“You’ve drawn quite the crowd, Miss O’Neill,” Sarah said, her gaze directed out at the throngs of adoring fans, some of them still shouting Evie’s name.
“Oh. Well.” Evie was suddenly at a loss for words. “You have admirers, too, Miss Snow.”
“Not like yours,” Sarah said, her eyes still on the crowd. “If I did, Mr. Phillips might not threaten to cancel my radio hour. Apparently, my sponsor doesn’t find bringing lost souls to Jesus as entertaining or profitable as reading objects. There’s money for Diviners, but not the Divine.” For just a moment, Sarah’s eyes flashed. But then her placid smile returned. “I must say, I’ve come to admire your courage, Miss O’Neill.”
“My courage?”
“Yes, indeed. It’s quite brave of you to handle all those objects belonging to complete strangers. Why, some people would be afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” Evie said.
“There’s our little radio star!” Mr. Phillips boomed. He marched toward her, brandishing a newspaper, a retinue of secretaries and reporters behind him. “Great showing at the fights last night. You two were more popular than the boxing,” he said, holding out the Daily News, where the front-page picture showed Sam and Evie sitting ringside. “I tell you, I wish I had twenty of this girl! I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
“Not at all, Mr. Phillips,” Sarah Snow answered calmly. “I was just telling Miss O’Neill how much I admire her courage.”
“Whaddaya mean?” a reporter asked.
“Why, the sleeping sickness, of course. After all, we don’t know how people take ill. Anyone could have it. Any object could be contaminated.”
“Say, that’s true,” a reporter said, jotting it down. “You ever get spooked about that, Miss O’Neill?”
“Oh. Gee…” Evie said. She’d never thought about it before, but now the worry wormed its way into her thoughts. What did she know about the objects people brought in? About the people? Nothing, really. Not until she was already pressing into their secrets with her hands, and then it was too late.
“Now, now, our Evie isn’t afraid of some little old sleeping sickness,” Mr. Phillips said, waving the thought away, as he did anything that didn’t affect him directly. “It’s mostly confined to downtown, isn’t it? It’s a matter of proper hygiene. Those people don’t come to WGI, I can guarantee you.”
“Of course, Mr. Phillips. I’m sure it’s all perfectly fine. Still, I suppose you never know what you’re in for when someone hands you their secrets,” Sarah Snow said. Her smile followed two seconds too late.
“These fellas want a picture of us in the studio, Evie,” Mr. Phillips said, then escorted Evie and the reporters toward WGI’s bank of shining elevators. As the elevator doors closed on the grand marble lobby and the crowd of admirers on the other side of the glass doors, Evie saw that Sarah Snow was still standing in the clock’s deep shadows, watching her intently.
It reminded Evie for all the world of a cat watching a mouse.
But then she was on the radio, her voice reaching out to people everywhere. The applause was for her. Afterward, fans lined up around the block to have her sign their autograph books. And Sarah Snow was forgotten.
Evie decided to walk the ten blocks back home to the Winthrop so she could enjoy the admiring looks of people on the street.
“A penny for one who served, Miss?”
A filthy, unshaven man in a wheelchair shook his cup at her. Evie recognized him as the veteran she’d given money to during her first week in New York.
“The time is now. The time is now,” he murmured. His anguished eyes searched for something beyond sight.
Evie was angry that this poor man, ruined by war, had been abandoned to a hard life on the streets. If Sarah Snow were here now, Evie would ask her to explain why her God allowed war and poverty and cruelty to happen so often. Sometimes, Evie wished she had an object of God’s to read so that she could begin to understand.