by Ciji Ware
Amelia resorted to her familiar habit of calculating the multiplication tables backwards to try to calm her nerves. How in the world did Jasper know the particulars on a legal case with the ink barely dry?
The purser’s expression grew dour. “I ’spose you’ve heard the private gambling club’s opened on schedule up at the Bay View. Those fellas stand to make a fortune, they say.”
Now that she had moved to her aunt’s, she didn’t want to hear anymore about J.D. Thayer and his damnable gambling enterprise. Fortunately, she was spared any more conversation as the Berkeley’s horn sounded and the boat pulled away from the dock. However, ten minutes later, Harold Jasper reappeared by her side.
“I ’spose you know your father was seen bummin’ drinks on the Barbary Coast a few days back.” Amelia suppressed her dismay and merely shook her head. Harold Jasper shrugged at her silence, adding, “Don’t it just prove that even fancy folk like you’un have skeletons in the closet like your da?” and ambled down the deck while she busied herself by sketching neat rows of bookshelves that might be suitable for the second floor of the Mills College library.
During the rest of the trip across the bay, she tried unsuccessfully to avoid either thinking about her father—who was probably lying in a gutter—or replaying in her head the purser’s cutting remarks or the courtroom scene and memories of the disintegration of her family that preceded it. Deep into her unhappy reverie, she hardly noticed when the ferry docked in San Francisco and the passengers began departing the gangway.
“Better step lively, Miss Bradshaw,” chided Jasper, baldly peering over her shoulder at her notebook, “or you’ll be finding yourself on your way back to Oakland.”
***
A cable car clanged and clattered nearby as Amelia walked a block up Market Street and turned right to reach California Street, heading for Julia’s office farther down on Montgomery. As anxious as she was to get to work, it was hard to ignore the staccato rhythm of hammers and the hiss of welders’ torches at so many construction sites in the downtown district. Most of the new buildings were standing on “made land” that skirted San Francisco’s hills. The shifting mudflats had been filled in along the shoreline with the residue of rotting ships abandoned by gold-fevered crews during “The Rush” fifty years earlier, along with decades of garbage buried by the ebb and flow of tidal sands. Now a thriving new city was thrusting up, proud and tall, on its marshy banks.
San Francisco, she thought with a glow of pride. Beautiful… bawdy… brand new San Francisco. And she would now be part of it becoming a great metropolis!
She lowered her rooftop gaze and came face-to-face with a tall figure in a smart black cape, gloves, and top hat.
“Why good evening, Miss Bradshaw.”
J.D. Thayer was obviously headed into Tadich’s Grill at 240 California Street.
The restaurant had been a coffee stand for incipient gold miners about to head off for Sutter’s Fort in 1849, but for decades now, Tadich’s had been a staple of fine San Francisco dining.
“Hello,” Amelia answered, her abbreviated greeting just short of rudeness. Thayer was alone, she noted, but then Chinese concubines were not welcome at such establishments as this culinary landmark.
The new owner of the Bay View Hotel was dressed impeccably, as usual, and appeared to her poised to meet someone for supper. He had seen her first. Even so, he looked as surprised to encounter her on the street corner as she was to nearly bump into him. He glanced at the large sketchbook under her arm.
“I heard you are now employed by Julia Morgan,” he commented with a quizzical look. “Aren’t your day’s labors at an end? Why are you trudging up the street, rather than heading towards the Ferry Building at this hour?”
Did the man know every detail about her life? But, of course, the Bay View’s staff would have told him her trunks were sent to her aunt’s in Oakland.
Well, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that she worked at night.
“I spend time in the city for reasons and at hours for which I have no need of accounting to you, sir. Now, if you’ll just excuse—”
J.D. rested his hand on her forearm, halting her forward progress, and she suddenly felt the fool for sounding so churlish.
“Miss Bradshaw, I…”
Amelia felt herself stiffen. She glanced at her arm encased loosely in his grasp. He released her but remained silent, his expression unreadable.
“What is it, Mr. Thayer?”
“I was wondering how you were faring in your… in your new…”
“Circumstances?” she filled in. “I’m working hard. I’m looking after my aunt who used to live with us at the Bay View. And I’m worried about my father. Have you seen him?”
“I? No, not I. The barman sees him in the storeroom occasionally.”
“Oh.”
An intense awkwardness bloomed between them.
“Miss Bradshaw…”
J.D. took her gloved hand in his, and the familiarity of the gesture, coupled with his having seized her forearm to halt her in her tracks a few minutes earlier, somehow infuriated her.
“I must be on my way, Mr. Thayer,” she announced abruptly, pulling her hand away.
“The ferry to Oakland won’t leave for another hour. Won’t you to allow me to buy you dinner after such a long day of toil?”
She was flabbergasted by his invitation. She studied his face and detected the faintest curve of his lips beneath his jet-black mustache.
“You are mocking me, Mr. Thayer, and such an approach is unlikely to persuade me to take anything you say to me seriously.”
“But I am serious, Miss Bradshaw,” he replied. “I would very much like to have supper with you. There are a few loose ends concerning the Bay View we need to discuss.”
“Loose ends? Such as what?”
“Well, for one thing, you mentioned on that day you burst into my office—”
“My grandfather’s office!” she interrupted.
“—that day you noted that part of the gambling annex needs to be shored up for safety’s sake. Perhaps you, Miss Morgan, and I could discuss ways to ameliorate—”
“Ah… so your conscience is pricking you ever so slightly and you intend, by throwing me a bone, I’ll just quietly accept the fact that you propositioned a known drunk into an all-night poker contest and thus swindled the Bay View away from my mother and me.”
J.D. paused a moment and Amelia guessed she’d managed to challenge his scruples—that is, if he had any.
“My intentions are rather more mundane,” he replied at last. “I agree with you that the construction work was shoddy. I’d like to remedy the problems if I can. And besides, I think I’d enjoy your company of an evening.”
He had ignored her insult and appeared, instead, actually to be flirting with her!
“And Miss Lee?” Amelia asked, gazing at him steadily. “Would she be joining us?’
Thayer’s eyes narrowed, but he did not reply.
“I think not, Mr. Thayer,” Amelia said, securing her sketchbook more tightly under her arm. “I’m not interested in assisting you with your structural problems at your club, and I won’t have supper with you at Tadich’s this evening. Good night, sir.”
And without further exchange, she hurried on her way, praying Julia wouldn’t notice she was five minutes late—or ever find out that she’d turned down a potential commission.
***
In the waning hours of the fogless spring night, a sharp vibration rippled beneath the redwood planking on the ninth floor of 456 Montgomery Street.
Startled, Amelia lifted her head from her arms, which were braced against the slanted drawing board, and tried to remember, in her just-wakened stupor, where she was. To gain her bearings, she focused on the large sketch of a floor plan she’d been working on for hours, its precise, black outlines vivid against the ivory-colored vellum.
It’s my drawing of the library. I’m still at the office…
&nb
sp; After a few more seconds of soothing quiet, she pushed her wire-rimmed drafting spectacles lower on her nose and peered through the windows across the room. The sky was a pale gray wash. It would soon be dawn.
A few blocks away, the Ferry Building stood rooted at the edge of the congested shoreline. Ships’ masts bobbed on both sides of the clock tower whose alabaster face registered a few minutes past five. The faint tremor that had just rippled through the room was like so many other small jolts she’d experienced as a native San Franciscan. Not like the earthquake in April of 1898, that had broken windows in the women’s residence hall adjacent to the Berkeley campus, frightening some of her fellow sorority sisters half to death.
“Mornin’, Miz Bradshaw.”
She peered across the room at a bewhiskered man in a dark blue cap who’d poked his head through the open office door.
“Zack! Goodness! You gave me quite a turn.” She paused and then asked, “Did you feel anything just now? The shaking?”
“What, miss?” the night watchman replied, furrowing his brow.
She glanced around the room and shrugged. “I thought I felt a little earthquake a few minutes ago, but maybe not. I think you caught me cat-napping.”
“The charwomen will be comin’ soon.”
“I know. It’s after five. You must think me daft.”
Zachary Webb cocked a disapproving eyebrow in so fatherly a fashion that Amelia laughed. “You’ve worked long enough, it seems to me,” he said. “It’s just comin’ on daybreak. You’d best enjoy a cup of coffee with me in the basement and have yourself a bit of a rest while the ladies be at their cleanin’.”
“Yes, of course. That’s a lovely offer.” The watchman had been extraordinarily kind to her from her first day entering the building just as everyone else was leaving. There was kinship in the night shift, she concluded, happy to have his company. She pointed at her drawing. “Just give me five more minutes.”
Webb shook his head in another show of friendly censure. “I’ll just be makin’ one more round of the building, miss, and be back for you in my elevator when the chars arrive.”
“You’re very kind,” she murmured, absorbed in her handiwork. After a few minutes, Amelia sighed, absently tucking her shirtwaist more securely into her skirt. “Voilà!” she exclaimed, pronouncing the project complete. With a flourish, she stashed her drawing implement in a tin cup atop her drafting table.
As if that triumphant flick of her wrist had set a giant machine in motion, the clutch of sharpened pencils rattled an alarming tattoo inside their metal container.
Amelia would remember that staccato sound the rest of her life.
In the next second, a vicious tremor struck beneath the soles of her sturdy shoes. She grasped the edge of her drafting table to steady herself and hung on tight as a large photograph of Julia Morgan’s controversial Mills College bell tower swung in a wide arc along the paneled wall. Then a second gigantic jolt of primordial energy shot through the room.
“Oh!” she cried as the four walls began a terrifying dance. “Oh God, no!”
A loud rumbling in the distance, deep and powerful as a hundred locomotives, gathered strength, and in seconds roared beneath her feet. The black-framed photograph of the campanile catapulted off the wall and crashed onto the desk normally occupied by Lacy Fiske. Lacy’s desk, her typewriting machine, and the smashed picture then toppled to the floor, overturning the drafting boards like a row of dominoes.
Amelia clutched her own desk for support. Church bells from a few blocks away sounded, joined by peals from the tower of old St. Mary’s on upper California Street by Chinatown. Then, bells all over the city began a dissonant clanging, as if heralding doomsday.
It is an earthquake! she thought, stunned. And it’s a big one!
By this time, the entire ninth floor was undulating like a deadly carpet. Rolls of blueprints flew out of their storage bins as bottles of ink exploded off the shelves in the supply room. Agonizing seconds ticked by while the noise grew even more deafening—the unforgettable roar of the earth splitting open and nearby buildings collapsing in lethal piles of debris.
Amelia’s stool pitched out from under her, hurtling her to the floor. Behind her, a waterfall of bricks and mortar erupted through a paneled wall from a stairwell leading to the roof.
Chunks of concrete and heavy ceiling moldings crumbled, filling her mouth with the chalky taste of plaster dust. The drawing she’d painstakingly completed slid to the floor, which was blanketed with gravel-sized chunks of rubble.
Amelia’s worries of material loss were soon replaced by the gut-wrenching fear that she was about to lose her life. Her world kept shaking as terror gripped her insides and left her gasping for breath.
What of Father? Did he finally go home? And Aunt Margaret… all alone in Oakland. Will I ever see Mother again?
She heard herself scream with fright as a water main burst through a baseboard like a broken bone puncturing skin. On her next breath, she inhaled a foul-smelling stench as the nine-story office building’s principal sewage pipe fractured and hemorrhaged its rank contents in all directions.
I’ll never have a child! I’ll never see the Bay View again.
Then, years of training suddenly drew her fragmented thoughts to the inside stairwell spiraling to the lobby.
The center core of the building’s the strongest… get away from the windows… get to the center!
Blindly, she inched along a floor pitching as violently as the deck of a boat in a midwinter storm. Her hands touched the threshold opening onto the ninth floor foyer at the instant the glass transom over her head exploded into a thousand pieces. Reflexively, Amelia cast her right arm in front of her face, but not before blood spurted from her scalp and ran down her checks. She crumpled beneath the doorframe, curling into a ball.
Amelia screamed again as a twenty-five-foot expanse of wood paneling and masonry pitched outward and plunged nine stories to Montgomery Street below. She knew that no structure on landfill, no matter how well built, could withstand much more shaking without collapsing.
Then, just as suddenly, the convulsions subsided.
For several long minutes, Amelia clung to the doorjamb, her mind drifting like a seabird’s flight. She gazed beyond the missing wall on the ninth floor at several buildings now visible across the street. Their facades too had disintegrated into heaps of rubble. Desks where accountants once sat were exposed to the elements. Bathroom urinals were immodestly revealed, and entire office floors were twisted into a jumble of metal girders.
The gray sky in the east had deepened to a rosy pink interspersed with streaks of palest blue. Incredibly, though, the Ferry Building’s clock tower was still standing above the roiling salt water below, hands frozen at 5:14.
Amelia’s entire body had started to tremble uncontrollably as if she, like her father, had been trapped in an ice cave in the Sierras. Her gaze skittered from crumbled cornice to buckled ceilings to the flag still flying from the top of the Ferry Building as she tried to absorb the chaos of her surroundings. Miraculously, she was still alive, but what of the rest of the city? What of her father and Aunt Margaret? Julia and the colleagues she hardly knew? What of people across San Francisco asleep in their beds?
She struggled to her knees and then fell once more against the doorjamb. A light breeze blowing gently through the missing wall lifted a few strands of hair from her bleeding forehead. She stared vacantly at the sky beyond the line of wounded buildings ringing the shore.
April 18, 1906, had dawned eerily clear and mild in the City by the Bay.
Chapter 5
Amelia had no idea how long she remained crouched in the doorway with her back to the open gash that had been the ninth floor’s east wall. Bruised, bleeding, and coated with plaster dust, she willed herself to stop trembling as she listened to the unnatural quiet, wondering if she were the last person alive in San Francisco.
Fine plaster particles still hung suspended in the air, making it
painful even to breathe. Somewhere within the shell of the building she heard bricks break loose and cascade for several long seconds until they hit bottom—wherever bottom now was.
Without a plan or promise of reaching safety in a building in its death throes, she began crawling across the littered floor toward the elevator. The brass arrow above the door indicated that the car had halted one-and-a-half floors above the basement.
Zack! Oh God… the poor night watchman…
Zachary Webb had made a final trip down to the basement and had been on his way back to get her when the quake struck. What if she hadn’t remained in the office to put the finishing touches on her drawing?
Don’t think about that… not that.
Finally, she found the strength to limp toward the center stairwell and creep down an endless series of steps—many missing or warped by the tumultuous upheaval. Her ankle-length skirt and petticoat were now as potentially lethal as the jagged spikes of wood and chunks of brick that impeded her way.
At length, she arrived at the mezzanine where a broad staircase had once descended into the building’s resplendent marble lobby—now an enormous open pit. Gone were the tall brass torchieres. Gone were the bronze and amber glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling—for now, there was no ceiling. The elevator shaft on the lobby and mezzanine levels was a tortured mass of steel and plaster. The car itself had been flattened to half its size, probably with Zack’s body inside. The enormity of the damage was so devastating that Amelia stared in disbelief at the destruction of one of the city’s grandest office buildings.
Like a diver poised on the edge of a cliff, she took a deep breath, counted to three, and then stepped backwards onto a jagged peak of the lobby’s remains. She clung to the sharp edges of the wreckage above her head and, step by step, slowly eased herself down the pile of rubble until she reached the buckled sidewalk.