When they reached her building, she said, “Go ’round back. It’s a green door in the alley. I’ll meet you there.”

She went inside and Luther cut down the alley, all his wits about him, all senses turned up as high and awake as they got. Only four in the afternoon, but already Scollay Square was banging and bouncing, shouts echoing along the rooflines, a bottle breaking, a sudden burst of cackling followed by off-key piano playing. Luther reached the green door and she was waiting for him. He stepped in quickly, and she shut it behind him and he followed her back down the hallway to her room.

It must have been a closet once. Literally. The only thing that fit in it was a child’s bed and a table fit for holding a single potted plant. In place of a plant, she had an old kerosene lamp and she lit it before closing the door. She sat up at the head of the bed, and Luther took a seat at the foot. Her clothes were neatly folded and placed on the floor across from his feet and he had to be careful not to step on them.

“Ah now,” she said, raising her hands to the room as if to a mansion, “we’re in the lap of luxury, we are, Luther.”

Luther tried to smile, but he couldn’t. He’d grown up poor, but this? This was fucking grim. “I heard the factories never pay the women enough to support themselves.”

“No,” she said. “And they’ll be cutting our hours, we hear.”

“When?”

“Soon.” She shrugged.

“What’ll you do?”

She chewed a thumbnail and gave him another shrug, her eyes strangely gay, as if this was some lark she was trying out. “Don’t know.”

Luther looked around for a hot plate. “Where do you cook?”

She shook her head. “We gather at our landlady’s table every night—promptly, mind you—at five sharp. Usually it’s beets. Sometimes potatoes. Last Tuesday, we even had meat. I don’t know what kind of meat it ’twas exactly, but I assure you it was meat.”

Outside, someone screamed. Impossible to tell if it was from pain or enjoyment.

“I won’t allow this here,” Luther said.

“What?”

He said it again. “I won’t allow this. You and Clayton the only friends I made in this town. I won’t abide this.” He shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Luther, you can’t—”

“Know I killed a man?”

She stopped chewing her thumb and looked at him with big eyes.

“That’s what brought me here, missy-thing. Shot a man straight up through his head. Had to leave behind my wife and she’s pregnant with my child. So I’ve been doing some hard things, some hard time since I got here. And damned if anyone—you included—is gonna tell me what I can and can’t do. I can damn well get you some food. Put some meat back on you. That I can do.”

She stared at him. Outside, catcalls, the honking of horns.