Page 7 of If Looks Could Kill

September grew more damp. The street gutters, more clogged with fallen leaves.

The windowpanes, more fogged with condensation.

The sky, more choked with coal smoke. Pearl and I failed to find much to love in each other.

The upstanding citizens of the Bowery failed to find much to love in our copies of The War Cry .

“We’re nothing but paperboys,” I grumbled to Pearl the next Saturday afternoon. We’d been following our desultory route from tavern to tavern ever since lunch, accompanied by a depressing drizzle that fit my mood precisely.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pearl said tersely.

“I left my home and my life to do something,” I said. “Something important. Instead, I’m selling papers no one wants. To the poorest people in America.”

“Not the poorest,” Pearl said flatly. “You’re helping to fund the work.”

“There’s got to be a better way,” I told her. “What we sell doesn’t even feed us .”

“Have faith,” Pearl said. “This is what we’ve been asked to do.”

“Wouldn’t you rather help people?” I asked her. “There’s so much need all around.”

She was silent for a moment. It seemed she planned to ignore me.

“I know.”

Her tone stopped me in my tracks. It was so un -unpleasant. Just matter-of-fact.

“We are helping people,” she added, “but only those who come to our meetings. And they’re often the ones with no hope left at all.”

“It would be nice,” I said, “if we could help people before they hit rock bottom.”

“Oh, Sister Tabitha. If only we could lead them to the Lord.”

There she was, the Pearl I knew.

“Or have any kind of an impact at all,” I added, by way of keeping conversation going. This was practically the closest we’d come to a civil exchange.

“You’re so pessimistic,” she said.

Never mind.

The rain, after hours of indecision, made up its mind to pour. We crossed a street, leaping over the river of brown water coursing through the gutters, washing away manure and cigarette butts and sodden bits of pretzel. I wished I’d brought an umbrella.

Pearl paused for a moment under an awning to admire a display of red and blue hair ribbons in a women’s dress shop. I ducked under the awning to brush water droplets off me.

The wistful expression on Pearl’s face took me by surprise.

It was plain: she wanted those ribbons. Suddenly, I wanted her to have them too.

Not because she was my friend, for if anything, she was my nemesis from hell, but I wanted them for her anyway.

Even the tiny allowance the Salvation Army gave us for necessities had room in the budget for a hair ribbon or two.

But Pearl had moved on. I hurried to catch up with her.

“You’d look pretty in those ribbons,” I told her. “Let’s go back and get them for you.”

She looked caught for a moment, then annoyed. “No, thank you.”

“It’s just a trifle,” I said. “I saw how you admired them.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Tell you what,” I coaxed, “we’ll both get some. You get the blue, and I’ll get the red.”

“It’s vanity,” she said flatly.

“Hardly,” I said. “They’re Salvation Army colors.” I thought that would get a smile.

“Sister Tabitha,” she said dully, “I don’t want the ribbons.”

“But you do,” I protested. “I know you do. You lit up at the sight of them.”

She looked down at the pavement. “Even if I did, I can’t afford them, and that’s that.”

“But your allowance,” I protested. “Surely—”

She glared at me. “Would you please stop?”

She continued walking. I followed after her, baffled. I’d hurt her somehow. Embarrassed her. I’d meant it as a kindness, even though she could be the most irksome girl on God’s green earth. I was ready to pay for them myself, but that would hurt her worse. Wound her pride.

It wasn’t Pearl’s happiness I was urging along so stubbornly. It was my own.

Tucked down into what I thought was generosity were layers of smugness and self-satisfaction. As if I knew best what she wanted. As if I knew better what she could afford.

Life is a bad mess. The least little thing you think you know can still be wrong, wrong, wrong. The best of intentions can do the utmost damage. May this be a lesson to me, I thought.

All the same, and even though Pearl gives me a stomachache on good days, I couldn’t shake my regret at having caused her pain.

Halfway along the block, I realized Pearl was no longer ahead of me. I turned to see her frozen in her tracks and gazing upward. I trotted back to see what had captured her interest.

She seemed transfixed by the sight of something in a second-story window, above another saloon, the Lion’s Den. I followed her gaze to see a girl standing in a bay window, gazing outward as if at nothing through the rain-streaked pane.

“Who’s that?” I asked Pearl. “Do you know her?”

She shook her head.

I studied the girl. Her dark hair was piled on her head in a soft, unruly pompadour. Her face was painted with a dark red stain upon her lips and cheeks, and heavy black outlined her eyes. She wore a blue dressing gown hanging loosely around thin shoulders and collarbones.

“She calls to us,” Pearl whispered fervently. “She begs us to rescue her.”

She certainly did present a striking portrait of pathos. Like a French painting—the pale, blurred face gazing out sadly through a sheet of autumn rain.

“What do you suppose she’s looking at?” I whispered back. “She’s so young.”

A woman clad in frowzy finery appeared at the girl’s side, with an irate expression and words the girl didn’t acknowledge.

The girl turned and noticed us then. Her body tensed. Her eyes grew wide.

“You’re sure you don’t know her?” I whispered.

“Not her,” Pearl said quietly, “but living here, you see, and hear of, thousands like her.”

The girl in the window watched us both intently.

One girl. Thousands like her.

It left me dizzy, the vertigo of trying to reconcile the humanity of one girl standing there against the faceless, forgettable blur of unnamed thousands. Here she was, one small needle in an overwhelming haystack. One small lobster among countless others caught in a giant trap.

“Wotcher piping, you Hallelujah Lassies?”

We turned to see a bald, round-faced man in a black suit approaching us from the door of the saloon with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He was thickly built with the sort of muscles I imagine one acquired from a career of knocking people’s skulls together.

“What’s a pair of bundles like yous two doing out here on a cold afternoon?” A hammy hand landed on my shoulder and another on Pearl’s. “Whyn’t you come inside for a drink?”

Pearl snapped out of her reverie with a jolt. Girl Soldier was back on the job.

“We’ll come in for a song and a scripture,” Pearl said. “We would never touch liquor.”

The bouncer’s gaze flicked reluctantly from her face to mine, then back to hers. Naturally.

The pensive girl was gone. Her window was dark, as though no one had ever been there.

“Well, if you ain’t drinking your health,” said the man, “move it along. Nothing personal”—(pronounced poissonal )—“but a pair like you two, standing right at the door, ain’t great for business.”

“I should hope not,” Pearl said. “If standing here would keep wretched souls from wasting their lives on drink, I’d stand here all night and day.”

“And I’d lose my job, see?” he said. “Besides, there’s a lot more saloons than there are you Salvation types. So beat it. You ain’t good for business.”

Pearl’s face flushed. “I don’t care a cent for your wicked business .”

The bouncer curled his hand into a fist. He and I, it seemed, shared the same secret fantasy of socking Pearl in the chin.

Another man emerged from the saloon, taller and leaner, clad to the nines in a dark blue velvet suit and ruffled shirt, with a bowler hat perched atop slick pomaded hair.

He glanced us up and down, his gaze lingering, as gazes do—forgive me for overemphasizing this point, but these are the facts—upon Pearl’s face rather than mine.

“Sal,” the man drawled, “are you giving these young ladies trouble?”

Sal, for evidently that was the bouncer’s name, crossed his hands at his waist. “No, Boss,” he said. “Just inviting them in for a drink.”

Pearl sputtered at this, but I did my best to warn her silently to say nothing.

The boss man smoothed his mustache. A heavy gold ring hung loosely around one finger. “Now, Sal,” he said, “these young ladies are out doing God’s work, aren’t they?” He waited for Sal to nod a reluctant agreement. “You know they don’t drink demon rum. We wouldn’t want to be the reason they start.”

Sal, it appeared, did not share his boss’s philosophy.

The tall man gave him a thin-lipped smile. “The Bowery’s got enough customers for us without us needing to bring these godly young ladies down to the devil.”

Pearl got her two cents in this time before I could stop her. “Plenty of young ladies find their way to the devil in saloons like yours.”

The velvet suit watched her through half-lidded eyes. “It’s tragic.” He lit a cigarette. “But those girls are already in the devil’s clutches before they arrive.”

“I doubt that,” she said. “Either way, you have no problem cashing in on their downfall.”

“Pearl.” I hoped her name would be warning enough.

The boss took notice of me for a wordless moment, then turned back to my companion.

“I don’t know what kind of establishment you think I own, miss,” he told her coolly. “Miss Pearl, if I may. I run a saloon, not a bordello. There’s no law against a man or woman enjoying a drink.”

“There should be,” snapped Pearl.

He blew out a cloud of smoke. “Be that as it may,” he said, “there isn’t.”

I thought of the girl in the upstairs window. Don’t you run a bordello, Mr. Ruffled Shirt?

He turned aside to blow smoke. “I like to think I keep the young ladies who sing and dance for us better paid, happier, and healthier than many of their sisters at work in other more tiring, wearisome trades, stitching from dawn till midnight. Choking down factory air.”

“Singing and dancing!” Pearl fumed. “You expect me to believe—”

“Singing and dancing,” repeated the unflappable landlord.

“And nothing more than that?”

He shrugged. “Genial conversation, from time to time.”

Well, that was a way of putting it.

The tall man took a drag on his cigarette. “You attend your worship meetings, yes?”

“Without fail.” An understatement. We were living, breathing, street-trudging worship meetings, ready to worship loudly at a moment’s notice, anytime, anyplace.

“And I attend Mass without fail,” said he.

I glared sideways at Pearl. It didn’t matter. She humphed. Mass wasn’t church to her, the snob. The god of the Catholics wasn’t her god, though I didn’t see why not.

I could tell the saloonkeeper heard Pearl’s contempt, though his smooth-water face betrayed nothing. As for Sal, he looked like thunder.

“So we try not to stand in the way of God’s work,” the saloonkeeper said. “We treat your mission with dignity. You are always welcome here.”

“Thank you.” I took Pearl’s arm in mine. “We’ve taken enough of the gentleman’s time.” I could feel the word “Gentleman!” rising up from Pearl’s lungs like a curse word.

The saloonkeeper bowed. “Johnny Leone, at your service.”

“Um, Tabitha Woodward,” I replied. “At yours.”

Good night . I’d just offered my “service” to a pimp. Perhaps he wasn’t a pimp exactly, but the subdivisions of vice on the Bowery were hard to keep straight. Never mind. My one job was to get Pearl away from this Lion’s Den of iniquity, fast, before she landed us in trouble.

But she dug in her heels. “Wait.” She reached into her bag and pulled out two pamphlets.

Oh no.

“Purchase a copy of The War Cry .” She glared at the velvet suit. She wasn’t asking.

One corner of his mouth twitched slightly. “How much?” he drawled.

“One penny.”

He solemnly handed it over, took the offered tract, and tucked it into his coat.

“And you, sir?”

Pearl had actually thrust The War Cry at Sal the Bouncer.

His lip curled as if the offered object were a steaming turd, not the Salvation Army’s newspaper. A quelling look from Johnny Leone made him fish in his pockets for a penny.

“Thank you both.” I pinned Pearl’s captive arm against my side. “Time for us to head home.”

Pearl tripped along complacently now. “That’s twelve for me and two for you.”

I glanced back to see Sal toss his paper down. Its pages fluttered away in the breeze.

“Yes, well,” I muttered as the Third Avenue El screamed by overhead, “if I looked like you, I’d…”

“How’s that?”

I sighed. “Nothing.”