It took Tan and Bobby a week to dig through the rubble. And when they did find the safe, buried deep, it was still hot from the fire. Tan hired several workers to help lift it into the wagon and, once they got it home, to carry it from the wagon into the house. They used oven mitts, and even then, their hands burned. They hauled it through the front door and gave up. The thing was just too heavy.
Sargent & Greenleaf, the name blazed in gold on the safe’s door, lived where it couldn’t be avoided, in the foyer, its scars from the fire having blackened its painted cast-iron sides and top. Its bellyful of heat radiated throughout the main floor like a mighty furnace.
We’d heard stories of business folks downtown retrieving their safes, then opening them while they were still hot from the fire, much to their sorrow. The heat trapped inside exploded the moment the cooler air rushed in, burning whatever was flammable: papers, cash.
“When will it be okay to open it?” Bobby asked.
“When she says so,” I replied. “Rose is the only one who knows the combination.”
“What’s she got in there, gold bars? It sure is a heavy joe.”
Bobby was hoping, same as Tan and me, that this heavy joe would be our salvation.
Tan and Bobby had formed a buddydom hauling that thing, and Bobby was now invited to join us at Tan’s outdoor kitchen. We understood that the days of Tan’s enterprise were coming to an end, and so we lingered in the cool San Francisco night and savored a bit, after the day’s work. For Bobby, that was hauling and repairing; for Tan, it was bartering for our food and running his kitchen; for me it was managing the house and its too many people. If the toilets were stopped; if the milk from the relief line turned sour; if the women ran out of thread or stockings or blankets; if someone stole-borrowed without asking someone else’s curling rod; if a merchant on Fillmore Street would only barter with a white person who didn’t resemble a prostitute, they brought the problem to me.
The thing is, I liked to work. That was among the many lessons of those fevered days. I liked to work and I liked feeling necessary.
I was just beginning to know that the only folks I could ever care about would be fellow scrappers.
June into July, the summer fog made the house tight with an unremitting dampness. With great reluctance, a defeat Tan suffered deeply, he and LowNaa packed up their curbside kitchen. We had seven dollars and twenty-two cents to last the summer.
And still Rose refused to talk about the safe. In an act of defiance, Tan draped Sargent & Greenleaf with a wrinkled cloth and we moved on.
At night, the women sang in the parlor. “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie” and “So Long, Mary” were frequent numbers, but their all-time favorite was “Give My Regards to Broadway.” They had excellent voices, and with Mercy keeping pace on the piano, their harmonic warbles passed siren-like from Rose’s parlor into Lafayette Square.
When the women were downstairs singing, Pie hid in her room. I followed her one evening to see what she was doing in there. When I grabbed the book from her hands, she confessed she was reading the Bible.
“Why on earth are you bothering with that?” I asked.
Pie held up her palm to stop me from saying more.
“Do you really think God is watching?” I pestered.
Pie tipped her head, the bright hum of music rising through the floorboards from below. There was the insistence of the piano, and Valentine’s bass underscoring all.
“That man,” Pie whispered, “is he a man?”
“Valentine?” I shrugged. “Well, you know—”
“No, I don’t know!” Her eyes were a brilliant, spiked blue. It seemed to me there were tiny icicles inside that blue.
“What’s there to tell?” I said. “Valentine started as a man, now she’s a woman. But Capability says Valentine prefers to date men.”
“Herregud.” Pie shuddered. “Herr-e-gud!”
“Pie, stop with the oh my God–ing. You sound like Morie,” I said. “Talk to me. Just talk to me plainly.”
She took a deep breath. “Yes or no, are you planning to start a brothel here, in the house?”
I had expected her to implore or beg, to tell me all the ways we were ruining ourselves by being associated with whores. I had expected the latest report of tongues wagging in the square about our boarders. And I was prepared to mock Pie, to say, Yes, and even so, Pie, would you like the ladies to starch and press your dress, in addition to having them wash it in Pearline?
But Pie said nothing of what I thought she’d say. She folded her hands across that thick book and asked about my business plans.
I shrugged. “And are you thinking of becoming a nun? You’re not even Catholic.”
“What about you?” she countered. “Are you the next Rose?”
Such a face she was making. No longer the old pleasing, if overly practical, sister, this new Pie was part schoolmarm, part zealot, and eager—as if she’d awakened from a long sleep.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said, lifting that sharp Swedish chin. “And yes, I can become a Catholic. Anything is possible when you’re living with harlots. Answer me, Vera.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’d like to help out in some way with the bills, and that is their way. But I don’t know. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re dead broke.”
“I know.”
“Do you? I wonder, Pie, do you remember that Morie turned to Rose when she was dead broke? Do you remember what she was prepared to do—”
“Don’t say it!” Pie snapped. “Morie would never have—”
“She would have, if that’s what it took to survive,” I declared. “She would have done the same as those women downstairs—for you.”
Pie shook her head, refusing that part of our story. Instead, she smirked as a new revelation
