The Harlot’s Pen (14 page)

Kate put the money in her till and marked his bill paid. The lieutenant governor never took a girl up to the rooms. He was true to his wife, but liked the break of conversation and bootleg as a way to diffuse the stress of his job in Sacramento. He would be a perfect target for Violet, as long as she didn’t get stuck on Caleb Houston. A whorehouse was no place for romance.

June 6, 1920

From the journal of Violetta Stone

I completed my first week as a working prostitute. I am appalled that I am so delighted with my achievement. Only the most perverse woman could take a judge’s daughter into the den of sin and find it remarkably un-scandalous after a mere five days. It makes me question first the depth of a reformer’s morality, and secondly, my own. Is theirs so much thicker than mine? My scruples evaporated on the first night.

Of course, I am doing research, as I am quick to remind myself. I have only prostituted myself in the names of knowledge and justice. But I haven’t hated it.

Kate—I can no longer call her Miss Lombard, but only Kate or Kitty—is a real taskmistress when it comes to working. For all her soft kindness, she is, after all, running a business, and just like the retail business Sam drilled into my head, the entire point is to make as much profit as possible. And in both cases, the owner makes the profit off the sweat of the women working under her.

First, Kate requires that on the nights when there are plenty of customers, a girl has to take at least three fellows up to her room as a minimum. And she takes away your tips until you get to the third gent. Then, and only then, will she give back the tips. She told me that I was lucky I didn’t have to earn my room and board first before I even got my forty percent take on the fee. Most places a girl has to pay her rent and food on her back. Or front, or on her knees. There’s no end to what the men want.

At least Kate doesn’t beat the girls. I wouldn’t stay if she did. I told her that, and she said that was the difference between a dilettante and a girl who had to prostitute herself to feed her children. “Do whores have children?” I asked. She looked at me like I was a Dumb Dora, and I realized that I was. Of course they had children and had no husbands, to boot. I realized what a fool I was, really playing milkmaid à la Marie Antoinette. I wanted to crawl away in shame.

Then she told me the story of how she ended up in the business, at least the first part of her story. I cried for her, and she said that if I ever cried again in her presence she would slap me and make me drink vinegar. Later, Rose told me that Kitty has taken in girls with broken limbs from men who beat them, nursed women whose wombs were destroyed by abortionists, and fed girls who were half starved, and their children too, and that self-pity made her blood boil.

When I explained that it wasn’t self-pity, it was pity for Kate, Rose just shook her head. “You just think it is, honey. But it ain’t.” I thought about that for a long time. “Miss Kitty just wants to make life bearable for the girls in this business, and she goes about it in her own way, but she sure don’t want you mewling over her life story. If that makes you cry, mine would make you upchuck.”

Rose is a real mystery. She’s unbearably beautiful, even with that horrible scar across her neck, and she’s treated with kid gloves by everyone, including that creepy Moses. She arises when she pleases, wafts in and out, and has a strange, far-away look in her eyes, like she’s seeing things that no one else can. I was dying to ask about the scar, but I at least had the good sense not to do that. I was learning, albeit slowly.

So, the first night it was just Caleb—I’ll get to him later—and the sweetest old guy, Jake. He’s about fifty, Jake that is, and the sun’s made his face wrinkled and tanned. He’s got a kind, teasing sort of way with himself, a delicious Scottish burr, and when we went upstairs he was as polite as a gentleman could be. Unlike Caleb, though, he asked me to get completely naked. I was nervous and hopelessly embarrassed. But I knew I had to do it, so I very slowly took off all my clothes while Jake watched. It really worked him up. Then he opened his pants and had me sit on his lap. It took a bit before he was hard enough to do the job, but he got there. When he was finished, he thanked me.

Kate let me get away with just two men that first night, and I was grateful, because after Jake I couldn’t think of trying another man. When I went back downstairs, Kate took my tip again, and I was steaming. But I had no choice, so I turned it in. Then she told me to stay in the card room and chat up the gents for the rest of the night. I pulled myself together and did as I was told. I watched Sharon take four men up, and each time she looked as eager and saucy as the time before.

The next day I asked her how she managed. She gave me this cockeyed look and said, “Back in my days at the saloon in Sonoma I used to do eight or ten a night, and in San Francisco I was whoring till I dropped. Four’s a nice, round number.”

Rose wasn’t up, so I couldn’t ask her, but I did not see her go upstairs with anyone.

I learned what three was like the next night, and it was exhausting. At least none of the men were rough or mean, or to tell the truth, all that interesting. I just did my job and got through it. Kate took the first two men’s tips, but gave it all back to me after the third. In one night I made twenty dollars in tips. It’s worth remembering that women at Nathan-Dohrmann make ten bucks a week. No wonder women go to whoring.

And that’s before I get paid. Kate pays us on Sunday after supper, so tonight I’ll get my share of the fees. All told, not counting Caleb’s tips and the tip from Jake for my first night, I’ve already made over sixty dollars.

Saturday night was my biggest night. There was a band and dancing, and I danced with all the men, and with Lily, too. She held me closer than any of the gents. It felt funny, but she must long for a motherly touch, so I held her close right back. And at the end of the song she planted a kiss on my lips!

Kate said I danced really well, and I should hope so, since I’ve done enough of it at parties in San Francisco. I danced twice with Gold, who had come back to the Resort. He was one of the first men I met that first night, playing rummy. After the dancing he took me upstairs, and I saw the first circumcised rod of my life. Turns out he’s Jewish. His real whole name is Shlomo Alexandrovich Goldstein. That’s not too hard to say, and he could just call himself Alex, but he likes Gold. It seems he owns a prune ranch and a string of knock-off clothing stores in San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, and even one in Benicia.

Gold is handsome in an exotic way, with enormous dark eyes. And he likes to take it slow, is full of surprises that leave me melting, making me feel like I’m the only gal in the whole world at that moment. He’s witty and awfully smart, and can talk forever, even with his heavy accent. If I get to know him better, I will ask him what he pays his women workers.

Which leads me to the problem with this experiment. Although I am doing this for research, the reality is that I
am
whoring. And I did somewhat slip right into it. I have tried to dredge up a share of shame and remorse, but not enough to stop this. I understand now that this isn’t what a prostitute’s life is on the street, or in a “crib” as Kate called it, but still, it is prostitution, and if it ever gets known that I worked as a whore, how will I ever get a decent job—never mind return to society? I wonder what Jacqueline or Leticia would think about this. But no, I know what they would think. They would be horrified. I have only told them I am “in the field” doing research on women’s rights. I am, of course, but if word got out I would be ostracized forever.

No one would have married me after Sam and Grayson anyway, so it isn’t like I’m giving up a marital future, but the idea of a future suitor or lover finding out that I was a prostitute for a month… Well, that pretty much ices any possibilities, now doesn’t it?

And last, there’s Caleb. When I think of him I go weak. He’s an engineer for the State, and he’s up here three days a week, and when I see him walk in it’s all I can do not to squirm and wiggle. And then he looks at me with those eyes, and I can’t help myself. Kate’s noticed and has made me turn in my tips from him every time, no matter how well I’m doing otherwise. I’ve been with him three times, and each time it’s been explosions of pleasure like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

This last time we sat and talked afterwards for about a half an hour. Kate told me the next morning that if that ever happened again, I was out. Talking was for before eight. I can’t tell Caleb to come earlier. I wouldn’t be able to chat up the other customers. From a business perspective, I can see Kate’s point.

And then there’s the dog. He looks like a cross between a rat and an elephant. He’s got no hair, gray, smooth skin like I would imagine an elephant has, and a pointed little nose. He’s no bigger than a beagle and howls like one too, if Kate locks him in his closet too long. She does that when she wants him out from under foot and Samantha doesn’t want him in the kitchen. He loves to sleep by the stove, even on warm days. His body is warmer than I expected, but he still craves heat. I guess it’s the lack of fur. Moses says the Aztecs used to cook the dogs. He’s as creepy as the dog.

I’ve started writing my series during the day, but I’m so tired from my nights I hardly ever get up before noon. In fact, this is the first journal entry I’ve written in over a month, since I left Sam’s old place and came up here. Of course it’s Sunday, and we’re closed for business, so I have time to write this. But I’m jotting notes like mad so I don’t forget anything and hiding my notebooks in my stockings drawer, way in the back, along with my precious stolen keys.

I find myself floating above myself somehow, observing, watching, and noting my life at El Verano. I wonder if this series will do what I hope, cement my future as a journalist and allow me to carry on the torch of justice that my father perforce dropped into the bay when he was killed.

Perhaps ultimately I’ll be a novelist or playwright like Maud Younger, and then it will no longer matter if I’ve led something of a Bohemian life. Speaking of Miss Younger, no word from her yet.

Kate counted out the money and set it in four little piles. She had already paid Samantha and Moses. She paid them on Saturday, so that when they went off duty at the end of Saturday night they could leave without having to collect. The girls lived in even on Sundays, so Kate made a habit of paying them after supper. Other than that, the day was free for them to take care of personal business, sew their clothing, wash their hair, even go to church. Kate herself went to Mass at eight on Sunday mornings at the Catholic church that was filled with Mexican and Italian workers and their large families. The Irish workers went to Mass at St. Leo’s. St. Leo’s was closer, but they would have shunned Spanish Kitty, and St. Francis Solano was much more welcoming. For a girl who had been born Soledad Martinez Smith, weekly Mass was a necessity.

The world is changing, she thought, and change itself comes faster every year. If you didn’t keep up, Kate thought, fingering the coins, you would be left far, far behind. The madam of a stylish salon could not afford to be out of touch.

Fewer and fewer went to church, almost as if the war had killed faith as much as men. On the other hand, before the war, Kate could not have run her salon as openly as she did now. San Francisco might have been a wide-open town, but it was a rougher place than it was now. Then, Kate had moved through the underworld of whores as a glittering shadow. Now, in permissive Sonoma, change had smoothed out the rough edges, and she sat at the top of illicit society’s mountain.
Rising like a hemline.
She glanced at her closet. She would have the dressmaker in San Francisco make her a few of those straight, short dresses, sleeveless and loose. The one Violet had worn was a knock-out, perfect for a tall, buxom woman like herself.

She looked at the pile of bills and coins allocated to Violet. It was a fair chunk of dough, she thought. Sixty dollars. Not bad for her first week. There was no way that minimum wage could top that. And she seemed to have acclimated fairly well. Unlike all her other girls, though, Violet had not come from the streets, the cribs or the saloons. She was a pampered intellectual who had no idea how good she had it at Spanish Kitty’s. Kate felt a spike of irritation when she remembered Violet tearing up at the short version of her story, and her lips tightened. She forced her mouth to relax. There were already little lines showing along the edges of her mouth, and pursing her lips only accelerated the aging process.

She was glad to see Violet getting on well with the other girls, although when Lily smooched her on the lips, that was a little too much. Of course the gents loved it, so all was well, but she would have to reprimand Lily if it happened again. Rose had taken a liking to Violet too, and that was good. One never knew with Rose. Out there in her little room off the back of the house alone, conjuring up whatever spells or voodoo she was casting, Rose was a case unto herself. Rose hadn’t liked Posie, and look what had happened. Posie hadn’t lasted a month, running away, convinced her room was haunted. Kate was sure this was Rose’s doing. But some nights Rose brought in even more than Sharon, and that was really saying something. With those two, Kate made as much as having four or five girls.

Sharon hadn’t warmed to Violet yet, but she came from the roughest part of San Francisco, had worked the wharf and the cribs, so it stood to reason. When the brothels had been shut down and the Barbary Coast and the Tenderloin had been
cleaned up
, as they called it, Sharon had lived on the street, filthy, starving, and hiding from the law. There had been no shortage of customers then, but they didn’t have to pay like they did at a house, and Sharon had no place to sleep after she was finished at dawn. At one point, she’d been pleasuring a groom with her mouth to be able to sleep in the back of a horse-stall when the working night was over. No wonder she didn’t trust Violet.