A-Splendid-Ruin(39)

The boy helped me from the carriage and went to wait, and I licked my dry lips and walked into the restaurant, where I was greeted by the buzz of talk, and garlic-and onion-and tobacco-scented air. An elaborately framed mirror behind the bar reflected the twenty or so tables in the narrow room. Even with the high ceilings and the tall windows at the front, the place felt close and intimate, made more so by garish red walls decorated in places with painted murals and cartoons. A frieze of faintly sinister black cats with yellow eyes stalked along the top of the walls, with the names of great men written below, among them Aristotle, Martinez, Rabelais, and . . . Maisie? A huge lobster stood on an island named BOHEMIA, as a scrolled banner above declared You cannot argue with the choice of the soul. Nudes straddled other mottos, and caricatures of people I did not recognize grinned and jabbered and bowed.

It was obscene and repulsive and delightful and too much to take in at once. It was also crowded and loud. Both men and women gestured and laughed, blowing cigarette smoke in clouds while waiters dodged about with bottles of wine and plates piled high with spaghetti and bread. The bustle bewildered and challenged and entranced. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.

“Miss Kimble!” Mr. Farge rose and gestured from a table at the back of the restaurant.

I hurried toward him, aware of the curious glances from those I passed, though I pretended not to be. Mr. Farge wore a dark suit and a silk scarf wound many times about his throat, and I smiled at the sight of him. “How good it is to see you again, Mr. Farge.”

“And you, Miss Kimble.” He held out my chair, and I sat, and before I knew it, a bottle of wine appeared, along with two glasses.

“It comes with the meal,” Mr. Farge told me. “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t wish.”

“Everyone is drinking,” I noted.

“That’s the artist life for you.”

“But you’re an artist too, aren’t you?”

He looked sheepish as he poured the wine. “If you want to call it that.”

“I do.” I reached into my bag, pulling out some of the sketchbooks I’d brought. “You said you wanted to see them—”

He put up a hand to stop me, glancing about. “Not here.”

“Oh.” Of course. Why would he wish to be seen in public poring over the drawings of an amateur designer—and one who was a woman, no less? “Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive. I just thought we should save business for the office. Except for one thing. I asked your uncle to let me tell you in person.”

He could not have been more mysterious. “Tell me what?”

“You’re to be the liaison between my office and your uncle.”

There it was, the possibility I had not dared to imagine. My uncle had listened to me when I’d despaired of my lack of purpose, but to offer me this, for Ellis Farge to have agreed . . . I was astonished at the opportunity to work with an architect of Mr. Farge’s renown. To show him my ideas. To perhaps design rooms for my uncle’s building—oh, but I was getting ahead of myself. Slow down.

“Have I distressed you so much? You can say no, but I’d hoped—”

“Of course I would not say no,” I burst out. “I would be mad to say no.”

“Or perhaps you’d be mad to say yes.”

“There’s so much I could learn.”

He looked uncomfortable.

I winced. “I sound like a fool.”

“Only a small one,” he teased, relaxing. “I’m glad you like the idea. I’d thought you might raise an objection to coming to my office. A woman alone, and all that.”

“Times have changed, Mr. Farge.” I sounded like Goldie. But this was San Francisco, and everything was so different than what I’d known; why shouldn’t it be true?

Mr. Farge handed me a glass of wine and lifted his own. “To new opportunities.”

“To opportunity.” The wine was thin and sour, but I gulped it eagerly. “This is such an interesting place.”

Mr. Farge’s eyes were dark in the dim restaurant; the gaslight threw itself across his sharp cheekbones and his nose and tangled in the hair swept back from his high forehead. He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “So I’ve done a bit of research on you, Miss Kimble, and I’ll admit I’m curious. You’re from New York?”

I nodded, gripping my wine glass. “Well, Brooklyn, actually. My mother died and Aunt Florence invited me to come to San Francisco.”

“And your father?”

It was a habit to glance away, to soften the truth. My father is from one of the original Four Hundred families in New York City. No, I can’t tell you his name just yet. It’s a bit of a secret. The same words came to me now, but the way Mr. Farge watched me, the way he listened, as if it mattered to him what I said, was hard to resist. In New York, those stories had been a way to protect myself. But here in San Francisco, what did it matter? I was a Sullivan now. The truth could not hurt me. “I don’t know. He abandoned my mother when she was expecting me. I don’t even know his name.”

“A grand affair?” he suggested.

“The secret’s gone to the grave with Mama. As far as I know, the Sullivans are my only family.”

“How strange to see you here with a woman, Farge,” said a man as he approached our table.