I was thinking Kat might warm to me a little knowing that, but the little girl says nothing. And Martin, who doesn’t seem concerned or surprised that Kat remains silent, says nothing, either.

Martin pays the driver after we step out of the carriage, and a few minutes later the three of us are boarding a red cable car trimmed in yellow and packed with other riders. Half of its benches are sheltered from the elements and half are open-air with only a brightly painted roof over the seats. A gentleman who’d been sitting offers me his place on a bench that is unprotected from the night air. I take it and then hesitantly pull Kat onto my lap. The child doesn’t object. The cable car begins to climb a long hill, stopping at each leveled block to take on new passengers and let off others. I can’t discern how the car is able to move with no motor or engine and no overhead wires. I ask Martin how this is possible.

“It runs on the steel rail underneath,” he says disinterestedly. “On a track. There’s a slot between the tracks where an underground cable runs at a continuous speed. The car grabs hold of the cable like a pair of pliers and gets tugged along.”

“But how does the cable run, then?” I ask.

Martin is too slow to reply. The man who gave up his seat and is standing near me is charmed by my interest and answers my question.

“The powerhouse over on Mason does the work,” he says proudly, as if he’d invented the cable car himself. “Large wheels spin the cable all day long with hydroelectric power. Quite an impressive thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it. Such power, so easy to go unnoticed.

After a few stops, we get off and walk a few more slightly ascending blocks. The homes, some amply spaced apart and with views of the matrix of streets below, are nicely appointed with paned windows that are aglow with electric lights. The people who live in these houses are a world away from the tenement dwellers of the Lower East Side. For a fleeting moment I wonder why Martin didn’t pay the extra money for a sleeping car if he can afford to own a house in this neighborhood.

“Here it is,” Martin says, as we arrive at a three-story house on Polk Street. It is not as imposing as some of the other homes around it, but it is freshly painted a deep blue with ivory trim. Black ironwork adorns the railings and window boxes. As we walked, Martin told me the house is situated a few blocks from Russian Hill, so that I would know which part of the city we are in. It had lately been the home of a doctor and his wife and their two young sons. The doctor had taken a director’s position at a hospital in Argentina, and he and his family had left with only their personal belongings and a few housewares. Martin had bought the home fully furnished.