Page 93 of If Looks Could Kill

January midday skies were dark and rainy when I knocked on the door of Ben Feldman’s tenement flat and shivered under my umbrella. He opened the door and blinked at me.

“I’m Freyda’s friend,” I told him. “The Salvation Army girl.”

“Miss Tabitha,” he remembered. “Freyda’s not here. She and Cora returned to Freyda’s family.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “Cora decided to stay in the city, then?”

Ben’s expression fell. “You haven’t heard,” he said. “Her parents said don’t come back.”

Oh.

I tried to imagine a world where my own father didn’t welcome me back.

Then again, I hadn’t told my dad what nearly happened to me in a Greenwich Village brothel. Was I afraid of a fate like Cora’s?

Ben interrupted my thoughts.

“Freyda’s writing more for the paper,” he told me, “and both of them are working at her home, in Freyda’s parents’ business, sewing shirts.”

Ben gave me Freyda’s family’s address, and I went straight there.

I’d gotten off the train an hour before, dropped my suitcase at Pearl’s and my new tenement, and gone looking for Freyda and Cora. Pearl wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Gorbady said, peering through her spectacles. “The girls aren’t here.”

She looked exactly as I imagined Freyda would look after giving birth to three children, raising them, and supporting them by squinting at stitches.

Behind her, I saw children and adults hunched over sewing, piecing shirts together at a furious pace. It was afternoon, but the dark outside forced them to work by candlelight.

“They went to meet with a newspaperman,” she told me.

Bravo to them! I couldn’t wait to hear more. I thanked Mrs. Gorbady and took my leave.

I reached the tavern and pushed through the door.

O’Flynn’s was mostly empty. A few old men sat in the back, lost in a card game, but otherwise, the place felt askew. As if, without people, it had forgotten its purpose.

Mike’s uncle stood behind the bar, totting up figures on a piece of paper, frowning, and comparing his columns to a pile of receipts. He only noticed me as I approached the bar. He peered over his spectacles at me, then took them off and folded them into his shirt pocket.

“Miss Tabitha.” He had a quiet sort of smile. “It’s good to see you back.”

The door behind the bar swung open and Mike backed through, toting a wooden crate full of clinking bottles. My heart sprang toward him like a cuckoo in a clock.

“Uncle, I think they shorted us a case of—”

He stopped mid-sentence when he saw me.

“Hello, Mike.”

Down went the crate of bottles. He ran a hand over his hair and tucked a shirttail into his trousers while his uncle watched, amused. He scooted around his uncle and ran to me.

He almost knocked me over. I laughed and hugged him back, inhaling the clove scent of him.

The door swung shut behind his uncle. He’d gone away to give Mike some privacy.

Mike lifted me off my feet and swung me. It felt like he might hurl me like a discus.

Hoots and catcalls sounded from the old duffers in the far corner of the tavern.

Mike grinned. He didn’t mind them, and neither did I.

“You came back.” He held me at arm’s length. “Whyn’t you tell a body you were coming back? Don’t you know how I’ve been suffering?” His face grew serious. “Is this just a visit?”

This was the best part of all, the part I’d rehearsed a thousand times on the train.

“No,” I told him. “It’s not a visit. I’m back to stay.”

He let out a whoop that got a rise out of the old duffers, then crushed my ribs once more.

“Why doncha kiss her?” hooted one of the old sods.

“I’ll kiss her when I’m ready,” Mike called back, “but not to please the likes of you.”

“Better let me kiss her,” teased the talkative one, “and show a young scalawag like you how it’s done.”

His mates seemed to feel that O’Flynn’s hadn’t offered this much entertainment in a good long while.

“I’d better get you out of here,” Mike said.

Uncle Mike came through the swinging door just then. He stayed placid and unruffled, as though my arrival wasn’t newsworthy at all. His wife, following on his heels, was the opposite.

“Tabitha!” she squealed.

“Hello, Aunt Mag.”

“Uncle,” Mike began, “I wonder if I might—”

“Go on,” his uncle said, waving a hand at his nephew. “You’ll be no use to me tonight anyhow. Show Miss Tabitha a good time while she’s in town.”

“She’s not here for a visit,” Mike said. “She’s here to stay.”

Aunt Mag looked ready to pop. “I’ve got Irish stew on the stove if she’ll join us….”

“Maggie,” her husband said, “I think the young ones would like to be alone.” He brought Mike his cap and coat.

“Of course.” Aunt Mag was not the crestfallen type. “You’ll just come back later for dessert, then. I’ve got a lovely cherry tart.”

“Come on.” Mike laughed. “If we don’t go now, we’ll never escape.”

The bell jangled behind us, and we climbed the stairs to the street.

The rain had returned. The glow of streetlamps shone in the puddles.

“Are you hungry?”

I acknowledged that I could eat.

He grinned. “Chop suey?”

My stomach lurched. “I don’t know,” I said. “After what happened last time I ate it…”

He looked like he, too, might get sick at the thought.

“… it might take me a while to be ready for chop suey again.”

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get away from this rain.”

We found an awning to a women’s shoe shop, and that was where Mike kissed me.

There are times when you wish time would stop for you, and time listens to your prayer.

When I opened my eyes, I saw our reflection in the silvered window of the shoe store. There I was. There I was. It was me, yet it was almost a person I didn’t recognize. She looked so comfortable, and so glad. She was fully herself, and fully at ease, and that was striking.

This is who you are. Especially when you’re not worried about who you are. This is how those who love you see you.

“What do you see in there?” Mike inquired. “Are you in the market for new shoes?”

His eyes were bright with laughter.

“Or are you a Narcissus, in love with your own reflection?”

“Narciss a , if you please,” I said loftily. “You’ve found me out. I just stare in mirrors all day long.”

He shrugged. “I can see how, in your case, that would be a temptation.”

I gave him a shove. “Flattery won’t work on me.”

That grin again. “Want to bet?”

He wrapped his arms around me once more. “Tell me everything,” he said. “Are you back with the Army? Where will you live? What will you be doing?”

“I’ll tell you everything,” I told him. “But first, let’s eat.”

“Sure thing.” He offered me his arm. “Say the word, Miss Woodward. What’ll it be? Delmonico’s? The Union Club?”

“Are you a member?” I teased.

“Not yet,” he admitted. “But give me a few years.” He squeezed my arm, threaded through his. “You were gone too long.”

“I was gone a few weeks,” I said. “Considering I was leaving forever, that’s not bad.”

“Considering you were leaving forever,” he said, “each day lasted forever.”

“Did you have a happy Christmas?”

He looked like he intended to deny it, but gave up the struggle.

“Aunt Mag is a force of nature,” he said. “It’s impossible to have an un happy Christmas when she’s in charge. You?”

“I love my dad with all my heart,” I told him, “and the Troy-Rensselaer Courier doesn’t put out a paper on Christmas Day. That was the best part of the holiday for me.”

“I want to meet him,” Mike said. “Suppose he’ll ever leave the paper for a visit?”

“He’s threatening to,” I said. “He says he needs to investigate reports of an Irish bartender who keeps flocking around me.”

A burly man passed by, steering a young woman by the arm. She locked eyes with me for a moment, and a sick feeling of dread came over me.

I stared back at her. Was it her? In outdoor clothes, I couldn’t be sure.

The man with her was a stranger to me, though his face bore the tough, angry, don’t-get-any-ideas look that fit the type.

Or he could’ve just been an ordinary Bowery husband or boyfriend steering the arm of a girl who looked a lot like Sarah from the brothel.

They passed by. I saw the young woman turn toward the man and say something. I felt a chill. Was she saying something about me?

“What’s the matter?” Mike asked.

I waited until they were well out of earshot.

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but I think I just saw one of the girls from Rosie’s brothel.” I frowned. “Which would make that man a pimp. Why would they be down here?”

“That brothel was raided,” Mike said. “Mother Rosie’s in the Tombs.”

“I wonder,” I said. “From what Freyda’s said, she had, er, sister locations.”

Mike watched me with concern. “Are you sure it was her?”

“No,” I admitted. “But if I had to bet…”

He wrapped his arm around me. “They’re gone now,” he said. “You’re safe.”

Returning to the city was entering a lion’s den of another sort. I knew that the Bowery could never be safe for any girl. Especially one who had declared war against the sex trade.

In the Bible story, the prophet Daniel was safe in the lion’s den because God sealed the lions’ mouths shut.

I doubted God had sealed this maybe-Delilah girl’s mouth shut.

Perhaps she hated me. Perhaps she’d been beaten after the raid, or perhaps her new situation was worse than before.

Perhaps she resented me for getting away.

Or perhaps this was all in my head. But not the danger. That was real enough.

Bring them home.

I’ll try.

We resumed our stroll, using awnings to keep the rain off us wherever we could.

“So what’ll it be, Taibít?” Mike said. “Where do we go celebrate you coming home? What do you want to eat?”

“How about Irish stew?” I said. “Followed by a lovely cherry tart?”

I may have mentioned it before, but there’s something quite wonderful about how Mike’s mouth works when he’s trying not to smile.

“Come on, then,” he said. “I know a good place. Let’s get in out of the rain.”

Returning to O’Flynn’s, I spotted a familiar face on the street corner.

“Hello, Oscar,” I told him.

He fixed me with a grin. “Looky here,” he said. “Miss Theresa’s back.”

“Tabitha,” I told him.

“I hardly recognize you,” said the saucy fiend, “with clothes on.”

I stifled a laugh and grabbed Mike’s arm before he could erupt. “Leave him be, Mike.”

“Little beast,” Mike hissed. “I’ll come back and wash his mouth out with soap.”

“Not him,” I told him. “Oscar gets a free pass.”

“For now,” Mike growled.

“Yeah,” Oscar called after us. “I’m only a poor, motherless orphan, after all.”