Son of Fortune (11 page)

Aiden handed him the book.

“A book? That's all?” They looked disappointed.

“What did you think it would be?” Aiden said, annoyed at their response. “A block of gold?”

Fish snatched the letter out of Aiden's hand.

“‘Please accept this as a small token of my appreciation for your welcome companionship and assistance last night,'” he read aloud. “There is also an invitation to a party! At Mr. Worthington's own home, and a tailor to make him a new suit for it!”

The other Swedes murmured their approval.

“‘Elsworth Winsor IV, world-renowned tailor of royalty,'” Fish read. “That's a high-class street, and not a Chinaman—maybe English!”

“I'm not getting any fancy suit or going to any fancy party,” Aiden said.

“Of course you'll go!” Fish slapped the book back into Aiden's hands. “What do you mean, not go? You must go, if only to tell us all about it after! Have the tailor make extra-big pockets, and you can fill them with sweets and cakes and bring them home to us poor shabby lot!”

“What does he mean, ‘your assistance last night'?” Mrs. Neils stared suspiciously at her youngest son. “What happened last night?”

“Nothing at all,” Fish said innocently. “We met the young Mr. Worthington and his friends and Aiden gave them a good story, that's all.” Fish folded the letter away. “That's all.”

The sailors, who had speculated all day over the mysterious package and were now gravely disappointed to find it only a book, soon shuffled out and took themselves quickly to the Viking.

“We should get you to the tailor right away,” Fish said eagerly. “Even a ‘world-renowned tailor of royalty' will need time to make a gentleman's suit.”

“What would I do at a party?” Aiden said. “What could I possibly talk about with any of those people? Christopher probably just wants me to tell them all the stupid shark story, which I don't want to do—only if I don't, I'll have nothing to say at all.”

“Don't say anything, then,” Fish said. “Just stand around in your fine new suit and let them think you're someone.”

“But I'm not someone.”

“It doesn't matter! Look, Aiden, everyone in San Francisco is someone they're really not. Even those who actually are someone weren't always someone and know they could be no one again like that!” He snapped his fingers. “No one is no one here, and everyone can be anyone! Come on, what's the worst that can happen?” Fish went on. “You have a fancy night, then go back to ditch work. Or you have no fancy night and go back to ditch work.” Fish grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the door. “Either way, you can always sell the suit!”

iden stared at himself in the mirror as the tailor whipped a measuring tape around his body and shouted out numbers to an assistant. The tailor seemed displeased, as if there weren't quite enough inches somehow, or they were all in the wrong places. Though he kept his drawers on, Aiden still felt naked. He had never seen all of himself at once in a mirror. He didn't know a mirror could even be this big. It was an acre of polished glass, big as a front door. The body he saw there was familiar, but utterly foreign all the same. He recognized the roughened hands and muscled arms, but not the sharp ridge of collarbone, or the complicated ropes that made his neck. He had never seen his own bare chest before and thought at first he was looking at one of his older brothers. He was taller than he remembered either of them being, but he had been only fourteen when they died. He had seen his face, of course, but only in small pieces of a hand mirror or as a blurred reflection in a pond or shopwindow.

The tailor poked a finger in his ribs to make him turn.

“Arms up!” he snapped. Aiden lifted his arm up.

“No—out! Like this!” The tailor slapped his elbow to straighten it. Aiden hadn't expected haberdashery to be quite so rough. But he endured the prodding, and three days later he left the shop looking every bit the gentleman.

Aiden tried to act calm as he walked into the Worthingtons' home, but it was like walking into Aladdin's cave. It seemed like every surface was painted with gold, every object dipped in gold, then all of it painted with even more gold, as if decorated by mad elves and dragonflies. The floor was a kaleidoscopic swirl of green and pink marble that reflected the starlight flickers from the crystal chandelier hanging above. Against one wall was a massive mahogany table with legs carved to look like a lion's paws and a polished slab of marble for the top. Upon the table were two silver vases stuffed with bouquets of flowers as tall as children. Beside the vases were china saucers full of glistening candies, and huge silver bowls overflowing with sugared grapes. Aiden was dizzy from looking at it all, and this was just the foyer. It was nearly as big as his entire sod house in Kansas, where his whole family, as many as eight, had lived. Four gold cherubs flanked the arches that led to the even more opulent rooms beyond.

“May I take your hat, sir?” A tall man in an elegant black suit and blindingly white shirt gave a slight bow and held out a hand.

“Mr. Worthington?” Aiden said, quickly extending his own hand.

“No, sir.” The man waited quietly. Only then did Aiden notice there were actually three more of him. Servants.

“Oh—yes.” Aiden snatched off his stiff, heavy hat and handed it to the man. “Thank you.” He had a moment of panic, for how was he supposed to get it back again? It wasn't even his, but borrowed from an undertaker cousin of a friend of Fish's. Aiden had no idea what a hat cost to replace, but it probably wasn't cheap. He quickly glanced around and saw another man casually reach into his pocket and take out a card, which he slipped into his hat before surrendering it. But Aiden had no card.

Then the old butler smoothly dipped his thin hand into his pocket and drew out a slip of paper. He tore it in half and dropped one half into Aiden's hat and slipped the other into his palm.

“Thank you, sir.” The butler nodded, gave him a kind smile and disappeared silently into the cloakroom.

As Aiden walked through the entryway, another servant stepped forward with a tray. On it were delicate little glasses with a golden-colored drink. He took one, but noticed with dismay that there was a stream of bubbles fizzing up. What was it about bubbly drinks here? He cautiously wet his lips. He wasn't about to risk choking on an actual sip.

The room was crowded with women dressed bright as tulips and men looking all so identical in their suits and whiskers that Aiden didn't know how he would ever tell any of them apart.

“There you are!” Christopher Worthington strode through the crowd, silk and whiskers swishing out of his way. “I'm so glad you came. What a rotten dull party it was until now. Oh God, you don't have to drink that swill.” He snatched the glass of champagne out of Aiden's hand. “They make it down the road, you know! Father says he wants to support our local businesses, but really, he's just cheap when it comes to these parties. Mr. Butter”—an attentive servant stepped immediately to his side—“would you please bring my guest a glass of whatever this is I'm drinking?” He held up a glass of ruby-colored wine. “From Father's study.”

“Of course, sir.” The man bowed and pivoted neatly on his impeccable shoe.

“And here.” Christopher handed over his own glass. “Top mine up, would you, please, we're about to venture into the wilds and need fortification.”

“The wilds?” Aiden asked suspiciously.

“The zoo.” He waved toward a bank of windows at the rear of the house, through which Aiden caught a glimpse of an ornate gate. “I'll show you before Father starts his official tour. He'll go on for hours. All about reproducing the optimal habitat of each and every creature, and how many natives it took to capture the things.”

“I should like to see it. Thank you for the invitation,” Aiden said stiffly. “And the book. It was an excellent book.”

“You read it already? The whole thing?”

“Yes,” Aiden said, then paused. Was that maybe an insult—that he had read the whole thing so quickly? Would Christopher think it wasn't a worthy present since it was too short? “I have many idle hours these days,” he added. “And it was a very exciting story.”

The servant returned with two glasses full of red wine. Aiden, suspicious now about all new beverages, took a cautious sip, but found it smooth and quite delicious.

“Come on,” Christopher said.

Afraid of spilling the red wine on his crisp new white shirt, Aiden took a big gulp to lower the level. He looked up to see a whiskered face frowning disapprovingly at him. There were probably a thousand rules here he did not understand, Aiden thought. There was probably a whole bible full of rules and he had probably done half of them wrong already. He stared the disapproving man directly in the eye, tipped up the delicate glass and drank down the whole thing in three great gulps. Then he smiled at the man, set the empty glass on a spindly little table and turned neatly on his heel. There was a certain sweet freedom in having nothing to lose.

Christopher led him deftly through the crowd, through a set of tall carved doors with glass windows and into a room that seemed to be made entirely of windows. There was a tropical jungle growing inside, complete with parrots in enormous wire cages. Aiden could have lingered here for at least a month, but Christopher hurried him outside through another pair of tall doors, across a sort of plaza made of stone, down a manicured path and up to the huge wrought-iron gate.

“Here it is.” Christopher swung open the gate. “The Worthington Zoo. Come on, your bears are down the path.”

“Have you always been interested in animals?” Aiden asked, trying not to sound as amazed as he felt, or gawk at everything like some bumpkin.

“I'm not the least bit interested in animals,” Christopher laughed. “It's just something for the old man to do, you see? We already have the grandest house in San Francisco and all the ice cream we could ever possibly eat. But he is a dear old man, and if it makes him happy to give us an ocelot or aardvark, well, how could I refuse? There's the aardvark.” Christopher pointed to a curled-up lump of fur in the corner of a cage.

“He likes the hunt too, you see? Not shooting—the old pussy won't kill a mouse! No, for Father, hunting animals is about writing letters and arranging ships and hiring trappers,” Christopher explained. “He spent a year getting the polar bears, arranging for the Eskimos to catch them and the ship to bring them down. And then, of course, there was having the architects design the cage—you wouldn't believe how hard it is just to get enough ironworkers for a fence these days! He shipped them up from Mexico City. Look at the pond—it took a dozen coolies a week to dig that, and you know how fast they work!”

“What are coolies?” Aiden asked.

“Chinamen,” Christopher replied. “They're very good diggers.” They stopped in front of an extravagant enclosure with ornate iron bars and a pool. The mother bear was curled up sleeping between some rocks, the cubs nestled against her. Aiden was glad to see they all looked well.

“And having a zoo is brilliant for the girls,” Christopher went on.

“You mean your sisters?”

“No! Real girls—the kind you court. Of course they'd be coming around anyway, but it is much nicer to have a zoo, for otherwise one would have to sit around in the parlor and always be thinking up conversation.”

“Do you have a girl?” Aiden asked.

“A sweetheart?”

“Yes, I suppose, a girl you especially like.”

“I like them all. They're all fine.”

“What do you mean, all?”

“Well, all the girls in our set,” Christopher said. “There aren't that many of them. Thirty-five, I think, maybe forty if you count the ones over twenty. And, well, another fifty if you go down to the picnic girls.”

“Picnic girls?”

“The daughters of merchants or minor officials—the next tier down. The ones we would invite to a picnic or a casual dance but not a ball. You know, an open house, like this, but not a served dinner.”

“But what's wrong with them?”

“Nothing's wrong, they just aren't, you know, in our set,” Christopher explained. “Look, society here is really very movable. I mean, look at yourself—you're nobody, and here you are, welcome in my home. Most people came here with nothing, after all, my father among them. But the gold rush was seventeen years ago.”

“Is that how your father made his fortune—in gold?”

“No, iron,” Christopher said. “Nails mostly. The city grew so fast, and burned down so often, there was always a need for nails. He started scavenging nails from burned houses, then manufacturing them. He made nails, then factories, then machinery. You've heard of the Comstock Lode? In Nevada, 1859?”