Page 36 of If Looks Could Kill
“There isn’t time,” she said, “and that’s the point. No time to waste where a human life is concerned. Let’s go, and let’s hurry.”
I nodded and reached for the other cardigan while she put hers on. “Let’s, then,” I said. “But you’re taking the saloon, and I’m taking the brothel.”
Pearl rolled her eyes at me. “Let’s not start that all over again.”
“I’m not,” I said flatly. “At the Lion’s Den, the bouncer will keep you out of trouble. I don’t trust you not to march right into that brothel and get yourself killed.”
Tabitha—Fishing(Sunday, November 18, 1888)
And so I sat in the waning light on the fire escape in the alley with the brothel, and waited.
As a little girl of nine or ten, I once accompanied my father on a fishing trip. Just the two of us. No Aunt Lorraine. It was the Fourth of July, and a community picnic beckoned with games, company, and food galore, but we two took a picnic lunch to Cohoes and found a secluded spot on the southern tip of Simmons Island, where willow trees cast enough shade for us to bait our hooks, prop our rods, and leave our lines bobbing in the calmer little pool in the island’s lee. There the rush on either side of us of swirling Mohawk River waters met in the middle and made peace with each other. And, Dad hoped, with the fish.
“What do we do now, Dad?” I asked my father.
“We eat lunch,” he said, “and we wait.”
Lunch disappeared quickly enough, but waiting took its time. Water raced past us on either side, talking loudly on its way. Scrubby brush at the river’s edge swayed and rustled with the breeze while gulls circled above and, in the muted distance, the Cohoes Falls roared.
“Nothing’s happening, Dad,” I told him.
“I know, Tabby Cat,” he said. “That’s the point.” He tipped the brim of his straw hat low over his brow and settled in to watch the fishing line in its quiet pool beside the churning river.
After what felt like an eternity, but was probably about three minutes, I disturbed his rest again. “Can’t we do anything, Dad?” I asked. “To hurry the fish along?”
He shook his head. “Not a blessed thing,” he said, “and that’s the best part of it.”
“The waiting?” I asked. “The doing nothing and the waiting are the best parts?”
He opened a pea pod and thumbed out baby peas into my hand. “Someday you’ll see.”
But I didn’t see. We caught no fish that day. I thought the outing a waste, and I resented missing out on hide-and-seek, jacks, and hopscotch with all the other children, my best friend Jane especially, not to mention the cakes, pies, and tarts the mothers would have brought.
But now, crouched on the fire escape, I could begin to see. Six days a week, Dad’s newspaper office was a noisy, hectic, harried place, with deadlines and edits, with writers and workers clamoring for attention. Six days a week, Dad was swept up in news flooding into Troy, a hub of science, commerce, and politics at the junction of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers and the Erie Canal. Most nights Dad barely got home in time to kiss me good night.
But that day on Simmons Island, we shucked peas and shelled peanuts and drank lemonade straight from the jar. Dad told jokes, and I tore leaves into bits, tossed them high, and watched them flutter down as “snow” upon his balding head. He quizzed me on my state capitals, and I asked him how banks work, how businesses work, how government works. He showed me how to lob acorns with a slingshot and how to skim a rock over the water’ssurface. I showed him how Queen Anne’s lace, upside down, looked like a fairy’s wedding gown.
As I kid, I thought I’d waited all day for nothing to happen. Much like today, on the fire escape. But I saw now what Dad meant. And, oh, if he were there to keep me company.
So consumed was I in thoughts of Dad that I almost didn’t notice, in the falling dark, when a pair of figures left the hidden doorway and ventured down the alley toward the street, bundled against the cold. One was a burly man, puffing on a thick cigar. The other was slim and pale, with a pouf of dark hair piled atop her head.
It was the girl in pigtails who’d been looking for Spring Street. The girl in the window.
She was alive. Finally, we’d found her.
I waited till they had turned the corner and vanished from sight, then I clattered down the stairs and ran after them. I barely saw them turn left at the corner up ahead onto Broome Street, heading toward the Lion’s Den.
I followed them closely enough to keep them in my sights. The man, I noticed, when he turned sideways, had one large, misshapen ear, a common sight among boxers and brawlers. They pressed along through foot traffic, together but not together. The man put a guiding hand on the girl’s back occasionally. She cringed away from him. From my father, the touch would mean,I’m here. I’ll look out for you.From this man, it seemed to say,I’m here. Don’t get any ideas.
They reached the Bowery. Spring Street was just ahead. I was out of time. I had to do something. But how could I, with that possessive man hovering like a circling shark?
A passerby recognized the man and hailed him. This halted the pair as the bodyguard stopped to exchange a word or two with his friend. The girl waited, staring mutely ahead.
Now or never.
I took a deep breath, got a bit of a running start, and plowed into the girl from behind.
“Watch it!” she cried. She stumbled forward and dropped her gloves.
