“Decency? Decency! Says the fella out every night with a different girl! ‘Jilted Sam Lloyd Finds Comfort with Chorus Girls! Hard-Hearted Hannah Evie O’Neill Breaks Hero’s Heart.’ What a lot of hooey!”
Sam leaned against the light post like he owned it. “What do you care? It’s not like you want me, right?”
Evie drew in a sharp breath. “I-I… don’t care!” she said with a toss of her head. “But it’s embarrassing. And you get to be ‘poor Sam’ while I’m ‘fickle Evie.’”
“Give the papers another few weeks, and they’ll flip the story to ‘Poor Evie, Cad Sam.’ What am I supposed to do, sit at home and fog up the bathroom mirror with lonely sighs?”
“Gee, can you do that? That’s a swell trick,” Evie said sarcastically. “What is it? Why are you making that face?”
“Incredible. You actually worked up a little angry spit in the corner of your mouth right there.…”
Evie batted Sam’s finger away. “Good. It’ll make it easier for me to digest you.”
They squared off under the street lamp. Over Sam’s shoulder, Evie saw Jericho part the drapes at the front window and look down the street to find the source of the commotion. With the light behind him, he was nothing but a shadow, but even his shadow had a pull Evie found hard to ignore.
She tugged at Sam’s sleeve. She didn’t want Jericho to see them fighting. “Let’s keep walking.”
When they’d reached the corner of Columbus and Sixty-eighth, Sam stopped, his tone conciliatory. “Listen, doll, we don’t have to be best friends. But can we call a truce until we solve the mystery of Project Buffalo? I got a feeling we’re getting closer, and the closer we get, the more dangerous it gets. I’d rather have you on my side than against me. Truce?”
He stuck out his hand. Evie had a visceral memory of that hand on her back as they kissed, just the two of them against the world. What had started out as a phony romance had turned far too real before coming painfully apart, leaving wounds on both sides.
“Truce,” Evie said on a sigh, and gave Sam’s hand a quick shake. “Should we tell the others that we’re still looking into Project Buffalo?”
“Not till we find out what’s on those cards. For now, it’s our secret.”
“And Woody’s,” Evie said apologetically.
Sam’s laugh was bitter. “T. S. Woodhouse. How could I forget you told that rat reporter about Project Buffalo? Fine. Let the bum see what he can find. But that’s on you. I’m not paying him.”
Evie shrugged. “Fine.”
There it was: the old battle stations resumed. How long had it taken since the truce—ten seconds? They stood awkwardly on the corner, their breaths coming out in soft wisps. Sam clapped his woolly mitten–clad hands together, his infamous smirk in place.
“Well, this has been fun. I’m headed that way.” He pointed toward Central Park. “Plenty of pockets to pick this time of evening.”
“Then I’m going the other way. Toward civilization.”
“Always a pleasure, Lamb Chop.” Sam saluted angrily and marched toward the park.
“Just remember, Sam Lubovitch Lloyd!” Evie shouted after him.
“What?” Sam called, barely glancing over his shoulder.
Evie’s voice rang down the street: “You still owe me twenty bucks!”
On her way to the New Amsterdam Theatre, Theta relived her stolen kiss with Memphis. She knew their love was trouble. All she had to do was keep it a secret long enough to make it from Broadway to the pictures. There was money to be made in pictures. Louise Brooks, Colleen Moore, Clara Bow—they were raking it in. Once Theta made a bundle, it would be Theta and Memphis and Isaiah in a little Hollywood bungalow with a lemon tree in the yard and a dog yipping at their heels. Memphis would be a famous poet, and Theta would be a mysterious movie star. Henry could live right next door. Together, they’d make their own rules. And then they’d go about changing the rules. Was that too much to hope for?
It would be the family she’d always wanted, the family she’d never had. She could finally bury the horrors of her past once and for all. Theta held out her gloved hands. They were fine. Perfectly normal. It was going to be okay.
At the corner of Forty-ninth Street and Broadway, Theta passed a hysterical woman holding tightly to a policeman’s arms. “I’m telling you, it was a ghost! I saw it!”
“Now, Miss, it was probably just your eyes playing tricks on you in the dark.”
“It was a ghost! There was a ghost in my bedroom!” the woman insisted. “Oh, I can’t go back in that room now. Never, never!”
Theta clutched her coat collar to her neck and walked faster.
Backstage, the theater was in its usual state of preshow chaos. Costumers ran past with gigantic beaded headdresses needing last-minute touch-ups. A few of the young actors flirted with one another in the wings, where they thought no one could see or judge. Two chorus girls passed a bottle of Listerine back and forth. They gargled the pungent mouthwash and spat it into cups.
“Theta! Where’s Theta?”
“In here, Wally,” Theta shouted, and the burly stage manager poked his head into the dressing room.
“Congratulations, kid. You’ve got yourself a screen test with Vitagraph Studios.”
Theta whirled around. “Are you pulling my leg, Wally?”
“On the level. Two weeks from tomorrow in Brooklyn. If this goes well, kid, they might send you out to Hollywood to make pictures with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Eddie Cantor. Then you can go away and stop being such a pain in my neck.”
Theta grinned. She kissed Wally’s cheek. “I love you, too, Wally.”
Wally blushed. “Ten minutes. Get a wiggle on. Flo wants to run through the ‘Stardust’ number before the show.”
At her makeup table, Theta peered into the lighted mirror and applied a swipe of Dorin of Paris rouge to each cheek as she imagined herself on the silver screen, performing stunts alongside Buster Keaton or playing the poor, dying consumptive opposite John Barrymore. The house. The lemon tree. The little dog. Theta and Memphis. It was that much closer. She could feel it.
She just had to get her awful power under control.
Theta lifted the lid on her box of face powder and screamed. A dead mouse lay inside. A note covered the top of its small, lifeless body. With shaking fingers, Theta lifted the note and read.
Dear Betty: Violets are blue. Red is the rose.
You left him for dead. But somebody knows.
Somebody knows.
Quickly, Theta grabbed the box and ran for the stage door and out into the back alley. Already, smoke was rising from the sides of the box where her hands gripped it. Heat rushed up her arms. As the box caught fire between her palms, she dropped it into the trash can, where it fizzled. Her hands were bright red still. For a moment, she was back in Kansas. She could see the flames crackling up the walls, smell the smoke filling the tiny room. She could hear Roy’s screams.
Her mind went blank then, as it always did.
But somebody else remembered. Somebody who wanted Theta to know, too. The past had found her at last, and it threatened to burn down everything she’d built.