Lair of Dreams

  Mrs. Rosenthal opened the box and retrieved a cookie tin. “It’s right that you should have this now.”

  “I can’t thank you enough, Mrs. Rosenthal,” Sam said, taking the tin. It was all he could do not to rip off the lid right there. “Gosh, would ya look at the time? Golly, I wish we could stay longer, Mrs. Rosenthal, but we’ve got to get Lamb Chop here back to the radio station for her show.”

  “But we’ll send you an invitation to the wedding,” Evie said cheerily as Sam edged her toward the door.

  “You’ll come for Shabbos,” Mrs. Rosenthal called after them.

  “We’ll Shabbos as much as possible,” Evie said as Sam practically dragged her from the apartment.

  “How was I supposed to know Shabbos is the Jewish Sabbath?” Evie said as she and Sam boarded the nearly empty El back to Manhattan. “And it couldn’t hurt to invite her to a wedding that’ll never happen. Sam, is everything jake? You look like you just got off a roller coaster.”

  “Evie, I didn’t know any of that about my mother,” Sam said as he watched the Bronx roll past the train’s windows.

  Evie shook the tin gently. “I’m guessing it’s not cookies.”

  Evie slid closer to Sam, who pried off the lid. Inside were two items: a file and an old photograph of a woman wearing a long plaid dress and holding a little boy’s hand.

  “That’s my mother,” Sam said, staring at the sweet photo. “And that’s me.”

  Evie giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” Sam asked.

  “You in short pants. And those are some chubby cheeks!”

  “That’s enough of that,” Sam said, yanking the photograph away. He lifted the file, which was just a typed sheet. “Looks like a report.”

  U.S. Department of Paranormal

  Office B-130

  New York, New York

  Date: September 8, 1908

  Name: Miriam Lubovitch

  Race: Jewish

  Age: 20

  Country of Origin: Ukraine

  Address: 122 Hester Street, New York, New York.

  Subject has passed all tests. In good health.

  Recommended candidate: Project Buffalo.

  Across the bottom, the page was stamped: APPROVED.

  Sam’s insides buzzed. “You know what I’m gonna ask, don’t you?”

  Evie nodded. “A deal’s a deal.”

  “You know, at times like these, I’d consider making an honest woman of you, future Mrs. Lloyd.”

  “I said I’d read it. There’s no need to torture me, Sam.” Evie took the file between her palms and pressed down. But no matter how hard she tried, nothing flared. “Gee, I’m sorry, Sam. I can’t get a thing from this report. Honest, I can’t,” she said, feeling rather put out about it. For her to decide not to read an object was one thing. It was entirely another for a read to feel beyond her capabilities.

  “Well, thanks for trying, anyway,” Sam said.

  Evie examined the file again. “Office B-130. But there’s no address. That office could be anywhere.”

  “I know.” Sam sighed. “Every time we get one answer it leaves us with twelve new questions.”

  “What about your creepy man?”

  “Do you mean my contact?”

  Evie waved his words away. “Contact, creepy man…”

  “Last time I saw him, he told me he thought he was being watched.”

  “By whom? Gangsters?”

  “Don’t know. He just told me to stay away. But this is too important. I gotta try.”

  “Sam, did you ever think of asking a reporter to look into this story?”

  “Are you crackers? Bring one of those shiny-suit-wearing newshounds into this?”

  “But why not? Put one of those dogs on the scent! They’ll find the goods soon enough.”

  “Nothing doing. I work alone. With occasional company,” he acknowledged. “But no reporters. Got it?”

  Evie put her hands up. “Forget I mentioned it. Oh,” she said, wincing. “What a skull-banger.”

  She rested her throbbing head against the train window as the El rattled through city canyons. The last rays of sunlight brightened rooftops and glinted off office windows, reluctant to say good-bye. Down below, the afternoon gloom bathed the bustling city streets in deepening shadows of loneliness. Sam laced his fingers through Evie’s and held fast. It was a small gesture, but Evie felt it everywhere at once.

  “You’re the elephant’s eyebrows, doll,” he said.

  Evie’s face was suddenly too warm. “Someone has to look after you, Sam Lloyd.”

  The train rattled to a stop.

  “Come on. I’ll walk you to the station,” Sam said, offering his crooked arm. “Gotta put on a show for the adoring fans.”

  “Right,” Evie said, threading her arm through his. “For the fans.”

  On their walk to WGI, Sam and Evie were mobbed by New Yorkers who were happy to shake their hands and wish them well. They called Sam’s and Evie’s names as if the two of them were movie stars or royalty.

  “Tell me the truth, Sam—isn’t that the best sound you ever heard? I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.”

  “Gee. You might have to keep me on, then,” Sam teased. The truth was, he was enjoying their cooked-up romance a little too much. Whenever Evie looked at him from across whatever room they were working, he got a feeling in his stomach like they were sharing the most delicious secret. It was fun and exciting—the two of them against the world. He dreaded the countdown to the end of it all. Was it too much to hope that he could change her mind along the way?

  “Have a swell show, darling,” Sam said, playing his part. He kissed Evie’s hand and turned to the crowd. “Folks, you have no idea how soft this girl’s hand is. Oh, hold on a second—that’s her glove. Folks, you have no idea how soft this girl’s gloves are!”

  Everybody laughed, including Evie, and Sam’s hopes rose anew. He gave her a you liked that? grin, and he could swear by the way she bit her lip and smiled that she did. He wanted nothing more than to come up with ways to keep her smiling.

  “Good-bye, Sam,” Evie said, shaking her head.

  As she pushed through WGI’s front doors, Evie glanced back at the scene on the street. The girls beamed at Sam as he charmed them, his dark hair flopping into his eyes. A twinge of jealousy bit at Evie. She’d had the urge to kiss Sam right there so that everyone would know he was indisputably hers. Except that he wasn’t. This was a game. A business arrangement. And falling for Sam Lloyd was the don’t-you-dare cherry on top of a worst-idea sundae.

  “Stop it, Evie O’Neill,” she whispered to herself. “Stop it right this instant.”

  Evie was startled to see Sarah Snow standing in the deep shadows cast by WGI’s grand gilded Art Deco clock.

  “You’ve drawn quite the crowd, Miss O’Neill,” Sarah said, her gaze directed out at the throngs of adoring fans, some of them still shouting Evie’s name.

  “Oh. Well.” Evie was suddenly at a loss for words. “You have admirers, too, Miss Snow.”

  “Not like yours,” Sarah said, her eyes still on the crowd. “If I did, Mr. Phillips might not threaten to cancel my radio hour. Apparently, my sponsor doesn’t find bringing lost souls to Jesus as entertaining or profitable as reading objects. There’s money for Diviners, but not the Divine.” For just a moment, Sarah’s eyes flashed. But then her placid smile returned. “I must say, I’ve come to admire your courage, Miss O’Neill.”

  “My courage?”

  “Yes, indeed. It’s quite brave of you to handle all those objects belonging to complete strangers. Why, some people would be afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?” Evie said.

  “There’s our little radio star!” Mr. Phillips boomed. He marched toward her, brandishing a newspaper, a retinue of secretaries and reporters behind him. “Great showing at the fights last night. You two were more popular than the boxing,” he said, holding out the Daily News, where the front-page picture showed Sam and Ev
ie sitting ringside. “I tell you, I wish I had twenty of this girl! I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

  “Not at all, Mr. Phillips,” Sarah Snow answered calmly. “I was just telling Miss O’Neill how much I admire her courage.”

  “Whaddaya mean?” a reporter asked.

  “Why, the sleeping sickness, of course. After all, we don’t know how people take ill. Anyone could have it. Any object could be contaminated.”

  “Say, that’s true,” a reporter said, jotting it down. “You ever get spooked about that, Miss O’Neill?”

  “Oh. Gee…” Evie said. She’d never thought about it before, but now the worry wormed its way into her thoughts. What did she know about the objects people brought in? About the people? Nothing, really. Not until she was already pressing into their secrets with her hands, and then it was too late.

  “Now, now, our Evie isn’t afraid of some little old sleeping sickness,” Mr. Phillips said, waving the thought away, as he did anything that didn’t affect him directly. “It’s mostly confined to downtown, isn’t it? It’s a matter of proper hygiene. Those people don’t come to WGI, I can guarantee you.”

  “Of course, Mr. Phillips. I’m sure it’s all perfectly fine. Still, I suppose you never know what you’re in for when someone hands you their secrets,” Sarah Snow said. Her smile followed two seconds too late.

  “These fellas want a picture of us in the studio, Evie,” Mr. Phillips said, then escorted Evie and the reporters toward WGI’s bank of shining elevators. As the elevator doors closed on the grand marble lobby and the crowd of admirers on the other side of the glass doors, Evie saw that Sarah Snow was still standing in the clock’s deep shadows, watching her intently.

  It reminded Evie for all the world of a cat watching a mouse.

  But then she was on the radio, her voice reaching out to people everywhere. The applause was for her. Afterward, fans lined up around the block to have her sign their autograph books. And Sarah Snow was forgotten.

  Evie decided to walk the ten blocks back home to the Winthrop so she could enjoy the admiring looks of people on the street.

  “A penny for one who served, Miss?”

  A filthy, unshaven man in a wheelchair shook his cup at her. Evie recognized him as the veteran she’d given money to during her first week in New York.

  “The time is now. The time is now,” he murmured. His anguished eyes searched for something beyond sight.

  Evie was angry that this poor man, ruined by war, had been abandoned to a hard life on the streets. If Sarah Snow were here now, Evie would ask her to explain why her God allowed war and poverty and cruelty to happen so often. Sometimes, Evie wished she had an object of God’s to read so that she could begin to understand.

  “Help,” the veteran croaked. “Please.”

  Evie had three dollars to her name; Prohibition gin wasn’t cheap. To hell with it, she thought. She was the Sweetheart Seer; she’d get somebody to buy her a drink.

  “Here you are, sir,” she said and stuffed all three dollars into the soldier’s can. Quick as loose mercury, the man grabbed her wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong.

  “I hear them screaming,” the man whispered urgently through gritted teeth. Spit foamed at the corners of his cracked lips.

  “Let go!” Evie cried.

  “The eye. Follow the eye,” he pleaded.

  “Let me go! Please!”

  Evie stumbled back and the man banged his head softly against the brick, keening, “Stop, please. Stop screaming. Stop screaming.…”

  “How come you lied to Sister Walker the other day about where you’re from?” Isaiah asked Blind Bill as they walked back from the barbershop toward home. Octavia had to stay late at the school, and Bill had offered to take the boy to Floyd’s for a trim so he’d look nice for church on Sunday.

  “That woman don’t need to know my business,” Bill said. “It don’t pay to tell folks too much about yourself. You understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to tell me about your time with Sister Walker. What she make you do?”

  “She didn’t make me do anything.”

  “No, no. I know ain’t nobody can make little man do what he don’t want to do,” Bill said, giving a tight smile. “She do the cards with you, though, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many you get right?”

  “The last time, I got all of ’em right!” Isaiah crowed.

  Bill whistled. “That a fact?”

  “Mm-hmm. I was good at it,” Isaiah said. “Corner here, Mr. Johnson. Watch out.”

  “Thank you, son. But you know I ain’t Mr. Johnson. You call me Uncle Bill.”

  “Yes, sir, Uncle Bill,” the boy said, and he sounded pleased.

  “Seems to me that’s a mighty powerful gift you got there. Nothing bad about it,” Bill said as Isaiah led him around the corner. Bill could’ve navigated it himself, but he let the boy do it since it made him feel important.

  “That’s what I said!” Isaiah blurted.

  “Well, now, it wouldn’t do for me to tell you to go against your aunt. But you know how women do.”

  “Yes, I surely do,” Isaiah said on a sigh. The sound of the little man’s voice, going on like he knew about women, made Bill want to laugh. He reached out and ran his hand over the top of Isaiah’s head like a pleased father.

  “Sometimes men got to have their secrets. Am I right?”

  “Right.”

  “So what we gonna do is, we gonna have a little secret ’tween us men right now, all right? Now, you can’t be telling your auntie ’bout none of this. This is men talk!”

  “All right,” Isaiah said, sounding pleased again.

  “Shake on it,” Bill said and took the boy’s small, soft hand in his own rough, weathered one. “Old Bill thinks you oughta be working on your special gift. Making it stronger. And I’m gonna help you come into your gifts right. What you say to that?”

  Isaiah was all balled up. After he’d recovered from his fit, Isaiah had gone to church with Octavia to see Pastor Brown, who had prayed over him, and they’d made Isaiah promise that he’d never use his powers again. But now here was another grown-up, Blind Bill, asking him to open it all back up. Isaiah didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore.

  “Auntie told me not to,” was all he said, as if that could settle the matter.

  Bill took a deep breath through his teeth and whistled it out, thinking about just what to say next. “Your auntie is a good woman. A smart woman. I wouldn’t never go against her. I just want to make sure whatever Sister Walker done to you is all gone, you see? Want to make sure there’s nothing that the pastor and prayer didn’t get rid of. Understand?”

  “You think something bad could be hiding inside me, left over from Sister Walker?” Isaiah asked, his voice quavery.

  “No need to be scared, son. I’ll protect you. I’ll take it on, as if I was your daddy. Once the bad’s gone, you’ll have your gifts back, good as new, fresh as Eden. You reckon that’s all right, then? If I watch over you and promise to keep you safe like your daddy would do if he were here?”

  Isaiah swallowed hard against the ballooning in his throat. Sometimes he couldn’t even remember his daddy’s face, and when that happened, it was like he was losing a part of himself, like waking from a good dream and trying desperately to go back into sleep and grab the ribbon’s end of that other world as it slips away for good. He dug his fingernails into the soft pillowing of flesh at the base of his thumb. “I reckon that’d be okay.”

  “Good, good. Let’s go on up to the graveyard. Ain’t far from here.”

  Isaiah led Bill the few blocks to the cemetery, where they found a mausoleum with an open door and went inside.

  “Spooky in here,” Isaiah said, his voice echoing a bit in the space.

  “Can’t have nobody watching us,” Bill explained. “Here. Take hold o’ my hands, now,” Bill said, and the boy laid his own palms, soft and unformed, a
gainst the rough calluses of Bill’s. “You good, little man?”

  Isaiah nodded, then remembered Bill’s blindness. “Yes, sir,” he answered.

  “All right, then. No tickling now. ’Cause I’m real ticklish!” Bill reached out and tickled Isaiah under the chin, making him laugh. The boy sounded happy enough. Good. Bill needed him relaxed. He took the boy’s hands again. “Let’s start easy. Gonna make a connection with me, now. You tell me if you see a lucky policy number for your old Uncle Bill, and if I win some money, I’ll buy you a new baseball. Just close your eyes.”

  Isaiah took his hands away. “I’m scared.”

  “Nothing to be scared of. I’ma take care of you.”

  Isaiah put his hands back.

  “Nice and easy now. Just a little taste…”

  There was nothing but the sound of leaves skittering across the tombstones. And then, suddenly, a pull on Isaiah’s fingers, like the first nibble of a fish on a baited hook. The connection trickled up Bill’s arm, warming into a pleasant, electric buzz under the skin. The boy’s body stiffened, but his voice had the calm of a sleepwalker. “I see a house and long road. A lot of sky.”

  “Yeah? You see a number, little man?” Power flowed from Isaiah’s body to Bill’s. He had to be careful not to drain the boy. He just needed a number.

  “A tree.” Isaiah jerked. He sounded a little scared. “Tree.”

  “You ain’t scared of no tree, is ya?” Bill said, impatient.

  Isaiah twitched twice, yanking on Bill’s grip. Dammit. He couldn’t stay too much longer or he might hurt the boy. But Dutch needed Bill’s money, and that meant Bill needed a number.

  “What about a number? What numbers you see?”

  Isaiah’s whole body trembled. Bill could feel it traveling up his arms.

  “One, four, four,” the boy said. “One, four, four,” he repeated, louder.

  That couldn’t be right. One, four, four was the number Isaiah had given him the last time, and it had done very nicely for Bill. But odds weren’t good that it would be a winner again so soon. “You sure you seeing that right, little man? Look close—”

  “One, four, four! One, four, four! Ghosts on the road! Gonna come for us. Ghosts on the road. Ghosts on the road, Ghosts on the road…”