Crooked Hearts

by Patricia Gaffney

  “How does it work?” she asked out of the side of her mouth.

  “The guy with the purse is called the tan kun, which means the ‘ruler of the spreading out.’ Watch what he does now. See? He takes a bunch of buttons out of that bowl, and now he hides them.”

  “Why?” He’d put a lid over the pile of buttons immediately after placing them on the table.

  “So the players can’t try to count them until after they bet. Now they’re betting.”

  The gamblers were putting money down on the four numbered sides of a square painted in the middle of the table—she hadn’t noticed it until now. “What are they betting on?”

  “They’re guessing how many buttons will be left after the last spreading out—one, two, three, or none.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all there is to it.”

  The banker began the “spreading out” with his wand, sorting the buttons in fours with lightning quickness, never faltering or making a clumsy pass. Within seconds he was paying off new winners—this time, the men who had put their money on the number three—and reaching into the bowl for another handful of buttons. “I like it,” decided Grace. “How much do you get if you win?”

  “Four times your bet, minus a small cut for the house.”

  She had another question. She should wait, ask it outside, but she was dying to know. Under her breath she murmured, “How do you cheat?”

  “You can’t.”

  She looked at him in disbelief. “Nobody can?”

  Now he was whispering too. “Sometimes the dealer uses a wider stick and hides a button in it to foil the heaviest bettors. But a player can’t cheat, not unless he’s connected to the house.”

  “Amazing.” She’d never heard of a game you couldn’t rig somehow. She was impressed.

  “We should go,” Reuben said.

  “Oh, no—so soon? Are you sure we can’t play? I’d love to try it.”

  “No, and the sooner we get out of here, the better they’ll like it.” He made a gesture with his chin toward the players.

  “Why? We’re not bothering anybody.”

  “We’re bad luck, I told you. White is the color of mourning and death, and we’re white. They associate us with losing.”

  “The house ought to pay us to stay, then,” she muttered, letting Reuben guide her toward the door. Hostile stares followed them all the way; she felt them on the back of her neck. When they reached the street, she couldn’t help feeling relieved.

  A man in a bamboo basket hat was selling spiced pork on the corner, and the enticing smell reminded her she was hungry. They found an eating house on China Street. Grace balked at first, put off by the pigs’ heads hanging from the rafters and the chicken gizzards and livers proudly displayed in bloody wooden bins at the entrance. But Reuben insisted, and when the meal came she had to admit it was delicious. She didn’t ask what was in the bowl of rice they were sharing, though, and she noticed he didn’t, either.

  It was getting dark by the time they finished dinner. Grace said they should go north and see if they could find Mark Wing’s house, but Reuben said Jackson Street was too far away. She argued with him, more from habit than conviction, but gave in when he pointed out that they wouldn’t know Wing’s house if they saw it, and it wasn’t likely he’d have his name on the door.

  They were walking through a particularly unsavory neighborhood near St. Mary’s Square; in the gathering twilight, the character of the streets and narrow houses changed, seemed to grow subtly more menacing. In a dark doorway, a woman’s form materialized; Grace caught a quick glimpse of her young, pretty face before she faded back into the shadows and disappeared. A lady of the evening, no doubt. Reuben had told her St. Mary’s Alley was one of the places where whores congregated after dark. Just then they passed a ramshackle building, with one brightly lit window on the ground floor. Behind the window—Grace blinked hard and looked again, to make sure—a woman sat, naked to the waist, smiling woodenly at passersby. Reuben was looking the other way; he went three steps by himself before noticing Grace wasn’t beside him. She’d stopped in her tracks to gape.

  “Did you see that? Did you see it?” she sputtered, letting him take her arm and drag her away. “That girl—did you see her?”

  “I saw her.”

  “She was just sitting there—naked as a jaybird!”

  “Come on, Gus.”

  She craned her neck for one last glimpse. “What did the sign say? Did you see the sign Under the window?”

  “I saw it.”

  “What did it say?”

  “How would I know? It was in Chinese.”

  Something in his voice convinced her he knew exactly what the sign said. “But the money was in English,” she insisted. “Three amounts—one dollar, two dollars, and ten dollars. What was it?” He kept shaking his head until she pulled on his arm. “Come on, Reuben, tell me. You know, I can tell. What were the amounts for?”

  “Why do you want to know so much?”

  “I just do. I’m curious. Come on, tell me.”

  He looked up at the sky and heaved a put-upon sigh. “I think—and I’m only guessing, of course—that for a dollar, the customer gets to fondle one of the lady’s … charms.”

  “In the window!”

  He nodded; his face was grim because he was trying not to smile. “And for—”

  “Never mind, I can work the rest out for myself.” For two dollars, the customer could fondle both “charms,” no doubt, and for ten, he got the most intimate favor of all. She wondered how exactly the sign expressed the latter, but at the same time she was glad Reuben couldn’t tell her. Or could he? Maybe he knew everything about it because he visited girls like that all the time. A little fire, hot and unpleasant, flared up in her at the thought. It almost felt like jealousy—but, of course, it couldn’t be.

  Besides, she couldn’t imagine Reuben having to pay a woman to have sex with him—even though some men, she’d heard, liked it better that way. But Reuben … well, he was too good-looking, for one thing; and for another, he was such an accomplished confidence man, she wouldn’t put it past him to figure out some way to make women pay to sleep with him.

  “Let’s go home, Grace.”

  “I’m not ready to go yet,” she said perversely. “I want to go to an opium den.”

  “You what?”

  “I want to see one.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Because I never have before. I’ve read about them, and now I want to see one, and this is probably my only chance. Have you ever seen one?” He gave a reluctant nod. “Why did you go?”

  He shrugged. “Curiosity.”

  “There you are. Take me to one, Reuben.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “Why? You said it wasn’t dangerous, not even at night.” She argued with him until he gave in. Jubilant, she clutched his arm and started walking. “I wish we had a gun, just in case. You don’t have one with you, do you?”

  “Of course not, don’t be an idiot.”

  “Don’t you ever carry a weapon?”

  “Certainly not. Why would I? I’m not a criminal.”

  She shook her head at him, mystified. “Do you know where a den is?” she asked, keeping her voice low, scaring herself on purpose.

  “They’re everywhere. We won’t have to go far.”

  He was right; they hadn’t gone a block before he guided her into a rubbish-strewn alley—Fish Alley, he told her; in single file because the passage was so narrow, they squeezed between two foul, sweating stone walls and came out into a fetid courtyard, as dirty as the alley had been. The door to the den—she knew it was a den because of the sweet fumes of the drug, strong even at this distance—stood partly closed, and a young man with only one arm stood guard in the half-light. “You smoke?” he asked, grinning and gesturing with a long pipe. His eyes were glazed; his expression was imbecilic. “We got Turkey drug, Persia drug, good smokee. You come inside?”
<
br />   Not far away, a man in rough work clothes was passing heavy wooden chests from a loaded cart to another man, visible only from the shoulders up because he was standing in a hole in the pavement—on steps or a ladder, presumably, leading to the den’s cellar. “Is that chests of opium?” Grace whispered to Reuben in amazement.

  “No, green tea,” he whispered back sarcastically. “They’re called piculs. That’s what the drug comes in from India or Turkey or wherever.” He took money from his pocket and handed it to the smiling doorman, conveying something to him under his breath. “Okay, boss,” the guard responded, grinning wider.

  “Come on,” Reuben said to Grace, taking her arm. “Let’s get it over with.”

  At first she couldn’t see anything except half a dozen dim lights scattered at random around a small black room. As her eyes adjusted, she made out mats on the floor, then benches, then bunks in stacks as high as the low ceiling. The stench was stupefying, the heavy air nearly opaque from smoke. Now she could see people reclining on the makeshift beds, women as well as men, in various stages of narcotism, from dreamy languor to unconsciousness. Everything was absolutely quiet, like a tomb.

  The lamps dotting the room were for lighting the pipes, she realized. She watched a thin, frail old man with no hair reach for his pipe, which was about eighteen inches long, with a curved stem. He dipped the end of a long wire into a metal container, like a snuffbox, and extracted a lump of something dark and gummy-looking. Holding the wire to the flame of his lamp, he waited until the lump began to sputter and bubble. With practiced fingers, he stuffed the stewing opium pellet into the bowl of the pipe and began to puff, exhaling through his nostrils. The gurgling sound of the cooking drug, like fat in a frying pan, was revolting; Grace shivered involuntarily. Presently the man’s eyelids drifted shut; the pipe slid from his fingers. He lay without moving in an opium trance, as pale and still as a dead man.

  “My God,” she murmured. “It’s horrible.” Beside her, Reuben nodded. Nothing but his solid, reassuring presence kept her from bolting. She took his hand and made herself look at the smoke-blackened walls and ceiling, the filthiness, the cloudy, reeking air, and most of all the hopeless lassitude of the addicts. They seemed more dead than alive, zombies dreaming narcotic dreams while their bodies decayed and their souls sank into depravity.

  Reuben’s arm came up around her shoulders. “Let’s go home, Grace,” he said softly.

  His gentleness had the baffling effect of making her want to hold him tight in her arms and feel his arms around her. She let him lead her out of the murky den and into the marginally more wholesome air of the courtyard. They found their way to Dupont Street without saying much, and hailed a hansom cab heading north. It wasn’t until Reuben unlocked the door to his house in Yancy Street and held it open for her that her deadened spirits began to lift. She guessed it was because she was home.

  8

  Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

  —Addison Mizner

  “ANYBODY HOME? HEY, GUS, you up there?”

  No answer. She couldn’t be asleep yet, it was too early, only eight or so. “Grace?” Reuben shouted louder. He wanted to tell her the good news—that he’d just won two hundred and forty dollars and a ruby stick pin at blackjack, completely on the square.

  He thought he heard a mumbled reply, and then the sound of water running in the bathroom. Good; then she’d be down soon. His news would go a long way toward smoothing over the awkwardness they’d been dancing around since this morning.

  There was still a corked half-bottle of Sauvignon de Touraine on the table, left over from last night’s celebration of the three hundred bucks they’d won in a seven-up game at the Paradise Hotel. Not quite on the square, but close enough; a crimped ace or two and a couple of double discards didn’t count. They hadn’t come close to duplicating their windfall at the Evergreen, but that was all right. They weren’t losing. Besides, the secret to sustaining a brilliant brace trick was not to use it too often.

  Reuben poured himself a glass of the Sauvignon and sat down, swirling the wine to test its second-day legs, then just staring into it moodily, not drinking. He’d been sitting here this morning when the mail came, he remembered. From this spot he’d watched Grace, across the room on the sofa, open a letter from her husband. The letter had come with a big box of clothes, which she’d already opened, exclaiming over every skirt, shoe, shirtwaist, and unmentionable inside. You’d’ve thought hubby had sent her bags of gold nuggets instead of a bunch of old clothes. But that was understandable; most women were a little crazy when it came to clothes, and a smart man just sat back and enjoyed the spectacle. That wasn’t what had ticked Reuben off. Sitting here observing the amusement and pleasure on her face while she read her husband’s letter—that’s what had made him feel like tearing the letter into little pieces and sprinkling them over her head.

  “How’s the old man?” he’d inquired irritably.

  She’d waved her hand to shush him, not even looking up.

  “Did you tell him we sleep together?” That made her look up. “In the same house,” he clarified with a big smile.

  “Henri is very understanding,” she’d said calmly, and gone back to reading. Something in the letter made her smile, then chuckle, then laugh heartily. Reuben stood up and sauntered over to her, taking a seat on the wide upholstered arm of the sofa. A corkscrew curl dangling in front of her ear needed pulling back; he did it, gently, while she pretended to keep reading. She wasn’t, though, he could tell because her eyes weren’t moving across the page. He craned his neck to try for a peek at the letter, and she sighed irritably, folded it, and tucked it down the front of her dress.

  He moved his hand to the back of her bare neck, so she had to look up at him. “Do you tell your husband everything, Gus?”

  “Of course. We have no secrets.”

  “None at all?”

  “None.”

  His fingers slid into her hair, caressing her scalp.

  “Then you must’ve told him about the night I kissed you. Hmm? And you kissed me back. Did you tell him about that night, Gracie?”

  Her face didn’t change, but her pupils dilated, wide black circles almost eclipsing the clear blue irises. “I forgot,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “It completely slipped my mind.”

  “Did it?” He brushed his thumb across her lips, daring her. “Let me refresh your recollection.” He kissed her before she could turn away, and once their lips met she held perfectly still. But he knew from experience that Grace’s first line of defense was a show of indifference. Determined to get under her guard this time, he kept the kiss gentle while he held her face between his hands, stroking her cheek and tracing the arch of her eyebrow. He nuzzled her, pressing soft little sipping kisses to her lips, until her eyelids fluttered closed and her pretty mouth began to soften. “Is it coming back to you now?” he whispered. To keep her from thinking about the answer, he slipped his tongue under her top lip and ran it along the smooth, slick surface of her teeth. She reached out and gripped his shoulder. She was trembling, head pressed against the high sofa back. He put his palm on her chest to feel the pounding of her heart. Vivid images of her naked body kept tantalizing him; he saw her the way she’d looked that first night, wet from her bath and pink from embarrassment, trying to cover herself with her hands. But her lush breasts had been too generous to hide—and now they were straining against the soft material of her dress, inviting him to touch. Whispering love words, he sleeked his hand inside her gown.

  Soft. Springy and warm. What a luscious curve. Grace held her breath and let him touch her. “Hey, honey,” he mumbled against her lips, finding her cool, silky nipple, playing with it until it peaked. Wanting more, he moved to her other breast. Something rustled; the unexpected feel of a sharp edge startled him. Henri’s letter.

  He didn’t know if it was the rustling sound or the sharp edge pricking her soft skin, but one or the other definitely took all the romance out of
the moment. In two seconds, Grace went from soft and pliant to mad and betrayed, and he knew before he opened his mouth that she wasn’t going to buy his explanation.

  He tried anyway. “I forgot about the letter, Grace. I swear, I didn’t even remember it was there. All I wanted—”

  “Oh, shut up.” She shoved him away and stood up, all wounded pride and shaky dignity, pulling at the top of her dress. “You’re a snake, Reuben Jones. It’s a good thing I don’t even like you.”

  He said, “Aw, Gus,” feeling terrible.

  “I’m going for a walk,” she announced in a high voice, spun around, and escaped through the door to the alley.

  She’d stayed away for twenty minutes. When she’d come back, she’d acted as if nothing had happened. He’d tried another apology, which she’d accepted without a second’s hesitation, and for the rest of the day she’d treated him with horrible, nerve-wracking politeness. But when he’d asked if she wanted to go gambling with him tonight, she’d declined. “I’m not really feeling up to it. I think I’d like to be by myself.”

  He took a morose sip of warm white wine, regretting the whole damn thing. All he’d wanted to do was seduce her. Was that a crime? He hated hurting Grace’s feelings, but every time he touched her, that’s what he ended up doing. She wasn’t like any other female he’d ever met—not even Hazel Mayne, and she’d been crooked as a pretzel. But Hazel didn’t have Grace’s sense of humor, or her brains, or her sly sweetness. The women he customarily associated with in his line of work—prostitutes, hangers-on, flim-flammers—were hard. The few who were nice weren’t very smart, and the smart ones were mean. But Grace was wise to the life, and yet she was soft inside. He wasn’t used to that. A clever girl who still had a heart—that was a rarity to him. Every day he liked her better, and he was actually starting to think he’d miss her when she went away.