Evie didn’t know what she’d say if he came for her. She didn’t really want to go away and would have to explain her change of heart. How she’d needed a job—that was the way it started. How the math had been simple in those days, but then things changed. It wasn’t right to take money from Billy Nesselhous after Jake was sick. After she fell in love. So she told the gamblers to shove it, she wouldn’t take their money anymore. She thought Jake had something to get by on. He was stealing from the gamblers, she knew that, but she’d hoped he could keep his strings running, because if he couldn’t, she didn’t know what they’d do to survive. Maybe Jake didn’t understand how things worked, he was young, but Evie should have known better. Life intervened in all plans. Her life intervened and changed the rules. That was what the gamblers counted on, in their way of thinking, that a guy would let something slip he wouldn’t otherwise to a girl he fell for. Only natural. The gamblers played the odds that way, bringing in a chaos girl as a hedge. They ran interference on their own schemes, on their own men, as a way of finding out who was strong and who would fail. Evie found out too, by and by, because she was in the middle.
Evie should have known better than to let things go as far as they did with Jake. She knew there was a limit to love, but she ignored what she knew and then went and did something stupid like tell off the gamblers. What would she do now? Her own money was running out. She had to go away, didn’t she? Even though it was a harebrained plan. That was what she thought on election night—she was going to run with Jake—at least early in the night. She was. She’d talked herself into it. But then he didn’t show up, and that gave her time to think. Where was he? Was he dead? Did the gamblers get him? Would he still come for her? Did she want him to? Did she wish he’d never come back?
She was in bed when Jake found her, spread out on her stomach. Her pink kimono rode up her body to expose an arc of hips, the sloping meadow lines of ass and thighs. An old habit, posing like that. She heard him come in but didn’t move. She tried to not even breathe. A paper lamp made the room glow orange, particularly her. Her bare legs and feet. Jake held a hand to her mouth to feel if she still breathed. She wanted to laugh but she wouldn’t move. He pinched a bead of sweat from her top lip and rubbed it into his fingertips.
Evie held her breath but smiled in spite of herself. She’d tricked him, hadn’t she?
Jake shifted his weight off the bed to remove his jacket. She took a heavy breath, silk sliding over her legs as she rolled to watch him. He parted the lace curtains and glanced down at the street below but didn’t bother to raise the window. She didn’t like to have the breeze come in at sundown. It gave her a chill.
“Is this for me?”
He’d left a wax paper package on the bed. She was eating when he turned around, Muenster and mustard on white rye. It was good, warm and formed, the cheese soft. She tore a sliver of cheese from between the bread and smiled as she tasted it. She plucked a rye grain off the blanket and crushed it between her front teeth. Her hair clumped lopsided.
“You like it?” Jake sat next to her on the bed and took her hands between his. He was much calmer than before. All the urgency was gone out of him. “If you want more,” he said, “you can send out. Get whatever you want.”
“I’m half-starved. A whole apple orchard sounds nice.”
“Sure,” he said. He bent and kissed the top of her head. “Make it two.”
She went to the other room and stepped behind the divider to change clothes. She felt safe behind the divider. Its etched parchment made the light white, it removed the incandescent glare. She felt safe, hidden, but not comfortable. Jake asked why she hadn’t packed.
Her rooms were as always, she realized. The high-backed chair and low-slung sofa. The kitchen, her bedroom with the brass bed and legless vanity and mirror. All more or less the same. A lamp in front of the divider. In a corner was the cutting table, the woman-shaped wire cage. Around the doorway were several bolts of bright fabric. She was so handy with a needle and those giant shears. It would take some planning to package the tools and bring them along somewhere else. The heavy oak table would have to be left behind if she moved.
She slipped around the screen in the same stained robe she wore before and nudged the suitcase with the side of her foot.
“Where’d you pick this up from?”
She smiled in a far-off way.
“It’s late. I’m sorry.” He pulled a single bill from his pocket. “Don’t you believe what I said before? I have this. It will take us a long way from here.”
She took the note and examined it in the orange light. “Is this play money?”
She handed it back. Who’d heard of such a thing as a thousand-dollar bill? Jake tried to make her hold the money, but she wouldn’t. The thousand dropped in among her blankets.
He sat sideways on the bed, leaning crooked over his hip. “I told you. We can go off someplace we’ve never been. We’ve got that thousand. It’s cash. We could get some land somewhere and farm. It’s enough to get started on anything we—”
Evie waved him off. She went to the kitchen, where the ring was, and handed it back to him. “I don’t want this,” she said. She left him standing there. His face lengthening. He was terrified, she saw this. Evie didn’t know what she was doing. She hadn’t convinced herself to break things off—giving back the ring just happened. She didn’t know why Jake was late in coming for her. He could have done so many things against the gamblers, stupid things. He could have sealed his fate for all Evie knew, and hers too. He could be in real trouble, and the smart thing would be to distance herself. She saw this. Jake couldn’t protect her.
She ran water for the tub. Under the sink basin was a green bottle. She tipped it to her mouth until she reached the dregs then let it clunk against the tile floor as she eased into the water. Hot water filled over her, splashing off her feet as it dumped from the spout.
Jake followed. He sat on the toilet cover, the room filling with steam. The toilet chain hung down from a sweaty upper tank.
“What am I going to do with you?” she asked.
“We agreed already. We’ll leave. Then we won’t have to worry.”
“There’s two alternatives, you should know.” Evie spun to wet her front, then over again. “Either I jump in the river or find some way to pay the rent. That’s how it is. Frankly, I don’t care much for the drowning option.”
She took on a mocking accent, like she’d grown up on Broadway instead of in Kansas. “This isn’t the farm you came from,” she said. “We do things different down here in America.”
Jake rubbed the shape out of his hair, head in his hands. He was shaking. He was falling apart.
“You got a lot to learn about keeping a woman. I’ll tell you that much.”