Excerpt from A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Mrs. Parks was sitting on her veranda with a friend of hers, Mr. Bauer. She gave Eliza a welcoming wave and stood up as Eliza mounted the steps. She of course knew what Eliza was after, and took her inside, where she checked her book. The fellow's name was Elijah Harwood, he would come at nine, and he requested that he might take Eliza to his house on Jefferson Street, keep her there for the night, and bring her back in the morning. Mrs. Parks looked at Eliza and lifted her eyebrows. Eliza said, "I've seen some lovely houses on Jefferson Street."

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Parks. "You may try it if you like. Some girls feel a little uncomfortable."

Eliza thought of Peter. He was the only fellow who had ever made her feel uncomfortable. Mrs. Parks said, "He is a rather elderly man. And not, shall we say, blessed. From what I understand, he does his best, but it wears him out. If he does it here, he's afraid he won't have the strength to return home."

Eliza said, "I suppose that going to his house is the kindest thing to do."

Mrs. Parks smiled. "Indeed. And the most lucrative."

So it was set, then. She did not ask Olive, who was also there, if she had been to the Harwood place. Olive was the friendliest of the other girls, and when Eliza had first started working for Mrs. Parks, she had exchanged a few words with her. Once, they had run into each other at the market and then walked along, chatting for a few minutes. Olive was two years older than she was, had grown up in western Massachusetts (which, Olive said, her father, who farmed, called "Massive Two Shits"), and liked music—­she had grown up playing the flute (lessons every Saturday). But Mrs. Parks was strict about keeping all the girls apart: they were not to gossip about their customers, or say much to one another. Mrs. Parks told them that gossiping was like opening a door and leaving it unlocked—­you never knew what might happen—­so the girls were to be friendly but to avoid one another. They all lived in different boarding houses (two had houses of their own), and though all of them smiled or nodded to one another, they knew they were to keep to themselves. Eliza did not want to get fired, and neither did Olive, so, once in a while, they exchanged a word or two, and if they saw each other in town they were friendly, but they did not dare to become friends. Olive knew Eliza had come from Michigan, that she had no brothers or sisters (Olive had four of each), that she had been married (Olive had planned to marry, but the fellow had dropped her when a young woman showed up in Chicopee who was from a prominent Boston family—­that chit had fallen for Olive's suitor and swept him off to the city). Apples and milk were what Olive's father produced on the farm. Eliza hadn't learned how Olive got to Monterey or how she came to work in Mrs. Parks's establishment.

On the way back to her boarding house, Eliza reflected upon the fact that one of her ambitions, to see the inside of a nicer house in Monterey, was about to be realized. The houses in Monterey were not at all like those in Kalamazoo, another thing that Eliza enjoyed about them. Many of them were adobe, and if they were not, then their style mimicked those. There was one place not far from her boarding house whose owners, her landlady, Mrs. Clayton, had told her, came from Australia, of all places, and brought all of the lumber for their house with them. It was quite large. Mrs. Clayton was a decent woman, perhaps the same age as Mrs. Parks. She didn't say where she had come from, or what had happened to her husband. She did say that her son was stuck with some farmland he had bought in Texas. He wished to leave, but was too indebted. Mrs. Clayton's place was where Peter had settled Eliza, a rooming house that, at the time, he could barely afford, and when Peter had been buried in the public cemetery, Mrs. Clayton had gone along with Eliza to watch, even, Eliza thought, to say a little prayer, but she hadn't questioned Eliza in any way afterward, or since. Eliza was happy to stay there. It was not far from the wharf or Mrs. Parks's. Her room was small but neat. Mrs. Clayton did not pester her or look at her askance. At one point, Mrs. Clayton had even patted her on the hand and said, "We all do what we have to do, don't we?" And she knew how to cook. At first Eliza hadn't liked the salted fish, but she did now, as long as she had some milk to go with it. Other boarders came and went—­there were three rooms for them other than Eliza's. She was the only regular boarder, and Mrs. Clayton never said a word if she was gone overnight. All in all, how could she write back to her mother and successfully pretend that she was unhappy or in mourning? And her mother's response would contain a request, or a demand, that she return to Kalamazoo.

Excerpted from A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley. Copyright © 2022 by Jane Smiley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.