-Elizabeta Héderváry-

Elizabeta found herself alone in a familiar place. Sawdust powdered the floor as shotglasses did the bar. She sat, elbows on the table, fingers on her skull, long loose bronze curls cascading down her bare arms. Her appearance and susceptibility had been attracting attention, and several men had taken notice of her. Even if women went to bars today, they would always bring their boyfriends or a few female friends. Drinking alone and looking forlorn despite her best efforts, Elizabeta had found herself subjected to numerous good and not so good Samaritans. More than one of them assumed she was a prostitute.

A new man sat next to her in the empty rightside stool, vacated after she had only spoken Hungarian to the last one.

"You look like you don't belong here," the newcomer said simply. He did not look at her, rather stared at his ale. She looked through the hanging curtain of hair that hid her eyes to examine the man to her right.

His skin was smooth as a mountain face, and his hair was a dark umber. He wore a long faultless indigo sports coat and a white cravat.

"You neither," she said.

"What is your name?"

In the mood for no company, she replied, "Héderváry Erszébet."

"Héderváry Erszebet," he repeated almost perfectly. "Last name first. You are from Hungary."

She blinked in surprise. Maybe if she had spoken Hungarian he would have repeated it back. No American had ever danced that bar so gracefully before. "That's right. And who are you?"

"Roderich Edelstein. Of Vienna."

Of course. An educated Austrian might be familiar with the quirks of the neighboring language. But Austrians and Hungarians didn't really get along. "Oh," she said, somewhat disappointed.

"What do you want with this place?" he asked.

She looked down at her ale. She had been trying to nurse the sour liquid for half an hour, but it tasted like rotten rye and upset her stomach. She pushed it farther away.

"I felt like I was supposed to get drunk, but really I just want some ice cream."

"In November?"

"Definitely."

"What type would you want?"

"Vanilla, with strawberries if they had them."

The Austrian closed his eyes, slid a coaster over his beer, and slowly climbed the stairs. He placed no hat on his stool, but she had half a heart to defend the seat if someone else tried to sit there. A few minutes later he returned with a vanilla ice cream with candied strawberries and sauce in a tall glass goblet.

"This is for me?"

"Well, wheat beer and ice cream was never my best combination."

"Thank you, Roderich."

"If 10 cents of ice cream makes someone happy, they should just have it."

He spoke as if his problems were too complicated to be solved by sweets, as hers were, but she was satisfied with his generosity. He said nothing and stared broodingly at his beer. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Drinking a beer."

Not uncustomary behavior for Austrians, but: "You're the glummest Austrian with a beer I've ever seen."

"When your country went from the largest in Europe to the size of New Jersey, they find they don't need to keep that many embassy men on the payroll."

"I'm sorry. I lost my job too."

"Where did you work?"

"Not an embassy."

Roderich nodded, asked no further questions, and sipped his beer.

"Wouldn't you rather be in a nicer bar?" she said.

"I don't need to run into anyone I know. You?"

"This is the only bar I know. And, it has ice cream."

He laughed gently once. "Smart woman. It was good meeting you, Erszebet. I wish you the best." He pushed his empty glass beer mass, still frothed on the walls with foam, towards the barman.

"Szia," he said in Hungarian.

"Servus," she said in Austrian.

Alone again and without drink, her eyes traced towards the musicians: four black men with brass. Elizabeta saw another woman alone. In fact, she was the only black woman there. In a huge dress, she had just received several dollars from the barman. She pushed her glass away. Elizabeta knew who she needed to talk to.

-Gilbert Beilschmidt-

"Another one!" Gilbert cheered.

"Who'd we get?" Matthew asked, jogging victoriously forward through the tall wet grass, grinning, a rifle and two dead hares swinging on his back.

"Red fox. You are a master of snares, you know that?" Gilbert delicately twisted the trap. A dogfox hung some five feet high, eyes closed, a wire around its neck, out of the reach of marauding jaws that may have gotten there first. It was a more of a russet brown than a true red or orange, with thick, soft, even-toned fur.

"He's a beautiful one," Matthew said, turning the canine's snout, and finding no injuries or ticks.

He felt Matthew freeze next to him, and meld quietly into the brush like an animal. Alarmed, Gilbert looked up.

A man stood, looking at him, approaching him, not twenty meters away. Gilbert's hand hovered at the snare.

"We have to go," Matthew said urgently. "This land isn't ours."

Of course not, Gilbert thought. I don't own any land and if you did you wouldn't be moonshining.

A shotgun muzzle leveled at them. A sort that he'd never seen before. It was a normal Remington in shape, standard crafted in some factory somewhere. But it was painted white along the wood and barrel, slashed with orange lines of paint and affixed with tiny beads, and from the side dripped a long lock of black hair.

Gilbert had never seen a person like this before. An Asian like Kiku was the closet his limited experience could place it, but darker, bigger, and rougher. The smooth hair was long and black as pitch streaked with silver, and the eyes were dark brown and narrow. Everything of his handsome expression was stoic or tuned to an emotional spectrum he couldn't understand. No facial hair, not even stubble, seemed to exist under his eyelashes. His clothes were of fringed deer hide and a feather hung from his hair. But his skin, the subtle claylike red tan of an aged brick, rather than the pink of a European or the brown of an African, was what he had never seen before.

Gilbert wanted that fox. He knew exactly what he was going to do with it.

He shore the wire with a knifestroke, grabbed the fox and ran.

"You idiot!" Matthew screamed, leaping after him, as birdshot burst over their heads and seared across their backs.

He ran so fast he thought his lungs would bleed. Tearing through the forest at full sprint the barn appeared through gaps in the leaves to the two men. They looked back for followers, Gilbert slung open the wooden crossbar, Matthew leapt inside. They barred the doors shut from the inside and in their exhaustion fell to their knees in the dust.

Gilbert tenderly set down the fox and began to check the damage. He was thankful it was winter, because none of the tiny duck-hunting pellets had surged through his heavy gear to strike him deeply. Matthew, rifle and pockmarked rabbits laid in the hay, was examining his backside similarly.

"Should I check you?"

"What, on Earth," Matthew panted, pulling off his shirt, "made you do that?"

"It was our fox."

"That we caught illegally."

"Maybe, for what your fathers did, you feel guilt towards the Indian. But I haven't killed his people, and I have no worse feelings for taking his fox."

Matthew sighed noisily. "Gilbert, did you know that this barn sits edgewise a damned Indian reservation?"

"A what?"

"There's a dozen on the New York border. It's a little piece of land that doesn't belong to the United States, where Indians still live today, and they don't have to follow US rules."

Gilbert sat dumbfounded. A day ago he hadn't even thought that Indians were still alive. Now he might as well be in another country. An intimate, mysterious, country full of heathens who were probably watching them from the trees, poison frog blowdarts poised, that they had just stolen a moose and a dozen other animals from.

"Why would you plan that!"

"Limited police access and free border crossing between the US and Canada," Matthew explained. "Excellent for smugglers, White and Red alike."

"No fear," Gilbert rationalized. "He'll never see me again. And covered in ash and in the bushes, he didn't have a good look at you."

"Hope so. Either way, I better prepare to give Chief Mohawk another gift."

"What kind of gift?"

"You."

"Me?"

"You. The Iroquois are cannibals."

"Canni..."

"They'll tie you up on a post and torture you for a few days, for every passing child and granny to abuse at their leisure. And when they decide you're too weak to take it anymore, to absorb your strength, the entire village will eat a stew made from your body."

"What the fuck!"

"Kidding. They're aren't cannibals. Anymore. A barrel of whiskey'll do those corrupt bastards well. Want to learn how to make some moonshine?"

Gilbert's chin jackhammered once. "Hell yeah."

Matthew walked over to a large copper contraption in the corner. "Tell me Gilbert, you a corn or potatoes kind of guy?"

"You ever hear of a corn-sucking kraut?"

"Spuds it is then."

Matthew paced over to one of two big copper drums on the ground and carefully removed the lid and looked inside. Gilbert peered over him, the contents looked like a five gallon sloshy mess of mashed potatoes and water. It smelled vile.

"Kinda gross at this stage, ain't it?" Matthew laughed.

The two men lifted the drum to sit on top of a metal grid about a foot off the earth. Matthew carefully balanced it in the center of the grid, and then pushed the whole contraption with his boot several feet away from the wall.

"I usually make it outside...cuz, you know." Matthew pantomimed an explosion with his hands.

Gilbert revealed his lighter and with a look of approval from Matthew lit the fire underneath the still. Matthew fed some sticks from the pile into the small flame. Matthew's eyes traced over to the dead fox, still fully intact, hung with a rope from the rafter. "Why'd you want him so bad?"

"It's for someone, if you'll let me." Gilbert answered.

"You ever done it before?"

"Done it…. with her?"

Matthew shook his head. "Done the fox. You ever take a fox for its skin."

"No, I always killed for the meat. I have never paid much attention to the fur."

"Why don't you let me start it off, then. I'll do it well."

Deciding that wise, Gilbert ceded the fox to the expert. Matthew held the animal gingerly, flipped the knife in his hand, and proceeded to carefully slit one of its paws, rather than its underside.

"Thanks for not hating me, by the way," Gilbert said.

Matthew shrugged.

Gilbert sat and watched. Matthew had begun to unseam it up the middle, tail first, just with the curved tip of his Bowie knife, careful not to burst its stomach. In the intermittence, Gilbert slid some paper and tobacco from his wallet. He cleared a space on his pantleg, deciding it cleaner than the ground, and flattened out his paper. He carefully sprinkled the brown shavings along the center. A violet iris slid to the corner of his eye, and Matthew had taken notice of his deviance from the lesson. "Whatcha making?"

"A cigarette."

"They sell them in packs, you know."

"Always I make them."

"Oh."

Gilbert hesitated. He looked up out of politeness. He felt rude not offering one, though he neither wanted Matthew particularly to start. "Would you like one?"

"No thank you, I don't smoke."

"Good. Don't start. I ain't got the money."

Matthew turned back to cutting. "When d'ya start?"

Gilbert licked the edge closed and held it to his eye for inspection. "In the army."

"You were in the army?"

"Yes."

"You fought in the war? On the side of...?"

"I was a teenager. They trained me, but the war ended a pair of weeks before they would send me. I did not fight."

"Did you want to?"

"When I was twelve, I wanted to fight. I was so sad, angry, that the war would end before I could fight. By the time I was sixteen, then, I did not want to fight."

"I see." Matthew did not need to ask what had prompted the change of heart. Gilbert guessed it had been the same in his country: in that when the romanticism wore off, when the bodies came home without faces, no one wanted to be the last boy to die in a war.

Matthew stepped back from the fox. His knife hand swung loosely down and he wiped his brow with a cloth. It was perhaps best they were shirtless, because Matthew was bloody to the elbow. Gilbert realized then why he'd never heard of anyone eating a fox before: it stank like ammonia.

"What can you do with the meat?"

"Just bait." Matthew shook his head. "He reeks like a stud to the vixens, but to us..."

Matthew moved the body outside. He set the skin in the stretcher and handed Gilbert a scraper, pantomiming what was to be done. "Hard and slow."

Gilbert accepted the tool. He smiled at his friend. "You ever wanna learn something, Matthew, like how to make a woman scream, you let me know."

Matthew blew air out of his mouth. "I will sell you to the Iroquois. Been a while since Rude European has been on the menu."

"White meat is white meat."

"Whatcha mean?"

"They'll give me the same price for you," Gilbert said. He stood tall, shirtless, lean and scarred, and grinned like shark.

Matthew smiled and lifted his bloody hands in truce. "I say, if your Mohawk gets good as fast as your English does, you'll be negotiating my trade deals in no time."

-Ludwig Beilschmidt-

Gilbird sat in its cage, on a little white swing Gilbert had built out of chicken quills, above a copy of the Staats-Zeitung. It looked generally unstimulated and had busied itself in chewing on what Gilbert had built. The real Gilbert was a day late returning home, and Ludwig had no way to contact him—outside this supposed messenger bird. Ludwig peered close at the pigeon, his nose near touching the wicker bars of the hutch. It looked up at him dumbly, a strip of chewed newspaper hanging limply from its beak as it tried to construct a nest.

"Stupid thing," Ludwig muttered.

"Piyo."

"I should eat you."

"Piyo."

He sighed. "Come here, stupid," he said, untying the door. He reached in with his right hand and curled his fingers gently around the yellowish bird's breast and slid his other hand in to support its leathery feet. It stepped on and its head jerked around the room and him in rapid, abrupt twitches. It felt uncomfortably low on his hand, and climbed like a three legged monkey up his sleeve, using its two feet and its beak as a third limb. It proceeded with the parrot climb to the collar of his shirt. It investigated the buttons, the first of which was undone, but deemed the V of his shirt a suitable perch. Tiny claws gripped his collar before the hollow of his throat, its tail drooping inside Ludwig's shirt, its head peering contentedly out. He was shocked by the boldness of the thing, to make itself comfortable in such an absurd way.

"Did you know," Ludwig said rollingly, staring down the strait of his nose to his newest barnacle, "due to the large eyes of doves -that's what you are really, a rock dove- and the need for aerodynamic heads in flight, most Columbidae have remarkably small brains?"

He felt the bird sitting on his chest fan its tail.

"Pigeons were remarkably dutiful to a fault. They flew right over no man's land in the war, delivering messages and coordinates. They would have their limbs shot off by snipers but still try to fly back to the base they were originally taken from. No one knows why it was so important for them to fly back.

"They didn't understand they were delivering priceless messages of course. They just have a homing mechanism in their brains that tells them exactly how to get back to their roost. Using magnetic particles suspended in their brain fluid, or maybe he stars. Nobody is sure how homing pigeons could do it. Would be nice if you could tell me how. They'd give me a prize."

"Piyo."

"Maybe a cranial dissection would help."

"Piyo."

"Take that as a no?"

He sat down on the bed with a sigh and opened up his new book and started to read. White Fang by Jack London. It had had a formidable dog on its gray cover and he had picked it for that reason. Two Canadian sledders were being besieged by a starving wolfpack that would kill one of their dogs each night. He was hesitant of their survival. Somehow the bird rearranged itself to poke its head out from his shirt.

"I wonder, are you male or female? It is impossible to tell with sexually indimorphic avians, since most birds have no organs on the outside."

"Piyo."

"I think of you as male."

"Piyo."

"Might it just be that you carry my brother's name. Or perhaps because the word bird is a masculine noun. But you would be considered rather tasteless for a female of my culture. Humans usually do not snuggle up inside the other the gender's clothes, it is considered rather promiscuous."

The bird might have gotten something right, for it picked that moment to waddle out of his shirt. It took interest in the book he was holding, and as animals do, investigated it with its mouth.

"Chewing on pages is forbidden, this is a library book."

When Ludwig pulled White Fang out of reach and read with it above his face, the bird waddled around for other things to peck at. The point of its beak poked itself into every crevice of his dry fingers, nibbling, pulling at his hangnails, its arrow shaped songbird tongue dabbing at the salt on his fingerpads.

"I don't have any bread for you. I would have done away with it already," he told it. The bird pecked at his finger unabated. It was quite socialized for a feral animal.

He saw something dark twitch, and instinctively, his hand swept down towards it, leaving a startled Gilbird rolling backwards. There were far too many cockroaches here, he couldn't blame Gilbert, it was the whole building. He opened a few slits in his fingers to examine a wolf spider, brown and black, about as long as the last joint of his finger, racing around like a motorcycle in a circus cage. Growing up, Gilbert would always place insects outside, much to the irritation of their mother who had insisted it would find its way back in.

He was to open the window when the bird was suddenly intently interested.

"Did you want it?"

Something stuck him as somewhat wrong. "I can't feed her to you," he said, "I think you should catch it yourself."

Have mercy, the beady red crystal pigeon eyes pleaded, staring at him entreatingly.

"Any human can kill a spider, that's not fair to it. But if a littler thing did it, that would be fair." Ludwig explained logically to the stupid animal.

At that moment the spider slipped from the cracks in his fingers. Clumsy Gilbird fluttered down and thumped off at a surprisingly fast lumber after the spider along the wood and disappeared around the corner of the bed. When it emerged to request readmittance to the bed, there were no fuzzy black legs sticking out of its beak. Ludwig would never know if it ate the spider wholly or if it had escaped.

He was probably -certainly- anthropomorphizing it, but Gilbird did seem somewhat dejected. He doubted the scraggly thing had caught the spider. He bent down to pick the thing up from the floor. He ripped off a hunk of bread as large as a penny and rolled it into four little doughy balls, each the size of a ladybug.

American white bread was bizarre. Merely by rolling it between fingers it could be returned back to its dough-state. No chemical reaction needed. Real bread performed no such anomaly.

"Here, maybe we do have a little bread."

Gilbird's bill, evolved for plucking seeds, was never very good at eating bread. It mushed it up in its beak and half of the mush ended up on the outside where its little arrow tongue could not reach. But its efforts to chew twisted the crooked line of its beak into an imaginary smile, and Gilbird did not seem to mind.

He heard someone knock at the door and his heart jumped. Gilbert! Was Gilbert back? He quickly scooped Gilbird out from his collar and held it in his hand as he quickly swung his legs around to stand.

"Gilbird! I mean, Bert! You're ok!"

It occurred to him as he opened the door that Gilbert would never have knocked to enter his own apartment. Instead, a woman in a green dress stood owlishly, brown hair loose around her shoulders. Her eyes drifted fixatedly at what lay in Ludwig's hands. "Uh…"

"You," he said, recognizing her. She was the one that brought Gilbert's knife to him.

"Elizabeta. What is…?"

"Nothing, a project of Gilbert's." Ludwig explained curtly, embarrassedly, depositing the pigeon on the table, aware it would not fly away.

"Where is Gilbert?"

"Gone hunting."

"That city gangster can hunt? Or is that code for something?"

Ludwig displayed his palms. "All I know, is he's told me he's spent half of this week upstate with a Canadian fur trapper." Fur trapper, poacher, moonshiner, bootlegger, smuggler, maniac, one of those.

"I need to see him."

"What for?"

"Something important," she said, eyes darting around the room. Ludwig was unsure what to make with that.

"Can I take a message, or…?"

"When does he come back?"

"He should have come back today."

"I'll find him later. I better get back to Lili and Natalya."

He caught on the familiar name. "You live with Lili? Lili Zwingli?"

At the eagerness, Elizabeta grinned knowingly, evilly, in the way of women with any small amount of power. "Should I tell her you say Guten Abend?"

"Knock her off her feet for me," Ludwig said smoothly. Elizabeta must have heard of the event, for she smiled slyly, and made a shoving motion with her arms before tossing her chin in a wolfish laugh and disappearing down the hall.

Some hours later there was another presence at the door. This one had a key and let himself in. Gilbert emerged, tall and dirty, and hung his hat on the hook. Ludwig set the pigeon in the hutch and closed the latch before he hoped Gilbert would notice, but the elder's lip curled in a smile.

"I'm pleased you two have been getting along."

Gilbert paced to the sink and proceeded to wash and dress himself. He had only returned home with only his black briefcase. "I thought you'd come back with a deer leg or something to eat." Ludwig said.

"Of course, you see my portable handheld electric cooled meat freezer to keep it in?" Gilbert replied sarcastically.

"I forgot," Ludwig said lamely.

Gilbert, hair wet and in a starch-white clean shirt, set his black briefcase on the table, and like a lawyer or a showman, began unbuckling the upward facing chrome buckles. Ludwig stood to peer at it captively.

"Obviously, Matthew couldn't give me half of what we caught. We have nowhere to put it. So he kept the meat and gave me something of equal value."

On top shined the red, earless head of a fox. There were several furs underneath it. Mink, martin, beaver, a stoat, maybe a wolf. They were all unnaturally silky and soft and fluffy like a scarf he would see in a department store. Likely all soaked in a bucket with some caustic chemical at Matthew's barn, no doubt.

"I know all of these mafia folks who will want them for their wives for Christmas," Gilbert said excitedly.

Ludwig prodded tentatively at one of the dead animal skins, a badger, his hand jerking back as if he feared he would catch a disease from it.

"Oh, er, nice," Ludwig commented flatly.

"And I have some meat, just a few strips, that I brought back for you."

"What animal is this from?" Ludwig had taken one of the strips of jerky and bitten testingly into the corner of it.

"Moose. I know, it tastes like salty pond sludge."

"No it's not terrible at all." Ludwig said. But then the surprise hit him and he said, "You killed a moose?"

"Yes. After it almost smeared me on a tree."

"That's incredible! Moose even live in New York?"

"I guess they do up wherever I went. By some Grand Ponds or something."

Gilbert hefted the bundle of furs from the briefcase. "Which one do you think is the nicest?"

Please please don't spread those on the-- It was too late. Gilbert had already spread the flaky dead things where they ate. He would have to scrub it tonight.

"The fox," Ludwig said after brief consideration. Gilbert nodded his agreement. Then, "The gypsy wanted to see you."

"Did she?"

"Yeah. Said it was important."

Gilbert carefully folded the fox to fit in his briefcase again and turned towards the door. Ludwig noticed then it looked like Gilbert's jacket got in a fight with a cheese grater and lost. The white of his shirt showed through the black in a spray of little white starpricks.

"What the devil happened to your coat?" Ludwig asked.

"A shotgun happened."

The door clicked closed and Ludwig was left with his thoughts. He stood there for a moment. Well. At least now he could wash the table down without Gilbert getting in the way.

-Elizabeta Héderváry-

She recognized the knocking. It was some 8 o'clock at night, and she was alone. Stepping swiftly, she let Gilbert inside. "Good, you got my message," she announced.

"I heard the factory closed. I'm sorry, Elizabeta," Gilbert said solemnly.

Elizabeta was a business minded woman, and the time for mourning was over. She saw his coat. "What happened to you?"

Gilbert shook his head. He had folded the coat over his arm and extended it toward her. "I'll pay you to mend it."

Her smile was dauntless. "I'll do it free. Just need a favor."

"Shoot."

"I want you to teach me bootlegging."

"You're joking," Gilbert said with stern surprise. A stern warning surprise that knew she was serious. "You have got to be joking."

"I saw another woman doing it."

Gilbert's eyes widened. "Who?" What other woman would be reckless enough for such a thing?

"Don't know. A colored woman, twenty, who dresses like a Southern Belle."

"Black Amelia." Gilbert said. "S'wat they call er."

"Do you know her?"

Gilbert shook his head. "Never even had a conversation."

Her lips tightened in realization. Of course not. Other reasons aside, the number of negro Americans who spoke German was near zero.

"Will you please help me, Gilbert?" she asked.

"I don't know…It's dangerous. And even if I get you into it, you'll be competition for me."

"I'll give you a cut for your help."

He thought for a moment. His expression changed to be vaguely positive. "You'll need a bigger dress."

Elizabeta smiled surely. "Good thing I know three of the best seamstresses on the lower east side."

He glanced at the embroidery on the wall, at the machine in the corner, and then at his arm with eyebrows raised humbly. "Indeed."

"So," she grinned. "When do I get a nasty boot knife?"

"You should have no knife."

"Aw shucks."

"If someone like me comes at you with a knife, he'll kill you. Don't even let him get close. You'll need a pistol."

"Good, I've got a friend who has one."

"You'll have to make a gown that will allow you to get at it. You won't be able to get under that big petticoat to your legs, and I don't think it would fit on the bodice. You'll have to make some kind of secret side pocket for it. Maybe ask Amelia what she does."

She nodded determinedly. Gilbert displayed a remarkable amount of foresight for such a brute. Perhaps his mentorship would be an exceptionally good investment. "Yes, yes. I'll do that!"

"Don't get too excited. Natalya will contact her brother, and you will work for him."

Elizabeta deflated. "I don't want to work for the mob."

"It's safer than not working for the mob. And if I give you my contacts in no mans' land, then I'll be out of a job. I hope you understand."

"The gangs won't kill a woman. Not without warning. I could make my own contacts on their territories and lie low."

Gilbert seemed unsure. "Maybe it would work for a few weeks..."

She sensed him giving ground. "We'll go to just a few of your places so I can learn. You can escort me, so a woman walking alone doesn't look suspicious. You'll take half of the money."

If it was true that a woman could carry three or four times as much as a man, and she gave him half of the money, he would still be making more money than he would alone. And nothing would stop him from carrying his own.

"Sounds fair. It would be irresponsible of me get you into the trade and teach you nothing," he said nobly.

"Thank you, Gilbert."

Gilbert shrugged toughly.

"Now," she commanded. Elizabeta knowingly, powerfully, lifted the hem of her sturdy green dress, past her ankles, her calves, her knees until most of her naked thigh was displayed to Gilbert. She watched his expression attentively. "How do women position those flasks?"

For a second unsure of what he was seeing, his eyes gawked wide, and Elizabeta relished in this crack of composure. But he quickly hid it. With a face that was calm and experienced, his fingertips brushed her bare thigh, sweeping from the front to the side. "Gallon on each."

He looked at her long and dark, waiting for her to signal if she wanted to stop this, but she gave none. He pressed his lips onto hers. She led him backwards, pulling gently on his shoulders, interlocked, to the bench along the window, until her back pressed against the cool glass. Their mouths split open in the kiss and their tongues slid against another. He filled the space between them and his weight was warm and solid on her breast as her back pressed against the cold window. He smelled of salt and pine. Cool fingers held her through her bronze curls and his other braced himself on the wall.

Slowly, they parted from their kiss and she opened her eyes to see his pale smooth face. His pupils were big black disks in arousal, leaving a thin corona of wine red. She imagined, hooded in the shadow of her brow, her green ones looked the same. Her breathing was heavy and she smelled Gilbert's breath gently puffing against her face.

Her eyes refocused and Gilbert's clear face blurred, and the room behind him sharpened. She noticed Gilbert's black briefcase sat upright on her table. Last time she had seen it, he'd given the women a bottle of wine. Having not stitched him up recently, and him owing her nothing, she wondered what contraband he had brought. She looked at it on the table, and then slowly at him, and in her best gangster voice repeated: "'Ya bring heroine fer the kid?'"

He crossed his arms proudly, his chin jerking into the air. "I ain't owe you nothin, you know."

A gentle click signified the opening of the case. From it, Gilbert drew a coppery plume which he set gently around her shoulders. The bright red fur was feather soft, and the underside was a faultless white suede. Its feet and snout were cut away and it didn't have the uncanny eeriness of looking too much like an animal.

Confused fingers trailed it gingerly, as if unsure it was real. "Where did you get the money for this?"

"It didn't cost me anything. I killed it."

She shook her head and smiled. "I hadn't believed Ludwig when he said you were hunting."

He winked. "If dead foxes aren't your thing, I don't mind if you sell it to some middle-class wife to wear to the theater."

"It's a beautiful animal. I'll add it to the costume. It will be cold walking around in the winter. Thank you Gilbert."

Gilbert swelled excitedly. "Good thinking. You'll be the Fox of the Lower East Side."

She sat regally upon the bench, one leg crossed high over the other. With two fingers pinched, she raised an imaginary wine stem and inclined her head. "To the fox of the East."

Gilbert's hand was large around an invisible beerstein, jutted just slightly up but with grand emotion. "And the stoat."

Elizabeta's eyes smiled grandly. The door clicked open. She felt without looking the gaze belonged to Natalya, from whom, who wise as ever, no words came.

"I can't keep coming here," Gilbert breathed. "I like your roommates too much."

"Then let's go to your place," Elizabeta said lowly. And Gilbert, his expression full of dumb luck, did not question her.

-Ludwig Beilschmidt-

"Hi Gilbert. I ate all of the meat, I hope that's ok, I had no money and there was nothing el-"

"Ludwig. Get out."

"What?"

"Go buy yourself an ice cream."

Gilbert set a dollar on the table. Ludwig leaned to look behind Gilbert to see Elizabeta. An eastern European factory girl in a sturdy, dirty, olive dress, around her shoulders, a movie star's fox.

"Oh. Um, hello. I'll go..."

Ludwig lowered his head and slunk out the door.

Author's Note:

Servus- Austro-Bavarian for hello, goodbye.

Szia- Hungarian for hello, goodbye.

They are actually regional versions of the same word :) the Hungarian coming from the Bavarian, which came from the roman.

I studied abroad in Austria since I wrote the last chapter and am now back home. Thanks for reading and sticking with me, and please let me know your thoughts.

All the best,

Celtic