position. Without any noticeable signal on her part, the horse takes two or three steps and then breaks into a slow trot out of the yard. He watches as the horse and rider gain speed across the grassy field, break into a full gallop, and disappear into the woods.
It is not even a week later, taking a stroll after work toward the park at Judiciary Square, that he is brought up so short that the man behind him treads on his heel. A quick apology, forefinger to cap, and he turns to look again. It is the unique bearing that has caught his eye, the patrician way that she holds herself without any self-consciousness. Now she is wearing a starched white blouse with a rounded collar, a long tie, and a full gray skirt. It makes her look like an office worker, which thoroughly befuddles him. She is emerging from the Eighth Street side of the General Post Office building when he sees her. Another woman is beside her, and Charley can see that the woman is talking, apparently without pause, in that utterly self-absorbed way unique to the sex. She is oblivious that her companion is not listening. At the curb, his horsewoman stops, and he notices the way she seems to be looking over, or even through, the things around her—not in a haughty way, but as though she is absorbing the surroundings through more than her eyes. Finally, the other woman pauses for air, long enough to realize that this is where they are to part company. Disappointed to be losing her audience, she nonetheless takes her leave with a wave and a giggle, eliciting a brief nod in return. Charley waits to see which way his lady turns and briefly considers following. He dismisses this as intrusive. Instead, he simply glances at his pocket watch and heads toward home.
cd
A few times a week, he makes a point of lounging outside the building entrance at the time his horsewoman leaves from work. She rotates among three very similar outfits, and sometimes mixes elements of each. The only adornments she ever wears are a mother-of-pearl comb to hold up her hair, and, depending on the outfit, a cameo at her throat. He is glad for her that she is not always accompanied by the nattering woman. Often she is by herself, always with the same upright bearing and smooth carriage, the same distant look that appears to take in everything while giving nothing away. He has never once seen her smile.
One exceptionally warm day at the beginning of March, one that makes pedestrians roll their eyes at each other in speculating what this means for another suffocating Washington City summer, he stands upstream from her path out of the building. Today his horsewoman is walking out of the building with a man; the body language alone communicates that he is merely an acquaintance, probably a co-worker who happens to be leaving at the same time. A few steps beyond the door, they say a word or two in parting, and the man tips his hat. He turns and begins walking toward Charley, who takes his moment without a blink.
“Pardon me...”
“Good afternoon?”
“Don’t mean to intrude, but the lady you were just speaking with?”
“Yes?”
“I feel sure I know her, but I just can’t place the name...”
Charley can see the man’s hesitation, but he combines a friendly smile with a sincerely befuddled look, and the man gives in. “That’s Miss Miller, Emma Miller. She’s a clerk in the office down the hall from mine.”
Charley taps his chin and squints. “Maybe I know her parents from church.”
“Not parents. I understand her mother’s a widow. I’m not sure where they live.”
“Well, it’s a puzzlement. Maybe it’ll come to me. Much obliged to you, though.” The man touches his hat and continues on his way.
Emma. Emma Miller. What happened, Emma? Raised as a gentlewoman, but then Daddy died and the money ran out—or you found out it was never really there in the first place? And now you’re a clerk at the General Post Office. He isn’t laughing at her; he sympathizes, knowing the wellborn are so unready, so ill-equipped, when forced by circumstance to meet the realities of everyday life. And yet you handled that horse with no nonsense, no worries of dirt under your fingernails. With a will.
He waits another few days, then falls into the crowd behind her as she leaves the building. She heads north up Seventh Street and turns onto G, following the west side of the green space of the Pension Building, exactly where he’d been headed that first day. Half a block above the square, she turns onto Washington Street, one of the city’s many alleys in which low-rent housing has insinuated itself. The alleys are originally cut through to remedy the problem of how to get essential services—garbage removal, coal delivery—to the residents of Pierre L’Enfant’s fat city blocks.
And here again he is completely caught short. The row homes at the top of the alley are shabby but still neatly kept; farther down, he can see the progression into a jumble of shanties, some stacked precariously like building blocks, one on top of another. Far down the alley there is a group of colored children playing in the street, and Charley realizes that it is just beyond them, in the next alley over, that one of the city’s last remaining slave pens has only recently been torn down. Of course, in Washington City, it’s still common for the highborn and low to live cheek by jowl on the same streets, but there are clearly visible social distinctions, and there’s no mistaking who belongs in which group. This is more like the rough and tumble of his own wharf-front Georgetown neighborhood, where the various races mix like so much stew. It’s beyond him that she lives in similar circumstances.
Emma nods at a row house neighbor working on his tiny front porch, who has waved to her with his hammer. She mounts the three steps up to the adjoining porch and disappears inside. Charley stands on the other side of the neighbor’s house and rubs at the back of his neck, no longer feigning befuddlement.
“I think she’s already rented the room.”
It takes a moment for Charley to process that the handyman neighbor has stopped to stretch, noticed him looking at the house, and offered a comment.
“Beg pardon?”
“I say I think Mrs. Miller already has a renter for the room. That’s why you’re here, yah?” His German accent is thick, but his English says that he’s been in the country for some time.
“Oh, I see. Well, I thank you for keeping me from interrupting their supper for no reason.” Charley smiles and tips his cap; the neighbor again salutes with his hammer as Charley turns and starts again for home.
cd
“I tell you, Joe, I can’t make sense of it. I’d’ve bet anything that she was wellborn, but I can’t imagine a family falling that far in the space of a few years. I was thinking that they still had a big house and were just working to keep up appearances. You know how they do. But that?”
Charley and his buddy Joe are sitting on stools at their regular neighborhood bar, a half-empty glass in front of each. Joe and Charley share virtually their entire existence, since they work together in the Wetting Division at Engraving and Printing, and live in the same boarding house, sharing a room with each other and a bath with everyone.
“Well, I can’t make sense of it either. You see this girl once at the stables, and now you’re stalking behind her like an Injun hunting buffalo. And you were doing this when you thought she was rich? What exactly was your pitch going to be? You figured your natural charm and good looks would do all the heavy lifting?”
Particularly since Charley has no good looks to speak of, Joe knows perfectly well that there is nothing to recommend either of them to the fair sex. Today, as with every workday, they have changed out of their greasy coveralls into street clothes, taken a damp rag to their faces and a wet comb to their hair, and scrubbed
