full name was on one of the doors. He had expected to see her father’s. He knocked, heard footsteps, then the door swung open.
“Here,” he said to the boy and flipped a coin into the air. The boy snatched it at the top of its arc and bolted. It was not his fault that Luella was already closing the door.
“Please,” Karl said. “Hear what I have to say.”
He found himself speaking to a single eye.
“I had no idea this was going to happen to you,” he said. “I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. I’m a farm boy. I don’t know about these things. All I do know is that you were kind to me. And that I liked you. And that I was lonely. And that it seemed possible you were, too.”
She came into the hall with him, closing the door partway behind her until her back braced against it.
“I’m not mad at you,” she said.
“What will you do?”
“Find another job. I have skills, you know.”
He wasn’t exactly sure just now what he knew and what he didn’t.
“I’m afraid that I have had something to drink,” he confessed.
“I can see that,” she said.
“I was in the pit today,” he said. “Trading. I made a lot of money.”
“That’s what people do there,” she said. “It’s a very selfish place. Everybody doing things only for themselves.”
She looked at him in a way that made him feel he was losing her.
“You do something for me, Luella,” he said.
“And you know how to flatter a girl,” she said. “Did you learn that on that farm of yours?”
“I don’t want to be a farmer,” he said.
She looked at him strangely, almost sad. Then she turned.
“Wait,” he said. “What did I do?”
“One day and the money already has you,” she said.
“It isn’t like that,” he said. “Here, take it. I don’t care about the money.”
He lifted her hand and turned it palm up so he could empty his pocket into it. There was enough for her to live on for weeks.
“What is this for?” she asked.
“For what happened to you,” he said, closing her hand on the bills.
She turned again and opened the big old door.
“Please don’t think ill of me,” he said.
“Are you going to come in or not?” she said, stepping back to make way for him. Behind her was a single room with a couch and bureau and neatly made bed.
“Where are your parents?” he said.
“I’ve been on my own since I was fifteen,” she said.
“Are you sure it is all right?” he said from the doorway.
“It will be just fine,” she said.
6
EMIL SCHUMPETER WAS NOT A LETTER writer. About the only time he felt the need was to offer condolences upon someone’s passing or to scold Sears, Roebuck. Then he would spend countless hours worrying the language, which never seemed less like his first than when he dipped his pen into the black void of an inkwell. It took a lot to get Emil to confront that abyss.
So when Karl found on his bed a letter in his father’s Saxon hand, he broke the seal with trembling fingers. But instead of heralding death or illness or telling him to come home, it announced that Cristina Vogel had left for Chicago to spend the summer as a seamstress, staying with her mother’s sister, who had escaped Abbeville at nineteen to marry a man more than half again her age. His father thoughtfully included the address.
The news was welcome, but not without complication, coming as closely as it did upon Karl’s evening at Luella’s flat. And oh, what an extraordinary evening it had been. Luella had been more openly affectionate with him than anyone in Abbeville would have dared. When they’d parted, disheveled, Luella had thanked him for having more discipline than she. Still, things had happened under her caresses that before had only happened to him in dreams. He said he would, of course, do the honorable thing. She seemed to find that amusing and sent him on his way.
After receiving the letter Karl went directly to the place where Cristina was staying. The man who answered his knock wore a white dress shirt without its collar and a pair of bright red silk suspenders that secured his pants loosely over his belly like a cartoon barrel around a poor man’s middle.
“No solicitors,” the man said.
“I’ve come to call on Cristina Vogel,” Karl said.
“Oh, you have, have you? I don’t wonder that she already has begun to attract the bees. Unfortunately, you will have to fly honeyless back to your hive.”
“I’m Karl Schumpeter,” he said. “Cristina and I knew each other in Abbeville.”
“Well,” said the portly man, “that is another matter entirely.”
It was not at all clear whether he meant entirely better or entirely worse.
“We were friends,” said Karl. “I think she would tell you that.”
“If you are friends,” said the portly man, “then you must know that she is engaged to be married.”
All Karl was able to manage was a whisper.
“I have been away.”
“Engaged to Harley Ansel,” said the portly man.
Harley Ansel. How could she promise herself to Harley Ansel?
“You seem stricken, young man,” the man with suspenders said. “Why don’t you come in? I’ll get you some water. Cristina is in her room.”
“Maybe I’d better just go,” said Karl.
“If she wants to say hello to you,” the man with suspenders said, “I see no reason why she should not.”
Harley Ansel. Karl had misjudged her, misjudged the reason she had ventured to Chicago, too, pathetically misjudged that.
Cristina entered the room.
“You came,” she said.
“I just heard,” he said.
“I hoped that you would.”
“So
