“When we first met, and you saw the drawing I’d done of that eye symbol, you said you’d dreamed of it, too.”
“Yeah?” Theta said, suddenly nervous.
“Well, just seems funny. You’re not even a Diviner.”
I’m not a Diviner. I’m a murderer.
“Maybe it’s from being around Henry so much,” Theta said, feeling rotten for the lie.
“Reckon that could be it.”
Theta snuggled in to Memphis, resting her head against his chest. She didn’t want to think about Diviners or eye symbols or notes from mysterious strangers. She only wanted to have this moment together. Memphis kissed the top of her head and wrapped his arms around her. “Papa Charles still making you heal for him?” she asked.
“Mm-hmm. There hasn’t been any trouble for a few days. But I never know when he’ll come for me. Makes me a little sick afterward, though. The first time, when I healed a fella who’d been shot, I had these little sores on my hands. They’re gone now, but…”
“Gee, Poet. Maybe you better stop.”
Memphis’s eyebrows shot up. “Say no to Papa Charles? No, thank you. Besides…” Memphis bent his head to Theta’s and sucked gently at her lower lip, then kissed her fully, like a thirsty man drinking from a well. “I don’t wanna talk about that just now. You wanna get out of here for a while?”
“I can’t.”
“You got another date?”
“Need my beauty sleep.”
“You get any more beautiful and I’ll have to start washing my eyes every night. I won’t be able to take it.” He put one hand over his heart and shook, making Theta laugh. She kissed him harder. Memphis moaned softly, running a hand up her back until Theta felt warm and tingly.
“I gotta go, Poet,” she said between kisses.
Memphis was flushed. Sweat beaded around his freshly shaved hairline. “You’re cruel, woman.”
Theta laughed. “We all got our talents.” She fixed her dress and reached for her coat.
“Hey…” Memphis took hold of Theta’s hand, drawing her back for one more kiss. “I love you, you know.”
“Yeah,” Theta said, pressing herself against him until she thought she might lose her mind. “I know.”
Upstairs again, Theta passed through the club like a phantom. Around her, people stomped and danced. The band played on. Trumpets wailed against the night. The chorus girls glittered and winked. In that corner booth, her friends were huddled together, happy. Sam was telling some story using his hands. Henry wiped away tears of laughter. Ling kept stealing glances at Alma up onstage, and anybody with any kind of sense could see that she was smitten. Theta tried to imagine cantankerous Ling lovestruck, and it was almost enough to chase away her fear. Out on the street, Theta checked the time. Eleven thirty. She read over the note one more time. Midnight. Come alone.
The doorman hailed Theta a taxi. “Where to?” the cabbie asked.
“The Bowery,” she said. “And step on it.”
REUNION
“Thanks. Keep the change,” Theta said, and set off down the Bowery. Steam pulsed up around the edges of the manhole covers, lending the streets a grainy wash. Just past the darkened windows of a hosiery shop, Theta found the building—a skinny door nestled between a bakery and a tailor’s shop. Theta climbed up two steep flights, listening to a baby’s hungry wail drifting down the stairwell. At the end of a dim hallway with a chipped floor, she saw it: 3C. There was a note with her name on it taped there: Door’s open, it read.
Heart thumping, Theta turned the knob. The apartment was dark. Only the lights from the Bowery leaking in through the windows gave the room any shape at all. She wanted to run, but if she did, the threats would never stop. She had to know who was sending those notes. Theta shut the door behind her.
A lamp clicked on, and Theta blinked against the sudden bright. Her surprise turned slowly to disbelief, then horror at the figure on the bed sitting half in shadow. Her knees wobbled as she was seized by a fear so overwhelming it had a smell and taste. Bile inched into her throat. She fought to swallow it down.
“Roy?” she managed at last.
“Hello, Betty. D’ya miss me, baby?”
The wildflower in the vase. The hand at her throat. The slap across the cheek.
She was having a hard time staying in the room, staying in her body.
Her hands shook as she stood in the middle of the room like a guilty child.
The bed creaked as Roy stood up. He’d filled out the past two years. His arms and shoulders were thickly muscled, making him look even more of a menace. Slowly, he circled the room, prowling like a panther.
“You look good. Never used to wear all that face paint, but…” Roy added quickly, “Golly. You sure are pretty, Betty.”
He was talking to her the way he used to when he was a handsome soda jerk in Kansas and she was a gawky-legged girl on the vaudeville circuit. Theta felt like a small, cornered rabbit. She kept her eyes on the scarred floorboards.
“I suppose those New York fellas like all that face paint you wear, huh? Yes, sir, must be lined up for you.”
“No,” Theta said too fast. “I mean, I, uh, I work all the time.”
“Yeah? Who’s that fella you’re living with?
That Roy knew about Henry terrified Theta. “Just a fella works at the show. Piano player.”
Roy laughed. “Oh. A theater type. A sissy, then?”
Theta’s cheeks burned at the insult. The less she said, the better. For once, her palms were stone cold. It was as if her fear were a breath blowing out the flame.
“Well, well. This is a nice reunion, ain’t it? Took me a long time to find you. Nobody knew where you’d got to. And then I was doing a job in Brooklyn and I happened to see that newspaper article on Theta Knight, the Russian princess turned showgirl,” Roy said, giving the last bit a showman’s flair. From the corner of her eye, she saw him wagging a finger at her, grinning. “You looked different in the picture, but I knew, I knew that Theta was my long-lost wife, Betty Sue. And that Russian baloney was made up by those showbiz people.” He took a deep breath. “I missed you, Betty Sue.”
Her mind could only absorb snatches of thought: Memphis. Flo. Scandal. All gone. All gone.
“See, I figured after that night and the fire, you musta had, whatchamacallit—amnesia or something. Walking around without a clue who you were or where you come from.”
Theta had spent her life not knowing that. All she could do was move forward. Roy was like falling back. He was studying her the way he used to, waiting to catch her for some invisible wrongdoing. But Theta had learned a lot the past two years.
“I don’t remember much at all,” she said, acting the part.
“You remember doing this? Look at me, Betty. Look.”
Slowly, Theta turned toward him. Roy moved into the light and Theta gasped. Half of his face was burned all the way up to the hairline. She could just see the faint outline of her handprint on his left cheek, a bumpy scar.
“You did that. I don’t know how, but you did.”
She was fighting to stay in her body. Her mind wanted to flee.