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anticipation. It wouldn’t hurt to wait another week to meet her father. She’d see him another night. Tonight she’d go with harmless Hamilton to hear the king of ragtime.
    “Well, I...” she blushed, wondering how she dared accept after her horrid treatment of him.
    “Then you’ll go?” His face was so pathetically hopeful she almost laughed.
    “Yes, Hamilton,” she whispered, “I would enjoy that very much. I’ll meet you at the Warwick at seven.”
    “But I would so much rather call for you at home.” The poor man simply couldn’t keep his emotions off his face and she nearly laughed again.
    “That’s so kind of you, Hamilton, but I have a bit of business to take care of with the hotel manager after work—for my orchestra, you understand—and it would be much simpler for you to meet me there. If you don’t mind, that is.” Now she was shamelessly peeking at him from beneath her lowered lids. Had she no pride?
    For their two previous afternoon outings, she’d managed to meet him away from her meager flat, though she had no doubt he could obtain her address from the bank if he had a mind to.
    This would be the last time she’d have to worry about it. She’d not be seeing Hamilton Jensen again. At least, not socially. If she promised herself that, she could manage to get through one more evening. Joplin was indeed worth the misery.
    “The Warwick, it is. At seven. I shall look forward to the evening with great anticipation.” He ducked his head in a surreptitious bow and strode down the teller line.
    “Likewise,” Addie answered, meaning, of course, that she would look forward to the entertainment. She didn’t mind Hamilton so very much, but he was so maddeningly flirtatious that she’d been forced to spend most of the outing countering his advances. Perhaps tonight she would just give up and let her silence speak for itself.
    Three bells signaled the start of the business day as two liveried attendants opened the massive front doors. Addie put the evening out of her mind as the first morning customers began to line up just beyond the bars of Teller Station No. 8.
    . . .
     
    To say Jess had been restless like a schoolboy all day would have been an understatement. He was completely buffaloed by the unfamiliar anticipation that had plagued him without ceasing. As he left work that evening, Jess had the urge to deny his impulse and walk toward home instead of toward the Warwick Hotel. He would not be ruled by this untenable fancy for a slip of a girl.
    But while his brain mulled it over, his feet carried him unerringly to the majestic front doors of the popular hotel. Inside, he ducked into the washroom to get the black carbon graphite from the typewriter ribbon off his fingers. It was the one curse of the Blick. Its devilishly complex jumble of gears and levers through which to thread the ribbon when it needed to be replaced always left his hands a filthy mess. But he’d been a man on a mission tonight and hadn’t noticed his dirty hands until he was halfway to the hotel.
    By the time he’d washed up, the liveried attendant glowered at Jess from his station by the door of the marble-tiled lavatory. It wasn’t terribly difficult to determine the source of the man’s irritation. The hotel crest, embroidered on a brushed linen hand towel in nearly invisible white stitches, had been a pristine white when the man had handed it to him moments earlier. Now, as Jess lobbed it into the bin at the man’s feet, he saw that it was blackened and nasty. He resisted the urge to shove the discarded hand towel beneath the others that stood out stark and white below it in the pile, and instead, doubled his tip, which hardly mollified the fellow. But at least he stopped blocking the door so Jess could make his escape.
    It seemed impossible that a full day had passed since he’d dined at the Warwick. Busy as the day had been, he’d found scenes and sounds from the night before constantly intruding on his