by Tom Murphy
“To the future, Stanford, for that’s what this place is all about.”
“To the future, then, Lily—yours and mine.”
“Cheers.”
The room was lined with mirrors, a fairy palace it looked like, or so Lily thought. She caught their reflection in one of the looking glasses: Stanford, tall and broad-shouldered and handsome in his black evening tailcoat and white starched shirt and tie, and herself, all in deep green velvet, hair piled high and caught with a green velvet ribbon, and—as usual—no jewelry whatever. The long white kidskin gloves were her only ornament. Lily smiled at her admirer and thought of Kate. Sleeping, by now out there in the valley, in the Baker farmhouse at San Mateo. Believe me, child, I would give every bit of this to be with you this instant, singing a little lullaby. And I will be, soon. It shouldn’t take long, my darling Kate, a year or two at best. And please God that may not be too late!
She tasted the wine: golden, bubbling, dry and faintly sweet at the same time. Oh, it was excellent champagne, the best. Her green eyes scanned the room: it was all the best, and the best of the best. The richly furnished rooms, the food on the huge buffet table, even the music, this very spot high on the hillside. They’ll have to go some to outclass the Fleur de Lis.
Then Lily spotted Sophie across the room, alone, and went to have a word with her. Stanford Dickinson watched her in silence, smiling, then finished his wine and went downstairs to find Fergy.
The Fleur de Lis was an instant success. Lily had no way of telling how much business—if any—she actually took away from Sophie, for Sophie would never tell her. But men flocked up Sacramento Street every evening as if racing the setting sun. The wine and the gaming and the laughter started at five and went on until the dawn came creeping over the far Sierras. And the gold flowed in. Fergy’s girls were all he claimed. The atmosphere was more like a fine hotel than a bawdyhouse, and Lily exerted herself to keep it that way. As news of her innovations spread, more and more men throughout the West felt no visit to San Francisco was complete without a night at Lily’s. The Fleur de Lis was as famous for its food as its girls, and famous, too, for being the only parlor house in the West where every girl had her own private bathroom, complete with tub and hot running water! This was a revelation. Not only could a client bathe himself, but for the price of a night at Lily’s he could also have his clothes completely laundered and even his boots shined at the Fleur de Lis’s own self-contained laundry. The Chinese who had once done Lily out of a job now made niceties like this possible, and she took every advantage of that fact.
It often happened that a man would come to town for a week or more and simply check into Lily’s place as though it were a hotel. The fact was, the Fleur de Lis was far superior in all its services to any hotel in town. And it had something more: it had cachet. Men would say they’d been at Lily’s even if they’d actually been to one of the lesser, cheaper houses. Fergy once figured out that if all the men who claimed to have been at Lily’s truly had been, the house would need a hundred bedrooms and that many girls, instead of the very choice dozen who were actually in residence.
Lily herself took only old, favored clients now, and for twenty-five hundred dollars the night. She thought her new price was outrageous, and did it for the publicity value and also in hopes that it would slow down the demands on her. The result was just the opposite. The higher her price, the more they wanted her.
Stanford Dickinson groaned. “It’s a goddamned plot, Lily, you’re conspiring with my wife! You’ll drive me to chastity if this goes on.”
“That would be quite a long trip, now, wouldn’t it, my friend?”
“Long and highly uncomfortable.” He kissed her. They were in bed. Even Lily’s bed was extraordinary, all rosewood and gilt-bronze, sinuous curves topped by a pale green silk canopy pulled back by huge braided cords of deep green silk entwined with gold. The foot of the bed ended in swans’ heads, also gilded, and the headboard was a bower of carved wooden flowers.
It was rare, these days, for Stanford to mention his wife, although the image of that unfortunate lady had never left Lily’s mind after their painful interview. And it had been months since he’d asked her to marry him.
She rested her head against his deep furry chest and sighed. “You were right, Stanford, right as rain. The Fleur de Lis is coining money. Soon I’ll need your advice again.”
“You have it, my love, or any other part of me you might be needing.”
“Get on with you! I really mean advice. About land.”
“No better investment. Buy every inch you can.”
“I’m going to be…a farmer.”
He roared like a lion in the mating season.
“Don’t laugh. I’m serious.”
“I’d be the very last to deny that, Lily. But I had a picture of you in one of your low-cut silk gowns, white gloves, champagne, hoeing a row of early cabbage. It is a comical thought.”
“That would be more nearly what I’m like than any of this folderol.”
“You hate it that much, then?”
“How would you like it, Stanford, if our situations were reversed, if you had to put yourself up for sale like any black slave?”
“You’re hardly a black slave, Lily.”
“You haven’t answered me.”
“I’d hate it.”
“Then why should I not hate it too?”
“I don’t know why not. I’d just thought…”
“You thought what all men think. That we don’t know any better, that we like to be pawed and jumped on and treated like dirt. Maybe there’s some who do. I’m not one of ’em.”
“You’re even prettier when you’re angry.”
“If you were buying farmland, now, in a few months anyway, where would you buy it?”
“…and so romantic. I’d buy in two places, in the San Mateo area for relatively quick return, convenience, because that road is going to get built one day soon, and across the bay for the future. Land’s cheaper up the coast, you can still get some pretty big spreads reasonably, and the transportation’s getting better every year, if you’re really talking about serious farming.”
“Indeed I am. Have you priced food lately? Outrageous. Always has been.”
“I never thought much about that.”
“Hardly anyone’s doing farming. The Bakers are good farmers, but they don’t have enough land. I’d hire Baker in a minute, if he’d come.”
He turned to her, smiling, and kissed her cheek. “My little farmer. Tell me about the pleasures of the countryside. Better yet, show me.”
“You are a rogue, Stanford!” But Lily laughed with him, and kissed him, and showed him rare pleasures.
Kate was nearly three now. She had grown to be a bright and lively child who played happily with the Bakers’ own three children and called Mrs. Baker “Mama.” Lily had never tried to change this. It was natural, and she wasn’t sure just when she could take the child away, or just how she’d go about it when the time came. Surely the Fleur de Lis, grand as it was, was no place for a baby. And Lily’s long-range plan might well include the Bakers.
Now the drives down to San Mateo took on an extra meaning. She looked long and hard at the landscape as she passed, and sometimes didn’t pass but rather stopped and talked to the farm folk or the occasional Mexican. The farms were few and unevenly tended. The Bakers had by far the best and most productive of the smaller spreads, but a smaller spread had nothing to do with Lily’s plans.
Building the Fleur de Lis and seeing it prosper beyond even Fergy’s wildest dreams had taught her the advantages of thinking on a grand scale. And that was just what she intended to do with her dream of farming. Stanford was already keeping an eye out for likely properties. And so did Lily, in person or through discreet questioning among the well-placed clients of the Fleur de Lis. The quickest way to get a lot of land at one fell swoop was to acquire one of the old Mexican land grants. These were seldom available, but when they were, they were h
uge. Ten thousand acres and more, some of them, and some of them went for per-acre prices that were surprisingly cheap. Many of the old royal grants had never been worked as farms, but maintained for hunting or horse breeding, so the land was all but unimproved. And for reasons nobody really knew, the old aristocratic families were thinning out, retreating into their pride, paying less and less attention, gambling away huge inheritances, selling out and going back to Spain.
So Lily watched, and waited.
In the meantime, she played hostess at the Fleur de Lis, and her legend grew apace with the fame of her pleasure palace. And everyone’s list of San Francisco attractions put the Fleur de Lis right up there with the Mission Dolores, the Mechanics Institute, and the Ocean House. In the end, the Fleur de Lis had cost nearly half a million dollars to build, and Fergy told his sister they’d have it all paid back inside of a year. This sounded incredible to Lily, but no more incredible than some of the other get-rich-quick stories she’d heard, and from reliable sources. That meant that, with luck, they’d clear half a million next year—1860. And half a million meant there’d be no stopping her.
Lily smiled, and waited, and thought of doubling her price. In the grand game that her affair with Stanford Dickinson had become, it amused Lily to see just how far she could press him—indeed, could press any man—to pay her ever-escalating price.
In September, on a whim, she priced herself at five thousand dollars cash the night. No one blinked an eye. It was the sort of thing they expected of Lily Cigar.
Lily was learning what the world expected of Lily Cigar, and this was a lesson that sometimes amused her and sometimes frightened her nearly to death.
She was so used to her exclusivity now, to picking and choosing, and very often taking no client at all, despite her five-thousand-dollar fee, that she actually smiled one afternoon at the Fleur de Lis when Fergy told her a gentleman wanted an appointment with her.
“What gentleman, Fergy?”
The look in Fergy’s eyes told her something was wrong, for her brother looked everywhere in the room but at her.
“It’s O’Meara, the chief of police.”
Lily had seen O’Meara, bug-eyed and obese, and she knew that the ugliness of his person was nothing when compared to a catalog of his vices and corruptions.
“But you’ve taken care of the police.”
“And handsomely. Yet he wants to see you.”
“As…a client?”
“He didn’t say, Lil, and I didn’t ask. He is a government official, after all.”
“Send him in. And stay by me, Fergy, for I may be needing a strong arm or two.”
Chief O’Meara oozed into the room, two hundred and eighty pounds of walking corruption, fattened by every fancy house and gaming den in town. Greedy little button eyes glowed dully from a face as pale and pink and puffy as a newborn pig’s.
“Madam Lily,” he said, bowing slightly, “what a pleasure.”
Lily smiled and gestured to the delicate love seat, fearing he’d break it. “What can we do for you, Chief?”
His answer was a laugh that redefined coarseness. Lily shuddered. It was what she feared: naturally, he’d heard about the famous Lily Cigar, and he wanted free samples. She looked at Fergy. Fergy was staring out the window. Lily felt the trap closing in on her. Anyone else might be talked out of it. Anyone else might be thrown bodily into the street. But this load of blubber could close the Fleur de Lis in five minutes flat, and where would her fine dreams be then? She looked at him and suppressed a shudder. When she spoke, her voice was level.
“I think you’d better leave, now, Fergy. The chief has something he wants to say in private.”
Fergy left to the sound of O’Meara’s laughter getting louder and louder.
Lily turned to the man. She rose, and walked to him, smiling. She reached out and touched his three chins softly. And she made herself a solemn promise. If a year goes by and I’m not out of this business, I will throw myself into the bay, as God is my witness!
In Lily Cigar, she had created a gold mine. But she had also created an uncontrollable monster that would stalk her down all the days of her life. Smiling still, Lily slowly reached for the top button on her dress, and unfastened it, and the next and all the rest.
She had created herself as a fancy woman with the intention of being unique, an unforgettable experience for her customers, a drawing card for the Fleur de Lis. When the nickname “Lily Cigar” was given to her, almost by chance, back at Sophie’s house, Lily played with it, decided she liked it—memorable it was, and therefore useful—and kept the name. Now, every evening in the Fleur de Lis, Lily would be found in the biggest parlor, standing in the middle of the room like any proud Fifth Avenue hostess, draped in some rich fabric, low-cut, revealing the supple curve of her breasts, making the most of the slim waist and the pearlescent glow of skin, the flame-red hair. She would be smoking a cigar in the long jade holder Stanford had given her, deep green as her eyes it was, and tipped in gold, and specially made for the slim Cuban cigars she puffed gently, never inhaling. In time Lily got to rather like the smelly things.
Being a celebrity was a new and uncomfortable role for her. From the earliest days Lily had forced herself to ignore men’s stares when she went out in public. Now the stares were bolder, now they called her name, some of them even dared to run after her carriage or gallop beside her on their horses. Her name was public property now. It appeared and the Fleur de Lis with it, in the local newspapers, usually as the object of revilement. The moral outrage of the pulp-paper press was always good for a few extra sales, and periodic drives to “clean up” San Francisco met with cynical amusement on the part of the police and city government, many of whose officials were friends and cash customers. San Francisco had ever been a wide-open town, and very tolerant, and no amount of muckraking seemed likely to change it. Still, as the proprietress of the town’s fanciest parlor house, Lily was a natural target. “Satan’s Handmaiden” they called her, and worse. The Fleur de Lis was a “gilded dovecote for soiled doves” or an “emporium of painted pleasures.” Fergy merely laughed and kept the books and said it was good for business.
But Lily saw further than her own cashbox.
Lily could see a time when the fame of Lily Cigar might live to haunt her, and—worse—to bedevil Kate. This was why Lily remained ambivalent when little Katie called Mrs. Baker “Mama.” The child called Lily “Aunt Lil,” and loved her, but every time Lily looked down at Kate’s small radiant face, nearly aways smiling and filled with the wondrous discoveries that come every hour to a three-year-old, she could imagine a time when an older, unsmiling Kate learned the truth. And that was a moment that Lily feared more than death itself, a moment when the lurid fame of Lily Cigar might destroy all her happiness and maybe Kate’s too.
So for the time being Lily was unable to face the thought of educating little Katie to the fact that she was her mother.
And Lily smiled in her red-damasked, gilt-mirrored parlor, and took her five-thousand-dollar clients upstairs and counted the hours until the beautiful, dangerous time when she could leave it all behind.
She fostered the legend even as she feared it, feared that it might grow of its own momentum, and keep on growing, that it might not be easy for Lily Malone to leave Lily Cigar behind.
Stanford Dickinson was a comfort. Her enormous price bothered him not at all, even though he continually made jokes about it, groaning as he peeled off the crisp five-hundred-dollar bills that his bank kept in ten-bill envelopes just for this purpose, always at the ready.
“You might,” he said one morning, “at least let me run up an account here. Fergy does.”
“You don’t—I truly hope—go to bed with Fergy. In this department, Stanford, it’s strictly cash-and-carry.”
When he replied, there was an edge of desperation in his voice. “I love you, Lily Cigar. I loved you poor and I love you rich. And if it takes my last penny, I’ll still need you, and if it were to be
my last penny, I’d spend it on my Lily.”
She looked at him to see if he was joking. But it was no joke. Their affair had leveled off these past few months. Lily was never quite sure he meant it when he’d asked her to marry him. And Stanford was still thoroughly married, however he carried on outside of his opulent house on Rincon Hill.
She turned to him, and reached out and touched his cheek. As always, after five in the afternoon, he needed a shave.
“You’ve been good to me, and you’ve been good for me, Stanford. I’ll never forget that. Besides Sophie and Fergy, I truly have no friends.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Once, long ago, I thought so. But nothing…nothing happened.”
“He left you?”
Lily managed a small laugh. “I was a moon-struck girl then. It seems the devil of a time ago, truly a lifetime. I never really knew the lad. He was, maybe, a sort of idea of love.”
“Could you love me?”
“I like you, Stanford. Is that not enough?”
“It’s a long way from love.”
“I’m a whore. I sell love. ’Tis not a fair question to ask of Lily Cigar, the notorious madam.”
“And it’s not a fair answer. You say you sell love. It isn’t love you sell, Lily, it’s a dream. They come here drunk on the myth of you, intoxicated by this famous beauty, this past mistress of all the arts of love. The town’s filled with men who claim to know you—in every sense—who in fact have never set foot in the Fleur de Lis.”
“More power to them, then: they know a bad bargain when they see it! What I give a man for five thousand he can get in five minutes for a dollar from any Chinese crib girl.”
“Why must you slander yourself, my darling, when there are so many experts prepared to do it for you, and in print? If you think for one instant that what you’re selling in the Fleur de Lis is simply your body—or anyone else’s—you are badly mistaken. I think I said you’re selling dreams here. Can you know what it means to a man—a man who’s never known real love, except in the most brutal, animal sense? A man who has no woman of his own, or who finds himself married to some puritanical harpy who won’t give him the time of day in bed, who lies stiff and dry as a sack of raisins, who resents his healthy desires, who literally drives him out of the bed, out of the house, and right up the hill to the Fleur de Lis? Can you begin to imagine what that man feels like when he walks into your fine rooms, and hears the music playing, and the laughter, sees the beautiful girls and knows that it’s all for him, all for his pleasure? In a way, his is a very innocent dream, Lily. Making it come true is what you’re selling, not some quick, dirty little transaction between the sheets.”
