A-Splendid-Ruin(35)

He stood at a desk covered with unopened mail. “Well, if it isn’t Miss Kimble. The Bulletin Girl.”

“The what?” I asked.

He reached behind him for a newspaper, which he held out to me. That he had been looking at that page recently was not in doubt. There were two pictures from Sutro Baths there, the first with me looking pale and gawky in the revealing suit, and then in the next, my plunge backward into the pool. The caption read: The daring Miss Kimble models at Sutro Baths—and proves that this latest Parisian fashion is all wet.

I would have laughed at the caption had it been about anyone but me. Goldie must have seen it this morning, but she’d said nothing. Why hadn’t she warned me? My face felt on fire. “Oh dear.”

“You weren’t wearing that bathing costume when I saw you at the baths.”

“Thankfully I had it on for a very short time.”

“You belong to the Sullivans, I understand,” he said thoughtfully.

I was surprised again, that he knew it, that he’d offered me an opening so quickly, as if he’d known why I’d come. Perhaps, had those eyes been less blue, his smile less ready, I might have been suspicious. But he was attractive, and the drawing tools settled in a velvet-lined case on his desk—brass-plated compasses and rulers, thin wooden templates in triangles and curves—raised the beginnings of a hunger I didn’t recognize. “You’ve heard of us then.”

“Oh yes.”

“You know who my uncle is? He certainly knows of you. He’s longing to work with you. He says you’re avoiding him.”

“Ah, well.” Farge turned to the window. “It has nothing to do with him. I’m not working much these days.”

“Why not? My uncle says you’re very talented.”

“And you’re here to beg on his behalf.”

I paused. “Something like that.”

He said nothing. An awkwardness fell between us, and I looked at one of the framed drawings on the wall, a building of Egyptian fashion, with geometric walls that hinted at a ziggurat and many-sided columns topped with the distinctive bundled reeds. But it was a confusing mix of styles.

“The Hartford building.” He had turned from the window to watch me study it. “Finished earlier this year. What do you think?”

“It’s very nice.”

“Do you know what your friend at the Bulletin called it? ‘Bewildering’ and ‘cramped.’”

“I don’t have a friend at the Bulletin.”

He ignored that. “Do you agree with him?”

“I’m hardly an architect—”

“You don’t need to be an architect. Just tell me what you think.”

There was an intensity in his question that felt like his distraction of yesterday, and that kept me from honesty. I said carefully, “Surely people wouldn’t be clamoring to commission you if they thought your buildings ugly.”

“But you do,” he accused.

“I said no such thing.”

“Would you commission me, Miss Kimble?”

“I—”

“When I first came to San Francisco, I thought, what a place. What a place to do something new. It breathes in a way other cities don’t.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” I was eager to find common ground. “It feels new and exciting.”

“I see you understand.”

“It’s theatrical and yet—”

“Trying very hard to be classic,” he finished.

I laughed. “It wants to be flashy, but it wants to be respected too.”

He smiled now. “You know about the Burnham Plan?”

I nodded. “The city beautification project? My uncle says that the city doesn’t need it. He thinks it will hamper business.”

“It will cost too much and cause too much disruption. But it’s an opportunity for San Francisco to make a mark. It needs architects who aren’t afraid to try something new. That’s what I wanted the Hartford to be.” Ellis Farge nodded to the drawing. “Well? Don’t think you can get away so easily. What do you think? Not flashy enough?”

“What’s it meant for?”

His brow furrowed. “It’s a business building.”

“Offices? Then it’s trying too hard. The pyramid styling is interesting, but it does look cramped, and there are hardly any windows. It must feel like a prison inside.”

He stepped up beside me, a bit too close, and I was too conscious of the space between us. “You’ve studied architecture?”

“Oh no, just—I draw a bit but—”

“Is that a sketchbook? In your bag?”

I had forgotten it was there, and now I was horrified. Why had I not left it in the carriage? Goldie had been so sanguine, but it was Shin’s words that stayed with me, “You should not show him your drawings,” a reminder of impending embarrassment. “Oh, no. No, it’s nothing at all—”

A short, impatient gesture. “Hand it over. Let me see.”

“Please, it’s really so stupid—”

“No commentary please. Let me judge for myself.”

I handed it over, moved more by his insistence than by any volition.