The girls doted on Evie that night. “Evie Chambers. What a lovely name.” “Where do you come from, Evie? Where’s your family from?” “Oh. Kansas. That’s where. Just Kansas.” The Miihlstein girls, Maria Eigler, even Herr Miihlstein when he came downstairs—embarrassed because he forgot there was company and had been applying lacquer and now couldn’t shake her hand because his were sticky—they all loved Evie. They said so. Only Karel was gone, and nobody knew where he’d gotten off to. But the rest of them were charmed. The girls walked Jake and Evie to the street when the evening was over and lingered there on the walkway as the two young lovers strolled away.
That week people on Clandish talked about Evie and Jake a lot. Why didn’t they just get it over with? Why didn’t he ask her to marry him and put her up in a house of their own? Jake flaunted the fact that he had money. It wasn’t his money, of course. Pretty much everything he had belonged to Tom Dennison, but that didn’t seem to matter. He was in love. Life was good. He should marry his girl.
Of course, things would get worse for Jake.
Tom Dennison looked like an old priest when he confronted Jake about the money. The way his lips twisted his words, how he cracked his knuckles, ready to berate a sinner. “Fess up, son. Don’t embarrass yourself by saying you didn’t do nothing. We both know that’s a lie.”
Jake was confused. He thought everything was going swell. So he played dumb and asked what Tom was talking about.
“You’re sneaking money to your girl. Billy told me about it. He had a line on you. This is what came up.” Jake’s face went blank then. He couldn’t pretend. “That’s stealing. If it’s for your girl, that’s stealing. Don’t ask me what you did. If you want to throw away your own money, that’s your business. But don’t waste what’s mine.”
Tom stared at Jake a long time to see what he’d do. Jake didn’t say a word. He couldn’t even look at Tom, sitting there, as he tried to imagine what would happen next.
“You got to drop that girl,” Tom said. “I saw her. She’s not so pretty. Find a new girl. Promise me that and we’ll be square.”
Tom explained things to Jake. How he wanted to believe in him. He wanted to believe Jake was smarter than the other guys, more grateful. This wasn’t the first time Tom had been betrayed by a young man whose star seemed to shine brighter than it really did. There were others who thought they could pull one over on the Old Man. These things were solvable. If it only cost money to get through this trouble, Tom didn’t care. Money wasn’t so hard to get. Jake was a disappointment. But when you counted who had the most to gain and who lost what, there was no way of figuring that Tom Dennison was the loser of this gamble. It was Jake who’d miscalculated. It was Jake who’d lose if he didn’t drop that girl and put himself back in Tom Dennison’s good graces. That’s how simple it was. Even Jake should have been able to see that.
But Jake didn’t know what to do. Tom had it out for him. He’d been caught stealing—a cardinal offense, though everything they did was stealing in one way or another, wasn’t it?—and he wouldn’t even try to make things right. Tom wanted to let him off the hook. All Jake had to do was end it with Evie. But he wouldn’t.
A few weeks prior, Dennison had sent a new summer-gray suit to the Eigler house with a thousand-dollar bill tucked in the breast pocket. On the charge slip it read Happy birthday, sorry it’s late. —T. Maria found the money. Jake didn’t believe it when she handed him the thousand. How was so much money held in a single scrap of paper? He’d received gifts from Tom before—liquor, theater passes, front-row seats at fights and ballgames—but nothing like this. If Tom was so concerned about Jake taking money, why give him a thousand-dollar bill? It didn’t make sense. Jake thought of giving the cash to Evie—to pay her rent out over a year—but then Tom would have his ass for sure. He was trapped. The way he figured, there was nothing to do but hold on to the thousand and remember who gave it to him.
He was a mess those days before the vote. Unable to keep his thinking straight. Sensitive. He worked nearly twenty hours a day. Trudging through tenements. Up all night in social clubs, imagining lying on Evie’s sofa and listening to records. He imagined making love to her. He tried to convince himself that he should break it off with her until things cooled down with Dennison—the reasonable thing to do. But then he’d recall the way her body fit into his, her shoulder under his shoulder, the flat front of her hips on his legs, the way she walked barefoot on the crooked knuckles of his back, how she soaked his feet in alchemic water when they ached, how she’d cared for him when he was knocked down with the flu. He’d miss her scent in the morning, before she perfumed, a reconfiguration of burgundy wine and sweet rolls.
Screw it. He couldn’t stand this anymore. What did anyone expect of him?
He went and bought a ring before he lost her. The jeweler said it was a nice one. The ring had a silver band, which cost less than some of the gold ones, but there was a diamond chip, and that was a special thing, uncommon for an engagement those days. He blew just about every cent he had on the ring. She’d have to be his. Once he had the ring, Jake went home to get the thousand from under his mattress. They’d run off. He and Evie would take a car to Lincoln then catch a train to a city where the Omaha machine had no influence. He’d get out with Evie. They’d leave town. They’d make love in a sleeper car.
There was a meeting at the Santa Philomena that night. Jake was required to be there, but then he’d sneak off. Tom, Billy, all those machine men who could hurt him, they’d be too busy with the vote to notice. This was his chance.