“Gee, I’m awful sorry,” Theta said, horrified. “I shouldn’t’ve jumped up so quick.” She tried to conjure cool thoughts—ice cream, winter wind, snow. No. Not snow.
“All fine,” Dr. Jung said, examining his scorched sleeve. He retrieved the book from the spot on the rug where it had landed, spine up, pages fanned, and examined the page. “Hmm. Curious, indeed. Didn’t you say you felt too warm, Miss Knight?”
“Yes,” Theta whispered.
“What is it?” Evie asked.
“A meaningful coincidence. A powerful symbol from the collective unconscious.” Dr. Jung held the book open for them to a drawing of a grand bird consumed by fire. “The Phoenix rising from the flames.”
The book was open to page number one hundred forty-four.
Far below the surface of the city, Vernon “Big Vern” Bishop and his men tried to keep warm while they waited for the bootlegger who’d hired them to store a shipment of hooch. The job was simple: Canadian whiskey came in by boat. Before the boat docked, Vernon and his men rowed out, picked up the barrels, rowed back, and hauled the booze into the cavernous old stone tunnels that snaked below the Brooklyn Bridge. For his crew, Vernon had chosen Leon, a big Jamaican who did a little amateur boxing now and then, and a Cuban named Tony whose English was limited, but Vernon got on with the Cubans okay because his wife had come from Puerto Rico and spoke Spanish. From her, Vernon had picked up words and phrases here and there, enough to make small talk.
It was very dark here. The only light came from the lamp on Vernon’s digger’s helmet, Leon’s lantern, and the flashlight Tony gripped tightly.
“?Cuánto tiempo más?” Tony asked, pacing to keep warm.
Vernon shrugged. “Till the boss man comes.”
“Don’t like it here,” Leon grumbled, his breath coming out in smoky puffs that evaporated in the lantern light.
Vernon was comfortable in the tunnels. As a sandhog, he’d built some of them. That was dangerous work—deep underground, where a man could only dig a certain number of hours a day or else the pressure could get him. But he took pride in knowing that he was responsible for digging out to make way for the city’s future—the subways, bridges, and tunnels of tomorrow.
“Telling you, it doesn’t feel right,” Leon said.
“Don’t be bringing that island superstition into it,” Vernon chided, borrowing a phrase from his cousin Clyde.
Clyde had served in the all-black 92nd Division during the big war. After it was over, he walked into Harlem decorated and proud, despite the fact that he’d lost a leg to a bullet wound gone to rot. They’d smoked cigars and rolled craps in the back of Junior Jackson’s grocery till the wee hours, laughing and drinking whiskey, listening to two fellas cutting each other on stride piano. But Clyde looked haunted. Later, under the yellow-tinged moon, he’d said, “I saw things in that war that a man shouldn’t ever have to see. Things that make you forget we’re human and not just a bunch of beasts crawling out of the sludge somewhere. And the damnedest part of it all is, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what we were fighting for in the first place. After a while, fighting just got to be habit.”
Five months later, Clyde had gone down to Georgia to visit relatives. He’d walked into town for a cold drink. The local folks hadn’t taken too kindly to Clyde wearing his uniform with its shiny medals and told him to strip it off. Clyde refused. “I fought for this country in this uniform. Lost a leg doing it, too. Got a right to wear it.”