A Race to Splendor (19 page)

“I do hope you’re feeling better soon. It’s obvious you need this respite.”

Julia ignored Amelia’s show of concern. “Just be sure you’re at the Bay View site no later than 5:30 every morning to receive early morning shipments.”

For weeks now, she and J.D. Thayer had been checking in the supplies each morning at dawn.

“I’m sure everything will be fine on both sites,” Amelia murmured, though privately she’d begun to have her doubts.

To her would fall the responsibility of anticipating problems involving suppliers who were forever delivering their stores late, or not at all. She would have to deal with Kemp’s recalcitrant workers, and Thayer’s eccentricities. Her private concerns would have to be put aside, even though she owed her mother in Paris several return letters and poor Aunt Margaret in Oakland felt utterly abandoned while mourning her late brother.

The press of Amelia’s duties had even forced her to refuse invitations from both Angus McClure and her attorney, John Damler, to sample two newly opened restaurants. For the foreseeable future, she might as well abandon all hope for a social life.

And in that instant, Amelia felt the enormous weight that had been on Julia Morgan’s shoulders suddenly shift to her own.

***

The next morning at five, Amelia pulled herself out of bed and went along Taylor Street in the pitch dark. She had just set foot upon the curb in front of the Bay View’s half-completed front entrance when a low-pitched voice said, “Good morning, Miss Bradshaw.”

Stifling a small gasp, she saw a tall, familiar figure push off the door jam and walk toward her, Barbary dutifully trailing along behind him.

“Ah… well. Good morning, Mr. Thayer.” Amelia set a sheaf of drawings on top of a pile of steel girders. “I didn’t see you there in the shadows.”

He was holding two steaming mugs.

“Coffee?”

Surprised, all she said was, “Thank you.”

Make no mistake, she thought grimly, this was no welcoming committee. J.D. Thayer wanted something.

He shot a glance at the roofline. “How’s our roofing coming along?”

Amelia paused. His crew had proceeded at a snail’s pace.

“As slowly as can be expected, given the workers you have in your employ.”

Thayer gave her a steady look. Then he flashed her a smile. When he grinned, he was, indeed, a handsome devil, white teeth gleaming and a glint in his eye. She remembered thinking her first day back in San Francisco when she’d walked in at the end of the all-night poker game that Thayer’s tanned complexion gave him the look of a common field hand. Now, his long legs encased in boots that came up to his knees, he appeared more like the Spanish conquistadors from whom she vaguely recalled he’d descended on his mother’s side.

“I suppose you’d be the best judge of the roof, Miss Bradshaw, since you scamper to the top of the scaffolds each day. I hold my breath whenever I see you up there.”

So he’d been keeping an eye on her
activities, just as she’d warily been watching his.

“Have you been able to locate a reliable source for shingles yet?” she asked, making conversation. “Miss Morgan says they’re in terribly short supply.”

His smile faded. “Haven’t you found nearly everything in short supply, Miss Bradshaw?”

For an instant, they shared a knowing glance. Then, Amelia became aware that Dick Spitz, J.D.’s demoted site supervisor whom she’d replaced, had suddenly come around the corner. Now merely foreman, along with his cohort Kelly, the beefy head carpenter, Spitz scowled in her direction and slunk into the shadows. The pinpoint of a cheroot glowed in the distance and served as a reminder that he too watched her every move.

“What I need to locate at the moment is a supply of strong men to help me clear that rubble at the back of the property,” she said. “Please excuse me, Mr. Thayer, as I must have a word with Mr. Spitz.”

“Good luck with that, Miss Bradshaw.”

Amelia couldn’t help but smile at J.D. for understanding, at least, the challenges that faced her every waking moment. “Thank you. I could use some good luck. But wouldn’t you say that congratulations to us both are in order? Our walls are standing—and that’s at least something, isn’t it?”

J.D. looked amused. “Yes, the walls and roof joists in place are definitely signs of progress. And we’ll make even more, now that I have you all to myself. Good day to you, Amelia.”

Chapter 16

Amelia’s first week working full time at the Bay View site without the constant presence of Julia Morgan was uneventful, save for being awakened in the wee hours by the sound of a rat gnawing on something underneath her iron cot in the basement of the Fairmont.

Stifling a scream, she stood on top of the bedcovers and lit her kerosene lamp. Then she knelt on the bed and peered beneath the mattress where the creature nibbled daintily on what appeared to be a dismembered mouse. Its nose twitching furiously, the larger rodent cocked its head as if offended by Amelia’s intrusion, before scurrying away into the darkness of the Fairmont’s basement.

“Well!” she muttered, settling back into bed and pulling the bedcovers tightly around her neck. “I shall board up that hole in the baseboard myself. That’s the last time you’ll dine at
this
hotel, Mr. Rat!”

A few days later, Angus McClure stopped by the Bay View in the late afternoon to invite her to join him at another newly reopened restaurant he’d favored before the quake. She recounted her adventures with the rat and had expected him to laugh, but instead he scowled and wagged his finger.

“That rat might have bitten you in your sleep, lass, and you could’ve been dealing with rabies or typhus, rather than that slide rule of yours. What’s more, it’s not safe for you to stay in that drafty basement. All sorts of hooligans roam the streets scavenging among the ruins. How long must you remain in such a daft place?”

“As long as Julia Morgan wants me to.” She didn’t remind the good doctor that when J.D. wasn’t out gambling—or whatever activities he might be indulging in until late into the night—Thayer was asleep in far draftier accommodations at the Bay View, now he’d moved down the street to the half-built hotel.

“Don’t worry, Angus,” interrupted J.D., who had overheard their conversation as he walked up to them standing near the pile of lumber delivered earlier that morning. “Miss Bradshaw tells me she’ll soon have the Bay View’s roof finished, which means we’ll have a few habitable rooms she can stay in, rather than that dank basement at the Fairmont where she sleeps presently.”

Before she could put to rest any notion she would ever agree to sleep under Thayer’s roof, Angus shook his head as if he thought both of them should be confined to a mental ward. His scowl deepened when Amelia begged off his invitation.

“Thanks so much, Angus, but I’ve just got too much to do,” she apologized. She cast a quick glance in J.D.’s direction. The fact was, without Julia able to work full time, each evening, she had mountains of paperwork to keep up with after the laborers left both sites. She hated to hurt Angus’s feelings, especially in front of her employer, but there was no help for it. She smiled encouragingly at the doctor, adding, “Maybe another time.”

“
I’ll
keep you company, Angus,” Thayer said genially. “I’ve been wanting to see if Tadich’s is up to its former standards.”

“Aye, laddie,” Angus said, sounding not particularly pleased about this substitution. “Pity I can’t persuade Amelia to desert her duties. She must have a difficult boss.”

Two
difficult bosses, Amelia said to herself.

***

The following week, Amelia was again awakened in the middle of the night. This time she heard clanging metal and high-pitched voices in the lot where the Fairmont’s terraced, formal gardens had once been laid out. She cracked open the back door and peered outside.

Outlined in the palest of moonlight were two Chinese men—or rather a boy and a man—struggling to lift the heavy lid of the newly restored cistern. The deep cavern was filled with water that would one day be available to douse any fires that might break out on the property. The lid thudded to the ground and the older of the two seized a length of linen hose that most probably had been liberated from the half-completed firehouse on Powell Street a few blocks away.

The taller figure plunged the hose into the well, and in a burst of Cantonese, gave the little boy a litany of instructions. The youngest of the pair wrestled the other end down the sloping hill toward a large metal receptacle in a battered wheelbarrow. Clearly, they were siphoning water out of the cistern, but for what purpose, Amelia hadn’t a clue.

She swiftly donned her shirtwaist, skirt, and jacket. Stealthily, she emerged from the basement and crept down the hill without either of her uninvited visitors noticing her approach.

“What are you doing?” she asked sternly.

The little boy was so startled that he dropped the hose, soaking himself in the process. “Oh! Sorry!” cried his companion. “So sorry. Need water. For laundry shop. They no fix water in Chinatown.”

Amelia stared at the little boy who hadn’t uttered a word and, by this time, was shivering with cold. His saturated, black pajama-like garb matched that of his companion, and both wore odd little red silk pillbox hats and sported solitary pigtails down their backs. Amelia recalled the similar hairstyle worn by the Chinese houseboy who had been burying the old woman’s dog on the day of the quake.

“Come,” she said. “Let’s get you into the work shed. The little one will catch cold. I’ll give him a blanket to dry off, and you can tell me why you think I should allow you to steal my water.”

Amelia had known several Chinese houseboys employed by her grandfather in the old days. During the mid-century Gold Rush and the building of the east-west railroad, Chinese immigrants had flocked to San Francisco seeking money to send home to their impoverished relatives. Few had found little more than bare subsistence, a fate hardly better than what they’d left behind in Asia. Over the years, San Francisco’s Chinatown had expanded into a dozen streets that steadily crept up the steep incline toward the Bay View perched on the summit of Nob Hill. After April 18, all that was left below the hotel was a wasteland sloping toward the equally devastated shanties and saloons of the Barbary Coast.

In Amelia’s youth, she was forbidden to go anywhere near Chinatown, an area infamous for gambling parlors, opium dens, and whorehouses. Despite the enclave’s unsavory reputation, her personal experiences with the hardworking men from down the hill now prompted her to offer her visitors a cup of tea. She herded them inside the work shed where a low fire still burned on the hob, and set the kettle to boil.

“What are your names? Have you still no drinking water in Chinatown after all this time?” she asked, handing each a mug. They clasped the containers gratefully as if they held ambrosia—though she was certain that Chinese green tea would have been vastly preferred to her English blend.

“I am Loy Chen,” announced the elder of the two. “Foo here, is my cousin. Laundry shop burn up. No water. No money. No can live.”

Amelia deliberately kept her gaze steady. “And so you were siphoning
our
water. To use at your laundry? I thought everything where you live was burned to the ground.”

“No one here at night, so I take water,” he shrugged. “I do laundry in hole at old shop in Chinatown.” He squinted at her doubtfully. “This
your
water?”

Amelia had to laugh. “No… it belongs to the owners of the hotel we’re rebuilding.”

“Lady rebuilding hotel?” he asked, plainly skeptical.

“Yes. Two ladies and lots of gentlemen, working very hard, and we need our water.”

“Water in ground,” Loy said firmly. “Belong to everyone. And more come later, when misters need it, right?”

Amelia suppressed a smile. “You have customers for your laundry?”

“Oh yes, missy! City very dirty. Everybody need clean clothes!”

Amelia thought of her own soiled garments that she transported on the ferry to Oakland so that Aunt Margaret could wash them.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said with a sigh. “Clean clothes are a necessity.”

Loy cocked his head and inquired, “You want me wash clothes? I do that—if you give water. I wash all clothes you need, yes?” He shifted his gaze to the small iron stove and the tin of burnt bread resting on top. “I cook for you too. I be houseboy for you—if you give me water!”

Amelia could only imagine the desperate straits suffered by the thousands of Chinese who had been displaced. After the half-hearted attempt to banish the Asians to the periphery of San Francisco, a shadowy consortium of Chinese and Caucasian businessmen had sprung into action. Based on reports in the
Call
,
now publishing out of Oakland, several brothels and opium dens had already reappeared, with City Hall turning a blind eye—and perhaps turning a profit, as well, Amelia thought cynically. She remembered the little man in the ill-fitting suit who had not-so-subtly suggested he could supply workmen approved by city officials. When he was rebuffed at the Fairmont, he’d probably moved on to Chinatown to extort for the mayor and his sidekicks. Amelia had witnessed how hard men like Loy were willing to work—yet were prevented from seeking “white men’s jobs”—and felt a great deal of sympathy for him.

“For the time being,” she said, “and until the waterworks return to Chinatown, you may take what you need. At night.”

“Oh, missy, you very nice lady!” Loy crowed. He beamed triumphantly at little Foo, who, by this time, was so sleepy he was about to topple over onto Julia’s daybed, where the senior architect was known to rest after a long day. “We make good dinner for this lady every night, yes, Foo? We make laundry very white!”

“For your own safety,” Amelia insisted, realizing suddenly that she had made a decision without consulting Julia, “you must come
only
late at night, after everyone here is asleep, do you understand?”

Amelia noted that Loy had listened carefully to her admonitions as to when he could come onto the property. “Oh yes, missy. We come when very dark.”

She wondered what her strict employer would think of this scheme, not to mention the Law brothers. Even though Julia’s health had improved, she tended to prefer returning by ferry to her own bed in Oakland each night while Amelia continued to sleep on a cot in the Fairmont’s basement. The mains in Chinatown were due to open soon, so Loy’s borrowing water from the Fairmont’s cisterns a few times was unlikely to come under scrutiny. At least she hoped so.

“This is only temporary, you understand? Just for a few days.”

“We come only when okay. Men who work here no like Chinese.”

Amelia sighed and gave a brief nod of agreement. She gazed at Foo who was now dozing while sitting upright. He couldn’t be more than six or seven years old. “Let him sleep, Loy. If I hold the hose for you, you can fill your buckets and transport them to—where? Is anything left of your family’s laundry?”

“All gone ’cept hole on Clay Street.”

“You do laundry in what’s left of a basement?” she asked, thinking of J.D. Thayer, who’d had to live for weeks in what was left of his underground lair before the Law brothers offered him temporary shelter in the Fairmont’s basement while the Bay View was first under construction. The disaster had certainly been a leveler of society. Many in the city were still living like moles. “What about the other members of your family?”

Loy hesitated and lowered his gaze. “Mostly gone now.”

“Back to China?”

“No. Dead. In quake or in fire.”

“
All
of them?”

“Most. Seven dead. Trapped in house when fire came.”

“I am so sorry.”

She was struck by the unbelievable loss so many had endured, yet people like Loy Chen and J.D. Thayer soldiered on, regardless.
It made no difference what nationality or color or sex or class a person was. The suffering was the same.

Amelia gently removed the mug from little Foo’s hand, seized by the memory of Ling Lee’s arm protruding from the rubble on that fateful day. In her mind’s eye, she could still see dead horses and cattle lying in the street, wheelbarrows full of injured children, and the terrible vision of her father with the gaming table and lighting fixture heaped on his shattered body.

These unwanted memories came suddenly, unpredictably, and she found herself choked with emotion over the many deaths she had witnessed, including scores as a volunteer nurse at the Presidio.

For several moments she struggled to regain her composure, then rose from her seat and gestured toward the door. “Come, Loy, we’ll leave Foo here to sleep while I help you siphon some water from the cistern. Then, you must take this child home.”

Home? A burnt-out room among hundreds of burnt-out basements housing the city’s unwanted. It was simply
wrong
to treat the Chinese so shamefully.

And then Amelia told herself she had her own problems to attend to.

“Let’s work quickly, so we can all get some rest,” she said.

***

J.D. and Amelia stood side-by-side surveying the enormous pile of debris littering the site of the short-lived Bay View Gentlemen’s Gambling Club. Hammers rang out next door as the last floor of the Bay View was about to be enclosed against the elements. J.D. had already moved into a room off the unfinished lobby and was urging Amelia to do the same in order to be on site full time from now until the hotel’s completion.