“Sam, are you excited about the big day?” another reporter asked.
For the first time, Sam looked over at Evie. Her eyes were wide and she clutched a handkerchief tightly in one fist. This charade meant everything to her, he knew. She bit her lip, and he knew she was pleading with him silently: Please don’t spoil it with the truth. He’d gone into this phony romance scheme with his eyes open. But somewhere along the way, his feelings had changed. He’d wanted more. He’d let his guard down. And now she’d gone and sold him out. He could do the same to her right this minute. He could tell everyone the truth about their cooked-up romance. It would serve her right.
“Sam?” the reporter prompted. “I said, are you excited about the wedding?”
“What fella wouldn’t be?” Sam said, looking away.
They played their parts, waving to the crowds shouting their names and pressing themselves against the police barricades hoping for a closer look, hands reaching, needing that reflected glory.
“Miss O’Neill, I certainly hope you can’t read anything bad in these,” Mayor Walker joked as he handed Evie the ribbon-cutting scissors for the new Ziegfeld Theatre.
“Here goes!” Evie said. She snipped through the bow and the ribbon fell away. The onlookers cheered.
Down in the throngs of people, a haunted, hollow-eyed man in a tattered soldier’s uniform pushed his wheelchair toward the platform, muttering to himself. People stepped back as he knocked into them.
“Watch it, buddy,” a man growled, but the broken soldier didn’t hear him.
“The time is now,” the soldier said, over and over.
Onstage, Evie moved to the right and accepted a bouquet of flowers from a fan.
“The time… the time is now,” the soldier whispered fervently as he reached into his pocket for the revolver. All eyes were on Evie, who lifted her arm in a wave, blowing kisses to the crowd.
The soldier raised the gun. It shook in his hand. “The time is now,” he moaned.
Evie’s smile was still bright as she turned in the soldier’s direction. Her eyes saw the gun in his hand but couldn’t quite make sense of it, as if he might be holding a fish or an albatross. Sam was quicker. Time slowed and sharpened at once. Blood thrummed in his ears, blocking out the gasps of the stunned crowd. These people receded in Sam’s mind. There was only Evie, the man, and the gun. Sam wasn’t close enough to tackle the man before he could get a shot off. There was no time to think it through. Sam pushed Evie aside and thrust his hand toward the man with the gun. “Don’t see me,” he growled. He poured every ounce of will into that one movement. Sam felt as if he’d been struck by a tuning fork. His body trembled from the effort. His knees buckled, but Sam held on.
“Don’t. See. Me.”
The soldier’s haunted eyes emptied of all consciousness, like a sleepwalker’s. Sam lunged forward and pried the revolver from the man’s grime-coated fingers. Several people closest to the man with the gun had also gone slack, heads cocked toward the sky, lost in some private reverie.
But the rest of the sizable crowd watched it all.
Police raced to the stage and surrounded the still-dazed soldier. In the mass of onlookers and reporters, incomprehension gave way to astonishment—had they really seen what they thought they had? Murmurs became shouts. People raced forward from everywhere at once.
“What’s happening? What is it?”
“Sam Lloyd is what happened! He saved Evie O’Neill’s life!”
The story passed from one person to the next with breathless excitement, drawing still more people. They overflowed the banks of the sidewalks, snarling traffic. Taxi drivers honked their horns and shook their fists through their open windows while the cops tried to contain the swelling crowd before things got completely out of hand.
“Did I just see what I think I saw?” one reporter asked
“He put a hex on that fella, like hypnotizing him!” another answered.