Free The Gilded Age, a Time Travel by Lisa Mason Page B

sides a fine reproduction of Emanuel Leutze’s painting of George
Washington crossing the Delaware. More coolies in wide-brimmed caps and denim pajamas
dash across the avenue, their baskets heaped with vegetables or fish and slung
on yokes that they bear over their shoulders. Daniel spies the Palace Hotel
looming eight stories high and taking up the whole block. Other elegant
commercial buildings boast an intricate style more flamboyant, more exuberant,
more baroque than any architecture he’s ever seen. The street lamps are crafted
of beveled capiz shell and stained glass.
    Ladies
in their summer dresses and gentlemen in top hats and checked vests snack from
picnic baskets right on the street corners, uncork wine bottles. A crowd
congregates around a tall fountain made of gray marble cherubs, dipping cups
and glasses into a sparkling fluid spouting from the cherubs’ mouths.
    “What
is it?” Daniel exclaims.
    “Help
yourself.” A gentleman with a face blooming scarlet dips his hand. “Happy
Fourth of July!”
    Daniel
scoops up a palmful of cheap champagne from the fountain, astringent bubbles
tickling his nose as the wine slides down his throat. The strapping porter
grins and plunges his face right into the champagne cascading from a cherub’s
mouth. That’s San Francisco in the Year of Our Lord, 1895, Daniel thinks. Champagne
for all.
    A
ferocious clanging cuts through the celebratory din. A spectacular red and
black fire wagon with polished brass fittings, a gigantic brass cask of water,
and intricate pumping equipment thunders by, pulled by wild-eyed blowing steeds
whose prancing hooves show off their skill at negotiating city streets beyond
the capability of the ordinary nag. Boys cheer and whoop and chase after the frantic
fire wagon.
    “Happens
every Fourth, mister,” says the porter with a malicious grin. “Some blighter
lands a rocket on somebody’s roof, and the whole joint burns down. Ha, ha.”
    “Burns
down!” What about Father’s commercial building on Stockton Street? Daniel
suddenly wonders if Father’s tenants have any inkling he’s here. But how could
they? Father felt that taking them by surprise was the best strategy and, after
his last pleas for payment, he had wired no one. Still, Daniel feels uneasy.
It’s the noise and confusion, he tells himself, the smell of gunpowder, the
lingering aftertaste of puma piss. He takes out a handkerchief, wipes sticky
champagne off his palm. “Let’s get going.”
    “Sure,
mister.” The porter stops in his tracks, holds out his hand. “But first,
that’ll be two bits for unloadin’ you from the ferry.”
    “Oh,
very well.” Daniel searches his jacket pocket. He blew too much cash at the First
and Last Chance Saloon, that’s a fact. But he’s got more. He reaches into his
vest, his fingers searching for the smooth Moroccan leather of his boodle book.
He’s got a few treasury notes, but Father warned him no one honors paper currency
in the West. A gentleman needs coins, gold preferably, and he’s got several
dozen in the coin pocket of the boodle book. Now where is the blasted thing? It
seems to have migrated someplace.
    Daniel
searches, puzzled, and pats his pockets, reaching here and there. Nothing?
Nothing! “Damn,” he mutters.
    “Something
the matter, mister?” That malicious grin again.
    With
an awful sinking feeling, Daniel knows the boodle book and its contents are
long gone. “Seems I’ve lost my dough.”
    “Cashed
in your chips on the trip out, did ye?”
    “No,
I haven’t gambled since. . . . No. That bird. The little bird I left the ferry
with.”
    “Oh,
her? Good ol’ Fanny, she’s a hummer, ain’t she?”
    “By
God, are you telling me she’s a dip?”
    “Fanny
Spiggot? Ha, ha. Faintin’ Fanny, that’s what we call her. A’ course, a smart
young gentleman like yourself wouldn’t fall for her racket, now would ye?”
    Daniel
fights the anger and disgust welling in his chest while the porter sticks his
mug