Parlor Games (18 page)

“Where are they?”

“With their grandmother, in Guatemala.”

“You never told me.”

“It is not your business.” He arranged the puppets in seated positions on the couch.

I felt small, deceived, unimportant. I studied the floor.

Juan came up close to me and grasped my shoulders. “Why would you care about another woman’s children?”

“You mean their mother.” I looked at him with soft eyes. “Where is their mother?”

“My wife died three years ago. Her and the new baby.”

I flattened a hand over my heart. “Oh, Juan, I’m so sorry.”

“It does not matter now.” He drew me into his arms. “I have you,
mi amorcita
.”

I told Sue Marie the next day, during her afternoon visit to the apartment.

“So much for a tidy job of blackmail,” she said, throwing up her arms as she leaned against the kitchen counter. “After all the trouble to get you set up here.”

I cast my glance around the room—at the heart-pine flooring I’d recently polished, the fickle potted plants I tended, and the window’s lace curtains, which had taken up an afternoon of shopping. “Believe me, the last thing I wanted was to play wife.”

“You’ve got it better than me, sister.”

“I should leave him,” I said, retrieving the coffeepot from the stove and signaling her to follow me to the dining table. “We could move on.”

“And give up after all the time we’ve put in?”

“He’s getting terribly possessive.”

Sue Marie plopped down at her place setting. “We don’t have enough money for moving on.”

I poured coffee for us, sat, and stirred some cream into my cup. “Then I’ll ask for more allowance.”

“We can do better than allowance money. His coffee business rakes in plenty.”

“So? You expect me to sell the company out from under him?”

“No, just find the money.”

What could I do but forge ahead? Sue Marie and I had an agreement, and I could hardly complain while she slaved away at a bordello.

As of early March 1890, Juan was not only jealously guarding me from other men’s eyes, but working long hours, which left me cooped up in the apartment for days on end. I had come to dread his mocking inquiries about my activities. They verged on meanness and forced me to determine his state of mind by reading the compression of his brow and the twitch of his mustache.

I wanted to leave him, but his zealous watchfulness, as well as my partnership with Sue Marie, left me little choice. After sitting down to dinner in our apartment one evening, I said, “Juan, you’re neglecting me. I hardly see you in the evenings.”

“I am with you every night, except when I do my business travel.” He chomped down on a morsel of steak, as if to close the subject.

I placed my fork down beside my plate and studied my lap. “You come home and shut yourself away at your desk for hours.”

He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “That is how it is. I must see to my business.”

“I miss you. All day I wait for you, and then you work for hours.”

“We will go away this weekend.” He reached out and cupped his hand over mine. “Every weekend, if you want.”

“But it will be the same when we come home. Let me help you with the business.”

“No.” He braced his knife upright in his fisted hand. “It is not work for a woman.”

“I can help. I studied business and business law in Chicago.”

“It is my job.”

“But I want to. I could keep the ledger. I could manage your correspondence.”

“No, it is not right,” he said, cutting a chunk of steak and waving it at me. “Now eat.”

Over the coming month, I carried out a campaign of careful timing and expert complaisance. A wild-horse trainer could not have coaxed more gently or patiently. It took weeks of seduction—“See how well I know you and what you like?”—tear-shedding—“You don’t trust me”—and cajoling—“Many important American businessmen have their wives and lady friends assist them”—before Juan relented. At first he merely allowed me to sit with him and update orders in his ledger. But before March ran out, I was writing orders and occasionally accompanying him on calls to his businesses. By early April, I had proven myself a competent and efficient bookkeeper and assistant.

“Juan, shall I collect on the orders while you’re in Seattle?”

“It would do no good. Payments can only be released to me.”

“But I could deposit them, couldn’t I? The funds would be in the account, should you need to wire for them.”

“I have already covered the week’s orders.”

I stomped a foot down and eyed him pleadingly. “And how will we take our long holiday if you try to do all the collections on Friday?”

He shook his head. “Then go ahead. But deposit the checks right after you collect. I don’t want them kept here.”

“Of course, Juan. I know that’s how you run your business.”

I did collect that week. I took the smallest check, eighty-eight dollars from Goodson’s Wholesale Coffee, to a bank in Oakland. “I’d like to open an account in the name of Juan’s Coffee Imports, please.”

“And who will be the signers on this account?”

“Until further notice, only myself.”

I rushed home and sent a message to Sue Marie to come around right away with eighty-eight dollars from our funds, which I intended to deposit in Juan’s San Francisco bank. Then, so as to reconcile the accounting, I recorded that Goodson’s had paid their week’s bill.

“Aren’t you a clever one,” Sue Marie cooed when I informed her I’d opened an account.

I grabbed her hands. “He’ll be in Los Angeles for a full week at the end of the month.”

“How much do you think you can collect?”

“A few thousand.”

She pulled back from my grasp. “Is that all?”

“Don’t get greedy,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t fight me. “Soon enough we’ll be able to move on.”

She studied me for a few moments. A smile drifted across her face. “I can say good-bye to the whorehouse.”

My eyes circled around the kitchen, taking in the beastly cookstove and the cups and plates I’d neatly arranged in their glass-fronted cupboards. “And I to the shut-in life of a wife.”

The day before Juan was scheduled to return from Los Angeles, I collected on the outstanding accounts and cashed the checks at my Oakland bank. Sue Marie visited in the late afternoon so we could put the finishing touches on our plan to steal away in the morning. I counted out the money for her on the bed, beside my open, packed suitcase.

“That’s it—$2,216?”

“I told you not to expect much.” I tucked the money alongside my jewels in the false bottom of my suitcase.

“Doesn’t he have any money around here?”

“No, he doesn’t keep money here.”

“What about those diamond cuff links?”

A key wiggled in the entrance door.

“My God, it can’t be.” I slammed my suitcase shut and shoved it under the bed.

“Hello,” Juan’s voice called.

Turning to Sue Marie, I whispered, “Pretend we’re on our way to the market.”

“I’m in here, Juan,” I answered, emerging from the bedroom with Sue Marie trailing behind.

“Ah,
mi florecita
,” Juan said. As he caught sight of Sue Marie, a puzzled expression rippled his features.

I rushed up to him and kissed him. “What a surprise.”

“I thought we could start early on our holiday,” he said, looking over my shoulder at Sue Marie.

“Hello, Mr. Ramón,” said Sue Marie.

“Miss Littleton, nice to see you again.”

Clapping my hand over his arm, I said, “Why don’t you relax, and I’ll have Sue Marie help me at the market.”

“May I take you two to dinner?” Juan asked.

“No, no. You rest up.”

Sue Marie and I bounded down the stairs and out into the late afternoon’s overcast skies. As we turned onto the street, I took her arm and said, “Act casual, he might be watching us.”

“Your packed suitcase is under the bed.”

“I can say I was packing for our holiday.”

“How will you get it out of there?”

“I’ll have to send him on an errand in the morning.”

“Damn,” Sue Marie said. “Why’d he have to show up and upset our plan?”

“It’s not ruined. We just have to think.”

“There’s nothing to make him suspicious, is there?”

We turned off Powell, out of sight of the apartment window. I stopped and grabbed her arm. “I didn’t update the ledger.”

“Will he check?”

“He might. Unless I can distract him.” How could I do that, I wondered, as we neared the neighborhood market. I turned to Sue Marie. “Can you cook?”

“One thing. Pork chops and greens.”

“Then I’ll tell him you insisted on cooking for us, so that he and I can plan our holiday. After you leave, I’ll get him right to bed and insist he not bother with the ledger.”

“We better be sharp,” said Sue Marie, picking up the pace, “and not give him time to suspect anything.”

I nodded. “It’ll take some fancy footwork.”

“Fancy footwork?” Sue Marie flapped her hands. “Leave the kitchen to me, and I’ll get us out of here faster than a fox after a rabbit.”

Juan lit up a cigar as he leaned back from the dinner table. “Your friend, she is a very talented cook.”

A cool spring rain pattered on our windows, but the kitchen stove
had blazed for nearly an hour, rendering the apartment overheated and claustrophobic. I pushed my picked-at dinner to the side. “She is a treasure, isn’t she?”

Sue Marie glided in with a tray and placed it on the sideboard. “Let me clear the table.”

Juan looked up at her as she reached for his plate. “Very nice, Miss Littleton. The pork was as tender as butter.”

Sue Marie plucked our plates from the table. “The greens are a Kentucky specialty. Were they to your liking?”

“
Sí
, very tasty.”

Sue Marie disappeared into the kitchen with the tray.

“Pity it’s so rainy tonight,” I said. “I hope it’ll clear by morning.”

“How is Sue Marie getting home?”

“She can get a carriage on Powell. And we can have the rest of the evening to ourselves. Just you and me.”

Sue Marie returned with three drinks on a tray. “May I join you for after-dinner drinks?”

Juan rose to pull out a chair for Sue Marie. “Please, Miss Littleton.”

“This is my own creation,” Sue Marie said, placing the drinks before us and taking her seat. “It’s slightly bitter, but excellent for digestion.”

Bitter? She wouldn’t dare resort to that back-alley ploy of knockout drops, would she? And put our plan at risk?

Juan reached for his drink. “To my lovely ladies.”

“Juan,” I said, “did you finish unpacking?”

Juan scooped up his glass. “No, I’ll finish later. To your health, my dears.”

I tasted the drink. It was sweet and strong, like rum laced with sugar, but not bitter.

Juan sipped a bit and puckered. “Most unusual. Bitter under the sweet.”

I reached out to restrain Juan. “I really don’t care for it. I’m sure Sue Marie won’t be insulted if you don’t finish it.”

Sue Marie shot me a shut-your-mouth look.

Juan clapped his free hand over mine, lifted the cordial glass to his lips, gulped down the rest of the drink, and exhaled. “Ahhh.”