April 18, 1906
Three hours and fifty-one minutes before the earthquake
There were so many great songs for sopranos, Gemma thought—yet so few of them were angry. When a woman in an opera sang, she was transported by love, by grief, or by death, but rarely by fury. Sigh, cry, or die, just don’t rage.
But there was Mozart’s Queen of the Night, who got to spit rage for three minutes in d minor, hitting those four stratospheric high F’s that (if done right) made the audience shiver as though an exquisite silver knife had just been slipped into their ears. And that rage saved Gemma, because she’d never felt shakier in her life before getting up in front of an audience, but she was angry.
And for three minutes, she got to look Henry Thornton in the eye and tell him what she thought of him.
Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart. She ripped off the beginning like she was ripping off his head, and maybe she hadn’t impressed anyone very much tonight as the dippy village maiden in Carmen, but her vengeful queen silenced the entire ballroom within half a phrase. Death and despair blaze about me. She tore through the translated German words as if she were shredding flesh, the long pearl loops of the Phoenix Crown swinging around her throat, and launched into those high staccato runs like she was leaping off a mountain. She fired off her high F’s like crystal bullets, every one perfect, and when the Queen’s last guttural vow snarled across the room—hear, gods of vengeance, a mother’s oath—she had a moment’s disembodied remoteness, coming back into herself on that tidal roar of fury as the room exploded into ecstatic applause.
Hear a woman’s oath, not a mother’s, Gemma thought, breath still heaving, looking straight at Thornton’s smug, oblivious face. Hear my oath. For what you did to my friend.
She had no idea how she got through the entire program, but finally her last aria was over and for once she refused an encore. When she came off the ballroom stage in a surge of applause, her hand was seized and kissed over and over. Mayor Schmitz and his cadre of City Hall cronies; the chief of police; James Flood, the mining tycoon with his wife beside him glittering in diamond tiara, diamond dog collar, diamond stomacher. A languid, handsome actor smelling lightly of whiskey kissed Gemma’s wrist: “John Barrymore, you glorious creature. Those are the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen . . .” Caruso descended on her, a more welcome presence, and kissed her on both cheeks: “Carissima, you are magnificent! Micaëla, she is not for you, but I think you and I will sing a beautiful Traviata together someday.”
The mayor pressed a glass into Gemma’s hand, some potent blend of Peruvian brandy and pineapple and lime: “Pisco Punch, a drink invented right here in San Francisco—” A tower of crystal coupes was presented to oohs and aahs, piled high in a glittering pyramid, more punch poured into the topmost glass and cascading all the way to the bottom as all the glasses filled. The orchestra struck up “The Merry Widow” and dancers swirled out onto the floor again.
“You were magnificent,” Thornton said in her ear. “I had a tribute for you, you know. The Queen of the Night plant in the conservatory was supposed to blossom tonight—I intended to pick the flower once it opened and tuck it between those beautiful breasts of yours. A Queen of the Night, for my queen of the night, on the evening of her triumph.” How did I ever think you were charming? Gemma wondered. “But it’s a day late flowering,” he concluded, frowning.
“Even a millionaire can’t make a flower bloom on any schedule but its own,” she quipped, just for the pleasure of seeing that frown deepen. Some sapphire-decked matron rapped at Thornton’s arm with her fan—“Do promise my daughter a two-step, Mr. Thornton”—and Gemma took the opportunity to remove her looted crown and pass it to a hovering footman to be locked back up in the Chinese Room.
More gossip swirled along with the music: “Did you see Louisa Ward trip on her hem at the Cotillion Club ball?” “—dropping that story of the Pinkerton detective who went missing, there simply isn’t any—” But Gemma let it eddy through one ear and out the other. This carnivorous city . . . if even a Pinkerton detective could vanish without a trace, what chance did she and Suling have of finding Nellie?
“You aren’t dancing,” Thornton cajoled, but Gemma just blinked at him. During the last party here at the octagon house she had flitted through the crowd of guests like a champagne bubble, infatuated with the radiant sunlight, the luxury all around her, with Thornton himself. Tonight she didn’t flit: she stood at the edge of the dance floor in her sparkling night sky of a ball gown, gazing at the spectacle that was more nightmare than daydream to her exhausted eyes. The dancers seemed to tilt and stagger like badly operated puppets; the music lurched through her ears, a feverish calliope—like the party at the beginning of La Traviata, she thought dizzily, the soprano’s home crowded with guests who care nothing for her, the hollow glittering shell of her life whirling like a top.
“Buona sera, carissima,” Caruso shouted over the shrill laughter of the dancers, pinching Gemma’s cheek like he had after the Grand Opera House’s curtain came down. “Enough oysters and champagne for me, I need a plate of tagliatelle or I’ll never sleep!” He whirled off in his opera cloak, and Gemma envied him. But she’d stick this out till the bitter end. Two o’clock, three o’clock . . .
“What’s wrong?” George spoke quietly, hand at her arm, black brows knitted. “You look like an exhibit at Madame Tussauds.”
“I’m quite well,” she managed to say, lying through her teeth.
He looked at her for a long moment, fingers grazing her bare arm above her long kid glove. “Maybe all this is exactly what you thought it would be,” he said at last, jerking his chin at the crowded ballroom, the stage where she’d sung, Thornton presiding over his guests like a king. “But if it’s not—if this isn’t what you want after all—you can leave it all behind, Gem. Walk out of here now, with me. I’ve got a room south of Market Street; you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. I’ll bunk with my landlord, even though he snores and farts. As long as necessary, if you need space to get things straightened out.” A smile. “No one owns you. You’ve got friends. Walk out of here, if you want. I’ll be right at your side.”
You’d take me away from here if I so much as thought it at you, Gemma thought. She wouldn’t even need to nod. A skilled pianist didn’t need any signal from his singer to know it was time to begin—he’d know, just from the lift in her body, that she was ready.
So she kept her body still, kept her smile in place. “Thank you, George. You have no idea how much I appreciate that. But I’m quite all right, you know. Go home and get some sleep; it’s gone four in the morning.”
He went, still looking troubled, and he wasn’t the only one making his way toward the staircase and the night outside. The orchestra was starting to saw through the dance tunes, the massed camellias and lilies were wilting; the American Beauty rose in one bejeweled matron’s hair was listing over her ear.
“I’ve started herding them out,” Thornton murmured in her ear. “I want you all to myself.” And even though he made her skin crawl, some small, treacherous part of Gemma couldn’t help but respond in quite a different way—her knees wanting to weaken, her lips wanting to curve in an answering smile. Why can’t we just turn emotions off like a hot-water spigot? she wondered, biting down savagely on the inside of her cheek. Cut off the flow the moment we realize what’s coming out is burning us?
Maybe because so much of what he’d given her was real. Oh, he’d probably thrown out that first dinner invitation as bait—looking back, she’d realized he no doubt had heard about her imminent arrival in San Francisco from Nellie, had probably been keeping an eye out for her, wondering if she’d raise the hue and cry for her missing friend, and if so what he’d have to do about it. But his admiration after that Palace Grill dinner was sincere; Gemma had heard enough praise in her life to tell true from false. He devoured her in bed with palpable desire; he listened to her sing with real tears in his eyes; he truly wanted to throw her into the heavens and see her shine like his own personal star. That was all real, she wanted to cry, beating on his shirtfront. So why did the rest of you turn out to be monstrous?
Of course, he had warned her the first time they met: You look like a nice girl, Miss Garland. I’m not very nice. Better steer clear of me.
You didn’t have to be nice, she wanted to say now. But did you have to be a monster? Was that too much to ask?
If you aren’t silly enough to fall in love, she’d told George blithely, then no one can be hurt. How stupid that had been. There were so many ways the powerful could crush those under them to smithereens.
The final waltz finished with a plinking discord of indifferent bows on tired strings, the musicians barely putting in a token effort, the last of the guests not listening as they yawned and chattered, collecting their fans and heading for the stairs. Thornton stood bidding his goodbyes, the perfect host sending them off to their wraps, their carriages, and their waiting silk sheets. Gemma faded back discreetly out of sight down the servants’ staircase—not that she gave a damn if these sharp-eyed society matrons knew she slept here; it was more to get out from under Thornton’s eye. Checking on Toscanini in his cage, she found him agitated for some reason, squawking and hurling himself around the bars, so she fed him some seeds and then trailed the rest of the way downstairs, coming out into the great octagonal center atrium on the first floor. Thornton’s butler was just closing up the doors, the last guest’s carriage rattling away outside.
Looking up, Gemma realized dawn light was seeping grayly through the glass cupola far overhead. The great clock was chiming five in the morning. An exhausted stream of maids trudged in the direction of the servants’ quarters. The night—and the ball—was over.
“Gemma?” Thornton’s voice floated down from the top floor. Looking directly up, she saw him leaning on the staircase railing four floors up, his head a dark silhouette against the glass. “Come to bed.”
“In a moment,” she hedged. She was going to have to go up there and let him peel this ball gown off her, but she couldn’t make herself move toward the staircase yet. Not quite. “The morning newspapers will be here any minute,” she improvised hastily. “I want to see what the critics said about Carmen.”
“Sopranos!” He laughed. “You have five minutes, pet, then I’m coming down and dragging you off to bed by the hair . . .” To her relief he disappeared in the direction of his bedroom. She listened for the click of the door before releasing a long breath. The air in the octagon house seemed too close, suddenly, smelling like tobacco and flat champagne and the sweat of dancers hoping to cover their exertions with perfume. Gemma threw her midnight-blue spangled train over one arm and slipped out of the house.
She might have been up all night, but the rest of San Francisco was waking up. The milkman and his cart were already rattling down Hyde Street as Gemma walked through the manicured gardens and out to the gate, and yawning kitchen maids and cooks were trudging out for their milk bottles. Farther down Nob Hill, horse-pulled wagons were plodding toward the produce markets. A church bell sounded sweetly, somewhere in the distance—Old St. Mary’s in Chinatown, maybe. A policeman ambled past on the way back from his night rounds, and he tipped his helmet to Gemma, standing at the gate stretching her neck—the muscles ached from carrying the Phoenix Crown, all that weight of pearls and kingfisher feathers and history. She nodded back. Overhead, the sky had already faded from dawn gray to misty blue.
“The Call, ma’am.” A paperboy handed Gemma a copy of the morning paper, almost literally warm off the press. She didn’t much care what the music critics thought of Carmen, but she had a wan hope that if she dawdled long enough out here Thornton would fall asleep in bed waiting for her, so she unfolded the newspaper: “‘Carmen’ rechristens itself for San Francisco last night. For the season, at least, it may as well be called ‘Don José.’ Caruso is the magician . . .”
“La Fremstad won’t like that,” Gemma murmured, amused despite herself. She glanced up as a cacophony of dogs began barking, but the street looked peaceful, so she skipped to the end of the review. “Bessie Abott sang the music of Micaëla as if terrified, yet enlisted some sympathy for her pretty vocal quality and the intelligence behind it.” Well, if she was going to be damned with faint praise by the San Francisco Call, it might as well be under the wrong name.
“Whoa—” Across the street, the milkman stopped to soothe his horse, who was nervously jerking his head and switching his tail. “Easy there.”
“What’s wrong with him?” the paperboy called, already at the next house.
“Dunno, he’s usually quiet—”
Gemma raised her head again, this time at the sound of a strange rumble like far-off ocean waves. “What—” she had time to say, before realizing that the cobblestones of the street were rippling. She thought absurdly of oil drops leaping in a hot pan. The milkman’s horse let out a shriek, rearing in its traces, and the distant rumble crescendoed to a deafening roar. The ripple was tearing up the paved street like a shark knifing through deep water. All Gemma could do was stare at it.
Then the earth did a great curtsy underneath her, a diva sinking into her onstage death throes, and flung Gemma to her knees—and the ground tore itself apart.