“Point is, we have to start somewhere,” I said. “With so many wounded, it may take days to find her. And even then—” I paused, my voice cracking. “Lifang and LowNaa can take over the kitchen for a bit, yes?”
“Nah.” He shook his head.
“What?” I spat. “You don’t care about finding her?”
He stared at me oddly. I can only describe his expression in terms of what it wasn’t: not the usual grimace, or anger, or disgust. Tan looked, well, he looked sad, his hands curled into empty cups at his sides. It was a gesture so unlike him, it stopped me.
He waited till I understood. He couldn’t go with me. It wasn’t safe for Tan to be anywhere outside the protection of Rose’s house, and certainly not by the piers, where they’d consider him an escapee and lock him in the Chinese encampment.
The fact that he wasn’t able to go with me shamed Tan. It shamed me too.
I found myself apologizing for the unfair state of things. “It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll figure another way.”
I meant it, though I suppose I sagged a bit at the prospect of having to go alone.
We said our good nights with a simple nod. As I walked away, I looked back to find him watching me.
“Tan? Do you think the fire will—”
“Sleep now, Missy V,” he said. “Tan will watch.”
Before dawn, the fire stopped. As Abe Ruef foretold, it stopped when it decided to—having destroyed twenty-eight thousand buildings and five hundred city blocks.
The fire stopped at Franklin Street, a block from Rose’s house.
Then, as Tan predicted, it rained. The rain amplified the gloom and stink. With so much soot in the air, it rained black. Tar poured from the sky, soiling the white army tents inside the encampments and the linen roof of Tan’s outdoor kitchen. It rained black on the hillsides of Marin and Oakland, and in Napa and Palo Alto. And it rained black through the busted windows of Rose’s parlor, staining her fine carpet.
The mansions on Nob Hill had been reduced to steaming piles of rubble. Already looters were at work picking the piles clean. The city, hill and flat, block after block, looked plowed, as if the tall buildings had been rows of corn or wheat—plowed then torched, with only the stalks remaining. People sat smoking on the steps of their charred houses, as if waiting for the parade to go by.
During the night, a thousand young soldiers disembarked from the navy boats at the piers. They patrolled the streets in search of criminals, and anyone discovered looting was executed and left where they fell—at least for now. Farther south, Stanford University was in ruins, and in San Jose, a hundred inmates and staff at the state insane asylum were buried alive. With no building to house the survivors, the remaining staff tied the patients to trees.
Around Lafayette Square a new kind of normalcy was setting in. After the rains passed, boys played dice in the street outside Rose’s house. With the tent encampment now fully established, councils had formed to handle lawlessness and complaints. Ladies with diamonds and Limoges china resigned themselves to living next to squatters who’d escaped the fires without a pot or a blanket. My city was ashes, yet along the periphery of the square, you could buy the services of barbers and laundries, waffle makers, cobblers for your broken boots, farriers for your horses, a tinker to knock the dents out of your quake-battered pots.
On that first fireless morning, a young couple was caught having sex in the bushes of Lafayette Square. They were taken to the temporary Hall of Justice by two of Funston’s soldiers. A slew of babies would be born nine months hence—for the rest of their lives they’d be known as quake babies.
I woke late on that fourth morning. From the warm nest of my cot, I could hear those dice-playing boys, four stories down, laughing in the street.
I didn’t want to move. I knew I had to find her and I had to be quick, but would I find her in time? And if I did, which Rose would I encounter? The truth is I didn’t want to go. No, that’s not right: I didn’t want to go alone.
My attic room was unheated, the floor icy. I scurried to the hall to fetch my clothes. Outside my door, Tan had left a tray with a bowl of oatmeal and a pot of tea. Tan, my new partner.
Next to the tray, my skirt and coat, formerly caked with ash, had been brushed and folded. For a bit of armor or maybe luck—I decided it was both—Tan had gifted me Rose’s straw boater. The hat was too big for my head, but tipped low in front, it hid my eyes. As I set out to find Rose, I had to trust that the part that showed me most vulnerable, no one could see.
PART THREE
Bobby
I was barely fifteen yet ancient. As old in some respects as I would ever be. I’d witnessed the temblor’s roar, and the city burning. I’d lost one mother and maybe a second. At night, my dreams were of bright-eyed hookers and velvet-lined vaults of cash, and a longing I couldn’t name. The world, having been unmade, was being made new again.
In that gold house, Pie, Tan, Lifang, why, even LowNaa had to make it new. I think of us, our lives, their savor and spark, and all the ways we never could resist the three blind kings of want, stupidity, and brashness. The heart leaps, the head conjures, the soul yearns. Desire being the one renewable fuel we have on earth, here is how we burned.
Which brings me to Bobby. He’s the one I’ve got my eye on.
You can’t always know in the moment who will
