Breakthroughs Read Free Page B

solidly Jewish neighborhood in which she’d grown up would be like. So many changes…
    She got up, put on the overcoat she’d removed as soon as she boarded the car, and filed off with everyone else. “Be watching your step, ma’am,” a porter with a face like a freckled map of Ireland said as she descended to the platform.
    Broad Street Station was an impressive pile of brick, terra cotta, and granite. It would have been more impressive without the cloth awnings that helped shield the electric lights inside from the air. It would also have been more impressive had more of those lights been shining. As things were, walls and doors and windows barely emerged from twilight. Shadows leaped and swooped wildly as people hurried by.
    “How crowded it is!” someone behind her exclaimed. She had to smile. Whoever said that had never seen the Lower East Side.
    A man walked slowly along the platform holding a square of cardboard with a couple of words printed on it in large letters. Peering through the gloom, she finally made them out: CONGRESSWOMAN HAMBURGER . She waved to catch the man’s attention, then called, “Here I am!”
    “You’re Miss Hamburger?” he asked. At her nod, his eyes widened a little. With a shrug, he tossed the sign into the nearest rubbish barrel. His laugh was on the rueful side. “I knew you were young. I didn’t expect you to be quite so young.”
    He was probably twice her age: an erect but portly fellow in his early fifties, with a gray mustache and gray hair peeping out from under a somber black homburg. “I don’t know what you expected,” she said, a little more sharply than she’d intended. “I
am
Flora Hamburger.” She held out her hand, man-fashion.
    That surprised him again. He hesitated a moment before shaking hands. If he’d paused any longer, she would have grown angry. His grip, though, proved pleasantly firm. “I am pleased to meet you,” he said, and tipped his hat. “I’m Hosea Blackford.”
    “Oh!” she said, now surprised in her turn. “The congressman from Dakota!” She felt foolish. She’d expected the Socialists to have someone waiting to meet her at the station, but she’d thought the fellow would be a local ward captain or organizer. That a U.S. Representative—
another U.S. Representative,
she thought with more than a little pride—would come here had never crossed her mind.
    “I do have that honor, yes,” he said. “Shall we collect your baggage? I have a motorcar outside. I’ll take you to the flat we’ve found for you. It happens to be in the building where I have my own flat, so there is some method to the madness. You’ve got your claim tickets, I trust?”
    “Yes.” Flora knew she sounded dazed. It wasn’t just because Congressman Blackford was meeting her here. The idea of having a flat to herself was every bit as astonishing. Back in New York, she’d shared one with her father and mother, two sisters, a brother (her other brother having gone into the Army not long before), and a nephew. What would she do, with so much space to herself? What would she do with so much quiet?
    A porter with a dolly wheeled Flora’s trunks out to Blackford’s automobile, a small, sedate Ford, and heaved them into it. The congressman tipped the fellow, who thanked him in Italian-accented English. Despite the chilly breeze, Flora’s face went hot. She should have tipped the man herself, but she hadn’t thought of it till too late. Till now, she hadn’t been in a lot of situations where she was supposed to tip.
    Blackford cranked the engine into life. It started readily, which meant it hadn’t been sitting long. The headlamps had masking tape over most of their surface, so they cast only the faintest glow out ahead of the motorcar. Congressman Blackford drove slowly and carefully, so as not to run into anything before he knew it was there.
    “Thank you for taking all this trouble over me,” Flora said above the Ford’s grunts and rattles and