Some gifts are curses too. Where would we ever get the money to build, let alone pay the mortgage and taxes that were due?
At night, Tan, Capability, Valentine, and I stared at the papers as if they would magically show us a way forward.
Rose knew I’d be reluctant to sell the land—any fool could see this was my chance. She’d planted the seed to start a parlor house. Cap and Valentine needed an occupation. Tan—even Bobby and Pie—needed to eat. I had so many hearts to care for. And my own, which I could not see.
By then the debris downtown had been plowed and there were speculators with designs on making a killing. With the property records destroyed along with City Hall, there was a free-for-all. Anyone who could show proof of ownership had better get to it.
I went, as I would many times throughout the years, to seek the advice of Sugarman. When he saw me coming not at my usual evening hour but midday, he strapped on his boots and we walked downtown to eyeball my barren plots while turning over my latest problem.
“Vera, my friend,” Sugarman said, “what is it you truly want?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, but I thought of Rose’s answer, freedom, and how for me that was not the first thing.
“Ah,” he said, “I think you do know. You merely lack the words. Let’s keep walking till you find them. Meantime, what is it you think you need?”
“A lawyer, Dr. Sugarman,” I said, “though I also need money. But first I need a good lawyer.”
Sugarman introduced me to a young lawyer named Bill Hutchinson. Tall, well-spoken, Harvard-trained. He’d arrived in San Francisco the week before the quake. When the world around him fell to pieces, he decided he’d be part of making it new again. Hutchinson taught me what I needed to know about leases and shares—and what it would cost to keep everything. I left him feeling more certain that I would never find the money.
Bobby took me to those meetings with the lawyer; he waited outside at the curb with Monster. Bobby saw in Hutchinson, who was nothing to me, a young, educated man in a fine suit. Bill Hutchinson was six foot six, patrician, and though I wasn’t thinking about him, Bobby was.
“You gonna marry him?” Bobby asked, with such sorrow in his eyes.
“No, Bobby, I’m never getting married,” I said. “But you are.”
As we worked to rebuild our lives, the days were full. I didn’t look back much on my life before the quake; I didn’t think about Francisco Street. We’d heard that our block had been cleared and the lots were being sold for next to nothing. On another walk, Sugarman went with me to Francisco Street to claim my dirt.
Pie and I had forgotten about the Haj, but he hadn’t forgotten us. He followed Sugarman and me home. The next morning, he returned and rang the bell.
I had just run upstairs to fetch my ledger. Tan answered the door. By the time I came down, the Haj had cracked Tan’s knee with his cane and pushed his way into the foyer. Valentine threw a running punch at the Haj, knocking him off his feet. The Haj reached for his knife as Valentine clobbered him in the head with the marble bust of Venus. Cap had a grip on Rogue’s collar, but the dog was barking wildly, gnashing his teeth.
“Stop, everyone. Stop!” I shouted as I ran down the stairs. They ignored me. Rogue kept barking—the sound was deafening. “Rogue, off. You hear me, off!” I bellowed. He paused, and shifted to a menacing growl.
I focused on the Haj. He was truly a wretched creature, stalk-thin, bleeding from his nose and mouth.
Valentine, wearing a dress, her wig tossed on the floor, had gotten hold of the knife and was threatening the Haj with it, pinning him to the floor with a heavy knee.
The Haj’s hair and coat were filthy. He was gaunt in his bloody cheeks. The quake had been hard on everyone, but maybe especially hard if you were a shark.
“Valentine?” I called.
She wouldn’t look at me. “Go upstairs, miss. Go on, now.” Valentine turned the handle of the knife so the Haj stayed focused on the blade.
“There… she is,” the Haj muttered. “Hook… hooker’s daughter.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“What I’m owed… is all. Six hundred… twenty dollars.”
Tan looked to me. His knee was badly hurt, and even so, he shook his head. The Haj might just as well have said six thousand, or six hundred thousand; we had no chance of paying such a debt.
“Go on, Missy V. Go on up,” Tan urged.
I thought, That’s what I should do, go up, and let them take care of it. There was no question in my mind what taking care of it meant. And this time it would happen in my house.
“You’ll take a hundred,” I said. “Or I go up.”
“Four hundred fifty,” said the Haj.
Valentine flicked him with the knife under his chin.
“Talking to the miss,” the Haj spat.
“Two hundred or nothing,” I countered. “And I’ll need a month.”
The Haj dared to turn his head and look at me. “Two fifty… two weeks.”
“All right,” I said.
The habit of doing things to impress Rose didn’t quit me all at once. For a while, I acted as if she were watching me, and in my mind, I heard her clucking her tongue whenever I proved weak or foolish.
After that bit with the Haj, I didn’t hear Rose anymore.
But I kept thinking of those couple of nights when I fed her morphine and she confessed her soul, and how much of
