Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear

lamp—as she had asked—turned down to just a satiny glow, and went downstairs to see what I could salvage of my work for the evening.
    *   *   *
    It started off as an uneventful working night. I think we all expected Priya to sleep until sunset the next day, if not the second night through, too, and Merry Lee had a bell to ring for Connie or one of the day girls who kept house and served food and helped Connie in the kitchen—who was night girls at Madame’s, really—if she’d need. Custom was steady but not too strong, and I spent my time between goes sitting in the parlor, listening to the Professor chat up the tricks when he wasn’t barrelhousing out hot tunes on that baby grand of Madame’s.
    The Professor—his name was Shipman, but nobody ever used it—was average height and slender, a white man with strawberry-blond hair and a red mustache. He had knotted on a gray silk cravat—he wore a different color for every night of the week—and the only time he ever took his matching kidskin gloves off was to play the piano. He looked gentlemanly, or at least gentle, with his wire-rimmed glasses and his mild expression, and there was something aristocratic about the way the bones of his thin nose turned into the arch over his eye. His handkerchief was folded into four points.
    His cheeks was dotted along the stand-out bones with old, round pox scars, and you could see the knife scars across the back of his left hand. Between tunes, he got up and sauntered over to the game room to keep an eye on the faro and billiards tables. He weren’t big, but he could handle himself in a whorehouse fight as it came necessary.
    Most of our business came by way of what they call referrals. Appointments and introductions. The johns stayed overnight more often than you might think, if all you’ve ever been in is a regular bordello. Not most of ’em, mind—which suited me fine. Madame and Miss Francina know I prefer to sleep alone, even if it means sewing more than one coat of an evening. Pollywog, Effie, Miss Francina—even Bea—they’d rather one and done, because if they want you for all night they pay for all night. And you know for all men like to brag up their prowess, ain’t but one in twenty of ’em going to keep you up too late. But me, I like to sit in the library with the ladies and maybe get a little reading of my own done before I turn in.
    Anyway, like I said, it was slow custom, and I was in the parlor with the Professor and Miss Francina and Pollywog. And Miss Bethel, of course, but all she was doing was polishing her glasses. Pollywog was singing along with something the Professor was playing, and her French was even worse than mine. Miss Francina was playing Patience and losing. Miss Lizzie came down, seeing off her last john, and settled in with a cigarette in an amber holder and one of the little clockworks she fidgets with sometimes. This one was no bigger than Bea’s fist, and when you wound it up it walked on clattering ivory thimbles. I think it was supposed to be an elephant or a rhinoceros, but if I’m being honest the likeness weren’t striking.
    I was spending the time with the notebook I don’t care if people see, sketching away at my idea for curtains for Priya. I’d do those first, I decided, though they’d need lining to hide the seams between the patchworks, because they was just rectangles. They’d serve as practice for the duvet and maybe for cushions.
    It was all busywork, of course, to distract myself from what I was really thinking. That I needed— needed —Priya to stay. So she had to want to stay. So it was up to me to make her comfortable. To make her like it here.
    And of course I was all at the same time painfully aware that if I made it too obvious I was scrabbling after her I’d just drive her away. Anybody who just wants a dog to kick isn’t somebody you’d want to be loved by, my da used to say. Nor somebody you’d ever give a dog, Mama would always