by Megan Chance
He had gulped his champagne before I’d taken more than a sip of my own. Then he rose. “Now, my dears, enjoy your day. I fear I must be off. Oh, and May—Farge asked that you call him this morning.”
“Call him? Whatever for?”
“I believe he has something of importance to discuss with you.”
He nearly bounced from the dining room.
I frowned. “What could that be?”
Goldie drank her champagne. “How should I know?”
“Is something wrong? You seem upset this morning.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I’m not the least bit upset,” Goldie snapped. “Why don’t you call Mr. Farge and find out what he needs?”
So I did. I fidgeted nervously as I placed the call and waited to be connected, idly counting the silver, gold, and glass salvers on the table—seventeen. Who needed seventeen salvers? A man said, “Hello?” and I recognized his voice, crackly and scratchy through the line, with a small thrill.
“It’s May Kimble. My uncle said you wished for me to call?”
“I did indeed. Can you meet with me this afternoon? At Coppa’s, say, at five?”
I had some vague idea of that being the name of the restaurant on the bottom floor of the Montgomery Block. “Coppa’s?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make certain it’s all perfectly respectable.”
It had not occurred to me that it might not be. “Oh. All right.”
“And bring your other sketchbooks. I’ve some news for you that I think you’ll be glad to hear.”
“My uncle already told me you’ve agreed to work with him.” I glanced up to see Goldie idling in the hall, unabashedly listening.
“That’s only part of what I want to tell you,” he said. “Five o’clock. Coppa’s.”
We said our goodbyes, and I stood staring at the receiver in my hand.
“Well?” Goldie asked. “What did he want?”
“He asked me to meet him at Coppa’s at five.” Slowly I put the receiver in the cradle.
“Really?” Goldie lifted a perfectly arched brow. “The start of the cocktail hour. You’ll be there through dinner, I’m sure. My, my. Don’t tell me you have an admirer.”
“I hardly think so. He said he had something to tell me.”
“Probably that he’s mad for you,” Goldie teased, though there was an edge in her voice, that irritability again.
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Well, whatever it is, you should pretend to be pleased, even if you’re not. I’ve heard he’s very mercurial, May, so try to stay in his good graces, especially now.” She sashayed to the stairs. “Our family fortunes are in your hands.”
It was, unbeknownst to me, no exaggeration. “I won’t disappoint you,” I called after her as she went upstairs.
What should one wear for an appointment with an architect at Coppa’s? He’d asked me to bring my sketchbooks. Perhaps he meant to offer his advice. He’d seen talent, he’d said, and I wanted to believe him. There had been no reason for him to flatter me. I’d been asking a favor. In fact, it would have made more sense for him to dismiss my drawings completely.
So what could he want? Ultimately, it didn’t matter, because I couldn’t suppress my excitement—and yes, the hope—at the idea of meeting him once more, or again that sense that the world was holding out its hand to offer me something I hadn’t known I wanted.
I dressed carefully in a gray suit and plaid waist, along with a hat banded with a red ribbon and black and gray feathers and a small brim that curled coquettishly at one side. The hallway mirror was still gone, not having returned from its cleaning or regilding or whatever, so I could not check myself head to toe, and Goldie was not there to give me final words of encouragement. She’d gone earlier to tea with Linette, and had left me with a kiss on the cheek and “It’s the perfect ensemble. Don’t worry. Show him you’re no one to be trifled with! But remember to charm him too!”
I called the small buggy to take me to Coppa’s. Goldie had already taken the brougham and Nick; Uncle Jonny usually took the trolley to his office.
In Brooklyn, the weather would have taken on a distinctive autumn chill by now, but here the weather was fine and the buggy open as we passed the mansions on Nob Hill with their gardeners still out in force, and then, a few more blocks, and Chinatown, the silk and jade in the shop windows shimmering brightly in the sun, and—
Goldie. That was Goldie, wasn’t it, walking down the street? I would recognize my cousin anywhere, that distinctive sway, the golden hair, the hat with the blue ribbons, which we had bought at the City of Paris. But no, it couldn’t be Goldie. Goldie was at tea with Linette. Goldie would not be walking in Chinatown, nor would she be disappearing through a door carved with Chinese characters into a windowless building that looked nothing like a shop.
I opened my mouth to tell Petey to stop, to go back, but Ellis Farge waited for me at Coppa’s, and I could not be late, and it had to be an illusion anyway, some woman who only looked like Goldie. There was no reason for Goldie to be in Chinatown.
I forgot it all as we grew closer to Montgomery Street, and the restaurant, and my nervous excitement over my meeting with Ellis Farge returned. Petey pulled up before a small restaurant on the first floor corner of the Montgomery Block, where a sign in lights declared ORIGINAL COPPA, with COPPA RESTAURANT painted below.
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.
Ellis Farge made a face. “Gelett Addison, meet Miss May Kimble. Miss Kimble, here is one of the most odious creatures in the world, the art critic. Please don’t let his idiocy blind you to his very few virtues.”
There were two extra chairs at our table, and Gelett Addison chuckled and sat at one without invitation. He was short and plump, with a round, shining forehead and receding hair perfectly combed into place, as well as a carefully kept mustache. “Miss Kimble, I am delighted, though frankly I’m flummoxed as to why you’ve deigned to associate with this man. Where did you meet this charming creature, Farge? At Del Monte, where the rich while away their hours swimming naked in the ocean and dancing by the light of the moon?”
“Or something like that,” Mr. Farge said.
“Come, my friend, if you tell me there are no pagan rituals among the upper crust, I shall be severely disappointed.”
“They worship a small white ball, which they fling with long sticks into very small holes.”
“Sounds enticing.” Addison reached for Farge’s wine and took a gulp, and then called out, “LaRosa! My darling Blythe! Farge has brought us a new one!”
Mr. Farge sighed. “I see it was too much to hope for privacy here. I am sorry, Miss Kimble.”
The people Mr. Addison had called began to drift over, all of them holding half-full glasses of wine, but for a woman clad in a severe black walking suit and small black hat perched upon a hillock of dark, glossy hair, who had a small cup of coffee. Gelett Addison leaped to his feet, dragging over chairs and then the table they’d occupied, pushing it together with ours—no one in the restaurant even looked twice; apparently this was usual behavior. He rattled off introductions as he did so. A dapper-looking young man with a thin face and small mustache and auburn hair curling in a comma above his temple was Wenceslas Piper, whom everyone called Wence. He had fine light eyes and an insouciant air and fingers stained with colored inks and was an illustrator for the satire magazine the Wasp.
Mr. Addison said, “He also writes terrible poetry, perhaps you’ve read some?”
“I couldn’t say,” I said politely.
“You know the purple cow rhyme? ‘I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one . . .’?” Then, at my nod, “He didn’t write that. His are all moons and Junes—”
“And loons,” joked the man introduced as Dante LaRosa. He had thick dark hair and olive skin and he smoked his cigarette and looked at me as if surprised to find me here, which made me wonder if I knew him from somewhere. But he had a distinctive face. I thought I would have remembered him.
“LaRosa’s a writer too,” said Addison.
“Or at least that’s the rumor,” Mr. Farge said.
“I told you I was sorry, Farge,” LaRosa said. “I was only quoting Radisson at the opening. What was I supposed to do, make something up?”
“Don’t you usually?”
I felt LaRosa bristle, but Addison swept in lightly, saying, “Now, now, boys. LaRosa writes for the Bulletin, Miss Kimble. Be careful around him, or he’ll have you in the gossip pages by morning.”
LaRosa grimaced. “It’s bad enough to have to talk about society when I’m working. Must we do so here too?”
“Wait—you’re the society page columnist for the Bulletin?” I asked.
Wence whistled low and mimed ducking for cover. “Oh my God, here’s someone else he’s offended!”
LaRosa ignored him and dragged on his cigarette. To me, he said dryly, “No flies on you.”
“But . . . but you can’t be.”
“He is. Alphonse Bandersnitch, in the flesh,” Addison said. “I told him it was a terrible name.”
“It’s kept me hidden well enough, hasn’t it?” LaRosa asked.
“Oh, but you’re not at all what I expected!” I said. He was too young, too masculine, too Italian.
“That’s what everyone says,” Addison put in. “I keep telling you, LaRosa, you write like a sour old woman who lives with a hundred cats.”
Dante LaRosa gave him a thin smile. “Perhaps you could lend me some of your cats, Addison, so I could better fit your picture. Anyway, Older’s promised to put me on the Barbary Coast beat soon.”
“He promises that to everyone,” said the woman in black. She introduced herself as Blythe Markowitz, the Sunday feature writer for the Examiner. Then, to LaRosa, “He’ll say whatever you want to hear as long as it keeps you working for him. It doesn’t mean he’ll do it.”
“This time, I believe he means it,” LaRosa said glumly.
“To go from the crème de la crème to the scum of the earth—that’s quite a drop even for you,” said Addison.
“God knows it would be a relief to write about murderers of men instead of murderers of cotillion etiquette,” LaRosa said. “Something that matters for a change.”
A woman wearing a turban wandered over. “Is there a party? Why wasn’t I invited?”
“Because you’re wearing that ridiculous hat,” said Wence.
The woman patted the patterned silk. “Don’t you like it? I think it very stylish.”
“Worshipping idols in Chinatown again?” asked Addison.
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 C
oppa’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.”