Evie’s first week in New York City had proved to be every bit as exciting as she’d hoped. In the afternoons, she and Mabel took the El to the movie palace to watch Douglas Fairbanks, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin, and one particularly warm day they’d ridden the Culver Avenue Line out to Coney Island. There, they dipped their toes in the cold surf of the Atlantic and strolled past the penny arcades and carnival-like amusements, pretending not to notice the calls of the Boardwalk Romeos who begged for their attention. When Mabel had finished with her schoolwork and Evie with her recommended reading from Will, they window-shopped at Gimbels, trying on shawl-collar coats trimmed in fur and brimless cloche hats that made them feel like movie stars. After, they’d buy freshly roasted peanuts at Chock Full O’Nuts or stop for a sandwich at the Horn & Hardart Automat, where Evie thrilled at retrieving her food from the little glass compartment after she’d deposited her coin and pushed the button.
Evenings, Evie and Mabel went downstairs to the Bennington’s shabby dining room and sat beneath its sputtering lights to drink egg creams and plot their great Manhattan adventures. When Mabel had to help her parents at a workers’ rally one evening, Evie took the liberty of calling on Theta and Henry in their flat. Henry had met her at the door wearing a smoking jacket over a pair of baggy Moroccan pants worn with an unbuttoned tuxedo shirt. It was clear at a glance that he and Theta couldn’t be related—his freckled fairness was a stark contrast to her dark, smoky looks—but it was also clear by the way they were with each other that they were not lovers, only dear friends. Henry had raised an eyebrow at Evie as he leaned against the door frame and said, in his long, slow drawl, “I don’t suppose you’ve come about the leak under the sink?” Evie had laughed and promised to chew enough Doublemint gum to fix it and Henry had swung the door open wide with a grand “Entrez, mademoiselle!” Theta lay on a velvet fainting couch wearing her silk men’s pajamas, a peacock-patterned scarf tied dramatically around her head. “Oh. Hiya, Evil. What’s doing?” The three of them had knocked back shots of gin stolen from a party Theta had been to at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and made up silly songs that Henry picked out on the ukulele, and no one complained that Evie was completely tone-deaf. Then they played cards until the wee hours, and Evie crawled home to Will’s apartment just ahead of the morning sun with the feeling that everything was possible in Manhattan and that a great adventure lay ahead of her—just as soon as she slept off the night.
Now the first hints of red and gold limned the treetops in Central Park and an Indian-summer sun shone over Manhattan. Evie, Mabel, and Theta, outfitted in their fashionable best, boarded the crowded trolley for an afternoon jaunt to the movies. The three of them raced to the back and squeezed into a double seat, talking excitedly.
“Evie, how is Jericho these days?” Mabel asked and bit her lip. She tried to seem casual about it, but she had absolutely no poker face, and Evie knew she must be dying inside.
“Who’s Jericho?” Theta asked.
“My uncle’s assistant,” Evie explained. “The big blond fellow.”
“He’s absolute perfection,” Mabel said, and both of Theta’s pencil-thin eyebrows shot up.
“You goofy for him?”
“And how,” Evie confirmed. “It is my solemn mission to join together these two lovebirds. We’re off to a slow start, but I’m sure we’ll pick up steam for Operation Jericho now.”
“Yeah?” Theta appraised Mabel coolly. “What you need is a visit to the barber, kiddo.”
Mabel clamped a hand protectively over the braid coiled at the back of her neck. “Oh. Oh, I don’t think I could.”
“Well, of course, if you’re scared…” Theta winked at Evie.
“Yes, of course. Not all of us can be brave,” Evie tutted, patting Mabel’s hand.
“I could bob my hair anytime I wanted to,” Mabel protested.
“You don’t have to, Pie Face,” Evie said, batting her lashes.
“Not if you’re scared,” Theta teased.
“I’ll have you know I’ve faced down angry mobs at my mother’s political rallies and walked on picket lines. I’m certainly not afraid of the barber!” Mabel sniffed.
“Fine. Let’s put some dough on it. I’ll pony up a buck if you bob your hair today.”
“Two dollars,” Evie chimed.
Mabel paled. But then she tilted her chin just like her society-born mother. “Fine!” she said and signaled the trolley driver to stop.
Mabel glanced nervously at the Esquire Barbershop window, with its ad proclaiming WE BOB HAIR! LOOK LIKE THE STARS OF STAGE AND SCREEN! along with a drawing of a beautiful flapper in a feathered headdress.
“Mabesie, that style would be swell on you,” Evie said. “Jericho would adore it.”
“Jericho is a deep thinker and a scholar. He doesn’t pay attention to hairstyles,” Mabel said, but she sounded terrified.
Theta touched up her lipstick in a store window. “Even a scholar’s got eyes, kid.”
Evie brushed her hand across an imaginary screen. “Just picture it: You breeze into the museum as a whole new Mabel—Mabel the Enchantress! Mabel the Flapper! Mabel the Hot Jazz Baby!”
“Mabel Who Better Make Up Her Mind or We’ll Miss the Picture,” Theta added.
“I’ll do it.”
“Attagirl!” Evie said. She pushed Mabel toward the barbershop. Evie and Theta hurried to the windows and pressed their faces to the glass to watch. Mabel spoke to the barber, who ushered her into a chair. She looked nervously in the girls’ direction. Evie waved and gave her a winning smile.
“She won’t do it,” Theta said.
“I say she will.”
“Fine. Let’s up the ante on it. Ten dollars.”
Ten dollars was a princely sum, but Evie wasn’t about to back down.
“Done!”
They shook on it and put their faces back to the window. Inside, Mabel sat in the barber’s chair and let him wrap an apron around her neck.
“I’m going to buy the swankiest stockings with your ten dollars, Theta.”
Theta smirked. “Ain’t over yet, kiddo.”
Mabel gripped the padded armrests of the barber’s chair as he pumped the foot pedal, lifting her higher. He brought his scissors toward Mabel’s hair. Her eyes widened and she jumped from the chair, threw down the apron, and bolted for the door, setting the bell over it tinkling like Santa’s sleigh.
“Ah, applesauce!” Evie hissed.
Theta held out her palm. “I’m gonna enjoy those stockings, Evil.”
“I’m sorry, I-I just couldn’t,” Mabel stammered as the girls made their way toward Times Square. “I saw those scissors and I thought I’d faint!”
“It’s all right, Mabesie. Not everybody can be a Zelda,” Evie said, linking arms with her pal.
“If I’m going to win Jericho, I have to win him as I am.”
“And you shall!” Evie reassured her. “Somehow.”
At Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, they waved to the policeman perched in the glass enclosure atop the traffic tower with its red, green, and yellow signals. He tipped his hat and the girls laughed, buoyed by the crowds crossing amid the motorcars and double-decker buses. Steam pulsed up through sewer grates, as if the city and its bustling people were but part of a great mechanism powered by unseen machinery. As they waited to cross the street, a ragged man in a rickety wheelchair rattled his tin cup at them. He was dressed in a filthy army uniform; his legs were missing below the knees. “A bit of charity for one who served,” he rasped.
Evie reached into her coin purse and retrieved a dollar, which she stuffed into his cup. “There you are.”
“Thank you,” he said. He looked at Evie and muttered softly, “The time is now; the time is now; the time is now. Careful… careful…”
“If you fall for every sob story on the street, you’ll be broke by next week, Evil,” Theta cautioned as they crossed to the other side of the street.
“My brother served. He didn’t come back.”
“Oh, gee, kiddo. I’m sorry,” Theta said.
“It was a long time ago,” Evie said. She didn’t want to start their friendship on such a sour note. “Oh, look at that woman’s dress, will you? It’s the cat’s particulars!”