“You are, so! You’re good and kind, and you want to make the world better.”
Evie kissed Mabel’s cheek, and Mabel rested her forehead against Evie’s. It felt good to be close friends again, to trust Evie with her secrets. It had never occurred to Mabel before to ask Evie to read something of Arthur’s, but now that the idea was in her head, it wouldn’t leave. He was awfully secretive. What if he had a sweetheart somewhere? What if Mabel could know more about the wounds of his past and make them better? She was good at fixing broken things, and it would be so easy to know.…
“I do have something of Arthur’s,” Mabel blurted out, hating herself a little for it. “Not that I’m saying you should read it.”
Evie smirked. “You’re not telling me not to read it, either.”
Mabel reached into her pocket and pulled out Arthur’s card, the one he’d given her the day they’d met. “I really shouldn’t.”
Reluctantly, she handed it to Evie, who held it up to her forehead like a soothsayer. “What mysterious mysteries will be revealed tonight on… the Sweetheart Seer!”
“Oh, this is a terrible idea! Forget I said anything!” Mabel snatched the card back, tapping her fingers against it on the table.
Miss Addie wandered through and the girls watched her, dribbling salt from the pockets of her dress, mumbling something about “Keep Elijah in his grave.”
“Same bad cocoa. Same spooky Adelaide,” Evie said. She downed the last of her drink. “Come on. I want to go see this Maria Provenza.”
While Mabel was distracted with gathering her belongings, Evie pocketed Arthur’s card.
By the time Evie and Mabel arrived on Carmine Street, it was dusk. Street lamps cast a sickly glow down the block.
“This is it,” Mabel said, hopping up the steps to Maria’s building and knocking at the door. An older man answered. He squinted suspiciously at Evie and Mabel. “There’s no booze here. This is not a speakeasy.”
“I’m looking for Maria Provenza? She lives in Four-L,” Mabel explained, and smiled, hoping it would make them seem like trustworthy souls, but it only made the man scowl harder.
“Those people? They’re gone, and good riddance.” He spat over the railing.
“What… what do you mean, gone?” Mabel sputtered.
“Deported,” the man said slowly.
“For what?” Evie asked.
“Treason, that’s what! Galleanists, the whole bunch of ’em. The police found all sorts of anarchist papers—seditious materials—up there in that dump they were all packed into. Foreigners. Send ’em all back, I say.” He pointed a finger at the girls. “You girls oughta steer clear of that nonsense. Go home to your families.”
He disappeared inside, slamming the door in their faces.
“But I was there. That’s not true. They had no seditious papers,” Mabel said numbly to Evie as they walked arm in arm back up the mostly deserted Carmine Street. “They were people just trying to get by, selling paper roses on the streets. Someone wanted them gone.”
“The Shadow Men,” Evie said, and Mabel nodded.
Night was coming down hard now. Evie shivered. “Remember when we were just scared of getting pinched by the cops for getting blotto at the Hotsy Totsy?”
“Or being lectured by my mother for sneaking out my window?”
“Mabel, daahrling, I did not raise you to behave like a common hoooligan!” Evie said in her best impression of Mabel’s mother. They shared a giggle, but it was short-lived. “Sometimes, I wish we were girls again, safe.”
Mabel snorted in contempt. “When has it ever been safe to be a girl?”
The train rumbled over the tracks above Sixth Avenue.
“I have to meet up with Arthur,” Mabel said.
“Can’t I tag along? I want to meet this mysterious Arthur Brown!”
“Sorry. I can’t. Rules. You’re not even supposed to know. Remember?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t stay. I just want to lay eyes on the revolutionary specimen.” Evie wiggled her eyebrows and giggled.
“I’d better not. He might get upset,” Mabel said.
Evie sobered. “Well, that doesn’t sound kosher, as your father would say.”
Immediately, Mabel got defensive. “You don’t know him like I do. He’s got his reasons to be careful.”
Evie knew Mabel. She knew that telling Mabel not to do something was as good as pushing her toward it. She was stubborn that way—and too much of a romantic. No doubt she’d see Arthur as a wounded boy who needed her love to become a healed man. Sewn into Mabel’s goodness was a twin thread of grandiosity: Saving people gave Mabel the feeling that she was special for doing so. It was Mabel’s drug, and she was very addicted. Not that Evie cared if that was Mabel’s blind spot. After all, everybody had something about them that could be lovely on the one hand and annoying as hell on the other. And anyway, it was clear that there was no arguing it tonight.
Evie threw her hands in the air in defeat. “All right. I can’t fight the great reformer Mabel Rose.” She kissed Mabel’s cheek. “Fare thee well, sweet Pie Face.”
Mabel waved good-bye and turned up Bleecker Street.
“Mabesie!” Evie called.
Mabel turned back. Under the glow of the street lamp, she looked like a sweet-faced angel. “Yes?”
“Be careful, please? No, don’t you dare make that annoyed face! I adore you. The truth is, I’d be lost without you.”
“Yes. You would.” Mabel laughed. “I love you, too.”
Mabel continued on her way. She did love Evie. And she felt guilty for not inviting her along, especially when Evie had been standing there in the cold. With those wisps of her bobbed hair sticking out crosswise around the sides of her fashionable cloche, she’d looked less like Evie O’Neill, Sweetheart Seer radio star, and more like Evie, her best friend, and Mabel was hit by a pang for the times Evie had just mentioned, when they were writing letters to each other about film stars they swooned over and how delicious milk shakes were.
Yes, it was true that the Six was a secret. But the deeper truth was that as much as she loved Evie, Mabel didn’t want to invite her. She didn’t want to watch Evie suck up all the attention. This was Mabel’s place to shine, and she didn’t want to compete with Evie’s bright glow.
This business with Maria Provenza had her worried, though. Somebody had planted those papers, Mabel felt sure. Arthur would say you never really knew people, but Mabel’s gut told her that she did know that Maria Provenza wasn’t an anarchist; she was just a woman worried about her missing sister. And if the Shadow Men really had taken Anna Provenza, then where were they keeping her—and why?