the heat, everyone wears layer upon layer of clothing, from buttoned-up collars to buttoned-down boots. And hats—everyone wears a hat, even the children. The ladies wear veils and carry parasols, the scalloped edges drooping with lace or velvet fringe.
Zhu gulps. Her daily dress in Changchi? Jeans, a T-shirt, and worn-out sneakers, plus a sweat-stained padded jacket in winter. These people would think her half-naked if they saw her in her T and jeans. Like most post-domers, she’s always worn Block, the fine protective microderm protecting her skin from solar radiation. Her complexion, though golden, is paler than that of these veiled ladies.
Everyone so elegant in their elaborate formal clothes. Zhu sighs, wistful and resentful at the same time.
Yet there. Zhu spies a frail little woman in pale blue silk. The veil on her flowered hat barely conceals her battered eye. The pale blue ribbon tied around her chin does not at all conceal the bruise discoloring half her jaw. Her burly husband towers over her, quick anger in his narrow eyes.
And there. A gust blows off a woman’s broad-brimmed hat. Straps at her chin, ears, and forehead hold a translucent face glove. Her eyes, nostrils, and mouth show through the stitched openings. In the sunlight, Zhu sees serious acne beneath the face glove’s gauzy fabric. The woman retrieves her hat, furiously pins it back on.
There, too, a girl so thin, she’s nothing but satin skin over bird bones. She shuffles behind her sisters, dark circles surrounding her eyes, her skin pale celadon. She delicately coughs, and blood blooms in the handkerchief her mother impatiently thrusts into her fragile hands. Zhu recoils, covers her nose and mouth. Tuberculosis. Very, very contagious.
“Outta sight, you friggin’ hoodlum!” shouts a portly man in a charcoal cutaway coat as he grapples with a fellow in a bowler and a three-piece suit. Sweat pours down their flushed faces, staining the high starched collars strangling their thick necks.
“I’ll take me knuckledusters to ye,” the bowler shouts back.
Zhu smells the reek of whiskey. The cutaway passes a silver flask to the bowler, who swigs from it and slams the flask back into the cutaway’s chest. Are they roughhousing or about to commence fisticuffs? Their violent conviviality makes her heart race. Men like this go down to Chinatown, set a house on fire just to see the flames. Men like this chase a Chink, string him up from a lamppost just to see him swing.
What an Age. The Gilded Age.
“My calculations indicate your rendezvous is fast approaching,” Muse reminds her, a little too loudly.
A woman turns and peers at her. Zhu adjusts her veil. That’s all she needs--a disembodied voice hovering over her, and she answering. Muse is perfectly capable of communicating in subaudio so others can’t overhear. Why is the monitor speaking in projection mode? She’ll wind up in Napa Asylum for the Insane if she’s not careful.
The rendezvous! Time to go!
Zhu gathers up her skirts, sprints back to the Japanese Tea Garden. She finds the elegant redwood pagoda, takes a place in the queue. A Japanese woman in a kimono and clogs bows and smiles. Zhu returns the bow. The Japanese woman pours tea, sets the cup on a red lacquered tray.
“No more than a thousand Japanese live in San Francisco,” Muse whispers. “The staff is part of the attraction.”
An exuberant Japanese fellow in a blue and white kimono and scarlet headband bustles about behind the counter. “I am Mr. Makota, dearie. You try my cookie?” He proffers the treat, a wafer folded over like a half shell, fragrant with vanilla. He breaks the cookie open, extracts a slip of paper from the crumbs.
Zhu takes the slip and reads:
THERE IS A PROSPECT OF A THRILLING TIME AHEAD FOR YOU
The concessionaire laughs at her startled expression. “You like my fortune cookie, dearie? I make them for the fair, number one first, but, oh my! how the Chinese copy me. Every Chinese restaurant in town make fortune cookie now. But I am first!” He pops a piece of cookie in his mouth. “You try? Bake fresh today.”
“Thank you, Mr. Makota,” Zhu says, taking her tea and fortune cookie to a little table at the back of the pagoda. She unties her veil from beneath her chin, discreetly lifts the cup beneath the netted fabric, and sips. Hot sweet tea soothes her throat, calms her sinuses. The swirling, tenuous feeling—what the techs warned her about, a reaction called tachyonic lag—fades away. She smiles, encouraged, breaks apart the cookie, and takes