Romancing the Past

by Darcy Burke

  Moss said nothing. The hearing usually found her long pauses in company uncomfortable, but he worked peacefully in silence. He drained the potatoes and let them steam dry. Then he poked the boiled lemons with a fork before stuffing them in the chicken with the garlic cloves. He worked quite efficiently for a former ne’er-do-well.

  “I wonder what kind of trouble you caused,” she finally said.

  “Trouble is a strong word.”

  “I suppose a hotel can be quite a playground for a young man. There are maids, waitresses, laundresses . . . ?”

  Moss blushed. The color rose from his starched collar up to his spiky hairline. His eyes looked especially bright in their feigned innocence.

  “I lived in a boarding house most of my youth, and I know how these places are,” Della said.

  Moss stubbornly shook his head. “I will not talk about this.” Not with you, his eyes said.

  “I would have thought that a man who grew up in a fine establishment like the White Elephant would have put the Oriente in shape by now.”

  “Is your stay not to your satisfaction?”

  He was putting the chicken in the oven, so he did not see her smile until he turned back around.

  “If it tells you anything about my stay,” she said, “I am sure this will be the best meal ever to come out of this kitchen.”

  “You have not eaten it yet.”

  “A half-starved woman knows her food.”

  “Half-starved, huh?” He grinned. “I should charge you for dinner, then.”

  She shrugged. “Fine.”

  “No, it would be too easy to put it on your grandfather’s tab. I want a payment from you that is yours alone to give.” He tapped his finger against his chin with a great flourish.

  Della straightened.

  “Secrets,” he finally said.

  “What?”

  “I told you mine.”

  “Being an orphan is hardly a secret!”

  “No one else here knows it.”

  “It is just a fact, like me being deaf—though that used to be a secret.”

  She turned from him, but he touched her hand to keep her attention. When he did not pull his hand away, she felt the contact along the back of her neck.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “My grandfather paid my school bills, but even that he did anonymously. For a while, it was important to him that no one find out.”

  “He was embarrassed?”

  “He was careful.” She struggled to find a way to explain the most confusing tribe in America: Congress. “Some of his colleagues thought that higher education for the deaf was a waste of the government’s money.”

  “Your grandfather could not have agreed with them.”

  “What he thought was less important than what he could trade for his vote. If people had known he had deafness in the family, they would have pigeonholed him, written him off. Instead, they competed for his support. I don’t know which way he voted, though the school kept its funding.”

  Moss’s lips formed a puckered circle, and she imagined the whistle.

  “It is the way things work in Washington,” she said. “My grandfather is good at deals, which is how he maneuvered his way onto important committees. This trip might turn him into something more, something truly national, if he can draw enough attention from the players back home.”

  “And you do not mind being dragged around for show?”

  “It is why I am here.”

  He shook his head. “You are unbelievably passive when it suits you.”

  “Why fight it?” It was embarrassing to admit how hopeful—and naive—she had been as a girl. But if Moss wanted secrets, this was all she had. “There was a day when I wanted my grandfather’s approval. Once a month, he sent his driver to fetch me. His Brewster brougham was so fine, with the black exterior buffed into a mirror shine and the interior all cozy leather. None of the other girls at Kendall had ever seen anything like it. I used to let them come and sit in it briefly before I left. But when the congressman found out, he got angry. He demanded that I be more discreet about his patronage. He said lots more too, but I was not as good at reading lips.”

  Moss gripped the edge of the table. “Where were your parents all this time?”

  “I visited them sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?”

  “My grandfather sent me back home when he remembered to make the arrangements.” At Moss’s raised eyebrow, she added: “He could not send me on the train alone.”

  “You are making excuses for him.”

  She sighed. “No, I am being realistic. I know what he is, but without him I would not have an education.”

  “So you pardon your grandfather for his sins.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He is a congressman, not a pirate.”

  She did not feel like talking about this anymore. Maybe she was just tired. Lipreading for over an hour was exhausting, especially with someone she cared enough about to get it right.

  Moss must have read the reluctance in her face—quite perceptive for a hearing person—and let it drop. He glanced down at his pocket watch to time the chicken.

  After a few minutes, she realized he was letting her choose when and what to say next. So she did. “How are the preparations for my grandfather’s reception?” The congressman was throwing a party in his own honor the next week—at the Oriente, despite its lackluster catering.

  Moss threw a towel on the table in mock surrender. “He thinks no better of this hotel than you do.”

  “The name still means something in Manila.”

  “I only took over last week. You should have seen this place before.”

  She did not doubt its edges had been that much rougher before Moss took hold of it. “Just do what you would have done at the Queen Left Hand.”

  He laughed, as she meant him to. “We didn’t host grand occasions—the wives’ auxiliary of train engineers, that kind of thing. Nothing very fashionable. And my time with the Minnesota Volunteers trained me to police the streets of this city, not entertain its high society.”

  “Society,” Della said with a smile. “The Americans here are hardly that. Bounders, more like, trying to make a buck off the Asian frontier.”

  “What does that make you and me?”

  “We are the same,” she admitted. “So plan a party that would impress you—and, when in doubt, just make sure there’s lots and lots of liquor.”

  He laughed. “What would you know about that?”

  She slid her coffee mug over to him, the one she had brought from the dining room. It was mostly empty, but the fragrance would be enough.

  Moss sniffed the cup. “Crème de Cacao. You have been drinking all night?”

  “You assume that I’m boring, just because I am—”

  “A lady?”

  She laughed. “I am not a lady.”

  “So I am learning,” Moss said.

  Chapter 6

  The Scandal

  Della had never tasted anything as magical as lemony potatoes smothered in roasted chicken fat. She had barely finished eating when her grandfather entered the dining room and sat down next to her.

  “This is where you have been hiding,” he said, gesturing to his entourage to follow. He signaled the waiter. “Boy! Bring us a nightcap. Four.” He held up four fingers.

  Della was not one of those four.

  The Filipino left a bottle on the table so that he could end his shift and go to sleep behind the bar. It was late, even by local standards.

  Her grandfather introduced Della to the lieutenant seated on the other side of her, but the soldier’s mustache would make conversation impossible. Besides, Della thought mustaches poor hygiene, a trap for half the food a man ate. Della was further unimpressed by the lieutenant’s crooked brown teeth and chapped lips. She silenced him.

  The other men at the table began competing for her attention, though the prize they sought was her grandfather’s notice, not hers. The o
lder man, a civilian, spoke to her, but his exaggerated mouthing of words made him as unintelligible as Mustache Man. The one she could understand—the tall, bald man—kept talking about a “water pastor.” She ran through more possibilities until she figured it out: quartermaster. “Von” or “fawn” was fraud. Quartermaster fraud. Once she had those key pieces, she had enough context to follow the rest.

  Bald Man listed off staples—biscuits, flour, bacon—before asking: “How can someone make a hundred grand from flour?”

  Mustache Man said something.

  “A thousand sacks of flour,” her grandfather said. “And wagon loads of bacon”—though at first she thought it was “making loaves of baking.” The ensuing debate about how much cured pork could fit into a wheeled cart cleared up her confusion.

  “All pears in cavern men pets,” her grandfather concluded. Or didn’t.

  “Who else is involved?” Bald Man asked. He was less drunk than the congressman.

  She caught the end of her grandfather’s answer: “. . . and three of the largest bakeries in Manila.”

  “Clarke’s?” Bald Man said. “Our friend should be smart enough to smell a trap.”

  Mustache Man said something.

  Holt waved a hand to interrupt. “Not public”—his next words were slurred—“investigation is announced.”

  The men readily nodded. Della knew that a quartermaster scandal could damage the reputation of the military. Though the congressman would want to limit the damage, he was also eager to see a civilian government installed, so he would not want the Army to emerge completely unscathed.

  “We need strong government,” he said. “Permanent authority over these islands.” It was the clearest she had seen his speech all evening.

  Bald Man agreed. “It would be folly to give the locals any consequence,” he said, meaning self-government.

  “They’re like buffalo bulls,” her grandfather said. “They struggle, whether right or wrong.”

  The same could be said of the men at this table. Della pulled out her little red notebook and started taking notes anyway. She wrote without looking at the page—the men probably thought she was doodling out of boredom. It created a scribbled mess, but the alternative was losing some of the conversation.

  When the whiskey ran out, Holt’s guests took their leave. He motioned Della to stay for a moment, which she did reluctantly. She had a daisy of a headache.

  “You cannot tell anyone about this,” he said. His articulation was clearer now, which meant that his drunkenness had been, in part, an act.

  “Tell anyone about what?”

  “The investigation on the supplies.”

  “Oh.”

  “When I came in, you were chatting with that manager, Mr. West—”

  “North.”

  He waved his hand at the irrelevancy of the man’s direction. “He could be in on it.”

  “You think he stole bacon?”

  Her grandfather shrugged. “Where do you unload flour by the sack-full? Places like this”—he motioned to the empty dining room—“where they cook for dozens, if not hundreds.”

  Della did not know Moss well enough to defend him. “I do not think he would.”

  “He has been in Manila for three years. Do not fool yourself.”

  “But—”

  “The evidence is all around you. How is he not corrupted?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  The congressman looked shocked. “That is the last thing I want to do, not while we are staying here.”

  Eating the spoils, he meant. The chicken sat heavy in her stomach.

  “You hear me, Della? No hints or warnings.”

  Chapter 7

  The Reception

  Moss looked around at the tables of hors d’oeuvres and hoped there would be enough to feed the crowd. The Manila American had reprinted Congressman Holt’s invitation to all military officers stationed in the city and nearby provinces. The result was a hungry crush.

  Fortunately, he had successfully poached Luz the baker from Clarke’s, and she had learned the quirks of his ovens in no time. The tables overflowed with bread. Her early experimental loaves, now stale, had been diced into Moss’s gazpacho. He knew that he might have a hard time getting his guests to eat such an adventurous soup, especially since most Americans in Manila would only eat tomatoes from a can. For the timid, he had prepared boiled ox tongue and mashed potatoes. He made the mashed potatoes himself, fortified with butter, salt, and—his mentor Louis’s secret ingredient—a little French mustard, which he bought from a commissary sergeant in Ermita.

  Moss was not sure whether Della Berget had inspired him or embarrassed him over his lack of leadership in the kitchen. In the past two weeks, though, he had heard praise narrowly ranging from “welcome change” to “about time.” What would they say tomorrow? Never had Moss been responsible for a reception this size.

  He clasped his hands behind his back and feigned calm. It helped to watch Della. She was wearing an off-white silk and lace dress with metallic threading along the gauzy neckline. It was more sensible than the other women’s hot, high-necked frocks, and she looked dazzling in it. The cut of a talented dressmaker emphasized her long torso. Someone else might think her a maypole, but Moss had never been keen on the Camille Clifford hourglass-type.

  Congressman Holt had turned away from his granddaughter and instead was flattering Mrs. Cooper with honeyed words about the plight of brave Army wives. They endured such worry while their husbands were out in the field. Della kept a plain face, but Moss thought he knew her well enough to hear a swallowed laugh. Moss kept his spine straight and his hands to himself; he did nothing to acknowledge her except to smile. He counted the beats while Della stubbornly tried not to smile back. It took only five “one-thousands.”

  Someone tapped Moss on the shoulder: the staff was running out of mashed potatoes. It was an easy enough problem to solve, but the assistant chef did not like Moss’s recipe. American and Filipino tastes diverged somewhere between Dijon mustard and fermented fish paste.

  When Moss returned from the kitchen, Della was no longer at her grandfather’s side. Moss looked around the packed hall. The chairs and tables had been pushed aside to make room for the crowd. He would have to supervise José, Fernando, and Anastasio putting it back together in the morning, lest he ignite another furniture war.

  A few Filipinos fidgeted in the crowd, impatient with standing. The old Spanish bailes had been formal seated dinners, but Americans preferred to gulp their conversation on the move. Once the band started playing, a space cleared for couples eager to dance. Outnumbered by soldiers, every woman in the room was invited to join in—every woman but Della. Moss did not see her anywhere.

  It was not until he went back into the kitchen to deal with a shortage of cold beer that he found Della hiding behind the open door. She was gazing into the dining room, watching the young people with a mix of curiosity and skepticism as they acted out the latest cotillion fad: the “Dewey Figure.” At the cry of a horn, men and women dashed to the middle of the floor and grabbed confetti balls for a manic faux-naval bombardment. The battle waxed hot—colorful bonbons sparkled in the air—turning Moss’s dining room into a mess worse than the real Spanish wrecks in Manila Bay. When one side capitulated, the laughing couples paired off and began a lively two-step over the papered floor.

  Even though Moss did not need to touch her to get her attention, he gently brushed his palm down her arm. He felt goose pimples form as he went. “Would you like to dance?” he asked.

  She looked at him like he was crazy. “No.”

  “Which is your objection: dancing—or dancing in public?”

  “I . . .”

  Moss took a liberty and let his hand drop from her arm to her waist, where he tapped out a beat slower than the ragtime vibrations coming from the dining room.

  “Your timing is off,” she said.

  “This is better.”

  He held
out his other hand, which she took. He exaggerated the tilt of his hips and shoulders as he stepped to the side. Della moved with him. They rocked gently back and forth together to the pulse of his tapping finger.

  Moss knew they were too close to read lips, so he let his body speak for him. He could hear her though. “You smell like whiskey and lime,” she whispered. “The local lime, calamansi.”

  The whiskey was recent—a fortifying drink to calm his nerves—while the calamansi lingered from his earlier kitchen preparations.

  “Your hands,” she whispered, rubbing his palm. “They’re rough.”

  Running a hotel was a more physical job than most people understood. A good manager had to do everything, from cooking to moving furniture to spot-cleaning rooms. Fortunately, Della did not sound disappointed about his calluses. And he liked her rubbing his hand.

  Moss could see the eyes of his kitchen crew upon them, so he danced Della through a swinging door into the back hall used by room service. She laughed as he twirled her into the darkness, only the light from the round porthole window illuminating their faces.

  Moss gentled their sway, almost not moving at all. He drew her closer so that her forehead rested against his cheek, and he placed a soft kiss on her head, right above the hairline. Instead of protesting, she nuzzled in for another, which he gave easily.

  His senses focused on the moment: the champagne from her breath, the citrus lingering on his fingers, and her elbows resting on his shoulders. Moss traced along her spine with his free hand. Her shiver encouraged him. How easy would it be to kiss her full on the lips? Or to pull her through the hall to the storeroom? Or from there to his private quarters?

  Della stepped out of his arms and caught his hands in hers. She said nothing, but he knew she was right.

  He squeezed back. Della’s silhouette faced him, as if she were watching his lips for some sort of declaration in the window light. Who was he to declare anything more than a dinner menu? Her grandfather considered him only a glorified butler—no, a diminished one. Holt believed staying in this hotel had stained his dignity, no matter how much bleach Moss had used to prepare for this party.