Russian Hill had always seemed economically remote to me as an abiding
place until recently I was invited out where some people were living in
a modest apartment with a good view of the bay. And when they suggested
that I try to get an apartment over there I decided to do it.
It was a beautiful morning when I started out. There stood Russian Hill
and as Gibraltar bristles with armaments so it glittered with windows
facing the sea and one of them for me. Perhaps I could get a few rooms
from a nice Italian family and fix them up. Ah, the Latin quarter,
Greenwich village, the ghosts of artists haunting the place, Bohemians,
enthusiasm, the lust for adventure. I bristled with personality.
“Oh, you want a marine view,” said the real estate man. “Not for that
price, lady.”
A “marine view.” I didn’t want a marine view; I only wanted one window
facing the sea. Surely with all those windows--.
I left the real estate man and began wandering about. I asked a group of
Italian women and they exclaimed in a chorus “No marine views left.” I
hadn’t said a thing about a “marine view.” I wandered further and it was
always the same. Some were smug and some were sorry but they all spoke
of a “marine view” in a certain tone of voice, as Boston people say
“Boston.”
It was getting hot. I could not remove my coat because my waist was a
lace front. Only a hair net restrained me from utter frumpiness. Still I
was not altogether beaten and when I came to a nice countrified looking
house standing alone in the midst of modern art and a man came out I
asked him. The moment I did there came into his eyes a hunted glitter
and he told me how he had held out against them and how he had been
besieged for years to rent his marine view and wouldn’t.
As I turned away I met an Irish delivery man and he said that there were
dozens of vacant apartments very reasonable and waved his hand vaguely
in the direction where I’d been searching. I like the Irish but his
cheerful fibbery was the last straw and I went home.
The next day my friends called up and said that they had a marine view
for me. I was to live all summer in the apartment of the So-and-Sos
while they were away. So now I am. They are artistic and I drink my
coffee from saffron colored cups on a bay green table runner over a
black table under a turquoise blue ceiling with a view of the bay from
the window.
But I am humble and if some day I meet a hot, tired looking woman who
can’t find an apartment on Russian Hill, I shall say: “Shucks, a marine
view isn’t so much.”