Frog Music (30 page)

“Some fights are ripe for the picking,” insists Jenny.

And he’s there, all at once, in front of Blanche, moving with the gait of a long-legged bird, eyes red-rimmed and his face so drawn and clammy that she wonders if he’s ill.

Ernest seizes her by her elbow and marches her down the nearest alley, holding her close—a parody of a suitor. These Chinatown lanes all close in overhead like pleats in stained cloth. Waverly Place, that’s where they are: Blanche recognizes the barbershop with the Tin How Temple on its top floor. Fifteen-Cent Alley, some call this, for the price of the haircuts.

“How dare you show your face,” he’s demanding, “you infernal whore.”

He’s not sick, she realizes, except with rage.

Jenny’s right behind her but not saying a word. (Small mercies.)

“Ernest.” As softly as Blanche can. “I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened.” There’s a face watching through a sliding panel in the nearest door: a
mui jai
. Then a small hand, beckoning. Is the girl offering Blanche a refuge from the furious man, or inviting him in?
Two bittee lookee
. She forces her eyes back to Ernest. “All I’m asking for is my P’tit.”

“How do you have the gall to pretend you’re a woman? If you wanted that baby,” says Ernest in a wolfish snarl, “if you’d ever really wanted him, wouldn’t you have held on tight to him when he first dropped out of your hole?”

She cringes away from the words more than from his spirituous breath.

“No answer to that one?” He grabs her jaw with one hard hand, squeezes her lips together. “Then why don’t you shut your mouth?”

“Hey, hey,” says Jenny, pleasantly, at their side.

He barks over his shoulder. “Stand down, Bonnet, or I’ll see to you.”

“No, you stand down. You’re hurting the lady.”

“What lady?” Ernest yelps with a sort of laughter.

Blanche feels his grip relax a moment, and she shoves with both arms and wrestles her jaw away from him, staggering backward. The pain brings tears to her eyes. The
mui jai
’s pale face is gone from the door; the panel slides shut.

Instead of seizing Blanche again, Ernest turns to Jenny. “Settle something for the record, would you? Arthur maintains you’re just an interfering meddler. But my money’s on your being a dirty
gouine
who wants this muff for herself.”

He flicks one finger at Blanche, who goes rigid when she understands him.

“Fact or fiction,
chérie
?” he asks, stepping close enough to Blanche to make her leap out of range again. “I just hope you charge high, for the dignity of the trade. Don’t tell me you’re doing this piece of filth for free.”

Jenny cuts in relaxedly before Blanche can answer. “I declare, you fellows are the limpest pair of leeches I’ve ever encountered. You sponge off Blanche for the full of a year, then sulk like cast-off mistresses the minute she decides to go solo. Castor and Pollux!” She lets out a snort of mirth. “I say it’s high time you get out there”—she waves toward Sacramento Street—“and peddle your own handsome asses.”

Blanche can’t believe Jenny just said that.

For a moment Ernest only stares, and then he’s clawing at Jenny’s jacket.

“Oy,” she shouts, “hands off.”

“That’s my friend’s shirt,” he snarls, “the one that he—gentleman that he is—was kind enough to lend you the night we found you stinking up the sofa, and you never gave it back, you goddamn thief.”

Jenny’s fighting back in a tangle of arms and kicking legs. The gray jacket’s half open, the pale green shirt loose in the vee of the waistcoat, buttons popping off. “You’ve torn it, you son of a bitch!” She’s half bare, eyes bulging. She wrests herself away, skips to beyond Ernest’s reach, and suddenly the Colt’s out and pointed at him.

Putain de merde
. How did Blanche let it come to this, murder about to be done in a Chinatown alley on a Monday afternoon in September?

“I give you fair warning—” Jenny speaks levelly, even though she’s out of breath. With the hand not holding the gun, she wraps the ripped shirt around her to cover up her pale ribs, shoves it into her pants.

“Warning of what?” sneers Ernest, standing tall the way Monsieur Loyal always taught them. “It’s not your clothes I’m going to rip to pieces, Bonnet, it’s you. Whale the tar out of you, fix you for good and all, so you can’t ever lure a woman from her man again.”

“That’s not what happened,” Blanche protests, “you crack-brained—”

But the click of Jenny cocking her Colt makes a little pool of silence in Waverly Place. “Fix me?” Jenny says, smiling at Ernest. “You ain’t the only one to try that. But I’ll dance on your grave first.”

“Jenny!” Blanche shrieks.

Ernest’s eyes slide to Blanche, then back to Jenny. He jerks his head over his shoulder toward Sacramento. “You really mean to gun me down in broad daylight with witnesses all around?”

The three of them are standing very still.

“He’s not worth hanging for,” Blanche roars at her. Blanche could end up in jail for this business, along with her so-called friend.

Jenny purses her dry lips.

“I didn’t think so,” says Ernest. “You’ve made your bed. Time to lie in it.” He turns his back on them and starts walking up the alley.

He strikes a pose at the corner of Sacramento. Peers in both directions, then lets out a piercing whistle through his fingers. “Officers!”

Is he bluffing? Blanche wonders. Police almost never come into Chinatown.

“Come on,” she says, dipping to pick up Jenny’s scattered buttons from the dust, out of an obscure instinct to erase all traces of the encounter.

Jenny’s pocketing her Colt, very cool, and straightening her clothes. Waverly Place opens onto Clay Street at the other end, so they can be out of sight in half a minute.

But here comes Ernest, marching down the alley with two Specials. How the hell did he rustle them up so fast?

“Run,” Blanche whispers.

“Ah, that’d be called resisting arrest,” Jenny murmurs, “and those two know my face.” She sounds faintly proud of the fact. “Afternoon, Officers.” She tips her cap as she strolls to meet them.

“Well, if it isn’t our old friend the frog-catcher,” says the taller, red-faced one. “Done your time in County already?”

“Don’t time just fly,” Jenny replies.

“Been hunting today, I assume, from your costume?”

“Always on the lookout,” she assures them.

“Ribbit!” croaks the shorter man.

“What is this, a strawberry social?” demands Ernest hoarsely. “This female is clearly in male attire. Do your duty and arrest her.”

“Did this pup just try to tell us our duty?” the taller asks the shorter.

“As it happens, I’m on my way home to change,” Jenny puts in.

“Into bonnet and flounces?” asks the shorter one, deadpan.

“Got a bustle waiting for me the size of a wagon,” Jenny tells him, sketching it comically with her hands. “Now, I wish you both a good day …”

The taller puts a hand on her torn sleeve as she slides by. “Thirsty weather, this.”

“Isn’t it, though. Could I wish you well to the tune of two bucks?”

“I told you, she pulled a gun on me,” protests Ernest.

“Try ten,” the Special tells Jenny.

“Fellows! That’s as much as the judge would fine me.”

He shrugs. “Less fuss for all concerned, though. This way your evening’s your own.” His gesture takes in the whole City, as if he’s offering it to her on a plate.

“What would you say to five?” Jenny asks.

“I’d say come down handsome now, Jenny, or you’ll be back in the cells for supper.”

“Five’s pretty handsome,” she argues, still smiling.

Jenny hasn’t got ten, Blanche realizes, and she starts digging in her carpetbag for her own pocketbook.

“Take my five and call it quits?” Jenny splays the notes like a hand of cards.

“She’s a thief too,” Ernest bursts out. “That shirt belongs to Mr. Arthur Deneve—”

“And another five for your trouble, Officers,” says Blanche, holding out the coins she’s finally added up.

Jenny throws her an irritated look, as if Blanche has spoiled the game.

But the faces of the Specials have relaxed. They collect their winnings from the two women.

“Come on,” says Jenny in Blanche’s ear. She hooks her by the elbow and hurries her up the alley toward Sacramento Street. “It’s all hunky-dory now.”

“This is … this is corruption of the law to pervert the course of justice,” Ernest roars after the Specials. “What about my friend’s shirt?”

“Do we look as if we give a rat’s ass about a shirt?” the shorter inquires.

“Dandy Frogs and their goddamn clothes,” says the taller, rolling his eyes as they turn away.

VI
I HARDLY KNEW YE

On Tuesday, the twelfth of September, Blanche’s mouth still hurts. For a bewildered moment, waking up in the sour-smelling rented room on Commercial Street, she thinks she’s been gnawing at her own lips in her sleep, but then she remembers Waverly Place yesterday, and Ernest’s vicious grip on her face.

She lies still, feeling it settle on her: ennui. How can she be frightened and bored at the same time? Nothing to do today except wait, worry, wait some more.

If Arthur were here, at least he’d fuck me
. Blanche can’t quite believe she’s thinking that. But it’s true, she could count on him for that much; he was always ready to bend her over something if he had ten minutes free. The man spent most of his life in one of two states: half hard or willing to be hardened. There was a primitive comfort to it, the familiarity of being penetrated, somehow sharp and blunt at the same time. Occasionally Blanche’s mind used to float up to the ceiling and she’d look down and think:
How curious, those two, it seems so important to them, that bit of him pushing into that bit of her, in and out again, how repetitious
. But it worked. Fucking wasn’t always exquisite but it did make Blanche feel like a woman, like she knew what she was made for. Like something was happening. Five times a day, sometimes; she had to douche so much, her insides stung. So, yes, Arthur’s a son of a bitch, but she misses him.

There’s a scrap protruding under the door; Blanche thinks at first it’s just a square of light, but no, it’s the torn-off margin of a newspaper, and it bears an unfamiliar scrawl:
Heading to the Eight Mile House for a couple days (San Miguel Station)
. Blanche has heard the name before; a saloon of some kind, on the frayed southern edge of the City, where Jenny sometimes puts up if she’s stayed out late frog-hunting. So the note must be Jenny’s way of saying good-bye after the unsettling encounter with Ernest and the Specials on Waverly Place. Or, rather, her way of saying
Count me out. Nice knowing you. Places to be, frogs to catch …
Anger flares in Blanche like a match.

And then she reads it again and remembers that Jenny rarely volunteers information. Perhaps it’s meant as an invitation of a most nonchalant kind. Why would it be any of Blanche’s business where Jenny was heading unless Jenny was suggesting Blanche come along?

So here’s Blanche in a rented buggy an hour later making for San Miguel Station, because she can’t think of anything else to do, and her instincts tell her it’s best to stay out of Ernest and Arthur’s way as long as they’re in such a crazy rage. Since setting a pair of Specials on Jenny led to nothing worse than a ten-dollar fine, next time the
macs
might come with their knives:
fix you for good and all
. Blanche shudders, feelings Ernest’s thumbprint on her lip. Just talk, that’s all it was, probably, the kind of bluster men resort to in a row. But still. Time to get out of town.

After settling her bill on Commercial Street, Blanche doesn’t have much in the way of cash left, but there’s no point fretting, she tells herself. She could have taken the train but she fancied a ride, for once, hence the buggy. The speed of her motion stirs the parched air, making a sort of breeze. It’s been so long, Blanche has forgotten how good it feels to have wind moving over her, still hot but not half so stale. Why doesn’t everyone flee from the City who can?

It seems like years since Blanche has held a pair of reins. In the hack’s head-down, put-upon way, he’s got something in common with the circus horses who used to bear her balancings and flips. Wonderful to be up above the crowd, rattling over the cobbles of Stockton Street, making people hustle out of the way. She’s overshot Mission before she knows it, so she makes a sharp right on Howard to ensure she avoids Folsom, because the thought of the weeklies and the paid-ups is bad enough but that leads to P’tit, to what kind of room he might be shut in right now and what he might be gnawing on for lack of his doorknob, which rolls heavily from side to side in the bottom of Blanche’s carpetbag … Abandoning the City feels like giving up hope of finding P’tit.
Not for long
, Blanche swears to herself. What’s the old proverb about running away?
Live to fight another day
.

She cracks the reins to hurry the old horse on. Just as the stable boy at Marshall’s told her to, she’s following the single train track right across the Mission District. The horse slows as they climb the grade. From up here Blanche can glimpse the sea’s glittering tongue.

Through the Bernal Cut into Glen Canyon, and soon the bleak silhouette of what must be the Industrial School rears up on her right, with its scores of little windows winking through their bars; the stable boy told her to watch out for it, so she’d know she was almost at San Miguel Station. Fellows locked up in that place as old as twenty and as young as three, he mentioned—which disgusted Blanche. “Whips and gags for the troublemakers,” the stable boy added with relish. When Blanche mocked him for crediting every rumor he heard, he insisted that it had all come out before a grand jury.

“Gagged and whipped is what you’ll end up if you tell such lies,” Blanche said to him, but with a smile and a dime to tip him for the directions.

The hills are arid, pink. Out in the brunt of the sun, Italian-looking families haul water from their rickety windmills and spread horseshit.