“Why do I deserve you talking to me like this?”
“What makes you think it’s about deserving? You think anyone deserves what they get? You think I deserve this?”
Evie knew there was nothing Jake could say that would make things better, but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook. Her anger was coming out, and she couldn’t stop. This was his fault. She felt a tear pool on her cheekbone, then drip off. She’d begged him to find her a job.
Jake straightened to look Evie in the eyes. She sucked her tears back and reached under the water to feel her legs.
“You deserve too, Jake. Did you forget about Ugo? Is that why you ask about injustice? Because you got no memory? Did you ever think what it was like for him? Running for his life. All those strangers trying to kill him because of a rumor. Only a rumor. And they’d cut his throat in case there was a reward.”
They didn’t really know each other, did they? She’d been with other men longer, probably knew more about them. Why did Evie presume she loved this one?
He’d never asked about Ugo, and she never volunteered information. Jake didn’t know how they met. Whether Ugo picked her off the streets or out of the dance hall where she worked, or whether their meeting was smartly arranged by the gamblers to feel like serendipity, as was the case. Jake never asked where Evie lived before she came here. He didn’t want to know how she’d come to be the Cypriot’s kept woman, did he? But she was unavoidable in the tub. Alive and present. A complication to his scheme.
“How did you meet Ugo?” he asked. “What did you do for money then?”
Evie let her face drop. He was such a disappointment.
“Were you still a dime-a-dance girl? Or am I missing something?”
She drank from the bottle. She saw a tear on Jake’s cheek, which was the last straw, him thinking he deserved to cry.
“I worked for them too. For Billy Nesselhous,” she said. “It’s the truth. Billy hired me out of a dance hall. Paid me to seduce Ugo and keep tabs on him. Not only Ugo. There were more before him.”
“How many?”
Evie laughed. “A few. The first one lasted two years almost. It was easy. Make a man fall in love with you. Let him buy you fancy things. Billy pays for the rooms, so there’s plenty of dough for other things too. Things I wanted.”
“You were a snitch?”
“I guess so, sure. Ugo never said much. He wasn’t up to anything. Don’t you know that? Ugo knew people called him the Cypriot. He liked having a reputation, but he was no instigator. I don’t know why they had to kill him.”
“I don’t know either.”
Evie crossed her arms over her chest and gave Jake hell with her eyes.
“You got a lot to learn. There has to be money to live on. There has to be some way to make dough. That’s just business. Don’t be simple about it. A guy pays your way, you owe him what he paid for.”
Evie turned her head. Her mouth dropped open. She had to suck her lips. “I want you to go. It isn’t right, you being here.”
“Is it the thing about the job? Our fight? Is that it?”
She was quiet a long time, him asking questions but not waiting for her to answer. He didn’t understand. He didn’t see her rooms, her wire dummy, the cutting table. He didn’t even really see her, not how she saw herself.
Evie wanted Jake to say the right things, to understand her and what she wanted her life to be like, to convince her that they should stay together and that life would be good if they stayed together. Her shoulders collapsed, compliant to this yen, her eyes went wet. But she repeated “You have to go” until he lifted the suitcase and left.
Anna had her own trouble that spring. Somehow her file flittered up to the top of a stack of suspicious cases at the local education office. She caught the notice of a state inspector.
He came unannounced in May. There was a knock at the door, and when Anna went to answer, a fat man in a brown suit was standing there. He was bald, she saw, when he removed his hat. He asked if Mr. Miihlstein was at home.
She nodded yes. “But he’s busy.” This was true. Herr usually was busy in the attic and hated to be disturbed.
“Go get him anyway,” the man said.
“What do I tell him this is about?”
Anna jumbled her English when she had to speak to a stranger like this, one who had the unmistakable look of a government man. A man who could make trouble. She’d been reading in the parlor, which was a mistake. She couldn’t hide when she was in the parlor—he’d seen her though the window and she had to answer.
“Are you Anna Miihlstein?” he asked, bungling his words too, the pronunciation of her last name. Mill-stine. Anna acknowledged that this was her. “I’m here about you,” he said. “You don’t attend school and I have to find out why that is. Education is mandatory for the children of this state. Nobody told you this, I’m sure, but that’s no excuse.”
“The school?”
The man nodded. He peered down at Anna to look her over. Anna knew she was in trouble. She wanted to call for Maria, but Maria was out. Only Herr was home.
“Go on. Get your father. I need to speak with him.”
Anna had to turn and walk. When she did, she knew the inspector would see everything about her. Her illness. How she had to gird herself to start moving then hurry her legs along to keep up with her torso. How she pulled herself up the stairs by the railing. The man from the state would see that she wasn’t at all well, and then he’d repeat himself, that this was no excuse, she was sure. Her illness would make her absenteeism worse. She’d seen this when they lived in the Bowery. The state took sick kids away. Sick kids didn’t come back.
Anna sat on the staircase landing when Herr went to speak with the inspector. The front door hung wide open, the inspector waiting on the porch.
“Come in! Come in!” Herr urged him inside. “What are you waiting for?”
The inspector sat hesitantly on the parlor sofa next to Herr. “I’d offer you tea,” Herr said, “but I’m afraid it’s been doctored.”
“What do you mean?”
Herr laughed to himself and, searching the man’s face, became silent. This was a dumb thing to say, of course. There was the prohibition.
“I’m not unsympathetic to your plight,” the man said. “You surely have your reasons. But the girl must be educated. The law is quite clear on this.”
“She is being educated,” Herr insisted.
“Two years she’s lived in this state, and not one day has she been in attendance at a school, public or private. There are records on file that speak to this fact.”
“Herr Inspektor. There’s a explanation for this.” Herr leaned back on the sofa and folded his hands in his lap. He was a reasonable man. He would explain. “You have seen my dear Anna. She has trouble. She’s sick. So because of her illness I’ve been teaching her myself.”
“Is that a fact? What’s the curriculum you follow?”