“Good evening.”
Ruta gasped; the voice startled her. She squinted in the gloom. “Who’s there? You better get lost. My brother’s a cop.”
“I’ve always had a great appreciation for the law.” The stranger stepped from the shadows.
Her eyes must’ve been playing tricks on her, because the man seemed almost like a ghost in the light. His clothes were funny—hopelessly out of date: a tweed suit even though it was warm, a vest and suit jacket, and a bowler hat. He carried a walking stick with the silver head of a wolf at the top. The wolf’s face was set in a snarl and its eyes were red like rubies. Ruby—ha! That gave her a small shudder, though she couldn’t say why. It occurred to her that she wasn’t in a safe place. These dance marathons were usually held in bad neighborhoods, where they wouldn’t draw too much attention from the city.
“This is a dreadful place for a young lady to be walking alone,” the stranger said, as if he’d read her thoughts. He offered his arm. “Might I be of assistance?”
Ruby Bates might be on her way to being a glamorous star, but Ruta Badowski had grown up on the streets. “Thanks all the same, mister, but I don’t need help,” she said crisply. When she turned to go, her ankle gave way, and she winced in pain.
The stranger’s voice was deep and soothing. “My sister and I run an establishment nearby, a grand boardinghouse with a kitchen. Perhaps you’d care to wait there? We’ve a telephone if you wish to call your family. My sister, Bryda, has likely made paczki and coffee.”
“Paczki?” Ruta repeated. “You’re Polish?”
The stranger smiled. “I guess we’re all just dreamers trying to find our way in this extraordinary country, aren’t we, Miss…?”
“Ruta—Ruby. Ruby Bates.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Bates. My name is Mr. Hobbes.” He tipped his hat. “But my friends call me John.”
“Thanks, Mr. Hobbes,” Ruta answered. She swooned slightly from exhaustion.
“I have smelling salts, which might aid you now.” The man doused his handkerchief and held it out for her. Ruta inhaled. The scent was pungent and made her nose burn a little. But she did feel peppier. The stranger offered his arm again, and this time she took it. From the outside, he seemed a big man, but his arm was thin as a matchstick beneath his heavy coat. Something about that arm made Ruta cold inside, and she withdrew her own quickly.
“I’m good now. Them salts helped. I’ll take you up on that cuppa Joe, though.”
He gave her a courtly little bow. “As you wish.”
They walked, the stranger’s silver-tipped stick thudding a hollow rhythm against the cobblestones. He hummed a tune she didn’t recognize.
“What’s that song? I ain’t heard it on the radio before.”
“No. I expect you haven’t,” the stranger answered.
With his left arm, he gestured to the broken-down Bowery, with its Christian missions and flophouses, fleabag hotels and tattoo parlors, restaurant-supply stores and rinky-dink manufacturers.
“ ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city.’ ”
He pointed to where a couple of drunks slept on the stoop of a flophouse. “Terrible. Someone should clean up this sort of riffraff, turn them back at the borders. They’re not like you and me, Miss Bates. Clean. Good citizens. People with ambitions. Contributors to this shining city on the hill.”
Ruta hadn’t ever thought about it before, but she found herself nodding. She looked at those men with a new disgust. They were different from her family. Foreign.
“Not our kind.” The stranger shook his head. “Once upon a time, the Bowery was home to the most stupendous restaurants and theaters. The Bowery Theatre—that great American theater, which was a sock in the eye to the elitist European theaters. The great thespian J. B. Booth, father of John Wilkes Booth, trod its boards. Are you a patron of the arts, Miss Bates?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes. I am. I’m an actress.” For some reason, Ruta felt a little giddy. The streets had a pretty glow to them.
“But of course! Pretty girl such as you. There’s something quite special about you, isn’t there, Miss Bates? I can tell that you have a very important destiny to fulfill, indeed. ‘And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and decked with gold and precious stones….’ ”
The stranger smiled. In spite of the late hour, the strangeness of the circumstances, and the aching in her legs, Ruta smiled, too. The stranger—no, he wasn’t a stranger at all, was he? He was Mr. Hobbes. Such a nice man. Such a smart man—classy, too. Mr. Hobbes thought she was special. He could see what no one else could. It was what her grandmother would call a wróz.ba, an omen. She wanted to cry with gratitude.