“Really, I can! Here.” She reached over and grabbed a girl’s earring, ignoring her protests. For dramatic effect, Evie pressed the earring against her forehead. For a moment she hesitated—what if she heard that horrible whistling, like she had with Ruta Badowski? But the second she thought that, the more determined she was to take that image from under the bridge right out of her mind, and soon the earring gave up its confessions. “Your real name is Bertha. You changed it to Billie before you moved here from… Delaware?”
The girl’s mouth opened. She clapped in glee. “Well, isn’t that just the berries! Oh, do something of Ronnie’s!”
Evie went from person to person, grabbing up little tidbits, getting better as she went. “Your birthday is June first and your best girl’s name is Mae.” “For dinner, you went to Sardi’s and had the corned beef.” “You have a parakeet named Gladys.”
“Say, that’s swell—you oughta have an act, kid!” Ronnie the ukulele player said.
“I will have an act!” Evie said loudly, letting the gin do the talking. “I’ll turn my living room into a salon, and every night, people will come up and I’ll tell them what they had to eat. All the columns will write me up. I’ll be the Sandwich Swami.”
Everyone laughed, and their laughter tucked itself around Evie like the warmest of blankets. This was the best city in the world, and Evie was diving right into the thick of it now. Within the hour, she’d gotten a read from about a dozen objects, and she was positively woozy. The hour was late—or early, depending on how you read it. Some fella had wrapped his striped tie around her head and tied it off in a half bow. Mabel had fallen asleep on the sofa. The hostess had left a tray of sandwiches balanced on Mabel’s stomach, and from time to time a partygoer would stagger by and steal one. Near her feet, a passionate couple embraced in a never-ending lip-lock.
Henry settled next to Evie. “Say, sugar, that’s some party trick you’ve got. Tell me the truth: You were a magician’s assistant.”
“Uh-uh,” Evie said, grinning.
“Well, how did you learn how to do that?” Henry pressed. “Have you always been able to…” He put his fingers on her forehead and mimed reading her thoughts, making Evie laugh. She was drunk enough to tell him the truth, but some tiny voice inside told her not to. The evening had been so perfect. What if it turned sour, like the last party?
“A lady never tells,” Evie slurred.
Henry seemed like he was on the verge of asking her something else. Evie could feel it. But then he got that smirk again. “Of course she doesn’t.”
“Do you want me to tell you your secrets, Henry?”
“No thanks, darlin’. I love living in suspense. Besides, if I told myself all my secrets, I’d lose my mystery.” He raised one eyebrow and pursed his lips like John Barrymore in Don Juan, and Evie felt she’d made the right call.
She giggled. “I like you, Henry.”
“I like you, too, Evil.”
“Are we pals-ski?”
“You bet-ski.”
Theta crashed next to them on the thick zebra-skin rug. “I’m embalmed.”
“Potted and splificated?”
“Ossified to the gills. Time for night-night.”
“Whatever you say, baby vamp.”
“Theta.” Evie waved a finger in Theta’s general direction. “You didn’t let me tell your secrets.”
Theta wavered for a minute, but she was too drunk to say no. “Here ya go, Evil,” she said, passing over an onyx bracelet shaped like a jaguar. “My birthday is February twenty-third, and I had one of those limp sandwiches in the kitchen for dinner a million hours ago.”
Evie squeezed the bracelet and felt an overpowering sensation of sadness, and a trace of fear. She saw Theta running in the dead of night, her dress torn and her face a wreck. Theta was afraid, so very afraid.
Evie had to let go. When she opened her eyes, Theta was looking at her strangely, and all Evie could see was the other Theta, the scared girl running for her life. “S-sorry. I couldn’t get anything,” Evie lied.
“Just as well,” Theta said, taking the bracelet back. But she gave Evie a wary glance, and Evie hoped she hadn’t gone too far. Maybe it was best to keep her party trick under wraps for now.
A vase flew just over their heads and smashed against a wall, thrown by the blond from the Ba’al number. Daisy somebody. Now she was shouting. “Nobody ’preciates what I do for the show! Not Flo, not anybody! I’m a star and I could go out to Hollywood and be in the pictures anytime I wanted!”
“Good old Daisy,” Henry said knowingly.
“Time to blow,” Theta said.
Evie roused the sleepy Mabel, and Henry grabbed their coats. Evie kept diving for her sleeve with her left arm but missed it each time, and Henry finally had to put the coat on her.
Evie patted his face. “Send me the bill for your services, Henry.”
“Free of charge.”
Arm in arm, the four of them wound through the bohemian streets of Greenwich Village, past the tiny nightclubs and artists’ garrets. As they did, they sang a song Henry had made up, a ridiculous ditty that rhymed “she sat her fanny on a boy named Danny,” which broke Theta up every time. The first tentacles of a monstrous headache were creeping up the back of Evie’s neck, tightening across her skull and making her eyes hurt. She couldn’t quite shake what she’d experienced while holding Theta’s bracelet. She didn’t know what terror Theta had been running from, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, so she sang louder to drown out the voices in her head. At the edge of Washington Square Park, Henry stopped and hopped onto a park bench.
“Did you know this used to be a potter’s field? There are thousands of bodies buried under this land.”
“I might be one of ’em soon,” Theta said on a yawn.
“Look at that,” Henry said, gazing up at the golden moon bleeding its pale light into the inky spread of sky over the Washington Square arch. They tipped their heads back to take in the full beauty of it.
“Pretty,” Evie said.
“You said it,” Theta agreed.
“Oh, god,” Mabel whined. She turned toward the gutter and threw up.
GRIEF LIKE FEATHERS
Memphis sat in the graveyard, near a headstone that read EZEKIEL TIMOTHY. BORN 1821. DIED FREE 1892. He took his lantern from its hiding place, and beside its yellow glow, he set to work on a new poem. She wears her grief like a coat of feathers too heavy for flight. He crossed out heavy, wrote weighted instead, then decided that was downright pretentious and put heavy back in. Out on the Hudson, a boat skimmed the surface, trailing streamers of light. Memphis watched it for a while, gathering inspiration, but he was tired, and at last he rested his head on his arms and fell asleep.
In the familiar dream, Memphis stood at a crossroads. The land was flat and golden brown. On the road ahead, the dust kicked up into a brumous wall that turned the day dark. There were a farmhouse and a barn and a tree. A windmill turned wildly with the billowing dust. The crow called from the field and beat its frantic wings just ahead of the tall, spindly man bending the wheat into ash with his every step.
Memphis jolted awake. The candle in his lantern had burned out. It was very dark. He put the lantern back in its secret tree hold, gathered his things, and walked past the house on the hill. Don’t look; keep walking past, Memphis thought as he reached the gate. Now, why had he thought that? Why were his arms breaking out into goose pimples? Superstition. Dumb, backward superstition. He wasn’t having it, and as if to challenge himself, to separate himself from a long line of fearful ancestors, he purposely walked through the gate and stood on the cracked, weed-choked path that led to the ruined mansion. He willed himself to walk, drawing closer and closer to the scarred front doors. Maybe he’d even go inside, put this foolishness to rest once and for all. He was nearly there. Only five more steps. Four. Three…
The doors swung open, releasing a sound Memphis could only describe as a hellish groan. Memphis fell back, scrambled to his feet, and set off running at full speed, not slowing until he reached the bright lights of Harlem.