The week had flown by with more work than Krieger & Sons had gotten in months. Peter’s eye for detail had enabled him to become a master lithographer specializing in chromolithographs, but newer, cheaper printing methods had driven most printers out of chromolithography years before, the few remaining ones getting bread-and-butter money from cigar bands and advertisements. Despite the afternoon’s work being only a two-color series of cigar bands, the finished product satisfied Peter so that he hurried home whistling Maple Leaf Rag, an old tune, he would have said if anyone had asked, but a good one.
He stopped whistling when he walked in the door, early this time, and hung his coat on the coat stand, stepping across the room in two large strides and slipping both arms around his beautiful wife.
“Oh,” Vermilion said with a gasp, pushing one hand aside so she could flip two sizzling pieces of bratwurst. “After dinner.” She laughed and put her free hand over the one he kept around her waist.
“Meat during the week?” Peter leaned over her shoulder and sniffed.
“We’re having sauerkraut, too,” she said.
“Reminds me of Chicago, the smell of pork and cabbage. How’d you manage this on our budget?”
She didn’t answer until she had pushed him back and carried the pan to the table. While they pulled their chairs in and unfolded their napkins, she said, “Jake dropped by and said he’d bring a fresh chicken tomorrow, so I thought we might as well go ahead and eat this tonight. It won’t last till Saturday.”
“Jake dropped by?” Peter stopped smoothing out his napkin and looked up.
“Why, yes,” she said, hands hovering over her fork and knife as if waiting for permission to pick them up. “Yes, he came by this afternoon.”
“What for?” Peter asked, looking directly at Vermilion rather than at his food.
She shifted slightly and looked down at her hands before picking up her fork and knife to spear a bite of bratwurst.
“Well?” he asked when she didn’t answer.
“Well what?” She stared across the table at him.
“What did Jake drop by for? He knew I wouldn’t be home.”
“He wants a chicken someone gave him to be Southern fried with buttermilk biscuits and gravy. I told him I’d fry the chicken if he supplied what I needed,” said Vermilion, raising her eyebrows as she popped the bratwurst into her mouth.
The thought of Jake’s having to wring a chicken’s neck reminded Peter of 1924. Coming straight to the city from an apprenticeship in a second-rate law office in the mid-west, Jake had set up shop in an office above a bakery around the corner from Columbia. His willingness to take any case and an aggressiveness that caught a couple of white shoe firms off guard had propelled him to the top of the middle, and in five years he owned a Packard and an apartment on Fifth Avenue.
Peter met him before the Packard on a day when Peter had slipped into the bakery and ordered coffee and Danish. Balancing a cup and plate in one hand with the Sun under his arm, Peter heard a chair scrape and glanced down at a man no older than himself. “Have a seat. Always room for two.”
After hesitating only a second, Peter extended his free hand. “Peter. Peter Boyle.”
Because they had become friends before Jake won his first big case, Peter had been happy to ride in the Packard and was happy still to share Jake’s cheap wine now that he had started taking his wages however he could get them, the heady days of $5.00 an hour wages gone, along with the car and Manhattan address. Hence the fresh chicken, Peter decided.
“Will you need help?”
“You know I will.” Vermilion held up her hands so he could see her pink nails. “To scrub pots and pans.”
“I used to be the best pot scrubber in west Chicago, did I ever tell you that?”