Page 12 of If Looks Could Kill

“Tabitha,” Pearl said after our Sunday afternoon services had ended and we’d put away the last chair and trudged back to our room in the tenement the Army had rented for us, “we need to try to find that girl.”

She hadn’t called me “Sister Tabitha.” That was a first. Maybe she, too, wanted peace.

I subscribe to the “speak-first-and-think-later” philosophy. “Let’s go find her right now,” I said.

Pearl untied the scarlet ribbon of her bonnet while I sat on my cot and unloosed my boots. “She’s above the Lion’s Den, isn’t she?”

“That’s where she was yesterday. That’s all we know.”

I fished around in my footlocker for a pouch of almonds and popped one in my mouth. “We could head over there and look,” I said, “but the bouncer will chase us away again.”

I offered Pearl my almonds. She shook her head. “We could be stealthy,” she said. “Stand unobtrusively on a street corner and watch for any sign.”

An excellent idea. Pearl and Tabitha, Girl Spies. I gestured to our uniform jackets, military blue and smartly trimmed with gold braid. “Us? Blend in?”

She frowned. “Should we go… in disguise?”

“In normal clothes, you mean?”

She reached for some almonds after all and nodded reluctantly.

A very interesting side of Pearl was emerging. “Wouldn’t we get into trouble?” I asked.

Pearl chewed her almonds. “Only if Captain Jessop heard about it.”

For a higher cause, then, even the rigid Pearl could bend a rule.

I opened the drab armoire that held all our clothes and pulled out two cardigan sweaters. Our navy blue skirts would be fine if we left the fancy jackets at home. And the poke bonnets. Plain black straw hats would do, and I had an extra one to loan Pearl.

“Look at us,” Pearl said. “We look like two ordinary working girls. Shopgirls, maybe.”

“Typists,” I said.

It was strange, walking through the city without our uniforms. No more curious stares.

No more inching away as though we might try to inflict our odious salvation upon everyone we passed.

Ambush them with Jesus. To be fair, that was more or less our usual plan.

But now we were just two girls moving through the blessed invisibility of New Yorkers minding their business.

We passed by O’Flynn’s Tavern. No sign of Mike. Not that I was looking for him. We turned onto Spring Street.

“There it is.” Pearl pointed to the Lion’s Den.

We hung back. At a little past three in the afternoon, the dinner crowd hadn’t started up yet, and the front door saw little use. The upstairs windows were blank and dark.

“We probably need to get closer,” I said. “Let’s just casually stroll by. We’ll try not to seem like we’re looking.”

We wandered down the street like people with no particular place to go. My furtive glances revealed nothing in any of the windows. We circled the block.

“Let’s walk by again,” Pearl said.

So we did, looping the block one more time and still seeing nothing.

“We probably need to come back later on,” I said. “But we have evening meetings.”

“We could go in,” suggested Pearl. “Look for her inside.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. “They’ll see us.”

“So?” said Pearl. “We’re not in our uniforms.”

“Yes,” I said, “but we’re still in our faces. Yours is particularly hard to forget.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “You think they’ll remember talking to us?”

“Talking to you? Yesterday? ” I said. “Absolutely. And what will we do? Buy a drink?”

“Ask questions?” ventured Pearl.

“We saw a girl upstairs,” I said, getting into the spirit of the thing. “Do you happen to have any girls here?”

“If you’re so smart,” said Pearl, “suggest a better idea.”

I sighed. “Walk by one more time?”

We walked by one more time, then stopped at the corner where we’d started.

“Maybe this is pointless,” I said. “Maybe we’ll never see that girl again.”

Pearl replied, “Jesus never said it was easy, leaving the ninety and nine to find the one.”

I nearly ground my teeth. “If actual sheep were lost in Manhattan,” I said, “they’d be a lot easier to find than this girl.”

That actually cracked something almost like a smile from Pearl.

“Are we being ridiculous?” she asked.

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

We both turned toward the new voice and saw a girl our age leaning against a building, her arms folded across her chest.

“Who are you?” demanded Pearl.

“Sorry to startle you.” The girl extended a hand. “Freyda Gorbady. Reporter.”