Lair of Dreams

“I thought you’d be happy for me,” Henry said, hurt.

“I am, Hen. But I’m worried about you. It’s like you live more inside that dream world than you do the regular world these days. You’re skinny and beat, and you’re miles away even when…” Theta stopped suddenly. Her eyes narrowed. “Hen, where’d you get the kale for the train ticket?”

Henry kept his eyes on the ground. “I’ll pay it back.”

“Son of a bitch, Henry!” Theta barked. A couple passing by on Forty-second Street gave her a disapproving glare. “Breeze, Mrs. Grundy! This ain’t your business,” she growled and they hurried on.

“You made that fund for me because you wanted me to be happy. Having Louis in New York will make me happy, Theta.” Henry had been excited to share the news with Theta. Now it felt like a mistake.

“Hen, that piano fund is our piano fund. It’s for our future. You and me. A team. At least I always figured it that way.”

“I thought you of all people would understand.”

“That ain’t fair, Hen. You know I’m on your side. Always.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Henry said, and he and Theta watched the people walking past on Forty-second Street rendered momentarily insubstantial as they stepped through the steam rising from the city’s manholes. In the alley, he and Theta stood side by side, but they’d never been farther apart.





Between his new role as Evie’s pretend fiancé and putting in more hours at the museum now that Will was gone, Sam had found little time to follow up on his Project Buffalo leads. Finally, he managed to slip away and down to his old neighborhood on the Lower East Side. Many businesses were closed due to the sleeping sickness, and Sam had no luck on Orchard Street until a pickle vendor informed him that the Rosenthals had made good and moved to the Bronx.

Now Sam and Evie waited outside the sprawling apartment building on the Grand Concourse, an aspirational Tudor made for Jews who wanted to reinvent themselves once they’d left the crowded tenements of Orchard and Hester Streets—those tenements themselves a remove from the shtetls and ghettos of Russia, Poland, Romania, and Hungary. Every building had its ghosts, it seemed.

“I don’t see why I had to come,” Evie groused.

Sam put his fingers to his cheeks, making dimples. “Because you’re my darling fiancée. Everybody loves the Sweetheart Seer!” he said sarcastically. “Oh, one more thing—if she asks, you’re converting to Judaism.”

“What? Sam!”

“Don’t worry. Everything’s jake, Baby Vamp. Just follow my lead.”

“If that’s supposed to be reassuring, it’s not,” Evie grumbled.

They took the stairs, dodging a handful of merry children running amok, and knocked at Mrs. Rosenthal’s door. Anna Rosenthal was rounder and older than the young woman Evie had seen in her vision. She wore glasses now, and a few threads of gray showed in her dulled red hair, but it was unmistakably the same woman. Mrs. Rosenthal uttered a small cry before crushing Sam into a fierce hug. She stood back, shaking her head affectionately as she assessed him. “Sergei!”

She spoke to Sam in Russian, and he answered in kind, faltering a little. “Sorry, Mrs. Rosenthal, my Russian’s a little rusty these days.”

“Everyone forgets,” she said, and Sam couldn’t tell if it was said with sadness or gratitude.

Evie cleared her throat.

“And this,” Sam said, hugging her, “is the apple of my eye, my lovely bride-to-be, Evie O’Neill.”

“Charmed,” Evie said, curtsying.

“Yes, I read all about it in the papers! But I had no idea the famous Sam Lloyd was our Sergei Lubovitch until you telephoned and told me. But, please—come in, come in!”

Mrs. Rosenthal welcomed them into a parlor whose every stick of furniture wore a doily yarmulke. From the kitchen, she brought out a plate of mandelbrodt and a pot of coffee.

“Sergei Lubovitch!” Mrs. Rosenthal exclaimed, pressing her fingers to her lips. “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby. And here you are, grown. And so handsome.”

“You don’t look a day older, Mrs. Rosenthal. Why, I’d know you anywhere,” Sam said.

The charm didn’t fail to work on Mrs. Rosenthal, who laughed and waved away the compliment. “Tell me of your mother and father.”

“My father runs a fur shop in Chicago. My mother, I’m sorry to say, died many years ago.”

Mrs. Rosenthal put a hand to her chest and bowed her head. “Such terrible news. Poor Miriam. I remember on the ship coming over, she was so sick with you.”