That note was a reminder. Pat and I were on the same branch now was what I wanted him to know.

I know you’ve been wanting to ask, and the answer is no, Miss.

White passersby didn’t take notice of Pat and me when we were together in your parts of the city. My hair was pinned up, and I would wear my best dress and hat. You would be surprised what a well-trimmed hat can do for a face like mine. If accosted, Pat was prepared to say that I was a Spaniard. I’d told him that we had to have a story. You can’t be too careful, I insisted. He scoffed, but then he couldn’t pass up the chance to spin a tale. He renamed me “Adelina” and said that I was an opera singer touring the Midwest. He had me memorize “coloratura soprano.” He practiced as well, for he would say that he was my husband and manager. On the streets of Cincinnati, Pat was of the mind that we could be anyone we wanted to be. To Pat’s disappointment, we were never called upon to play our parts.

Pat playacted in other ways. He could flatten his Irish lilt at will or he could take on a heavier brogue. In Mount Adams, where the policemen and firemen had their own tidy houses, Pat sounded like them. These men, out of uniform and in their day-to-day, would stop to greet him. They would tip their hats to me. I would nod back. Pat couldn’t see their faces until they were right in front of him, but if they called out “Paddy” or “O’Hearn,” he would answer them with an open smile because he said that they, like him, were the sons and grandsons of Ireland. If they called out “Herr Hearn” or “Hearnmann,” he would know that they were the sons and grandsons of Germany. They would all laugh at his ready quips and slap him on the back. Often they would pull him aside and say something into his ear, and he would pump their hand by way of thanks.

These men have the best stories in Cincinnati, Pat boasted.

“You mean the lowest stories,” I objected.

I mean the stories that sell the most newspapers, Pat objected right back.

He was right. Their stories fed us. Charlotte had pork. I had the city’s muck and crime. Pat was doing very well at the Enquirer by the time we married, and these men were the reasons why. He said that they were his eyes and ears.

That’s right, Miss. Pat began working at your paper while he was still a boarder at Mrs. Haslam’s.

Proofreading at a printing house, for a man with his poor eyesight, wasn’t going to benefit him or his employer. Pat’s heart also wasn’t in it. He wanted to write the stories, not rid them of their mistakes, he complained to me. Pat kept long hours at the Enquirer because he said that the best stories in Cincinnati happened in the dark, right before dawn. He told them to me first.