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Chicago, he had never considered her a peer, let alone a potential match.
    â€œReally, you must have known,” she said. “I’ve been sending you cues from the moment my father ran you down in the street.”
    George laughed uncomfortably. She was referring to the accident that had led to their first meeting. In Chicago for less than a week, he had been trying to land interviews at the city papers. Having made little progress he was wandering the Loop in that somnambulant state of so many new arrivals from Midland villages. He had yet to stand on the shoreline of the lake, had only seen it from a distance, so he was walking toward Michigan Avenue and the great expanse of shimmering blue beyond.
    He remembered it was an uncommonly temperate afternoon for April, how just before he stepped into the street the voices and crowd fell aside and a ribbon of sunlight seemed to spool over the water. George had never been in a boxing match, but one second he was walking toward the lake and the next he was on his knees in the Michigan Avenue mud, feeling as if Jim Corbett had knocked him out with a single vicious punch to the slats. He looked up, seeing stars, then into his line of vision a girl’s face emerged.
    â€œMy God. Are you all right?” she cried. The ginger springs of her hair trembled with panic. “Father, come quick.”
    George sat up slowly and clutched his ribs. He tried to catch his breath as the girl moved to touch him. When he winced, she pulled her hands back as if from a hot stove. Behind her appeared a man in a swallow-tail suit.
    â€œHe stepped into the street.” The man pointed with his cane. “It could hardly be avoided.”
    â€œHe did not!” his daughter declared. “You drove up onto the curb!” She turned her attention again to George. “Say something. Tell us you’re not injured.”
    George took a deeper breath this time and grimaced at the stabbing pain in his midsection. “That was a sockdolager,” he said. “But I think I’m okay.” He began to stand up, and as the girl put her hands under his arm to assist him her curls brushed his ear.
    â€œGo on, father. Don’t just stand there like a statue.”
    â€œI’ll be fine,” George said. But when he rose to his full height he had to bend down again.
    â€œShall we take you to the hospital?” the girl asked.
    â€œLook at him,” her father said. “Not a spot of blood on his shirt.”
    â€œI told you we shouldn’t be out in that contraption until you’ve mastered it. You see—” She gestured to George. “You have the singular honor of being one of the first automobile accidents in the city of Chicago.”
    The man in the suit and cane added, “This is one of only twenty Duryeas in all Illinois.”
    â€œIt’s no time to boast, Father. If you can’t control the thing you shouldn’t have it out on the road.”
    The man was inspecting the chassis of the Duryea with his swank malacca cane. George had never seen an automobile before. It was a simple two-seat carriage, like a phaeton, only it had a tiller in the middle, a sputtering box beneath the bench, and seemed to be propelled by the ghosts of horses. A crowd had begun to gather, and behind the Duryea traffic had stopped and drivers called curses into the air.
    â€œWe have to get a move on.” The man climbed into his seat and took hold of the tiller.
    â€œWe’re terribly sorry,” the girl said to George. She introduced herself as Margaret Lazar, got the name and address of his temporary lodgings, and promised to have something sent over. After they parted, George figured he would never see her or her father again, but two days later, while he was still nursing his bruised ribs, a note of apology arrived along with an invitation to dinner.
    Inside the grandest house George had ever stepped foot in, Margaret’s mother treated him