Leaving Lucy Pear(6)

The women were still new to voting. The women were key. And Josiah had a plan to win them over, by eking an endorsement out of a leading dry named Beatrice Cohn. See? Josiah urged himself. Here you are. With a plan. It’s April. Almost spring. All these men are here to see you.

The door opened, then shut again, letting in a brief roar from the waiting room. Josiah didn’t turn at first. He waited to hear his assistant say, “It’s time, sir.” Then he turned.

Sam Turpa was a tall, skinny boy who would stoop like that until he filled out in the chest and shoulders. Josiah had chosen him for the job because he was loyal, because he was Finnish—the quarrymen liked seeing one of their own in a decent suit up in the office—and because Josiah did not trust himself to keep a woman at his side all day, as Caleb had. Josiah’s eyes were the wandering kind. Back in the day, before Susannah, other parts of him had wandered, too. He was prone to a pretty smile, flattery. And so, no women. Susannah suffered enough.

“Who’s here?”

“A Mr. Taylor, sir, and his brother. An Italian named Buzzi who says you said you had a job? Various innkeepers. A lobsterman . . .”

“The Italian is pronounced ‘Boozy,’ I think.”

The boy nodded, too harried to appreciate the joke. “Who should I send in?”

“Shall,” Josiah said, correcting Sam as Caleb had once corrected him. “Who shall you send in.” He gave the boy an apologetic smile, reached up to ruffle his straw-colored hair, seized with longing, then moved away, toward the porthole window. “Let’s see.”

He recognized Buzzi right away, a carver from Naples who’d come to Josiah’s door a month ago, saying he could turn stone into lilies. There were the “hotel” men looking for alcohol and whores, as if Josiah had been born with both in his pockets. He could locate them, of course, but it would require telephone calls, perhaps a drive. If he were his blacksmith father, he would turn his sign around, go upstairs to his small apartment, and sleep. His father, though not a lazy man, had no stamina for negotiating, even on the price of his work. But Josiah wasn’t his father. He had surpassed his father. A couple years ago, Josiah had offered him a job heating the iron rims for the garymander wheels and his father had declined, complaining that Josiah worked his men too hard. “It’s not me, it’s old Stanton,” Josiah explained. His father simpered. “Said like a future dictator,” he said, and went back to the hammer he’d been mending.

Josiah met with Buzzi first, then a ship captain who had sixty cases of full-strength, authentically labeled brandy waiting four miles offshore in need of runners, then a pair of young men who had done some running for Josiah in the past and were eager to do more. Deals were falling into place. He liked the game of it, the exercise of working out what the men would owe him in return, making them think, as his father-in-law advised, that they were getting a good deal. “They have no idea,” he said, “how much money you have access to. They can’t fathom it. They hear ‘rich’ and they think a stand of timber, a heap of clams. They don’t know that they are worth more to you than you will ever make yourself to them.” Caleb’s choice of words wasn’t lost on Josiah: how much money you have access to. But this was part of what he liked about Friday Favors: that he wasn’t required to be himself, exactly, but a representative for someone else. He was like a playactor giving play money away.

He was about to have Sam send in the Taylors when a woman entered the waiting room, followed by one child, then another. By the time the door had shut behind them, there were seven, ranging from nearly grown to a toddler, all standing in a quiet line against the back wall. Their mother wore a plain dress and badly worn shoes. Her hair had been blown by the wind, and though she was making a great effort to gather it into a bun and tuck it behind her ears, Josiah found himself cheered by her minimal success. All that hair made her appear beautiful. Or maybe she was beautiful. And her children—they were so well behaved, so patient. Their sheer mass, that many small, warm bodies in a row, gave him a little chill. The waiting room had gone quiet at the arrival of the family.

“I’ll see the woman,” Josiah said.

“The Irish lady, sir?”

“Is there any other?”

“But she’s just arrived.”

“The others will wait.”

“And the children, sir?”

“Not the children.”

“They’ve come with the lady, sir.”

“They’ll wait peacefully.”

“There’s barely standing room, sir.”

“Send some of the others outside.” Josiah’s need to see the woman up close was inexplicable but overwhelming. A clear, sharp stab. Hunger after years of being overfed.

“It’s cold, sir.”

“Then see about ordering some hats! Certainly we should provide them with hats when they come to ask for money.”

Sam stared. “Are you in earnest, sir?”

“No! Truthfully I don’t care. If you want to give them hats, give them hats. Just bring in the woman.” And with a force he regretted, he pushed Sam out the door.

? ? ?

Once the woman was seated across from him, Josiah couldn’t think what to say. Everything about her appealed to him—her high cheekbones, her small breasts, her teeth protruding, just slightly, in front of her bottom lip. She hadn’t managed to fix her hair, and so she looked at him through a fringe of yellow, her gaze polite but unflinching.