The sun sank below the horizon, and streetlamps flickered on one by one, spilling warm yellow light across the polished brick streets.
Workers finishing their shifts hurried home if they were married, returning to their wives, children, and warm beds.
The unmarried ones gathered in groups of three or five, ducking into nearby cheap taverns to order an inexpensive beer or whiskey. Their conversations were always about the same things:
Women, shitty bosses, how good the drinks were today, strikes, women, shitty bosses... over and over, until they were dead drunk, then they went home to collapse into bed, only to return to the factory the next day to tighten screws.
America in 1890 was facing an extremely important period of transition.
Simply put, there was a growing contradiction between the nation's increasingly powerful productivity and its relatively weak consumer demand.
The best way to resolve that contradiction was expansion abroad and dumping goods overseas, but that would inevitably provoke resentment from other nations, perhaps even war.
Funny Valentine had wanted to obtain the Saint's Corpse for the same reason: to solve this problem once and for all.
Factory chimneys in the distance belched black smoke, much of it obscured by the night and the lights.
Lucy lit a cigarette and took a shallow drag. After lighting it, she held it upright before her eyes, lining it up with the distant factory chimney.
She was not smoking.
During the Steel Ball Run Race, Lucy had seen some contestants from the East use this method to offer incense to the dead.
Lucy was offering incense to this city.
"Hey! Girl, you're up!"
A voice urged her from behind. Lucy rose to her feet and walked out of the pitch-black changing room. With her head lowered, she followed the corridor until she