Monday he woke early with a terrible hunger and went down onto the street. It was nine in the morning and the men had been three hours gone to the quarry, first shift of the week. The street was quiet, with women already stringing washing. He wanted breakfast before anything and decided since he was up early he’d spring for a hot bath as well as being shaved. So he turned upstreet away from the barbershop and toward the common-table restaurant and so did not see her sitting on the stoop two doors down from his own. But heard her feet on the cobbles and her small cries of his name and turned and she stopped then, feet away from him, her head turned up at him, chin tilted to one side, defiant and cocky, saying nothing. Showing him the purple and black plum that was her right eye and the crusted black blood around her nostrils. Her dress the color of raspberry jam dirt-caked and one sleeve torn free. In the moment they stood looking at each other before speaking she lifted one hand to pluck at the torn sleeve, trying to press it back into place.

He got her upstairs to his room without being seen and left her, carrying the wash pitcher down to the back where he roused the woman proprietor and purchased hot water and carried it back up. She was out of her dress, sitting on the bed in a chemise and knee-length knickers trimmed with lace. Her upper arm where the dress had been torn was bruised peach and blue in thick horizontal bars, the flesh-shadows of fingers. He left her to clean herself and ran up the street and bought four fried egg sandwiches in a paper sack that turned transparent with grease and a can of coffee and a pint bottle of milk and then to a druggist for three paper packets of headache powder. And thought also of the raspberry dress thrown off into a corner of the room and sought a dry-goods shop and bought a cheap ready-made dress off the rack, using his hands to outline her height and shapes. And then stood, feeling stranded, while the clerk folded the dress and wrapped it in paper and tied it up. Finally the package was before him, and he paid and swept it up and went out toward her.

She was crosslegged on the bed, wearing his extra shirt buttoned up with the tails covering her in front and behind. She watched him with her eyes cut sideways as if doubting her decision to come to him. He put the dress parcel on the chair and the sandwiches on the bedstand and handed her the coffee and milk and then fished the powders from his pocket and held them out, saying, “These should ease you a bit.”

“I’m making trouble for you.” She drank down half the milk and refilled the bottle from the can of coffee and tipped out two of the powders on her tongue and washed them down.