A-Splendid-Ruin(86)

“Staying with you? You must be mad. What will people say?”

“Says the woman who set the tongue of every gossip in the city wagging.”

“That was not my fault.”

“We’re in the middle of a disaster, or haven’t you noticed? No one cares except those up on Nob Hill, and I’m the only one watching them. Not only that, we can plan better if we’re together. And I have an idea for Farge that I think you’ll want to hear.”

“What idea?”

“Oh no,” he wagged his finger playfully. “Not until we have something to eat. Let’s go.”

I looked again at the library, my vision made real, beautiful yes, but a terrible betrayal. I would never be able to come here again, I knew. Goldie and my uncle had been cruel and avaricious, but their greed was not so personal as Ellis’s. Not so intimate. And yet, I knew also, in a way I had not known before, that its very intimacy made me stronger. I would not forgive him this, and this time, I was not helpless, and I was not alone.





Dante took me to the west side of Telegraph Hill, where he stopped at a cluster of small wooden houses that had been saved from the fire. One of them was a single-story house with a flat roof and narrow, slatted stairs that led to the front door. The windows were cracked and busted from the earthquake, and plaster had fallen from the walls in places to show the lath beneath. Other than that, it seemed mostly undamaged. A small front room fitted with a secondhand settee, a desk, and piles of books was to the right. To the left, a kitchen and a table with two chairs. At the rear were two bedrooms.

“I share it,” he said. “But Bobby’s to Oakland for a few days.”

“Bobby?”

“My cousin.” He motioned to one of the closed doors leading to the bedrooms. “You can stay in his room. He won’t care. But you might. He drinks too much and he’s a slob.”

Gingerly, I opened the door. The curtains were drawn. I saw a bed, a chair, lumpy shadows. It smelled sour, of dirty clothes and unwashed skin and yes—what was that? Spilled beer?

“I try not to go in there,” he said.

I closed the door again. He was in the kitchen. The stove had been pulled out into the street like every other in San Francisco, leaving only the cobwebbed, greasy wall behind it. Dante pulled things from a cupboard to set on the table: a half a loaf of bread, two tins of sardines and one of tomatoes, and—

“Where did you get wine? No one’s allowed to sell liquor.”

“They never said we couldn’t drink it.” He set the bottle down with a victorious thump. “I know the right people. Papa Gennaro down the street. I helped him save his place.” He shoved up his sleeve and held out his arm to show smooth olive skin. “Burned all the hair off my arms doing it too. Sit down.”

I took off his hat and put it on the desk, and then I took one of the chairs at the table.

“All the glasses broke in the earthquake. We’ll have to be bohemians and drink from the bottle. I know society girls don’t do such things, but . . .”

He pulled the cork and handed the wine to me, and I raised the bottle in a toast and took a gulp. I hadn’t tasted wine in so long that it burned its way down my throat, but it was a long and luxurious burn, and I closed my eyes to celebrate it and sighed. “Oh, that is lovely. It’s been so long—” I broke off, humiliated at unexpected tears. I dabbed at them with the edge of my sleeve, trying to be surreptitious, but when I looked up, Dante was watching me. I felt strangely, horribly vulnerable; I had to turn away.

Gently he took the bottle from my hand and took a gulp himself. Then, softly, “What was it like?”

I didn’t pretend not to know what he meant. “It was all right.” I blinked and tried to swallow the memory. “Fine, once I found my way.”

“What way was that?”

My attempted smile was a failure. “Secrets.”

“Ah,” he said. “Just as brave as I remember.”

It made me teary all over again, and he gave me back the wine. He opened the sardines, then tore off a piece of bread. He put a chunk of the oily fish on the bread with his fingers and handed it to me with a care and concern that made me laugh with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I just . . .”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he offered, but it was his grace in relieving me of the obligation to say it that released me so I could describe that first horrible night when I’d been nearly strangled, and then the wretchedness of the toilet and the hoses and then finally the way I’d learned to be there, and he listened and made no comment, and my words spilled in a torrent I could not control, and when it was done, I felt as if I’d emptied an ugliness from inside me that I hadn’t known was there. I would not forget it, but the poison was somehow gone. I had not realized until then how sick I’d been with it.

He opened the tomatoes. He had two spoons, and he gave me one, and we ate contentedly from the can until we finished them.

He took the notebook from his pocket, along with the pencil, and laid it on the table with a quiet deliberation I didn’t understand. And then suddenly I did. Suddenly I knew that he’d heard something in my story that I’d forgotten. He took out a precious cigarette, got to his feet, and said, “I’m going for a smoke,” and went outside, leaving me there. I stared at that notebook, the page with Charles written on it and then the dates I’d given him. I pulled it toward me. The stink of sardines was in my nose, their salty oil on my fingers. The wine was almost gone. I took another gulp and picked up the pencil, and turned the page. The imprint of the words Dante had written pressed through. He’d left the door open; the smoke of his cigarette drifted inside.