A Race to Splendor (39 page)

Amelia leaned forward to touch his hand that lay on the desk. “No, it seems we could not.”

He gave her hand a squeeze while deftly withdrawing his own. “I had a rather nasty exchange with Kemp the night of the Fairmont’s opening and I’ve decided to take his threats more seriously. Hence, Nico and Roman are now on the roof.”

“That sounds like a sensible precaution, and thank you for telling me this, even at this late date, J.D. But honestly, don’t try to shield me as if I’m a hothouse flower. I’ll feel much safer if I know exactly what we’re up against.”

He nodded but didn’t comment further.

She rose from her chair and turned to go. Then she paused and faced him again. “You know, if you and I are to… to find our way through all this, there must be no secrets. No private arrangements on the side. We must tell each other the unvarnished truth at all times.”

J.D. looked down at his desk. “Ah… the ‘unvarnished truth.’ But what you must understand, Amelia, is that I’ve been a man on my own my entire life. I’m not in the habit of consulting anyone before I make decisions.”

“As you may have noticed, I’m rather independent myself. But I very much appreciate being told what’s happening where it concerns
me
. I’ll do the same for you so there’ll be no surprises on either side, all right? That way, we’re each free to
choose
if we agree with the other person’s decisions… and then make decisions on our own.”

J.D. appeared to be mulling over her last words but all he said was, “Where are we on the roof?

Amelia paused. “The crossbeams are up and the wood slats on top of them were nailed down yesterday. When the tar paper gets here later today we’ll be ready to roll it down. Perhaps those lookouts can also help us with that while keeping an eye out for intruders?”

J.D. leaned back in his chair, smiling faintly. “Always out to save a penny.”

“When I can. Safely.” Amelia shrugged and then disappeared down the hallway.

Once she left the room, J.D.’s expression grew somber. For his part, he was grateful that she wasn’t aware of the most recent threatening note from Kemp, who was enraged to learn from his apparent spies that J.D. had secured slate for the roof and canceled the order for shingles from Kemp Lumber. This latest vicious warning had been delivered just that morning by the wagon driver who brought the last load of slate tiles to the site. If Amelia ever knew the “unvarnished truth” about what was contained in that ugly missive, J.D. would have to make damned sure that she left San Francisco for good.

In fact, he still might have to.

Chapter 30

Mercifully, the rest of April and the month of May slipped by uneventfully. J.D. and Amelia kept busy in their own spheres, rarely exchanging anything more than pleasantries or information relating to their business, while Loy and Shou Shou somberly went about their daily routines never mentioning the loss of little Foo. Whenever Amelia felt a strange pang that J.D. made no move to see her privately, she sternly reminded herself this was just as it should be.

In the middle of June, Amelia looked up from an array of building plans spread across the table in her kitchen headquarters when her foreman opened the back door.

“A Miss Julia Morgan is here to see you, Miss Bradshaw.”

Startled, Amelia watched as Franco Pigati stepped aside, revealing Amelia’s former employer standing alone in the doorway.

“Hello,” said her visitor. “May I come in?”

“Julia! Please do.” Amelia hastily stood up. “How… how grand to see you.”

The petite figure appeared her usual trim self, dressed in a matching brown gabardine skirt and suit jacket, silk blouse with a mannish silk tie, and a small brown velvet hat perched at a jaunty angle. Her sturdy shoes were polished to a glistening shine.

“I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“Oh no… it’s—” Amelia was suddenly tongue-tied. Finally she said, “It’s a pleasure.” She pointed to a pot of tea that she always kept on the corner of the stove. “May I offer you a cup? I was just about to pour myself another.”

“That would be lovely.” Julia removed her gloves but not her hat. She gazed around the room and Amelia could tell her eyes were measuring the angles of the walls and the plumb of the windowsills. “Your work looks as if it’s coming to fruition beautifully.”

Amelia felt the knot in her stomach loosen slightly. “Truly? You think so?”

“Indeed.”

“Do you think the front entrance is the proper scale for the building’s height? Now that it’s completed, I’ve been worrying a bit about that.”

Julia smiled. “I think it’s exactly right. And the mullions around the windows are especially apt. They conjure up the stern of a clipper ship, which is quite appropriate, considering one can view the bay from them.”

“We have a number of difficulties still to overcome before our opening, but thank you for saying that. The construction is just about finished except for the roof and then there’s the final landscaping still to do, of course. And thank heavens most of the furniture arrived in port today. It’s rather a miracle, but I think we’ll be ready by the Fourth of July—as Mr. Thayer announced yesterday.”

“So I read,” Julia said dryly.

“He doesn’t seem to embrace your philosophy of never speaking to reporters.”

“Well… we each look at these things in our own way.”

Amelia realized that Julia’s last statement was probably as close to an apology as she was ever likely to receive. She smiled at her visitor. “I’ve come to believe that a balanced approach with our friends at the newspapers might be the best course for me,” Amelia declared. “For instance, I won’t give James Hopper an interview until the day
after
the hotel opens its doors—but there you are.”

“I was terribly saddened to hear from Donaldina about the tragedy you had here with the Chinese laborers.”

So, thought Amelia, Julia had heard from her old friend about the calamity at Taylor and Jackson. “You’re so kind to ask about them,” she replied. “My friends Loy Chen and Shou Shou, who work here now, are heartbroken, as we all are, but carry on, of course.” She gazed somberly at her visitor as she handed her the hot beverage in a cream-colored teacup with the initials BVH etched in blue on its side. “You heard about little Foo?”

Julia nodded. “I saw Donaldina yesterday. She said he was such a dear boy.”

“We’re all still terribly sad.” Amelia wondered if the stab of guilt that pierced her whenever she thought about what had happened to Foo would lessen with time.

“That’s why I wanted to stop by and extend my condolences to all of you.”

Amelia felt tears suddenly well in her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes glued to her teacup. “That’s really kind.”

“And Mr. Thayer?” Julia asked. “How is he faring?”

Eyes still lowered, Amelia fingered the handle of her cup. “Very well, I should think.” She reached for the teapot and carefully refilled Julia’s cup, though it hardly needed topping off. “However, I believe he’ll be extremely relieved when all this is finished and the workers and I are out of his hair. I also expect he’s looking forward to being relieved of the burdens and expense of construction. Today, for instance, we learned that only half the furniture that had been unloaded at the dock was ever delivered here to the site. He’s gone off to locate the rest and hire more teamsters to haul it to Nob Hill.”

What she didn’t mention to Julia was that J.D. told Franco—not her—about the waylaid furniture. It was just another instance of how he’d recently assumed an air of polite detachment, as if he really might be looking forward to the day construction was complete and their association officially concluded.

“And what are your plans, Amelia, after the Bay View opens? Professionally, I mean?”

It was a question Amelia had asked herself countless times, but coming from Julia, she hardly knew how to reply.

“I-I don’t actually know.” It was the absolute truth.

“No plans to marry?”

Amelia tried to disguise her amazement. “No, I have no plans in that regard. I’m just not sure of my next project.”

She refused even to think about the implications of Julia’s odd question. It had been more than a month and a half since the solitary night of “wild abandon” —as the novels of her youth would describe it—in J.D.’s private quarters had taken place. With each passing day, Amelia almost wondered if she’d dreamed she’d spent a night in J.D.’s brass bed.

“I thought perhaps your Dr. McClure…” Julia proposed delicately.

Amelia almost laughed at how off-the-mark her visitor was. “He’s asked me to marry him. Twice,” she divulged, meeting Julia’s steady gaze. “I thanked him for the offer but respectfully declined.”

“So did Donaldina,” commented Julia with an arch of her eyebrow.

“He might still have a chance with our friend, Nurse Pratt,” Amelia added, and they both smiled.

Amelia took a sip from her cup and added, “Angus McClure is a very wonderful man, but he and I simply don’t see eye-to-eye on a number of things. He seems to think women architects need to be shielded from the world.”

Now it was Julia’s turn to stare into her teacup. “Many men are of the opinion women need to be protected from their own ambition.” She reached for her kid gloves lying on the table. “Well, I mustn’t keep you from your work. I merely wanted to stop by and pay my respects.”

“It’s wonderful to see you again.” Amelia scrambled to her feet as Julie rose from her chair. “I truly appreciate your coming. I hope you’ll attend our opening festivities.”

Pulling on her gloves, Julia paused and suddenly smiled. “If I can, I certainly will. It was lovely to see you as well, Amelia. Please come by and say hello to everyone at California Street. Lacy and Ira, especially, wanted me to extend their regards—and, again, condolences regarding Foo.”

“That’s dear of both of them—and of you, Julia. I’d be delighted to pay everyone a visit sometime soon.” A weight seemed to float off her shoulders. For the first time since their breach, she saw a glimmer of a chance that she and Julia might be amiable colleagues again, even if they didn’t work together any longer.

“We’d all love to see you. And do keep me informed of your plans.”

Her visitor departed as quickly as she’d arrived.

Amelia began to speculate whether Julia had paid this call in part to determine if her erstwhile employee might eventually be available for hire. The Morgan office was probably swamped with commissions and both of them knew how difficult it was to employ truly qualified people.

Amelia wondered if she’d enjoyed her freedom too much to go back to a working relationship with Julia that was bound to remain difficult, just because of the kind of forceful woman each of them was. And besides, she thought ruefully, Julia would never take her on again if her employee confessed about certain events that transpired the night J.D. discovered the trunk full of silver and jewels…

She gathered the tea things and deposited them in the kitchen sink, musing that she and Julia were just too different for there to be much hope that the two could find a middle path. It occurred to her suddenly that the fifteen months she’d been a practicing architect had certainly taught her that the role of a professional woman was fraught with complications. Sometimes, work and family and love—and lust—could not be as neatly compartmentalized as she had thought. Until her unexpected visitor had posed the question about her personal and professional plans, Amelia had only occasionally allowed herself to contemplate her future—post J.D. Thayer.

Now it yawned before her like a big black hole as dark as the bottom of the hotel’s cistern out back.

***

On Sunday of the week in which the Bay View was to have its grand opening, J.D. left the hotel even before Amelia had emerged from her bedroom for a cup of morning coffee. She didn’t see him later in the day either, for she took the ferry to Oakland for a much-postponed supper with Aunt Margaret. Amelia had been the sole support of her increasingly frail relative for months now, gifting her with enough cash so that the older woman’s bills were paid and there was food in the larder—all with the excuse that Amelia stayed there on her infrequent days off and wanted to pay her share.

“Here, dear,” Margaret said as soon as Amelia had hung up her coat. “This came the other day.” She pointed to the frank. “See? Paris. You’ll have to write your mother all about the new hotel. Perhaps simple curiosity to see what her own daughter has created will persuade her to come home.”

“I tried that last month. I even sent a sketch.”

Amelia sank onto a kitchen chair and opened her mother’s latest missive. Two lines in, she reread the plaintive news that Victoria Bradshaw was, as Amelia had long suspected, nearly out of funds herself.

Paris is so hideously expensive that even Madame Hervé must ask for an increase in my room and board. I find, of late, that I seem to have reached some obstacles in my attempt to be a bona fide Artiste and have been humbled by the discovery of my creative limitations. That finding, along with the scarcity of friends and familiar faces, remind me of how very “foreign” one can feel when living abroad.

If nothing else, Amelia, Paris has shown me what difficulties you must have faced during your time at L’École des Beaux Arts and I do admire you for your perseverance. Perhaps I simply do not possess the temperament it requires if one is to be more than a dabbler in paint. I was especially reminded of this when I beheld your drawing of the “new” Bay View Hotel and then went to the Rue Jacob to view that cunning hostelry you told me was your inspiration. Your work is very fine, my dear, and I am full of approbation…

Amelia tucked her mother’s sad, contemplative letter into her pocket. These days, her own daily routine seemed to comprise merely work and obligations—and very little pleasure. There wasn’t much she could call her own except the satisfaction of looking at the Bay View and telling herself,
I built that.

Amelia recalled the drawings that were spread on the long kitchen table in Nob Hill that plotted the Bay View’s back garden. Once the shrubs and plants were installed, her official duties as architect and construction supervisor of the Bay View project were at an end.

Is the same true with my short-lived liaison with J.D.?

Just when she’d finally had the courage to admit to herself she had strong feelings for the man, he’d turned into a phantom, locked in his office most of the day, or out on the town until the wee hours at night. Even in private, he never reached for her hand or sent her a special look or touched her in any way. Amelia could no long avoid another truth: J.D. actually appeared to be avoiding her.

For a moment, she imagined herself packing her trunk once again and moving out of the hotel and back into her aunt’s depressing little bungalow. But how could she give up the memory of her childhood home or the beautiful new one that rose in its place?

And where was J.D.?

A familiar sense of gloom invaded her soul, a lost, abandoned feeling she’d suffered whenever her father had disappeared into the bowels of the Barbary Coast for weeks at a time. A thought she’d successfully extinguished weeks ago now returned.

Had the gambler in J.D. been playing some clever cards in another sort of high-stakes game? A game to guarantee his ownership of the hotel they’d build together?

With unseeing eyes, she continued to gaze at the letter her mother had sent and felt utterly alone.

***

J.D.’s stated mission to find a part of the furniture shipment that stubbornly remained missing and have it hauled to Nob Hill took the greater part of Monday. During that time, Amelia continued to see nothing of him, thus robbing from her the opportunity to ask him outright what was going on between them.