Wilful Impropriety by Ekaterina Sedia

liberated from passing waiters, he began to grow annoyed. He went out the side door for a private cigarette, and as he was pulling the silver case from his inside pocket, he was surprised to see Winifred bustling up the street. She was still in a simple afternoon dress and her cheeks were flushed with hurrying. She was being followed at a slight distance by two rather unseemly looking men in threadbare overcoats, their heads down and their hands jammed into their pockets. He was about to leap out into the street and tell the mashers to shove off when Winifred paused at the gate and turned back to them.
    “Thank you, Mr. Lamb! Thank you, Mr. Gussy! Goodnight! Goodnight!”
    The unseemly men stopped. Each one tipped his hat to her. Then they melted away into the dark street. Winifred hurried up the stairs toward the back door, jumping when she saw Oesterlische standing there.
    “Mr. Oesterlische!”
    “Late for your own party?” he said, as he helped her off with her overcoat and took her small purse. He looked up the street. “You know those thugs?”
    “Oh, they aren’t thugs! That’s just Mr. Lamb and Mr. Gussy. I was down at the soup kitchen on Cherry Street handing out soup, and they walked me home. They often walk me home. They call it
watching my back
.”
    Watching your bustle, more like
, Oesterlische thought with disapproval. But the discussion quickly left Mr. Lamb and Mr. Gussy as Winifred broke out in a flustered dither: “Oh, I can’t believe I’m so late! I’ve been running around all day, and everything’s started and I’m not even dressed!”
    “There, there. It’s all right,” he said. He always adopted his most soothing manner with her, because she was always so much in need of it. Volunteering at soup kitchens and distributing double-eagles to widows with eighteen children and things like that gave her whole existence the frothy consistency of whipped cream. Such activities took her to the worst kinds of neighborhoods at all hours of the day and night, which made Oesterlische worry. Charity was all well and good, but he certainly hoped, over time, she could be enticed to perform her good works at a greater distance. And without unseemly looking men in shabby overcoats walking her home.
    But he didn’t share these concerns with her. He carefully avoided chaffing her about anything that could possibly be a point of controversy. There’d be time enough for all that later.
    “No one’s missed you yet, except me.” He gave her another winning smile.
    She pressed his hand with hers before vanishing up the back stairs in a storm of small footsteps.
    He found himself standing in the vestibule, feeling rather silly holding her coat and her gloves and her purse. He chuckled at the ridiculousness of it. He hung the coat on a nearby peg, dusting the snow from her gloves and tucking them in the pocket. He hung the purse on a different hook, and was suddenly struck by a clever inspiration.
    He reached into his pocket and took out the blue satin box. With the small pencil that he carried around in his address book, he rubbed out the tedious inscription he had written and wrote “With fond regards from your coat-check boy.” Yes, that was rather clever. He opened her purse and tucked the present inside.
    As he did, his fingers came across a rectangle of stiff poster-board. He could not help but draw it out for a look. He stared at it for a moment. It was a round-trip train ticket to Boston, canceled two days ago . . . Tuesday.
    What an odd coincidence
, Oesterlische thought, remembering his own magical trip to Boston with Nussbaum. That had been on Tuesday as well.
    He stared at the ticket, brow wrinkling. Why on earth would she have gone to
Boston
? Shopping? But who shopped in
Boston
? Visiting friends? But who had friends in
Boston
?
    The strangeness of the coincidence firmed a resolution that had been building in Oesterlische since he’d parted from Nussbaum earlier in the day. He had already