Muddie tomorrow to make them jealous. Jamie and Muddie could read already, but I wasn’t much for books, since letters seemed to shimmer all around on a page. Stories, though — those I could remember.
He said he was downtown, that he’d seen Delia there. How the water had risen so fast that people were swept away. It rose above the reception desk in the Biltmore Hotel. He and Delia had battled their way to an office building and he had the key to an office, he knew someone, so they climbed all the way to the top and spent the night there. Down in the street the water surged up to six feet. I wanted details, the more gruesome the better. I perked up when he described people climbing out of the trolley and sitting on the roof, then getting knocked off into the water. He saw a mink coat float by and he thought it was a bear.
I pressed closer, but the topic changed just as it was getting interesting. I thought that only happened when children were around to overhear.
Da said that Delia was out, that she worked until late at night, most nights.
“Remember her that night down at Narragansett?” the guest said. “We talked her into driving the covering car —”
“— and she drove so fast she rammed our bumper!” Da slapped his leg.
The two men chuckled softly together. It was the first time I realized that they were friends. Before then, it had just seemed odd and jerky. I yawned. It was exciting to see a stranger, but I started to think of my warm bed. Then I heard the word that made me pay attention.
Job.
The man had heard about a job. Maybe Delia would be interested? A secretary for a firm he knew downtown.
The dresses could come back, and the stockings! Delia would be pretty again. She’d turned pale and scrawny, her lips bloodless and her moods foul.
I hadn’t stirred a hair, but Da suddenly sensed me.
He said, without turning, “Go to bed back there.”
The stranger rose and peeked around the doorway. He smiled, and I saw how handsome he was. He took two steps and swung me up in his arms. “And which one are you? Muddie or Kitty?”
“I’m Kitty,” I told him, insulted to have been taken for Muddie, who was shorter than I was.
“How do you do. I’m Mr. Benedict.” He took me back to the kitchen and settled into the chair. He smelled like rain and cigarettes, a nice smell. I didn’t mind being on his lap. I swung my legs, excited to be in the kitchen with the men.
“So you’ll tell her, Jimmy?” he asked Da. “I’ll tell her, Benny.”
They started to make those noises that meant the visit was over, a cough, a decisive slap as the whiskey glass hit the table.
I trailed after the men to the door. When the man named Benny opened it, the fresh smell of rain on pavement invaded the apartment, as well as something else, the smell of dead leaves from the coming autumn.
Da stared at the door after it closed, not moving except to tell me to get back to bed.
But he didn’t seem that interested in my obeying him, so when he sat on the couch and sagged back against the cushions, I scooted up next to him. I knew he was too tired to fuss at me. It was rare that I got my father to myself, and I knew better than to pester him.
We sat in the darkness, hearing the rain against the windowpane. I could smell the faint sweet smell of whiskey on Da’s breath and feel the warmth of the stranger, see his hands on the glass, the hands of a man who did not work with dirt and grease for a living, the fingers clean, with no cracked or blackened nails. He’d brought us a job from that world, the world that my aunt had known and slipped away from. I fell asleep dreaming of a doll for Christmas.
I woke up to the door opening again, and Delia stepped in, shaking the drops from her umbrella. “What a night, fit for man nor beast.” She always said that when it rained.
She leaned her umbrella against the wall so that it would drip onto the newspaper Da had spread out, took off her coat and hung it up, told me to go right to bed, and went to the kitchen for her tea. Da still hadn’t said