Enchanted Islands by Allison Amend Page B

planning. “That’s highly irregular,” she said. “You’ll have to ask Mr. Narrins.”
    I knocked softly on his door and waited for him to say, “Come in.”
    “Hello, sir. I was wondering if I could have an advance on my pay, just a week. You see my sister, she’s a baby, and she needs to go to the doctor.”
    Mr. Narrins took his pipe from his mouth. “The doctor. What are her symptoms?”
    “She’s been listless, feverish. She can’t keep anything down.”
    “It sounds like the flu,” Mr. Narrins said. “In which case the doctor will do you no good, and you’ll be wise to keep your money.”
    “No, sir,” I said. “My brother had it before, and the doctor gave him some very good medicine that cured him quickly.”
    “Come on, Miss Frankowski, tell me what it’s really for.”
    “What?” I asked, acutely aware that he was staring at me.
    “What is the true purpose of the money you’d like to be advanced?”
    “The doctor, sir, as I said.”
    “I have to say, Miss Frankowski, you lie about as well as you type.”
    I nearly protested that I typed very well. I searched my mind for a plausible reason I needed the money. “School fees, sir. For correspondence courses.”
    “Right,” he said. “I have a feeling, Miss Frankowski, that we won’t be seeing you anymore.”
    “No sir.” I shook my head. “I’ll continue on, the same way I’ve been. I like my job. I value it.”
    “Here.” He wrote something on a piece of paper. “Tell Mrs. Peck to advance you half a week’s pay. And Miss Frankowski”—he paused before he handed me the paper—“please do something worthwhile with yourself.”
    “Have a good weekend, Mr. Narrins. I’ll see you on Monday.”
    “Have a good weekend, Frances,” he responded, chuckling.
    I danced my way back to Mrs. Peck’s desk.
    “Well, that is very irregular,” she said again, reluctantly counting out the bills. I wanted to leave her with some parting words: Mrs. Peck, you are a cream-faced loon (apologies to Shakespeare); or, Mrs. Peck, you are a goopy goldbricking grousing gasbag (apologies to the English language). But I held my tongue. It would only have given me a moment’s satisfaction, and I would regret it later, if I knew myself at all.
    *
    As I rode the tram, packed with people going home from work, I began to worry. What if Rosalie wasn’t really going to meet me? What if she changed her mind? What if it was a trap set by her mother to see if I really was the bad influence she claimed? I tried to brush the thoughts from my mind. Rosalie would be there and we would run away together to the life we were meant to live. After all, my parents left Poland for the unknown. Now my New World would be Chicago.
    I arrived at the train station with fifteen minutes to spare and waited as directed under the large clock. The minutes were long, and I searched every hurrying person for Rosalie’s face. But that one was old, that one a man, this one fair. Each moment made me doubt myself and our journey more. Surely this was a fool’s errand, some fancy of youth that we would greatly regret. Maybe Rosalie had already come to that conclusion and decided not to meet me. Maybe her mother had locked her up.
    From there my mind began to spiral as it does when anxiety takes hold. Rosalie didn’t love me. No one would ever love me. My life would be a barren wasteland of loneliness, witness to the love and companionship of others, a joy that would be denied to me. I was thinking in that vein when Rosalie’s face appeared, red from hurry. Late, as always. She didn’t even pause but grabbed me by the hand, and we took off running for the train.
    We hopped aboard as the whistle blew and went from car to car searching for our compartment. I was breathless from running, from excitement. Rosalie consulted our tickets and then purposefully marched through the cars, until we found Cabin F, places 2 and 3. She grabbed the door handle and pulled, then pulled again.