A-Splendid-Ruin(41)

Blythe Markowitz sighed. “Oh, Gelly, when, when, when will you ever get your religions straight? Edith, come and meet our new Miss May Kimble, the mystery Ellis has brought foolishly into Coppa’s. Miss Kimble, Edith Jackson.”

“A painter,” Mr. Addison explained.

Edith Jackson blew the smoke from her cigarette toward the ceiling in a long breath. “How mundane, Gelett. You’re usually not so careless with words. I prefer ‘Artist,’ with a capital A. What do you do, Miss Kimble? Besides grace the arm of our very eligible architect?”

“Do?” I asked.

“Are you a writer? A poet? A playwright?” She gestured about the room. “Please don’t tell me you paint, or I shall have to flee to Carmel, where there’s less competition.”

I laughed softly. “I do draw a little, but only rooms.”

“Rooms?” echoed Miss Jackson.

Ellis Farge poured more wine into my glass and said, “For God’s sake, enough of the inquisition.”

“We don’t stand on ceremony here,” Wence said. “No misses and misters at this table. We must think up a suitable nickname for you. That is, if we allow you to stay. You know we shall hold our traditional vote when you’re gone.”

“Vote on what?” I asked.

“Whether we like you or not. You’re on trial. Take care.” Dante LaRosa stubbed out the last of his cigarette into his now empty wine glass and sat back, then lowered his voice to say to me privately, “Slumming, Miss Kimble?”

The conversation went on loudly around us. I glanced about, but no one seemed to notice or care that he spoke only to me. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Just that Coppa’s isn’t the usual haunt for society, not even the Sporting set.”

“The Sporting set? Is that what I am?”

“Generally seen about Ingleside, or at drunken yacht parties, or wearing scandalous bathing costumes at Sutro’s.”

I flushed and tried to ignore it, to match his drollness. “Oh yes, thank you for that. Your caption was very clever. It was yours?”

He grinned. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I wish I’d been there to see it in person.”

“I’m surprised you weren’t. You seem to be everywhere.”

He made a face. “Not everywhere. I try to avoid the Dead Slow set. Too boring.”

“The Dead Slow? Who are they?”

“Miss Sullivan hasn’t enlightened you? I’m surprised. They’re up there with the Conservative set, but duller. Senators’ wives and such. Very old school.”

I knew none of this. “And the Conservative set?”

“Hoffman, Oelrichs, the McKays . . . the top one hundred families.”

“Old San Francisco families,” I guessed.

“Old money, such as it is.” He leaned closer. “Very respectable. But not that fun. Where you really want to be is the Smart set, the Ultras. Never a dull moment, and not such parvenus as your Sporting set.”

Parvenus. Goldie’s talk of the Hoffmans and the Oelrichses, the Cotillion Club . . . It all jangled uncomfortably in my head. I think I must have been gaping. “I had no idea.”

“Your education’s been lacking.” He lit another cigarette. “How did you meet Farge?”

“He’s working for my uncle.”

“Jonathan Sullivan,” LaRosa intoned. “Builder, member of the board of supervisors. Has a mistress with Very Important connections, a wife who is ill, and a beautiful daughter.”

I was taken aback. “Do you always do this when you meet someone?”

“Do what?”

“List everything you know about them?”

He shrugged. “Best to have things out in the open.”

I was uncertain how to take him. I had thought of the Bulletin columnist as belonging to me somehow, but now I realized that I had only been reading into the writer the friend I wanted to see. Humor, yes, and cleverness, and he had an arresting charisma. I had no idea how I’d never noticed him before. But his bite held a keener edge than I’d thought. “Perhaps not everything should be out in the open.”

“Secrets.” He exhaled the word on smoke. “My stock-in-trade. Which brings me to the mystery of you. Why are you at Coppa’s instead of skating with your cousin at the Pavilion or wrapping poor Edward Hertford into knots?”

I barely remembered him. “Oh, Jerome’s cousin.”

“You seemed very close the other day at the Cliff House.” He offered the observation with an arch grin, an I know you better than you know yourself glint, and I remembered the article he’d written.

“During our jovial party, you mean?”

“I could have said drunken.”

“The champagne was very good,” I said with great dignity.

He laughed. “You’re no coward, Miss Kimble. I’ll say that for you.”

“How is it you manage to remain so anonymous, Mr. LaRosa?” I asked. “It seems frankly impossible.”

“It’s a skill.” He blew smoke from the corner of his mouth and met my gaze. “I do hope I can rely on your discretion. I don’t think you want me to write about your visit here.”

I was startled. Why should his writing about my visit here matter? But it was clear that he thought it would, and his words about slumming, and society not frequenting Coppa’s, and Ellis Farge assuring me in our phone conversation that he would make sure it was all respectable came together, and I realized that these were the kind of people my mother had warned me about. Of course society would not come here. “Artists are interesting, but they are only for show, May. One must never actually consort with them, not and remain above reproach.”