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“The city goes home at sundown,” she said, swooshing the broom back and forth, clearing a day’s worth of dust from the two short steps. “Ever since those two Texians went missing. As if the world ought to stop for a pair of brownbacks without the sense to come up from the river at midnight. ” The woman spit fast and hard, leaving a damp spot on the cobbled walkway.
“I didn’t know,” Cly admitted. “And if that’s the case, we need to find ourselves some rooms for the night. Could you recommend anything?”
She stopped her sweeping and appraised the group before saying, “Other side of the Square is the Widow Pickett’s place. She puts up men, soldiers, sailors. Folks like yourselves—airmen, I’m guessing?”
The captain said, “That’s right. ”
“And a couple of Chinamen like you got there—they shouldn’t be a problem for her. She takes negroes and Creoles and everyone else, as long as you can pay. Or if she’s all full up, I think the Rogers place on Esplanade could take you. ”
“Thanks for your time,” Kirby Troost told her. He touched the front of his hat as they walked away, on toward the Square at a somewhat quicker pace. As they walked, he added to the captain, “Shame we can’t just stay at the Garden Court. Can’t cost that much more. ”
“Don’t you start, now. ”
“Who’s starting? He’s what—sixteen, seventeen? I was younger than that when I got married for the first time. ”
“When you—?” Cly gave him a confused gaze, then shook his head. “Forget about schooling Houjin. Leave that up to his uncle. ”
“Back in Seattle, where there are about fifty men to every woman?”
“More men than that, if you count all the fellas in Chinatown—and there’s no reason you shouldn’t. ”
“And the women who’re there, you could count ’em on one hand … most of them so old, they could be his mother. Not that there’s anything wrong with learning from an older woman, mind you. ”
“Can we change the subject now?”
“Sure. Why can’t we stay at the Garden Court?”
“How about we don’t talk at all. I like the sound of that even better. ”
To the captain’s left, Fang laughed, silent except for a series of soft snorts.
“Not you, too,” Cly complained.
I didn’t say anything.
“You didn’t have to. ”
“What are you talking about?” Houjin had been walking ahead, eyes up on the brightly painted buildings with their brilliant white latticework balconies and tumbling planters full of gardenias, daisies, and flowers with bright pink petals like trumpets.
“Nothing,” Cly said quickly. “Turn left up at the next street, will ya? We’re almost there. ”
The Widow Pickett was not precisely what anyone had expected, but Kirby Troost in particular was quite charmed to meet her acquaintance. Said widow wasn’t thirty unless she was practicing witchcraft. She had
a figure to inspire envy in ladies and lust in gentlemen, with a tall pile of hair the color of wheat and strawberries. As the black woman on the storefront stairs had predicted, the widow had no problem whatsoever providing shelter to the oriental men or anyone else, and before long two rooms were arranged, paid for, and settled in.
Fang and Houjin shared one two-bedded room, for Houjin could ask all the questions he wanted and Fang never appeared to mind; the captain and Kirby shared the other—though the captain never did bother with the skinny, too-short bed. As a matter of habit, he pulled the mattress onto the floor and flipped the frame up against the wall. He’d hang off the padding one way or another, but there was no reason to let his feet dangle in midair.
“You may as well settle in for the night,” he told Kirby Troost. “Go downstairs and see about some supper. The sun’ll be down in another hour. ”
“You say that like you don’t intend to do likewise. ”
“I figured I’d head over to the Garden and have a real quick business chat with my old friend. ”
“You’re headed to the whorehouse without me?” he asked accusingly.
“Yes, but I can’t stay long, not with the curfew, and—”
Troost nodded knowingly. “And that’s why you want to go now. Shit, man. You must be scared to death of this woman. ”
