Vera Carol Edgarian (great novels of all time txt) đ
- Author: Carol Edgarian
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The Gold House
âPut on your new dress, mule,â urged Pie, as she peered through a slit in the parlor drapes to check the road. âHurry, before Hank gets here.â
It was after midnight and Hank was late. Pie looked gorgeous in her new frock, while Iâd thrown on my old blue with its too-short hem.
âWhat do I care? Rose doesnât give a fig what Iâm wearing.â
âYes she does,â Pie declared. âWhy else would she send these?â
Rose had commissioned the best seamstress at I. Magnin to sew our new dresses, with silks from Paris, lace from Belgium, bone stays made from Pacific whales, and long French ribbons for our hair. The apricot silk with crĂšme lace was meant for Pie and a fine navy satin for Morie, whoâd spent the afternoon scandalized at the prospect of appearing in public in anything other than widowâs black.
Even now, with Hank overdue, Morie was upstairs dropping her shoes and cursing, âSkit! Skit!â
Pie checked the road again. âI bet sheâs not back from the brothel. Do you ever wonder what goes on at The Rose?â
I shrugged. I wondered all the time, but I wasnât going to say.
Pie went on. âJames heard some fellas talking. The girls, they stand naked, all in a row, like plucked chickens at the market. The men point and say, Iâll have that one. Or that one. And the madam? She takes the money and says, âYou go with him.âââ Pie wrinkled her nose.
âJames is an idiot,â I snapped. âThe Rose is first-class.â
âOh really? How then? How does it work?â
In all my imaginings of The Rose, Iâd considered the frivolity and the money, but till that moment I never thought of the women as anything other than cheerful participants, as actresses in a grand show.
Tan, Roseâs butler and cook, was under strict orders never to speak of the goings-on at The Rose. But if I bribed him on the day every week that he begrudgingly worked at our houseâif I promised, say, to unload the buggy for him or shine our three pairs of dusty bootsâTan would sometimes provide curt answers to my questions. âA paradise,â he said, âa hell.â What Tan lacked in articulation he conveyed in feeling, lowering his eyes and faintly shuddering whenever he talked of The Rose.
My mother had some twenty girls working the rooms upstairs, where there were suites with full five-course dining and canopied, gilded beds, and parlors for gentlemenâs games; she had another dozen âhostessesâ in the French restaurant-saloon on the ground floor. She had safes stuffed with gold bars.
In his way, Tan held Rose in high esteemâas a sometimes generous, sometimes ruthless boss. If interrupted during a meal, or while she was in the bath enjoying one of her thin cigars, she was liable to turn violent. Sheâd lash a girl with her tongue, Tan promised, or her whips.
âOf all the places downtown,â I told my sister, âThe Rose is the best.â
Pie looked at me curiously. âDoes that make you⊠proud?â
It did. In my mind, The Rose was strictly a high-end joint, where laughter flowed like the limitless quantities of champagneâyou know, a warm, cozy sort of place, where all oddities were accepted and even celebrated, where no one was too bookish or stubborn or unsmiling. And, this was essential to me: The Rose was a place where no one was unwanted.
In my story, Rose called her workers girls but she treated them as professionals. She paid them handsomely, saw that they were schooled in the language of pleasing, with a fine appreciation for manners, music, and art, as their rich clients preferred. A doctor attended to them each week and money was sent to their families by courier, and there were even bonuses for the care of faraway children.
Faraway children. That was the part that stuck in my throat. No one had to tell me that Rose was expert at granting or withholding favors. I knew what a real motherâs absence felt like, how it was never to have someone look upon your face with wonder or pleasure. My life was a mess of contradictions, of locked doors and secret assignations, same as at The Rose. Every time I visited my mother, I was sent away.
Overhead Morieâs heels knocked on the floorboards.
âIâm starving,â I said. âI wonder if sheâll serveââ
âV, every day you claim youâre starving,â Pie said.
âAnd every day itâs true.â
Weâd been waiting so long that when at last Roseâs long, garish machine pulled up at the houseâsilent, like an eel sliding through inkâMorie was so flustered she ran out without her hat and shawl.
Rose had two places: the brothel downtown called The Rose, and her house. The Rose being off-limits to me, our visits took place at Roseâs house, on the highest hill of Pacific Heights. It took a half hour for the motorcar to climb the distance of no more than a mile. Hank, grinding the gears, had to zig and zag to avoid the steepest slopes. Even so, the car huffed, gasped, crawled. When at last we arrived, the house looked shuttered.
âItâs all right,â I told Morie, who hadnât been allowed near Roseâs place in years. âAt night it always looks foreboding.â
âForeboding!â scoffed Morie, uneasy with things she didnât understand. âMy, isnât that a fancy word.â
Foreboding it was, at least at night. Roseâs house was a grand Victorian dame, five stories tallâfour up, one downâwith
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