Summary

In “Sunny Days (1910),” Madam Flora returns the Tenderloin to a regulars-only policy. Fahn takes Ernest and Maisie to a Japanese bathhouse, where “everyone’s allowed--men and women, the rich and the poor” (179). Ernest remembers that when he was a toddler, “people from Jiangsu frequent[ed] the public bath, but he and his mother had never been allowed” because of their poverty (180). Although Ernest is separated from Fahn and Maisie in the men’s baths, they join him. Ernest is embarrassed, but Fahn says, “This is normal where we come from--and I don’t mean the Tenderloin” (182). Ernest wonders about Mrs. Irvine’s shock and disapproval if she saw him bathing with two girls, but focuses on an experience of “strange, marvelous joy” (183). On his way home, Ernest inscribes “three sets of initials” inside a heart in a cherry tree (183).

In “Coming...