Lair of Dreams

“We have a deal, Evie.”


Evie narrowed her eyes. “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth.”

“If I were the last man on earth it’d be because you drove the other poor suckers to early graves. Read.”

With a grunt at Sam, Evie closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and employed the tricks she’d learned on her radio show over the past two months when an object’s history proved elusive. She pressed the flat of her palm against Rotke’s handwriting, personal as a thumbprint, hoping it would provide an opening. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get much there—just frustrating blips of memory that wouldn’t stay. Undaunted, she concentrated on the scrawled Return to Sender message, rubbing her thumb back and forth as if she were reading Braille. A spark of the past flared promisingly, then began to burn down.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Evie whispered, kneading harder with the pads of her fingers. The wobbly vision steadied on the front window of a kosher butcher shop hung with thick rations of marbled beef. The door opened and an unfamiliar woman came out. The vision seemed to want to stay with her.

“I’ve got something,” Evie said, a little dreamily. “Does your mother have reddish hair?”

“No. Dark, like me.”

Sweat beaded on Evie’s forehead as she pressed deeper. The red-haired woman ambled down a crowded street bordered by pushcarts piled high with various wares. Several women draped in sashes reading VOTES FOR WOMEN stood on the sidewalk, and Evie could feel a hint of the red-haired woman’s disapproval of the suffragettes, just as she could feel that the disapproval masked a deeper desire to join them. Evie stayed with the woman as she moved past two men unloading a steaming block of ice from the back of a truck with huge tongs.

“I-I can’t get a place yet,” Evie said, moving her thumb along the envelope. “O-R-C-H… Orchard Street!”

A man in a yarmulke and butcher’s apron trundled after the woman, waving a sheath of letters. “There’s a man. He’s… he’s calling to her. ‘Anna!’ he’s saying. ‘Anna, you forgot your mail.’”

“Anna…” Sam repeated, trying to place the name.

The red-haired woman stopped to leaf through her mail. Some of it was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Itzhak Rosenthal.

“Mrs. Rosenthal?” Evie mumbled in her trance.

“I don’t know a Mrs. Rosenthal,” Sam said.

Evie kept at it. The red-haired woman leafed through the last two letters. One was addressed to someone named Anna Polotnik. The last letter was the one from Rotke to Miriam.

“Got it!” Evie came out of her trance. “Who is Anna… P-o-l-o-t-n-i-k?”

“Anna… Anna…” Sam snapped his fingers as it came to him. “Of course! Anna Polotnik!”

“Of course! Dear old Anna,” Evie mocked.

“She was our neighbor when I was a kid,” Sam explained. “Came over on the same ship with my parents. Nice lady. When she made borscht, the entire building smelled like cabbage for days. The borscht was good, too. Now I remember—she used to go around with a fella named Rosenthal, Itzhak Rosenthal. She musta married him. Did you see anything else—anything about my mother?”

“No. But Anna didn’t look too happy about this letter, Sam. She seemed angry or worried.” The aftereffects of going so deep caught up to Evie. Her knees buckled, and Sam helped her to Mildred’s chair.

“You okay, Sheba?” Sam took out his handkerchief and blotted at her forehead.

“You’ll take all my paint off,” Evie said, angling her face away. The dreaded headache had started. “I don’t understand why Will had this letter. He told you he didn’t know your mother.”

“Maybe he didn’t,” Sam said. “This was in a collection of Rotke’s books. Maybe she was the one who knew my mother. I just hope Anna Polotnik can supply the answers. Once I find her.” Sam tucked the envelope back into his pocket, along with the handkerchief. “One more thing—now that you’ve got two nights a week on the radio, it sure would be swell if you could talk up the Diviners exhibit.”

“WGI and Pears soap don’t pay me to shill for the Creepy Crawly, Sam.”

“Just work it into the act: ‘All ghosts swear by Pears! The cleanest ghosts in town will be attending the Diviners exhibit at the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult!’”

“Sam, how is it that you can take a perfectly ordinary day and turn it crossways?” Evie asked, rubbing her temples.

Sam grinned and spread his hands wide. “Everybody’s got a talent, kid.”

Mildred knocked again. “Miss O’Neill? Will you be much longer?”

“That’s your cue to leave,” Evie said, pushing Sam toward the door. “Don’t forget about our date tonight—the party at the Pierre Hotel hosted by some rich Texan who made all his money in oil. He’s swimming in it—money, not oil. It’s good press.”