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you.”
    She curtsied and tried not to look smug. “You’re quite welcome.”
    He shifted now to stand beside her. “So what brings you out tonight?”
    “Why, Mr. Schonfeld,” she said, “haven’t you heard it’s New Year’s Eve?”
    “Not for me. Again, Jewish.”
    “So perhaps the real question is what brings you out tonight.”
    “Why, my calling of course.”
    “To embarrass young women with your own pomposity?”
    His sudden laugh tingled down her spine. He cocked his head. “That’s an added benefit. But actually, the ideological potential for embarrassing the folks is astounding.”
    She didn’t want to ask but had to. The coincidence weighed on her. “And the poem?”
    “Ah. That.” He started looking around the room. “That was quite a happy accident. I have a friend who spends a lot of time down at the library reading up on strange occurrences, fanciful events, lights in the sky and what-not. We’d been talking about the visitation in Mexico City, he did a bit of looking and your poem got clipped.”
    “I find that highly unlikely. It came out, not two weeks ago.”
    “It is his work,” he said. “He’s here tonight. You can ask him.”
    “Sounds like a bit of a crank to me.”
    “Ah, but a well-connected crank to be sure. He’s here as the guest of Theodore Dreiser.” He took her elbow and warmth fled out as his fingers brushed her skin. “You’ll love him. Full of all kinds of amazing information. Besides, he’s actually responsible for me finding you.”
    She raised her eyebrows. “Mr. Schonfeld, you seem to be mistaken. I found you. Twice now.”
    He shrugged. “Believe what you will.” Then he patted the pocket with the concealed journal. “’Miss Agnes Barnham,’” he quoted from memory, “’daughter of preeminent architect John Barnham, currently makes her home in Boston, Massachusetts, with her family and her cat, Hezekiah. This is her first professional publication.’”
    He smiled at her, slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrew it. A single train ticket to Boston. “I was leaving tomorrow.”
    She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. She felt something odd moving from her stomach toward her throat, as if she’d swallowed a moth that now wanted out.
    He put the ticket away. “Still,” he said, “it’s a hell of a coincidence.”
    She blinked. “You’re telling me that you were coming to Boston tomorrow to find me?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “Why?”
    He cleared his throat, looking around the room at everything but her. “Well. That’s a damned good question.”
    “And?”
    Jacob shrugged. “I think it was the poem. I’d never felt so . . . Messianic . . . before.”
    Agnes felt a giggle rise but fought it down. She wanted to be annoyed. “So it’s really his fault, then,” she said.
    “Whose?”
    “This friend of yours who spends his days in the library studying poems about unexplained phenomena.”
    “Oh, not just poems. Newspapers, magazines, the works. But yes. His fault.” He grinned and offered her his arm. “Do you think,” he asked, “that all of these coincidences are...coincidental?”
    She rolled her eyes, letting him steer her through the crowd. “Are all Marxists this funny, or are you an exciting new prototype?”
    “Just the Jewish ones,” he said. “Let’s meet my friend.”
    Agnes couldn’t help but smile. “Let’s,” she said. “I’m really quite cross with him.”
    They navigated the room in silence now. With his free hand he waved to a group of men huddled in the corner. “There he is.”
    A tall, heavy-set man wearing a gray tweed suit who seemed out of place laughed loudly. He looked a bit like Teddy Roosevelt, Agnes thought. He swept off his glasses and rubbed them clean with a cloth. “—and I suspect only four or five people will actually pick it up,” the man was saying.
    “Going on about that again?” Jacob asked as they approached. “Charles Fort, may I present to you Miss Agnes