage! With my wife not well and our younger girl in tears all the time—I simply—how could I have been expected to—”
“How convenient,” barks Blanche. “Pack one off to rot in the reformatory and the other to die in the asylum.”
“Our Blanche didn’t die, only the baby,” Sosthenes says, confused. “They’d have sent word, wouldn’t they?”
“What baby?” She’s nearly shrieking.
“My daughter was enceinte, you see, though I never knew the exact, ah, circumstances. At the asylum—the poor creature, he didn’t live a week.”
Blanche is almost too angry to speak. Another baby? Jenny’s nephew. Was this one nudged along toward his death? she wonders. Did anyone in the asylum feed him, even? Hold him? All the missing children. Washed into the world against their will, to do their time, a day or a year, before being sent out of it again. P’tit, she cries out silently, P’tit.
Durand’s cook is at Sosthenes’s elbow, leading the old man away from Blanche. “Stop harassing a grieving old man,” Portal throws over his shoulder.
Guilt paralyzes Blanche. What right has she, of all people, to accuse?
Jenny’s father sobs something as he goes. “It’s all true, Adrien.”
Adrien.
No. The cook? Portal, the cook at Durand’s?
Wait. It’s a common enough name, Adrien.
But how common could it be among Frenchmen in San Francisco who were friends of Jenny’s? A cook who might well have been a mac until he lost all his money. (Jenny’s money, Blanche thinks with renewed fury.) Who knew Jenny long enough, well enough, to tease her and take her teasing; to persuade his boss to buy her frogs; to weep like a baby when he heard she was dead at twenty-seven.
The cemetery’s almost deserted now. The carriage of doves has left without Blanche.
She starts walking east, toiling through the thick air. Her parasol wobbles overhead, weighing down her arm. She’s busy trying to make sense of Jenny; she’s flabbergasted. To try to kill yourself over a man because he’s wrecked your life—and then, years later, to treat him as a friend? Forgiveness, is that the word for it? It seems too simple a term for whatever happened between Jenny and Adrien Portal. Some deeper alteration, then? When Jenny left off skirts and put on pants, did some old scars not bother her anymore—did they no longer feel like hers? You’ve got the wrong Jenny Bonnet. Had Jenny managed to convince herself that she’d metamorphosed into someone entirely new?
“Miss Beunon!”
Cartwright, trotting behind Blanche. Where did he come from? She shakes her head furiously.
“A single question.”
She marches on.
“Please.” He pants. “Help me make sure your friend’s story doesn’t fade away.”
“It’s on every front page,” she snaps.
“It’s been only a day and a half. By Monday she’ll be lucky to get a paragraph at the back between stolen watches and run-over dogs.”
Blanche halts. Purses her lips. “What’s your single question?”
“Are you acquainted with a man called Lamantia?”
Her mouth falls open. The journalist couldn’t possibly know she spent last night with Lamantia at the Palace Hotel, unless the Chronicle’s having her followed. “No,” she says automatically, turning her eyes away from Cartwright’s blue-glass-covered ones.
He persists. “I think you’ve heard the name, at least? He’s an importer on Market Street.”
She keeps shaking her head. It doesn’t sound as if he knows about the Palace. Curiosity’s like a pebble in her shoe. “Why does he matter, this Lamantia?”
“I don’t know for sure that he does. But he was in San Miguel Station on Wednesday morning.”
When she and Jenny were off frog-hunting on Sweeney Ridge? Blanche steps away from the newsman in confusion and panic.
“Yesterday Mrs. Holt told me about a stranger getting off the train on Wednesday,” adds Cartwright, keeping up with her. “A big man, dark, citified. She hadn’t thought to mention it to Detective Bohen, because it was on the day before the murder!”
But what could possibly have taken Lamantia to San Miguel Station? The Sicilian wasn’t even aware of Blanche’s connection to that crazy girl in pants till she told him about the murder yesterday. Unless—
Blanche stumbles, almost falls. On second thought, wasn’t it rather overdone, his insistence that he’d heard nothing at all about the case? Too busy to read the papers. Perhaps he wasn’t too busy to hire someone to track down his bella bianca after Blanche dropped out of view for a couple of weeks and left him pining. Didn’t Madame volunteer the fact that he’d been making inquiries at the House of Mirrors? How much had he paid Madame for the information that Blanche was at San Miguel Station?
Her pulse drums in her throat. What if Lamantia came down and made further inquiries about the women visiting from town? What if he somehow got it into his head that this eccentric frog girl was responsible for his favorite’s absence from the House of Mirrors? This so-called friend, that’s how he’d described Jenny yesterday. What if Lamantia, wanting to bully Blanche into accepting his permanent protection, formed a wild plan to scare her away from her riffraff connections by …
By what, gunning her friend down in front of her? This is ludicrous. But what does Blanche know about the man, really, except how he fucks? Let me look after you as you deserve, Lamantia wheedled at the Palace. Him being the killer makes no sense, but since when have men’s cravings to own women ever made sense?
“Miss Beunon?”
She waves Cartwright away. She has to think. Because if by any chance Lamantia is behind the murder, then that would mean Arthur and Ernest are … well, not innocent, that word will never fit. They’re snakes in the grass, child-stealers, brutes at the very least. But if they didn’t shoot Jenny, they’re not quite demons. A notion that chokes Blanche like a pair of hands around her throat. Can Ernest possibly have been sincere yesterday at the apartment when he railed against her for defaming his friend as a murderer? When he gave her one last chance to make things right and get her baby back? A chance Blanche threw away today at the inquest like a used handkerchief.
“Mrs. Holt said the gentleman wandered around as if lost,” Cartwright rattles on,” but then he struck up a conversation with the chicken farmer.”
The change of tack bewilders her. “What chicken farmer?”
“This Louis fellow, the Canadian. I checked, and he really has been in San Jose since Thursday. But it seemed a touch too convenient that he’d happen to leave San Miguel Station on the very morning of the shooting. And aren’t chicken farmers usually sto
ne broke, and so perhaps ripe for tempting?” Cartwright speaks as if telling the plot of some thrilling dime novel.
“What are you talking about?” demands Blanche.
“The importer could have hired this Louis, you see? The wife—when I pressed her, she admitted that her husband did talk to an Italian on Wednesday, name of Lamantia.”
“You’re raving,” Blanche tells Cartwright, putting one finger on his lapel. The newsman is chalk-white in a lake of sunlight. Now that she’s taking the trouble to look at him, she can see that he probably hasn’t had any sleep since yesterday. “If this Canadian left San Miguel Station on Thursday morning then he couldn’t have shot Jenny, could he?”
“He might have contracted the job out to someone else,” says Cartwright uncertainly, “so he could go to San Jose and provide himself with an alibi, you see.”
A substitute for a substitute, like some corridor of mirrors? “It’s a crossroads in the goddamn scrublands,” Blanche retorts. “How many killers for hire do you imagine could be found there?”
“Phil Jordan?” he suggests with a shrug. “John McNamara?”
“It’s too complicated. It’s nonsense. My Arthur did it!” Blanche screams at him. (Why did she say my? Why, after all that’s come between her and that man, does she still slip into thinking of him as hers?) “I’ve been telling you, all of you, but none of you seems to listen.”
Cartwright’s breath hisses tiredly. “The problem is, you see, the lack of evidence—”
“Evidence be damned. Who wanted me and Jenny dead? Arthur. Because I dared to walk away from him after all these years,” says Blanche with a sob that’s almost triumphant, “and it was Jenny who gave me the strength to do it, and she died for it.”
She stalks away.
She’s almost at the gates of the cemetery when Cartwright hails her again. “Just one more question—”
Blanche groans.
“Only for background,” the journalist pleads, “to liven up the story. What was the appeal?”
Is that a legal term? she wonders.
“If I may ask, I mean—” His cheeks are rose red. “What was it that attached you so powerfully to this particular girl?”
Blanche stares at him. And growls, “You never met her.”
On Dupont, when she finally gets back to Chinatown from the cemetery, the evening heat’s streaking the burnt cork on a young song-seller’s cheeks. On arrival in America, Blanche was disconcerted by blackface minstrels, but now she doesn’t bat an eye even when they’re wearing skirts. This one is pealing out his song in falsetto, holding up the freshly inked lyric sheets in one hand and his petticoats in the other:
The bullfrog married the tadpole’s sister,
Old Aunt Jemima, Oh! Oh! Oh!
He smacked his lips and then he kissed her,
Old Aunt Jemima, Oh! Oh! Oh!
He doesn’t look at all bad, actually; prettier than some real girls. The music gives Blanche a reason to stand still and catch her breath.
She says if you love me as I love you,
Old Aunt Jemima, Oh! Oh! Oh!
No knife can cut our love in two,
Old Aunt Jemima, Oh! Oh! Oh!
Her thoughts move turgidly. She has to do it, this one last show for Madame Johanna tonight. After clearing her spurious debt to the madam, Blanche should have almost three hundred dollars left. That should be enough to buy her some kind of future. Rent, food, clothes. It’ll give her time to hide away from the macs, at least, and wait for P’tit—or for news that he’s never coming back. Blanche presses her hand to her face for a moment.
She steps aside to avoid a knot of tourists following their guide out of a temple, all of them clutching overpriced incense sticks. Then she walks the other way, toward the House of Mirrors.
In a few minutes she’s standing by the stately doors of the blue-and-white mansion. The sign is fresh painted and almost as tall as Blanche.
FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY!
THE LIVELY FLEA’S FAREWELL TO THE TOWN.
LAST DANCE OF MURDERED GIRL’S BOSOM PAL.
Well, Blanche might have known Madame would milk the tragedy. She’s almost surprised there isn’t a large drawing of Blanche wearing nothing but a bloodstained corset.
The expressionless doorman lets her in. She can hear waves of laughter from the Grand Saloon; she pauses and puts her eye to the crack between the doors as she’s passing. Some burlesque about the epidemic? Lola and Paquita with what looks like—could it be?—fresh cranberries pasted all over their arms, chests, and faces. A month since Blanche has been here. The gaudy thick carpets, oil paintings, marbles, and, above all, the long mirrors are a shock to her senses.
She turns down the corridor that’s just for performers. Her skin crawls. Just one last time.
The empty dressing room at the end has been freshly wallpapered. She fingers the familiar costumes. Hourglass-shaped ball gowns, orthodox enough until they end above the knee. Military: fringed trunks, frogging, and tassels. The Andalusian outfit has a calf-length split skirt and castanets. The alabaster statue costume, more or less transparent. Hamlet, complete with Yorick’s skull, and boots that lace to the thigh. A bowl of wax fruit, a bow and arrow … Nothing looks appealing. It was always shoddy glamour, Blanche can see that now.
Suddenly decisive, she pulls on a peasant skirt from one costume, a shiny bodice from the Andalusian set, a little bolero jacket.
There’s a faint tap at the door. “My dear, so glad,” says Madame Johanna, putting her head around the door. Then her eyebrows soar. “All in mourning black tonight?”
“It seemed fitting.” Blanche keeps her eyes on the tiny faux-pearl buttons she’s doing up. “Ever so tasteful, the sign out front,” she adds, scathing.
The Prussian spreads her cloud-gray sleeves. “My doors are open to all who seek sensation. I don’t discriminate.”
“Well, that’s for sure,” Blanche mutters, tugging an opera glove up past her elbow. She needs to ask about Lamantia, just to put to rest that strange theory of Cartwright’s that she’s been turning over and over in her mind. But she’ll wait until after she’s danced, because she can’t afford to start another quarrel right now.
“The Professor wants to know what you mean to treat us to tonight.”
“‘Flea’ and ‘Bang Away, Lulu,’” says Blanche.
A pause. “Just two numbers?”
“Oh, I think that’ll provide enough sensation.”
Madame is clearly debating whether to press the point, to demand a lot more for the extraordinary fee of five hundred dollars. Instead she withdraws.
Blanche goes to stand outside the door to the stage, recognizing the final thumps of Fabienne’s flamenco skipping-rope act. The piano’s been tuned, which is some relief. She goes over her routines in her head, trying to block out the sound of Madame’s hushed, thrilling voice as she warms up the crowd for the enigmatic Blanche la Danseuse.
Blanche opens the door a crack to check whether the lights have gone low. She waits for silence. The excited babble of the audience dies away in the near dark.
She walks onto the little stage, as formal as some courtier. A storm of applause when the lights flare up. Blanche averts her face until the cheering subsides. She makes a rapid scan of the whole room: not a single velvet chair is empty, and there’s no sign of Lamantia, thank Christ. He can’t have been involved in the murder; he just can’t. But then what was he doing out at San Miguel Station on Wednesday?
The tune is a nervous tarantella, slow at first, then it starts to hurry, and Blanche twitches. It’s a simple routine, no intricate steps to remember or feats of flexibility to perform. She simply pretends there’s something in her clothes, flea, spider, skeeter, bee, wasp—it really doesn’t matter so long as she imagines it vividly enough. The music’s half the trick of it: stop and start, itchily agitated, then more and more maddened as the invisible parasite starts to bite. Madame’s always advertised the Lively Flea as Blanche’s specialty, “strai
ght from gay Paree,” and in June, when some girl on California Street started doing it, Madame sent a bouncer over to put paid to that. But the fact is, Blanche picked the gist of the act up from another showgirl who spent only a few weeks at the House of Mirrors before heading off to Chicago. The only difference is that Blanche plays it in earnest, not for laughs.
Tonight what she pictures is one of the vicious mosquitoes from San Miguel Station. She flinches, twists, spins around on herself. Her fingers pursue the invisible invader up her gloves, down her neck, under her sweeping black hem. Every micheton in the house must be able to imagine where the bug’s got to, every tiny fold and crevice.
The tarantella’s driving Blanche out of her mind now, and she’s peeling her gloves off and flinging them away, her own hands molesting her, plunging up her skirt, raking her thighs, clawing at her skin as if she wants to shed it … No flesh-colored tights tonight because she’s broken with protocol, and her pale, flawless legs are bare. Her eyes are terrified. She wrenches off the bolero jacket, hears a seam rip. She fights her hair in its chignon until it falls down. She tears the black satin bodice open down the middle and fake pearls explode onto the floorboards.
Some of the michetons in the audience look more alarmed than aroused, it occurs to Blanche, but does she give a good goddamn? She goes into one last fit of frenzy and collapses in the middle of the stage.
“Whoooooo!” Men are throwing up their hats and catching them, roaring “Blanche! Blanche! Blanche!”
She waits for the clamor to die away. Do they like her like this, laid low? Hair in her eyes, kohl halfway down her cheeks, kneeling in a plain corset and drawers like any destroyed woman?
The Professor’s eyes are as neutral as ever. He gives Blanche that private nod that means Ready? Then launches into the simple, jolly chords of her last number.
Rage; Blanche recognizes the feeling at last. Deep down revulsion at the prospect of spending another night of her life turning this old crank.
She summons her forces and stands. Hand on one hip, like some slapdash streetwalker. “‘I wish I was a diamond,’” she begins sweetly,