Una stood outside the nurses’ home, valise in hand, uncertain where to go. She couldn’t return to the Points, and Claire would never take her in. Three months had passed since Traveling Mike’s murder, not long enough by a mile for the police to have closed the case and forgotten her. She knew crooks who’d returned to the city after years away only to be nabbed by the coppers. Without her nursing disguise, Una would find herself in the same boat.
Three months—had it only been that long? It felt like a lifetime. She walked down Twenty-Sixth Street with no particular destination in mind. Night had fallen, giving her the cover of gaslight and shadow, but it was not yet late enough that her presence on the street would cause suspicion. The streetcar passed, its wheels grinding over the pavers, and she thought of Dru, still delirious with fever. Now they were both expelled. What a waste her sacrifice had been.
She wandered past Madison Square Park, not stopping until she reached the bright electric lights of Broadway. Hansoms rolled past, ferrying people from their hotels to music halls, theaters, and the opera house. Amusement- seekers crowded the sidewalks too, dressed in their evening finery. With her valise and cotton day dress, Una felt conspicuous here. The busy street and boisterous voices and noisy businesses unnerved her after so many days in the quiet of the hospital. Still, the Tenderloin was as good a place as any to hide out for the night.
A few blocks off Broadway, Una found a two-cent restaurant tucked away in a tenement cellar. It was a small, grimy establishment lit with sputtering oil lamps. Upturned barrels served as tables, and the sawdust on the floor looked like it hadn’t been replaced since before Christmas. But for two pennies, she could buy herself a cup of coffee or glass of stale beer and sit all night. Una chose the beer.
Drink in hand, she found an empty barrel in a dimly lit corner, pushing away every wobbly stool but one so as not to invite company. The beer was
weak, warm, and sour, and Una gagged on her first sip. Somewhere nearby, a rat scratched at the ground. Cockroaches skittered up the walls.
She longed for the warm, gaslit library at the nurses’ home. The smell of books instead of days-old vomit. The taste of honey-sweetened milk instead of rancid beer.
“You’ve gone soft, Una Kelly,” she muttered but couldn’t help wincing when a man across the room spit a slimy wad of tobacco onto the floor. The man smiled at her, taking no pains to hide his stained, crooked teeth. She scowled in return.
Edwin’s teeth were so white and handsome. His mouth always tasted deliciously of cloves and mint when they kissed. She’d come so close to telling him today of her true past and identity. Thank goodness she hadn’t. It was madness to think he’d understand. The smug look on Nurse Hatfield’s face when they’d found the watch was enough to remind Una she didn’t belong.
Mrs. Buchanan had gaped at her in disbelief, wagging her head like a broken toy. Miss Perkins had been more circumspect. Her expression revealed not surprise or censure but only disappointment. She held her hand up to silence Una’s fumbling explanation and insisted she pack her bag and leave the home at once.
It was that disappointment that had wounded Una the most. She couldn’t bear to see it in Edwin’s eyes as well, not when he’d gazed more lovingly at her than any man before. Better not to sully her memories of him. They were all she had now, after all.
Una forced the thought of him from her mind. She had to figure out what to do. With only seven dollars in her pocket, her options were few. She couldn’t go back to diving pockets when not a single fence in town would buy her loot. Marm Blei would have made certain of that. Anyone stupid or desperate enough to go against her wishes would give Una pennies to the dollar anyway.
There was always factory work, but backbreaking as those jobs were, there were always more hungry bellies than spots on the line to fill. It took grease to get even the meanest positions plucking chickens or bottling pickles. The men at Tammany would help. For the price of a few minutes between her legs.
Una choked down another sip of beer. The idea of sweating over a noisy conveyor belt for ten hours a day, feathers sticking to her skin and the
stench of chicken blood filling her nose, made her sick. Not even her worst day at Bellevue would compare. Never mind the foreman with his loose hands and the Tammany men who would come calling.
She dropped her head into her hands. So much for a new profession.
As much as she’d hated life at the hospital in the beginning, over time she’d grown fond of the work. She’d never taken to learning all the stupid Latin names of the bones and muscles like Dru had, but she’d enjoyed her time with the patients—soothing their aches and pains with warm fomentations, buoying their bedraggled spirits with fresh air and sunshine, watching their wounds heal and knowing she had helped.
Her feet had ached at the end of the day. Her head and back sometimes too. But she’d felt . . . useful. Capable. Connected to something larger than herself.
Maybe that had been the trouble. She’d lost sight of her rules. Forgotten that to survive you couldn’t get wrapped up in anyone else. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to regret that afternoon on the lake with Edwin or her evenings in the library with Dru. Her only regret was how she’d hurt them.
The man with the stained teeth dragged over one of the stools she’d pushed away and sat beside her. So much for not inviting company.
“What’s a perdy gal like you doing alone in a place like this?”
Una rolled her eyes. He couldn’t even think of something original to say. “Trying to be alone.”
“No one wants to be alone. How ’bout I buy you a drink?” “I have one.”
“Then how ’bout I buy you another? Two drinks are always better than one.”
“How about I clock you in the nose?” He chuckled and scooted closer.
“I’m serious, mister.” She raised a fist. “See that scar there? That was an Italian who thought it was sweet to pinch my rear. And this one’s from an Irish bloke who tried to kiss me. And this one—”
“Okay, okay, I get the point.” He backed away but didn’t leave. “Suppose I just sit here a while, and we take things slow.”
“I don’t wanna take things slow or fast or any which way with you. I want to drink my beer in peace.”
The clang of an ambulance bell muffled the man’s reply. Her thoughts circled back to Edwin and their ride together to Hell’s Kitchen. The blur of
the streets. The hunger of his kisses. The jolt of arriving at their destination and having to pull away. Another clang, this one nearer, and her thoughts were pulled back further still. To another dingy saloon. Traveling Mike draining his brandy and giving her a meaningful look. The ambulance bell ringing and stopping nearby just after he had left.
The man beside Una kept talking, but she silenced him with a shush and a wave of her hand. There was something different about the memory, like a stuck cog finally turning. She fast-forwarded in her mind to the alley. The flicker of Deidre’s match. The belt around Traveling Mike’s neck. The man in uniform beside him. It wasn’t a belt or rope; it was a tourniquet. The dark jacket and short-brimmed cap were those of an ambulance driver.
She closed her eyes and pictured the moment just before the match fell from Deidre’s hand. The chill in the air. The dusting of snow. The stench of urine and rotting food scraps. The murderer looking up in surprise.
Una opened her eyes abruptly. Conor.
