The docks, striving for a state of operability after the destruction of the fire, were a labyrinth of stacked raw timber and improvised sawmills, coils of rope as thick as trees and stoves of steaming tar. Mud was everywhere underfoot — mud mixed with ash and charcoal soot — the broad planks serving as pedestrian walkways slick with muck the color and consistency of wet tobacco. Her dress boots, soles worn thin from years of walking St. Paul’s cobbled streets, offered no protection from the viscous slime and she could feel damp starting in her heels and rising to her ankles. She slipped and fell against a barrel-chested man with an iron cudgel hammering an anchor chain, whose breath, when he turned to catch her, reeked of ale and onions. The air, less dense with fog than on the water, filtered light as if through muslin and was thick with unfamiliar smells, acrid, metal and marine, laced with the pungent spice of charring fagots that the Chinamen were burning to fry meat and nests of noodles in hammered bowl-shaped pans the size of carriage wheels.
This was not the city she expected.
Everything about it was rough and go, not civilized so much as being civilized and as she pushed through the clotted knot of people to catch up with Edward she felt comforted that he was there with her and wondered how she ever could have dreamed of managing this frontier alone.
As the city rose — and it rose in steppes, hill after hill — it became more tamed.
She followed him onto an esplanade, then up a paved incline into a street that began to prompt her memory of what a proper city had to offer. There were trolley tracks and sidewalks — a bakery, a tea shop, a stationer. The late summer sky was still a dismal gray but the rawness of the dockside blocks gave way to the patina of a better neighborhood as Edward finally came to a full stop and peered around a corner. This is it, he said.
“—it’s an alley,” Clara couldn’t help but noting.
“It’s that building, there,” he said and pointed to a shop at the head of the dim cul-de-sac with a sign that read, PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS.
The alley, though short, was wide enough for two carriages and must have originally been built as a mews to stable carts and horses, because midway down the short block there were distinctive stable doors and the remnants of tackle designed for lifting bales of hay. The little street was paved with cobblestones and was not the bleak dead-end that she first thought — on one corner there was a ladies’ milliner next to a gentleman’s cane-and-umbrella shop. On the other corner, a goldsmith and jeweler.
Carriage trade, she rightly assessed. “On second thought,” she said to Edward, “this could be a good location.”
They proceeded to the entrance, Clara conscious of the rising mudline on her skirt, as if it were a shore, and were surprised to find a neatly printed notice — CLOSED — hanging on the inside of the door. Edward rang the bell and a faint instruction inside informed them that the door was open, and they entered. “Is that you, Mr. Curtis?” the faint voice inquired.
A man emerged toward them — thin as a rail, lost in a brown suit of clothes several sizes too large, his head balancing on his emaciated neck, glowing yellow like a golden orb inside a gaslight globe.
“I am Rasmus Rothi,” he announced and extended a frail jaundiced hand but Clara took an immediate step backward, pressing Edward back as well, while covering her mouth and nose with her linen handkerchief.
“Do not worry, I am not contagious,” the jaundiced man informed them. “It’s my liver, as you see, but it’s specific to my person. And the reason I can no longer entertain the public trade myself.”
Edward took the gentleman’s hand and introduced himself, while Clara still held back.
“Would you like to see my photographs, Mr. Rothi?” Edward asked, proffering his monogrammed portfolio.
“I would rather see your money,” Mr. Rothi said.
“In that case I will have to see the darkroom.”
“In the back. Studio is up these stairs,” he pointed, “where there’s light. Skylight on the upper floor,” he started to explain but Edward had already disappeared behind the counter through a door toward where the photographs were printed.
“I’m sorry you are ill, Mr. Rothi,” Clara said, still keeping her distance, but before she had even breathed another breath Edward had returned, racing up the stairs. She could hear his footsteps on the floor above and then, within an instant, he was back. How much? he asked.
Clara took a small step toward him.
“—perhaps Mr. Rothi would like to show you his accounting, Edward,” she said, but he waved her off.
“One hundred and fifty,” Rothi said. “For half share of the business.”
“I’ll give you a hundred.”
“And I’ll give you the door.”
Clara watched the two men stand off with each other.
She wondered how Edward had acquired so much money, or if he even had it, but noted that nothing in his posturing before the older man suggested otherwise.
“I’ll work the difference off — work without a share in profits until the balance’s paid,” Edward offered.
“One hundred and fifty. Cash in hand. That’s my final,” Rothi told him.
Edward tendered their farewell and turned and left and Clara followed and once outside he grasped her wrists and said, “This is what I want—I could learn so much from him! What a tough old character, a man like him could teach me all I’d need to know about how to operate a business—”
“Edward,” Clara had to ask: “Do you have a hundred dollars?”
“—why, of course. Salary from all those years, odd jobs, and from the sawmill. I can raise the extra fifty, I suppose — I could sell the homestead, Father paid three dollars an acre for it — fifteen acres — plus, now, there’s the house and barn…”
“—but, Edward, if you do that…where would your mother and sister live?”
“—here. Seattle. They could live with us.”
Clara held her breath.
“—but, dear,” she argued: “Where would that be?”
“—we’ll find the rooms to rent…”
“—rooms for six? The city’s overrun with boarders from the fire. How would they pay? Where would the rent come from?”
“Asahel has work. Asahel has money saved. I could borrow—”
“Do you really want this, Edward?”
“So much, Scout. So very, very much…”
“—then here.” She reached into her bodice for the money she had left from Lodz.
Edward looked at the money then took it without speaking, nursing it from her fingers without touching her, though his eyes spoke an emotion she interpreted as ratified devotion.
She waited outside the building, watching the sun slide above the rooflines, pushing the shadows to one side of the street, while Edward went inside to deal with Mr. Rothi. She could hear a church bell clanging on the hill above her and detect a buttery aroma from the bakery nearby and she began to reinhabit the delights of city living, that sense of feeling others close at hand who share one’s cultural language and experience. She watched a carriage arrest at the corner where a well-turned-out gentleman descended, top hat and cane, and helped a lady in a fashionable dress dismount onto the pavement, as he took her arm and nuzzled his head close to hers before they sauntered, slowly, out of sight. I will have this life again, Clara thought. She felt her heart quicken — with a surge of pride she thought, I have paid to have this life again. She smiled, and told herself: with Edward.