Nine Lives Last Forever (8 page)

I had to agree with Monty. It seemed like an ordinary window to me.

I shrugged and stepped toward the door, but Sam grabbed my arm and whispered urgently into my ear.

“That’s the window,” he said, his voice tinged with a solemn awe. “That’s
the
window . . .”

One of Monty’s long, stringy arms reached back and grabbed my wrist. With a sharp tug, he pulled me into the hallway. As he dragged me down the corridor, he whispered shortly, “I’ll tell you about that
later
.”

“SAN FRANCISCO’S CITY
Hall,” Monty said proudly as the two of us walked up a flight of stairs from the basement to the first floor of the rotunda, “is now one of the most seismically sophisticated buildings in the state of California, if not the world.”

We reached the first floor, emerging on the backside of the rotunda’s central marble staircase. Monty waved his black-suited arms about like a tour guide, directing me around the base of the stairs into the rotunda as he continued.

“Of course, that wasn’t always the case. San Francisco’s first City Hall was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake.” Monty shrugged, dismissing the loss. “To be honest, that building wasn’t much to look at. Nothing like this,” he said, dramatically sweeping his hands across the vast open space beneath the dome.

“They went all out when they drew up the plans for the replacement. San Francisco had something to prove. Not only would the city rise from the ashes of the earthquake’s near total annihilation—it would do so with grace and style.”

Monty stepped back on his left foot and angled his tall, slim body skyward. “The peak of this dome is one of the highest in the world—several inches taller than the one at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.”

He turned his head back down toward me for an aside. “That’s a huge claim to fame for us. We always make sure to mention it to the tourists, especially the ones from the East Coast.”

I shook my head, amused, but not the least bit surprised, at how quickly Monty had assimilated himself into the City Hall “we.”

Monty released his hold on the ceiling and motioned me toward one of the expansive, pavilionlike rooms that stretched out on the north and south sides of the rotunda.

“The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake inflicted a fair amount of damage to City Hall. Extensive renovations were needed to repair the building and to bring it up to seismic code. On top of that, many of the structure’s unique design elements had been neglected over the years and required refurbishment. Our previous Mayor led the fundraising efforts for the project. He ensured that the renovations were complete before he left office at the end of his second term.”

We entered the side pavilion, which was identified by a small rectangular sign as the “South Light Court.” Several displays dedicated to the renovation work had been set up on the far end of the large, open room.

Monty pointed me toward an exhibit in the corner, which showcased a massive round piece of rubber. A portion of the rubber device had been cut out to show the layers of its interior core.

Monty rested his right elbow on the edge of the display mount. “It was quite a challenge to retrofit a building of this size and age,” he said, reveling in the authority of his newly acquired earthquake-retrofitting expertise. I cocked my right eyebrow at him skeptically as he continued.

“After extensive study and analysis, they settled on a form of technology called Base Isolation.” Monty fondly patted the exhibit’s lump of black rubber. “
This
is a base isolator unit.”

I squinted at the hulking round mass. Despite the fancy terminology, it looked like nothing more than a solid chunk of rubber to me.

“The engineers went through the entire foundation and inserted these rubber base isolators into the middle of each supporting column, separating the top half of the column from the bottom of the foundation. The entire building is actually
detached
from the earth below us. Now, in the event of an earthquake—”

Monty stood back from the display and placed his feet parallel to one another, about two feet apart.

“In the event of an earthquake,” he repeated, “the ground begins to move back and forth . . .”

Monty’s hips began to gyrate as if they’d been activated by an internal jackhammer.

“. . . some parts of it going one way . . . some parts of it going another . . .”

Monty’s legs spasmed out in strange directions. His arms kept pace, causing his suit coat to flap about like an oversized bat trying to take flight. His hair, of course, held steady.

“. . . but the building does not. It just kind of rolls along on top of the base isolators.”

Monty’s hips continued to move as he steadied his upper body. Slowly his shoulders slid sideways. He looked as if he were performing a strange new dance step. People in other parts of the room had started whispering and pointing at us.

“These isolators,” Monty explained, his lower body still jerking wildly back and forth, “will allow the entire building to slide as one entity, up to . . .”

He leaned over to check a plaque mounted on the display.

“. . . twenty-six inches. But, here in the rotunda, you wouldn’t feel a thing. You wouldn’t even know that an earthquake had hit.”

Monty pointed to the floor beneath his dancing feet. “They built a four-foot moat around the base of the building to give the foundation plenty of room to move—it should be able to handle the biggest quake the earth can throw up at us.”

One of the whisperers from across the room began walking toward us. The young man had squeaky white tennis shoes on his feet and a backpack squarely secured across his shoulders; a large camera hung around his neck.

Smiling shyly, the man approached Monty holding out a pen and a piece of paper. It suddenly occurred to me that he was about to ask Monty for his autograph. He actually thought Monty
was
the Mayor.

“Oh good grief,” I muttered under my breath as Monty took the paper, pulled out his own artist-grade calligraphy pen, and signed it. From what I could see, the signature was practically illegible.

The excited man turned to me and began pointing and gesturing at his camera. Apparently, the misguided tourist didn’t speak English; there was no way for me to explain that he’d been duped.

Begrudgingly, I accommodated his request. Monty and the man posed in front of the base isolator display as I focused the camera and clicked the button. Monty shook the man’s hand and waved warmly at the happily tittering crowd of fellow tourists who had gathered around to watch.

“I bet you didn’t know I was so famous,” Monty jested at me. He arched his eyebrows in an elitist fashion. “Just one of the perks of the job.”

I rolled my eyes with disgust. “That was pathetic.”

“Here, let me show you something else,” Monty said, predictably ignoring my comment as he pulled me over to another exhibit.

This display presented a wooden model of the upper half of City Hall’s rotunda, cut out to show the interior structure of the dome. I was surprised to realize that the pink-hued ceiling I had marveled at during my earlier wanderings was merely a cap that sealed over the rotunda’s central orifice, midway up the height of the dome. The tiny balcony that I had spied from my earlier viewpoint on the second floor hallway, I now realized, represented less than half of the dome’s true height.

Hidden from the pedestrian view at the bottom of the rotunda, a delicate spiral staircase stretched above the faux ceiling, circling its way up into a steeple mounted on the top of the dome. The winding staircase terminated within the steeple at a small attic. I stared at the model, trying to imagine the view from the magical little room perched at the top of the dome.

“Have you been up there yet?” I asked, pointing to the model.

“No,” Monty sighed ruefully. “They’re awfully restrictive about that area—afraid someone might fall out, I guess.” He winked at me. “I’ve been bugging Sam to get me in. He’s one of the few people with a key.”

We left the South Light Court and walked back out into the rotunda. I was hoping to extract Dilla’s package from Monty’s suit pocket and start my trip back to the Green Vase, but Monty wasn’t yet finished with his tour. He began ticking off facts on his long, skinny fingers.

“Let’s see, the floor design spreading out from the staircase—that’s done in pink Tennessee marble. And those big gray walls surrounding us, they’re all Colorado limestone.”

Monty pointed at a Hispanic couple walking across the main floor of the rotunda. The woman was dressed in an elaborate white wedding gown, decorated with yards and yards of pearl-shaped beads. The man wore a black tuxedo, accented with a cummerbund brightly striped in reds, greens, and yellows. A couple of attendants followed, each of them dressed in formal attire, one of them carrying a fiddle.

“That’ll be a marriage queuing up,” Monty said, glancing at his watch. “Come on, we should have enough time to check out the Ceremonial Rotunda before they get started. It’s right at the top of the marble stairs.” Monty grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the steps.

“All right,” I replied wearily. “But then, I really need to get back to the shop.”

Monty continued to pepper me with trivia while we climbed up the steps to the second floor. “Did you know?” he asked as we stepped into a smaller, more intimate cove formed in between the second and third floors. “This is where Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe got hitched. They call this the Ceremonial Rotunda.”

A bronze bust had been placed at the edge of the cove. The head and shoulders of a man with a prominent nose, wide elephant ears, and a broad humorous smile had been positioned so that he overlooked the designated location for City Hall’s marriage ceremonies.

I had noticed several similar monuments on my earlier walk around City Hall, but I had been so taken with the decorations on the walls and ceiling, I hadn’t stopped to familiarize myself with any of the memorialized figures.

Monty sidled up to the bust and wrapped his right arm around its bronze shoulders. “This guy,” Monty said, his voice dropping reverently, “is a legend in San Francisco politics. Most of these busts are monuments dedicated to former Mayors. But this one is for a former Supervisor, Harvey Milk.”

Monty stepped back from the bust to let me examine it more closely. Thirty years after his death, Harvey Milk was still famous throughout San Francisco, not only for his politics—he was the city’s first openly gay elected official—but for the tragic way in which he died. Harvey Milk and the Mayor of his time, George Moscone, were assassinated in City Hall by one of the other Supervisors. The horrifying event had shaken the city to its core.

A relief had been carved into the marble monument beneath the bust. The scene depicted a line of citizens marching through the streets of San Francisco holding candles in the air, commemorating the outpouring of grief that swept the city streets following the shootings.

Monty paced into the center of the rotunda while I bent down to study the base of the Milk monument. He was preparing to launch into the next topic of his lecture as I straightened and turned to face him.

But right at that moment, a strange feeling swept over me—an unsettled sensation, as if something were amiss.

I glanced around at the surrounding stone and then swept my eyes upward. A circular balcony, about ten feet or so in diameter, looked down from the third floor to the space where we were standing.

A movement on the edge of the stone balcony caught my eye as a tiny green figure shuffled to the edge of the railing. The slight echo of a meager croak floated down into the cove, barely audible over the drone of Monty’s voice.

I felt my mouth fall open as the frog leapt into the air, his strong back legs propelling him into the center airspace of the Ceremonial Rotunda.

Monty noticed my gaping stare and turned his long, narrow face in the same upward direction I was looking—just in time to receive the splat of the frog’s slimy body across his forehead.

THE FROG DUCKED
into the slick helmet of Monty’s hair, briefly dodging a flailing net of fingers as Monty’s arms swung instinctively up over his head. A muffled
ribbit
issued from somewhere within the heaving heap of fingers, frog, and overstyled hair.

“Ah ha!” Monty exclaimed as he finally wrapped his hand around the frog’s spongy middle.

But the extra lubrication of Monty’s hair gel made the already slippery frog impossible to hold. The struggling frog popped out of Monty’s grasp and shot up into the air, its hind legs stretching out behind it for full aerodynamic effect.

I stepped sideways to avoid both the fleeing frog and Monty’s lunging effort to recapture it. The frog landed with a squishing plunk on the marble floor and quickly turned around to size up the oncoming pursuit of Monty’s skinny, scrambling figure.

Monty stumbled forward, his long arms swooping down at the floor. The frog took off on a series of short, vigorous hops that took it straight between Monty’s pointed feet. Monty swiveled the toes of his dress shoes on the marble, trying to reverse direction to continue the chase.

A small amount of hair gel had apparently transferred from the bottom of the frog’s webbed feet to the center of the Ceremonial Rotunda when it first landed. As the sole of Monty’s left shoe hit the slick spot on the marble, his legs flew out from under him, and he crashed painfully onto the floor. With a last triumphant
ribbit
, the frog disappeared around the corner leading to the second floor hallway.

The wedding party reached the top of the stairs, murmuring with concern at the sight laid out in front of them. The fiddle player peeked over my shoulder as I bent down toward Monty’s lanky body, which was sprawled out in the middle of the Ceremonial Rotunda. His gel-coated hair had been hopelessly disarranged; it was now strangely spiked and ruffled as if he had just climbed out of bed after a restless night’s sleep.