Chapter 34
Kate went to Mullins’s house as promised the next evening. He seemed to be slightly less awkward than the previous evening. When she entered, he had tea at the table, and the chair she was to sit on was over by the fire and warmed already. She took the tea he offered, and then he sat down at a chair across from her, holding his own cup in his huge hands. It was quite amusing for her to see him like this.
“Did you stay home last night?” she asked.
“Yes.” He seemed agitated, as though he wanted to say something to her, something that he must feel was important. She didn’t say anything; she wanted to give him an opportunity to say what was on his mind. He was struggling, and it was becoming unbearable for her to watch him.
“I think…” she started.
“I don’t expect you to owe me anything for doing this!” he said, just as she began to talk.
She looked at him, at a loss for a moment. “The whole city will owe you our gratitude if you kill it.”
“I don’t need their gratitude. I’m as much at risk at night as everyone else who is outdoors,” he said, and he leaned forward in his chair to poke at the fire. She felt he did this so as not to look at her at that moment.
“I shouldn’t have said that I would give myself to you,” she said, but he only looked harder at the fire now, and she felt his discomfort. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want me, anyway.”
Now he did look at her. “No, don’t talk like that. I just meant that you won’t owe me anything. It is not your responsibility to get rid of the Dolocher.”
“It’s not yours either.”
“It is now,” he said grimly, and she felt that he was determined in his own mind that he had to kill this creature now to avenge his friend. She wondered: Did he think if he had tried to kill the Dolocher when she had first asked him that his friend would still be alive? If he did, it would be a terrible burden on him.
“Every night that I am not at the brothel, I see the alderman out patrolling the streets,” she said.
“I’ve seen him myself.”
“Maybe we should go to him and let him know that you will be out at night looking for it; that might make it less likely that you would be a suspect if something did happen.”
“Maybe.”
“He seems to want to catch it too. When I was attacked, he came to my rescue. He ran after it, but it got away from him.”
“He seems like a nice enough fellow.”
“He came and spoke to me after the attack, and he was very nice to me.”
They sat watching the fire for a time, and he poured her more tea. With the silence between them, through the walls they could hear some people next door arguing. Though the words were not clear, they could tell it was a couple arguing about something: there was a hurt passion in the tones of voice that murmured to them and joined the crackling fire. A jet of released air from the turf hissed in the grate. Kate looked at Mullins, and without saying anything, she leaned over and kissed him.
He was hesitant at first, but soon he pushed his lips against hers, and they met with equal force. He put his arms around her, and she felt herself being pulled into his embrace. She sat on his lap and put her arms around his neck and then pulled her head back and looked into his eyes. She saw the fire reflected in them, but also something she had never seen before, something trustful and real and yet unnameable: a tenderness for her as a person and not as a worker or pastime. She smiled; he looked seriously into her eyes, and then he kissed her again and again, and they kissed for a long time.
She left later that evening to go to work, but neither of them mentioned where she was going. He asked if he could walk her anywhere, and she declined.
“I’ll keep to the busy streets,” she said. As she left, she knew that neither of them knew how much what had just happened between them meant to the other.
The Dolocher Page 34
