"No, ma'am," Scipio said. He'd been paying the rent regularly for some time now. He was working steady hours, too, which made him a good bet to be able to go on paying the rent. Under those circumstances, no wonder the landlady sounded friendly.

He went on up to his neat little third-floor room, got out of his white shirt and black pants, and threw on a cheap, flimsy cotton robe over his drawers. Then, barefoot, he padded down to the bathroom at the end of the hall. Being butler at Marshlands had left him as fastidious about his person as he was about his surroundings, which meant he bathed more often than most of the people who shared the roominghouse with him.

But when he tried the bathroom door, it was locked. A startled splash came from within, and a woman's voice: "Who's there?"

Scipio's ears heated. Had he been white, he would have blushed. "It's Xerxes, Miss Bathsheba, from up the hall," he said. "Fs right sorry to 'sturb you."

"Don't fret yourself none," she said. "I'm just about done." More splashes: he judged she was getting out of the cramped tin tub. He smiled a little, letting his imagination peek through the closed door.

In a couple of minutes, that door opened. Out came Bathsheba, a pleasant-looking woman in her early thirties. Scipio thought she had a little white blood in her, though not enough to be called a mulatto. She wore a robe with a gaudy print, of the same cheap cotton cloth as his. She didn't hold it closed as well as she might have. At Marshlands, Scipio had mastered the art of looking without seeming to. He got himself a discreet eyeful now.

"See you later, Xerxes," Bathsheba said, and headed up the hall past him. He turned his head to watch her go. She looked back at him over her shoulder. Her eyes sparkled.

"Well, well," Scipio murmured. He hurried into the bathroom, ran the tub half full, and bathed as fast as he could. He would have bathed in a hurry anyhow; sitting down in a tub of cold water was a long way from a sensual delight. Now, though, he had an extra incentive, or hoped he did.

He went back to his room almost at a trot, and put on a fresh shirt and a pair of trousers. Have to take the laundry out soon, he thought. He started out the door again, then checked himself. When he did leave, he was carrying a flat pint bottle of whiskey. He didn't do a lot of drinking, but there were times… He knocked on the door to Bathsheba's room.

"That you, Xerxes?" she asked. When he admitted it, she opened the door, then shut it after him. She was still wearing that robe, and still not bothering to hold it closed very well. She pointed at the whiskey bottle. "What you got there?" Her voice was arch; she knew perfectly well what he had-and why, too.

"Wonder if you wants to take a nip with me," Scipio said.

By way of reply, Bathsheba got a couple of mismatched glasses and sat down at one end of a ratty sofa. When Scipio sat down, too, close beside her, he contrived-or maybe she did-to brush his leg against hers. She didn't pull away. He poured a healthy shot of whiskey into each glass.

They drank and talked, neither one of them in a hurry. After a while, Scipio slipped his arm around her. She leaned her head on his shoulder. He set down his glass, turned toward her, and tilted her face up for a kiss. Then his free hand slid inside her robe. He rapidly discovered she was naked under it.

Bathsheba laughed at what must have been his startled expression. "I was hopin' you might stop by," she said.

"Sweet thing, I ain't stopped," Scipio said. "I ain't hardly even started." He lowered his mouth to a dark-nippled breast. She pressed her hand to the back of his head, urging him on. His breath caught in his throat. He needed no urging.

These days, the Lower East Side in New York City felt strange to Flora Hamburger. That it felt strange was strange itself. She'd lived her whole life there, till she'd gone off to Philadelphia to take her seat in Congress at the start of 1917. Now, as October 1918 yielded to November, she was home again, campaigning for a second term.

But, though she'd visited the Lower East Side several times since, this long campaign swing forcibly brought home to her how much she'd been away. Everything seemed shabby and cramped and packed tighter with people than a tin of sardines was stuffed with little fish. Things surely hadn't changed much in less than two years. But she'd taken them for granted before. She didn't any more.

Her posters-red and black, with VOTE SOCIALIST! VOTE HAMBURGER! in both English and Yiddish-were almost everywhere in the Fourteenth Ward, and especially in the Centre Market, across the street from the Socialist Party headquarters. Her district was solidly Socialist; the Democratic candidate, an amiable nonentity named Marcus Krauskopf, had for all practical purposes thrown in the sponge. The Democrats hadn't been able to win two years before even with an appointed incumbent. Now that Flora held the advantage of incumbency, they looked to be saving their efforts for places where they had a chance to do better.

Flora was not the sort who took anything for granted. She stood on a keg of nails and addressed the people who crowded into the Centre Market, even if many of them were after pickled tomatoes or needles or smoked whitefish, not speeches. "What have we got from our great victory? Dead men, maimed men, men who can't get work because the capitalists care more for their profits than for letting people earn a proper living. That was the war the Democrats gave you. This is the peace the Democrats are giving you. Is it what you want?"

Some people in the market shouted, "No!" About as many, though, went on about their business. Most of them-most who were citizens, at any rate-would vote when the time came. They'd known too much oppression to throw away the chance to have a say in government the United States offered them.

"If you want to help the capitalists, you'll vote for the Democrats," Flora went on. "If you want to help yourselves, you'll vote for me. I hope you vote for me."

Her breath smoked as she talked. The day was raw, with ragged gray clouds scudding across the sky. People sneezed and coughed as they went from one market stall to the next. The Spanish influenza wasn't nearly so bad as it had been the winter before, but it hadn't gone away, either.

When Flora stepped down from the keg of nails, Herman Bruck reached out a hand to help steady her. Bruck was dapper in an overcoat of the very latest cut: not because he was rich, but because he came from a family of master tailors. "Fine speech," he said. "Very fine speech."

He didn't want to let go of her hand. Her being away hadn't made him any less interested in her. It had made her much less interested in him, not that she'd ever been very interested. Next to Hosea Blackford, he was a barely housebroken puppy. Freeing herself, Flora said, "Let's go back to the offices. I want to make sure we'll have all the poll-watchers we'll need out on the fifth." She was confident the Socialists would, but it gave her an excuse to move, and to keep Bruck moving.

The Party offices were above a butcher's shop. Max Fleisch-mann, the butcher, came out of his doorway and spoke in Yiddish: "I'll vote for you, Miss Hamburger."

"Thank you, Mr. Fleischmann," Flora answered, genuinely touched-the butcher was, or had been, a staunch Democrat. His vote meant a lot to her.

In a slightly different way, it also meant a lot to Herman Bruck. As he went upstairs with Flora, he said, "If people like Fleischmann are voting for you, you'll win in a walk."

"We'll know Tuesday night," Flora said. Inside the office, people greeted her like the old friend she was. A term in Congress slipped away, and for a little while she was just the agitator she had been before Congressman Myron Zuckerman's tragic accidental death made her run to fill his shoes and bring the seat back to the Socialist Party.