Parlor Games

by Maryka Biaggio

  SPOILED SPOILS

  SAN FRANCISCO—DECEMBER 1889–APRIL 1890

  Sue Marie didn’t object to Juan’s spoiling me—that is, not once she’d verified his status as a successful importer. By playing the part of an assistant to a coffee dealer and exploring possibilities for bringing more coffee business to San Francisco, she discovered that Mr. Ramón had made his mark on the city. And a few weeks later, after I stole a peek into his wallet and spied a picture of him with a woman and two little boys, Sue Marie’s enthusiasm for our liaison was sealed.

  “You have to get him into a compromising position,” Sue Marie said, pacing our hotel room. “Ask for an apartment. And an allowance.”

  I relaxed in our room’s overstuffed chair. “At the right moment.”

  Sue Marie stopped in her tracks in front of me. “The right moment, my fanny. We’re almost broke.”

  “Where’d all the money go?”

  The look she gave me could’ve scared a bear. “I need to eat, too.”

  Snuggling the folds of my robe over my legs, I said, “Some things take time.”

  “Listen,” she said, looming over me. “While you’re being wined and dined, I’m climbing streets steep as mountains and wringing every last drop out of our pennies.”

  “Fine, fine. I know what I’m doing. Let me play it my way.”

  “Yeah, you won the lead role—you’d better play it.”

  That evening, Juan and I stepped into a cabriolet outside the Palace, and Juan ordered the driver to the Poodle Dog. As we trundled through the city’s misty rain, we passed by department-store windows decorated with nativity scenes, and a caroling party strolling arm in arm. Still, save for the clomp of our horse’s hooves, a glum quiet pervaded our carriage compartment.

  I nestled up alongside Juan, who had been morose from the minute we’d stepped into the carriage. “Don’t you love this time of year?”

  I surmised he had not embraced the spirit of Christmas, for he clenched his hands on the tops of his knees and asked, “Why were you talking to Mr. Schmidt in the lobby?”

  “Oh, him,” I said, circling my hand around his arm. “He insists on exchanging pleasantries every time he sees me.”

  “You do not encourage him?”

  “Goodness, no.” I kissed his cheek, resolved to shower him with affection the rest of the evening. As my acquaintance with Juan deepened, the veneer of his charm had thinned, and the surliness of a wronged husband occasionally surfaced. “I haven’t the slightest interest in any other man.”

  “I will take you away for Christmas, to San Diego.”

  Much as the prospect of escaping San Francisco’s damp chill appealed to me, I couldn’t abandon Sue Marie. Besides, our money was dwindling fast. “Travel again? I’ve barely gotten settled here.”

  “We would only stay long enough to warm up in the sunshine.”

  “What I’d really like is a home for you and me right here in San Francisco.” I nestled my chin on his shoulder and looked up at him. “If I had an apartment with a kitchen, I could prepare coffee exactly as you like it. I could be waiting for you each day.”

  “No, we have my suite at the Palace.”

  “A hotel room,” I said with a heaving sigh. “Please don’t take offense, but it seems tawdry.”

  “An apartment is not practical.”

  “But you’re away on business so much.”

  Juan stiffened beside me. “It makes no sense to pay for an apartment and my hotel when I travel.”

  I pressed one hand over my bosom. “Are you saying you don’t want to spend the money on me? That I’m not worth it?”

  “Don’t be foolish.”

  “I hate having all those men ogle me in the lobby.”

  “And if you had an apartment, how do I know you would not see other men there?”

  I let go of his arm and pulled away from him. “I would never do that. How could you think such a thing?”

  I pouted all the way to the Poodle Dog. Finally, once we were seated, Juan apologized. To keep his spirits up, I fawned over him while we dined and pointedly ignored the glances of passing men.

  When we took up our carriage again, on our way to the Tivoli Opera House, I entwined my fingers in his and cast my eyes downward, studying the walnut-colored skin of his broad hand. “Juan, I can hardly believe you accused me of considering another man.”

  He cupped his other hand over mine and twisted around. “Forgive me, mi florecita.”

  The trace of a whimper escaped from my throat. I closed my eyes and clamped my lips tight together, trying to suppress the tears pressing at my eyelids.

  “Do not cry. You shall have your apartment,” said Juan, kissing my forehead.

  I blinked my eyes open. “On Powell Street?”

  “Sí, wherever you like. A place for just the two of us.”

  In January, Juan secured and furnished an apartment on Powell Street—a lovely one-bedroom affair with a living-and-dining area, a serviceable kitchen, a bathroom with modern plumbing, and wallpaper so freshly applied I could still smell the pasty glue. Although Juan had acceded to my request for a weekly allowance, which Sue Marie insisted on budgeting, the amount was insufficient for the apartment expenses, my dress budget, and her room at the Palace—or any other hotel, for that matter. She was forced to take employment at Lillie Winters’s brothel on Columbus Avenue, though she registered quite a protest: “This is not what we planned. I won’t put up with this for long.”

  “Don’t be so impatient. I’ve only just settled into the apartment.”

  “He hasn’t even bought you one trinket. You better figure out how you’re going to cash in on your Mr. Ramón.”

  Then my Mr. Ramón upset the whole apple cart. One afternoon in February, he arrived home with two carved-wood puppets. “Look what I found for my little ones.”

  “Little ones?” I asked, closing my Sherlock Holmes story and rising from the couch. “You have children?”

  Juan stood before me, holding one of the puppets in each hand and grinning mischievously. “Sí, two boys.”

  “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 sid
e. “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.”

  “I’ll clean up and get dessert ready,” said Sue Marie, leaving us at the table.

  The sounds of colliding metal and china clanged from the kitchen as Sue Marie cleaned the pots, plates, and utensils she’d dirtied during her culinary escapade. I kept a close eye on Juan, trying to figure out if his drink had been fixed. The kitchen noise subsided and Sue Marie peeked out, craning her neck to see over Juan’s shoulder. I truly hoped she hadn’t slipped him knockout drops. I had enough to worry about: making it through the night without questions about the ledger; retrieving my suitcase; and getting us out of town before Juan visited his bank in the morning.