Perfect Stranger

by Duncan, Alice

  A knock sounded on the door, and Somerset turned in his chair to see Jason’s Chinese nurse, a young man in dark blue pajamas and a long pigtail, poke his head in. “Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Abernathy, but there’s an emergency out here.”

  Jason stood instantly. “What’s the matter, Lo Sing?”

  “The tongs are at it again, it looks like.” He gestured at Jason’s desk, and Somerset saw a red paper lying on it, covered in Chinese characters.

  “Damn. I had thought the red sheet was some kind of joke.” He picked up the paper and slammed it back onto his desk in a gesture of total disgust.

  “Apparently not. There are several bad injuries.”

  Confused, Somerset asked, “What are tongs? What are red sheets?”

  As Jason rose and hurried to the rack by the door, to retrieve a white coat, he said, “Tongs are Chinese social organizations. Unfortunately, some of them have turned into criminal societies. Red sheets are murder orders posted on Chinatown walls offering rewards for killing certain people.”

  “Good God! How can they get away with such overt advertisements?”

  Jason shot him a cynical grin. “Do you read Chinese?”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  “Neither do our elected officials.” Jason stuffed his arms into his coat and picked up his black bag. Right before he dashed out the door, he said, “I’ll see you later, Somerset. Let me know how it goes.”

  “I will. Thank you.” Somerset watched the doctor rush away, his nurse on his heels. With a sigh, he snagged his own hat from the rack, plopped it on his head, and ambled out the door. He was going to the library now, to look up some information he needed to know for his book.

  Later he’d resume thinking about Isabel. Of course, in order to do that, he’d have to forget about her first.

  Impossible.

  # # #

  “This is a pleasant walk, Eunice.” Isabel and Eunice started out at the top of Russian Hill and walked down a steep zigzag path built out of what seemed like a million bricks. From this position, she could see the whole of San Francisco and the ocean beyond. There was a lot of construction going on here and there to remind everyone of the 1906 earthquake, but the view was still impressive. San Francisco was quite a place. She liked it ever so much better than the little she’d seen of New York, which hemmed one in on all sides.

  “Yes. I believe I like the panamas here better than those I remember of Upper Poppleton.”

  Isabel stared down at her daughter’s head, covered this morning with a pretty straw hat. “Panamas?”

  Eunice looked up at her. “Isn’t a panama a vista?”

  “Oh. I think you mean panoramas, sweetie.”

  “Ah. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So you like the looks of San Francisco better than those of Upper Poppleton?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, then, I’m glad we’re here.”

  Eunice gave a little skip. “Me, too.”

  As for herself, Isabel missed so many things about her former home, she could scarcely bear to think about them. It was nice to have fallen into a generous rich person’s life and to be taken care of and to have new friends and all, but Isabel still missed her homeland and her old friends. The food. The way she’d been used to doing things. The familiar broad Yorkshire accent—the same accent she’d worked so hard to overcome with the help of her uncle Charlie and aunt Maxine.

  Now, today, this minute, she thought she might just cry from homesickness as she mentally told herself that what she and Eunice were doing was walking “doon brick step on hill.” She heaved a huge sigh as she contemplated the loss of her native Yorkshire’s articles. Nobody ever said “the” in Yorkshire. “I miss Upper Poppleton a lot.”

  “I understand that,” Eunice said seriously. “Since you’re considerably older than I, and because you lived so many, many years—”

  “Not that many,” said Isabel, her sense of humor returning.

  As ever, Eunice didn’t understand the joke. Isabel sighed again.

  “Well, because you lived there your whole life, and you’re quite old now, you must miss things that I don’t.”

  Quite old, was she? “Yes, I suppose so.” She’d been seventeen when Eunice was born. She was only twenty-three years old now. A young woman still. After a fashion. How strange it seemed that she’d never felt young until recently.

  When they arrived at Eunice’s Montessori School on Montgomery Street, Isabel was pleased when two little girls, spotting them, ran over to greet Eunice. Now this never would have happened in Upper Poppleton. Truth to tell, most of the people Isabel knew in her homeland considered Eunice too strange to be comfortable with, even if they didn’t hold the accident of her birth against her—and most of them did. She was glad to know that her daughter’s intelligence wasn’t feared here, in this particular school.

  Eunice dragged her mother over to meet her friends. “Mama, please let me introduce you to Lillian Blyley.”

  A little blond girl with big blue eyes curtseyed politely. Tickled, Isabel held out her hand and said, “Delighted to meet you, Miss Blyley.”

  “Lillian,” Eunice confided, “is a mathematical genius.”

  Isabel felt her eyebrows lift. “My goodness. I wish I were.”

  “It’s not so great a gift for a girl,” Lillian told her with a hefty sigh. “If I were a boy, it would be much more useful.”

  Isabel thought about protesting, but recognized the truth when she heard it. And Lillian, apparently a lot like Eunice, was probably sick of soothing lies. “Yes. I’m sorry about that, dear. It’s not fair at all, is it?”

  Lillian subsided with another sigh and a shake of her head as Eunice turned to her other companion, a pretty child with dark brown braids, a serious mien, and small, wire-framed glasses.

  “And this is Rebecca Steinberg. Rebecca is a scientific genius.” In an undertone, Eunice confided, “She’s also of Hebrew heritage.”

  Good heavens. Isabel hardly knew what to say. Shaking the girl’s hand, she offered, “Is that a problem?”

  “Oh, it might be, Mama,” Eunice declared. “‘Cause lots of places don’t hire women and lots more don’t hire Hebrews.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m very pleased to meet you, Rebecca. Perhaps by the time you grow up, times will be better for women and—and Hebrews.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” the little sobersides said. “Perhaps you know already that Eunice is our linguistic genius. She’s excellently good with words. And she’s learning German, too.”

  “German?” Eunice’s mother stared at her child, mystified.

  “Miss Pinkney is teaching me,” Eunice said with a grin.

  Beaming upon her daughter, Isabel said, “My goodness. That’s wonderful, dearie.” Including the other two girls in her smile, she added, “It sounds to me as if you have all your bases covered.”

  To a girl, they looked confused.

  “That’s an American baseball term, I think,” elucidated Isabel. “It means that the three of you together have all the skills you need. Perhaps you can go into business together when you get older. I’m sure that together, you can overcome most of the obstacles the world will present.”

  They looked pleased at this assessment of their worth and future, and Isabel heard them talking about it as they walked into the school’s grounds together. That had been perhaps the most incredible conversation of her life so far. The fact that it had been conducted between her and three six-year-old girls made her laugh out loud. She felt much better as she walked home than she had when she’d awakened that morning.

  # # #

  Isabel and Jorge performed their tango number again that night for their first demonstration. As had been the case the night before, thunderous applause erupted the moment the hot thrumming stopped and Isabel leaned away from Jorge. This time, Isabel pressed the back of her wrist to her forehead to make an even more dramatic statement, and was both surprised a
nd pleased when Jorge commended her for it in the dressing room.

  “You’ve got a . . .” He flicked a hand carelessly in the air. “. . . a flair for this drama.”

  Isabel glanced at him over her shoulder. She was at the dressing table, plucking red plumes out of her hair and toning down her makeup in preparation for dancing with the customers. “Thank you.” She added, “You’re wonderfully dramatic.”

  He shrugged, as if accepting a mere truth. “You keep working, you be good, too.”

  How encouraging. “Thank you.” She didn’t smile and was proud of herself. No sense in riling her partner. He was the senior member here, after all, and if he took a dislike to her, Isabel felt sure he could make her life difficult and her job impossible and perhaps even gone.

  Picking up her red feathers and the black band which stabilized them to her head during their tango number, she went behind her dressing screen, hung up her tango gown, and selected a pretty cream-colored silk evening gown with a high waist emphasized by a not-too-tight light pink cummerbund (there was an art to looking fashionable while working as a dancer) with a darker pink rosette attached, a ruched bodice and embroidered cap sleeves. Isabel had nearly gone blind embroidering them, but the effect was beautiful. Loretta hadn’t helped any by persisting in making her laugh over her labors. Loretta, needless to say, had never embroidered a sleeve, cap or otherwise, in her life, having had no need to do anything of the sort.

  “You could be coming with me to a women’s suffrage march, Isabel!” she’d cried when she spied Isabel at her labors. “That’s ever so much more useful in the long run than embroidery!”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Isabel had said with a smile, “but marching for women’s suffrage won’t pay for my daughter’s education.”

  “Pooh!” scoffed Loretta, as Isabel had known she would. “You needn’t worry about Eunice’s education. I’m more than happy to take care of that.”

  With a suppressed sigh, Isabel, forever trying to make Loretta understand without hurting her feelings, said, “I know it. But you’re doing more than you should already. You’re probably the first genuinely good-hearted person I’ve ever met in my life, Loretta, but I would be shirking my own responsibility by allowing you to take on the entire burden of my daughter’s education.”

  Leaving behind a trail of her usual assortment of piffles and balderdashes, Loretta had left her to her embroidery. Isabel could never think of Loretta Linden without smiling. She was the most charming, annoying, trouble-making female Isabel had ever met. As much as Isabel loved her, she was sometimes grateful that there weren’t more Lorettas in the world. Her goodness and generosity could be almost oppressive at times.

  Now, as she tugged on various articles of clothing, her heart sped up and she said, “Jorge, are you interested in participating in a dance contest with me?”

  “A contest? Dancing is no sport. Dancing is art.”

  “Well, of course, but it might be fun to enter a contest.” Isabel held her breath. Since she’d read that article in the newspaper, she’d been spinning daydreams about winning it and opening up her dance academy.

  “Fun? Dance is not fun. Dance is magic. Music. Art.”

  Damn the man for his artistic temperament. Isabel wanted to scream at him that art wouldn’t pay for her academy, but she tried to sound reasonable. Then she remembered that she hadn’t mentioned the money. Even artists like Jorge could use money. “Yes, I know, but this contest pays five thousand dollars to the winning couple.”

  A pause. Isabel hoped the amount of the prize would reach him. “Five thousand dollars? American?”

  No. Japanese. Rolling her eyes, Isabel said, “Yes.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Does that mean you’ll think about it?”

  “I don’t know. Art is not a contest.”

  Isabel wanted to deck him. Recollecting his ego—and how she could have forgotten so enormous an entity, she had no idea—she said, “Well . . . I suppose that’s so, but it would be a shame if someone else won the money, when you’re the best.”

  Another pause, this one longer than the last. “Yes,” he said musingly. “I am the best.”

  “Indeed, you are. And the world ought to know it. It would help if you won the contest, don’t you think? Then your name would be in the newspaper and everyone would know who you are.”

  “Everybody already know who I am. Still . . .”

  “So you will think about it?” Isabel didn’t want to press him, since he could be terribly temperamental, but the contest had come to matter to her. A lot.

  “No. I not think.”

  Isabel’s heart sank.

  “I do it.”

  Her heart soared like a lark.

  “Thank you! The contest dances are those we do all the time, but I suppose we’ll need to practice anyhow.”

  “Yes. We practice.”

  When she emerged from behind her screen, he was waiting for her. As soon as he saw her, he cocked his elbow and jerked his head toward the entrance to the dance floor. Isabel presumed this was either an invitation or an order to take his arm and allow him to lead her out. Or allow herself to be led out by him, she guessed was more accurate.

  Oh, well, why not? She was pleased, in a way, to be accepted by her partner as worthy of his . . . elbow? But he’d agreed to enter the contest with her, bless his heart . . . if he had one.

  As soon as they emerged from behind the curtain shielding the dance band from the dressing rooms, Jorge allowed his elbow to straighten gradually, until Isabel was holding on merely to the tips of his gloved fingers. Then he released even that token of a grip, and she understood that he’d just choreographed their entrance onto their own little stage in a way that would never have occurred to her.

  She regretted that her uncle Charlie would never have the opportunity to meet Jorge Luis Savedra. It was probably true that Jorge would scorn her uncle, but they were both, in their own unique ways, masters of their art forms.

  And he’d agreed to enter the contest with her!

  The band had struck up a foxtrot and dancers were already thick on the floor. As soon as Somerset cut in front of another man in order to stand before her, bow, and take her hand, she realized he must have been keenly awaiting her arrival.

  After what had passed between them the preceding night, she wasn’t sure how to react to him. He had proposed, after all. That he had done so in a manner both insulting and infuriating to her, she wasn’t sure he even understood. Since she was on the job, she smiled her usual be-nice-to-the-customers smile. “Good evening, Mr. FitzRoy.”

  “Good evening, Mrs. Golightly.”

  So much for that. As he trotted her off to mingle with the other dancers, Isabel considered whether or not to bring up last night’s conversation. She decided to let him do it. She was at work.

  He cleared his throat. “Um, Isabel, I apologize for the mess I made of what I said last night.”

  Hmm. Interesting. He wasn’t even going to admit to having proposed. Icy fingers tapped on her heart, and she said, “Think nothing of it.”

  He wasn’t as good a dancer as Jorge. That notion made her feel superior for a second.

  On the other hand, she liked Somerset and she didn’t like Jorge, so what did dancing matter? Or, say rather, she had liked Somerset. She wasn’t sure any longer.

  “How can I think nothing of it?” he asked with a little laugh. “I annoyed you, and that was the farthest intention from my mind.”

  Damn your mind, Isabel thought furiously. She wanted his heart.

  Good heavens. Did she mean that? Oh, Lord, she wished he hadn’t come tonight. Or . . . she knew she didn’t mean that.

  “I’m sure that’s so,” she said soothingly, wishing they could talk about something else.

  He cleared his throat again. Must be nervous. Well, good, because she was, too.

  “By way of making amends, I wondered if you and Miss Eunice would be interested in visiting the vaudeville some aft
ernoon. I understand that you work at nights and that Miss Eunice is at school during the morning hours, but I thought perhaps we could find an agreeable time.”

  “The vaudeville?” Oh, my, she hadn’t been to a musical comedy house since the last time she’d visited Uncle Charlie’s. It sounded like such fun. Although . . . during that particular show, there had been one or two bawdy pieces that weren’t at all suitable for children. On the other hand, that was in England, and perhaps music houses in America were different. “Would the show be appropriate for Eunice?”

  “The show I’ve earmarked is set for Sunday afternoon at the Orpheum, and it’s intended for children. There’s a Chinese acrobatic act and a children’s chorus, a strong man, some trained animals and lots of singing and dancing.”

  “Sunday afternoon . . .” Isabel hesitated. Her first impulse was to throw her arms around Somerset and tell him yes to everything he’d asked her thus far in this life. She knew that was the spontaneous, unsound, romantic side to her character rearing its ugly head—the one that had caused her so much trouble thus far in her life—and that it needed to be trod underfoot firmly and with great vigor. “It sounds like it would be entertaining,” she said cautiously. “May I let you know after discussing it with Eunice?”

  “Certainly.”

  Did she hear a respiration of relief come from her dancing partner? Isabel wasn’t sure.

  “In fact,” he went on, as if attempting to sweeten the pot, “does Miss Eunice have any little friends from school that she might like to ask?”

  In spite of her state of nerves, Isabel chuckled under her breath. She recounted the morning’s conversation to Somerset as the music stopped and they applauded politely. She was amused by how hard he tried to hide his state of concern and how miserably he failed. “They’re really only children,” she said gently. He eyed her slantways, making her heart skip. He didn’t look like a horticulturist, particularly. He looked like an extremely handsome, desirable man. And he was her hero. She had the sudden and idiotic wish that he’d propose to her again tonight. This instant, in fact.

  “You think so?”

  She laughed, mentally taking herself by the shoulders and shaking herself silly. “Yes, I do. They may be smarter than other children, but they’re still children and need to be treated as children sometimes. All the time, really. You only have to keep in mind that they understand more than most, but they still only have their own short life experiences upon which to base judgments.”