standing together, a Manhattan of differing heights. Everything had been touched a million times.
‘Sit down, Ad,’ she said. ‘You’re like a kid with worms.’
He sat down, picked up the magazine and looked at the pictures of the island. ‘Look at us, we’re wasting time,’ he said. ‘Me and you, Rosie. Let’s go mad. Let’s go to Mexico. Let’s go to your weird island.’
She looked up and smiled. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘if you’re very, very good.’
Is This the Ugliest Woman in the World?
Miss Julia Pastrana is surely the most remarkable creature ever to have graced a stage in this city of excess, far surpassing any of the attractions currently on show at Mr Barnum’s American Museum just a couple of blocks away. She has the appearance of an ape but dances like Lola Montez and sings pretty Spanish folk songs in a very pleasant mezzo-soprano while sometimes accompanying herself on the guitar.
The newspaper lay open on a pouffe by her feet. It’s not that I have a particularly beautiful voice, she thought. It’s that they’re surprised I have any voice at all that isn’t a grunt or a howl.
Wearing scarlet boots, a tight-fitting skirt, and silk panty hose, Pastrana sang an Irish melody — ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ — and danced a bolero, looking every bit like the famed ballerina Fanny Elssler and displaying ‘a symmetry’ that would make the most successful ballet dancers envious.
Three nights on Broadway at the Gothic Hall, a big old palace covered in tarpaulin, the canvas a riotous mish-mash of colour. Sea monsters, a man with two heads, a boy pierced with pins, serpents and Cyclops and a scorpion with a woman’s face. In the corners, scenes from cannibal life. And now her picture was up there too, the head wild and fierce, the body a ballerina.
The front stoop of the rooming house was full all day with people waiting, hoping for a glimpse. She heard them, laughing and fooling around, crossing the road to the coffee booth, but she didn’t dare look out. ‘Think about it, Julia,’ Rates said. ‘Who’s fool enough to pay good money if he can just schlep down here and take a look for nothing? Guard your mystery.’
When this was over, they were for Philadelphia.
‘Or we are for Philadelphia,’ Myrtle said, laying out the cards for Patience. ‘I don’t know about you, Julia. You know he’s had an offer?’
‘Delia told me.’
They were in the pink parlour on the third floor, a room full of faded brocade and walls crammed with pictures and playbills of all the show people who’d ever stayed there. Julia was at the window, behind the curtain so she couldn’t be seen, looking down at the coffee booth across the street. A young man leaned against it with a bored air. Myrtle tossed one of her endless thin cigars into the air with her foot and caught it between her lips. ‘Look out for yourself,’ she said.
‘I’m not a slave,’ said Julia. ‘He can’t sell me.’
Myrtle looked thoughtfully at her, the cigar drooping on her lip. ‘Can’t he?’
‘Not unless I want to be sold.’ Julia turned from the window and sat down opposite Myrtle. ‘Can I have one of those?’ she said.
‘Sure.’ Myrtle gave her a cigar. ‘Mine’s gone out. Pass me a spill.’
‘I want to travel,’ Julia said, plucking a spill from a pot on the mantelpiece and lighting it at the fire.
‘Well, you’ll surely do that. They’re all out there, waving their big bucks, you could have your pick of them.’
‘I don’t want to stay with Rates,’ Julia said. ‘Do you?’ She lit both their cigars.
‘For a time, I suppose.’ Myrtle drew on the cigar, opened her lips and held the smoke in the bowl of her mouth. ‘He’s not too bad,’ she said, letting it out slowly, ‘wears thin, travel, believe me. I’ve been on the road since I was nine,’ leaning down, passing the cigar to her toes. ‘Been all over the west, up to Alaska, up in the snows, all over the place.’
‘I want to go everywhere,’ Julia said. ‘I want to go all over the world.’ She shivered. ‘I’m cold. I’m getting a shawl. Do you want yours?’
‘No.’
‘I’ve been in one place,’ said Julia, ‘all my life.’
‘Just look out for yourself, that’s all I’m saying.’ Myrtle shifted a card from one line to the next.
‘I’m going to get my shawl.’ Julia ran down quickly. Coming back with the shawl around her shoulders she saw Rates’s door at the end of the passage and thought, I’ll go there now and talk to him, no more of this drifting, put her hand in the pocket of her dress and closed it on the gris-gris bag. Courage and luck, the Doctor said. Be brave.
‘Julia!’ said Rates, as if delighted, ‘I was just about to . . .’
‘Mr Rates,’ she said, with no idea what to say, ‘what are your plans?’
‘My plans, Julia?’
‘Someone wants to buy me.’
‘Everyone wants you!’ Rates laughed, came out into the passage and pulled his door to behind him. ‘Barnum! Barnum sent someone! Soon sent him packing. Didn’t come himself, you note. Sent someone.’
‘So,’ she said, ‘am I to come to Philadelphia with the others?’
‘Don’t you want to?’
‘To tell you the truth, Mr Rates,’ she said, ‘I haven’t really thought any further ahead than this moment. And now suddenly, I don’t know why, but I’m feeling nervous.’
‘No need for that!’ Rates smiled down at her. ‘No need to rush into anything. Have the girls been talking?’ His face took on concern. ‘I’m sorry, Julia, perhaps I should have mentioned it, but I didn’t want to bother you with the details.’
‘But Mr Rates,’ she said, ‘I need to know what’s happening.’
‘The truth is,’ said Rates, all business, ‘I’ve had three or four offers and I’m weighing them up, settling in my mind which is the best for everybody all round. But, more to the point . . .’
‘I don’t want to go with just anyone,’ she said.
‘Of course not!’ Rates was shocked. ‘What are you worrying about, Julia?’
‘Who are they?’ she asked.
‘Associates. I don’t deal with anyone shady, as you know.’
‘I’d like to know.’
‘I promise,’ Rates said firmly. ‘I’ll tell you everything from now on. The truth is there’s nothing to tell right now, at least not as far as that’s concerned. But,’ and he bounced eagerly on the balls of his feet, ‘there is something very
