But he didn’t.
“You don’t know what I do, Fern, so I guess you can’t know how some people look at me.” He kept his eyes on the trolley. People had stepped off, laughing and talking. “Mostly, I get fear.”
He glanced back at her, and she wanted to know—and yet also never wanted to learn—what he did.
“Come get a pretzel with me,” he coaxed.
So simple. Just walk out there and grab a pretzel at a stand like it was nothing. She wanted to, and she wanted it to be nothing. She wanted to be the girl who smiled and said “sure” and didn’t care. She wanted to be as free as the people who’d just stepped off the trolley, laughing.
Fern reached for the door latch, her fingers sweaty, her wrist trembling. The humid air pushed against her skin as she got out, the night much too hot for the heavy black overcoat. She busied herself taking it off. Underneath, the plain, navy-blue, drop-waist dress and even plainer white heels were like something a secretary might wear to the office. At least she’d done her hair earlier while fighting boredom in her room.
Cal shut his door, and she closed hers, her hand tight on the handle as it latched. She didn’t want to do this and wished once again she’d stayed put earlier.
Fern barely breathed as they walked across the tracks laid out for the trolley. The lights along the Pier twinkled brightly. There was music, and loud voices, and somewhere nearby, a girl was laughing so hard she was nearlyscreaming. Long ago, Buchanan had tickled her until she’d sounded like that. The backs of her legs were the most sensitive spots, and he would pin her down and attack until their mother told him to stop and compose himself. Fern hadn’t thought about that for years. As they crossed onto the Pier, the entrance flanked by two brick towers, she wondered when Buchanan had grown tired of her.
“Do you come here a lot?” she asked Cal as a group of young men and women leaving the Pier passed them. Fern stared straight ahead, down the long, wide center of the pier bordered on each side by old warehouses. Above the warehouses, on parallel, raised promenades, more people strolled, sat at benches and tables, ate ice cream, and generally didn’t seem to care that it was about to rain. A streetcar trolley moved slowly along the tracks on the upper level.
“Does this look like my kind of scene?” Cal replied as he led them up steps to one of the raised promenades.
Everywhere Fern looked, couples, teenagers, and families were having fun. She found the girl screaming out with laughter. She was red-faced and smiling, surrounded by men, and they were teasing her with what looked like a gun. A man pulled the trigger, and she screamed as a spurt of water shot her in the chest.
“I suppose not,” Fern answered.
Cal was a black cloud of silence, strolling along the promenade at a fast clip. She kept up with him, glad to be walking quickly. She hoped that by walking fast, and with a set destination, it would cut back on the amount of staring people could do. As they passed a few ladies standing in a group, smoking cigarettes, however, sheaccidentally caught one woman’s eyes, which coasted over her scars. Pale shock transformed her expression. The woman’s lips parted in astonishment, and Fern sailed past without looking back.
“In a hurry to get to those pretzels?” she asked.
“John boards up early on Monday nights.”
The Pier was at least a quarter mile long. They passed the entrances to the theater and dance hall, walked through sugary clouds of cotton candy and fried dough, and greasy ones of hamburgers and hotdogs. If they kept up this pace, Fern would be sweating by the time they reached the end, where it rounded and became an open terrace.
She’d just started to go lightheaded with wonder at not blushing or feeling trapped when she heard her name.
“Fern Adair?”
It came through the din like a foghorn, and for a single, indrawn breath, she considered ignoring it. But Cal slowed and turned. He’d heard it too.
“That’s you, isn’t it? Miss Adair?”
Slowly, she turned. Mr. Matthew Clifton was staring at her from within the entrance to one of the Pier’s restaurants.
9
“Mr. Clifton,” she said stiffly.
Fern hadn’t expected to see anyone who recognized her. Especially not this horrid man. He smiled at her, but she couldn’t think of anything other than what she’d overheard him say at that Saturday night dinner. She glanced at his wrists. Silver cuff links. Had those been his reward from her parents?
“Call me Matthew. What, ah…what are you doing out here?” His eyes flicked up and landed on Cal, who stood close behind her.
A bevy of men and women surrounded Mr. Clifton, all of them dressed in the right kind of glad rags. Furs and jewelry, bow ties and hats. They all stared at her, then at Cal, and then at Fern again, their discomfort plain.
“I’m just out,” she answered. He had spared her a few pitying glances at one Saturday dinner. Why did he care what she was doing here?
“Who’s your date?” he asked, still picking Cal apart with his assessing stare.
He wasn’t Fern’s date, but she didn’t need to explain that to Mr. Clifton. She didn’t need to explain anything to him. The same humiliation and anger she’d felt while overhearing him and Mr. Halbert returned. “This is Mr. George Black.”
Fern didn’t think it wise to announce Cal’s real name, but after a few whispers among Mr. Clifton’s friends and an openly loud snort, she guessed they already knew.
