Gently, Wai-Mae lifted the hem of Ling’s skirt and trailed her fingers down Ling’s shins. Then she began to work the muscles, kneading with surprisingly strong fingers. Ling suppressed a gasp. In the hospital following the infection, the doctors had immobilized her legs in plaster, then splints, then braces. Her legs felt separate. A caged exhibition. No one touched them. Even Ling touched her own body as little as possible.
“Do that every day,” Wai-Mae commanded. She leaned her head back, toward the sun, gazing out at the golden hills. “I, too, want to stay here always. In dreams. No pain, no strife.” Her face settled into sadness. “I will tell you a secret of my own. I don’t like Mr. O’Bannion. He is not a good man, I don’t think. He lies.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard gossip today on the ship about one of the other girls he brought over. They say that when she arrived in America, there was no husband to greet her, no marriage. She had been tricked. Instead of a husband, the girl was forced to work in a brothel,” Wai-Mae whispered. “They say she is broken now. She cries all the time. Oh, sister, I must trust the judgment of my uncle, but still, I’m afraid.”
Ling wondered whether she should tell Wai-Mae about her own misgivings. But she didn’t want to worry her unnecessarily. She’d wait until she could speak to Mr. Lee. And she would redouble her efforts to find this Mr. O’Bannion. If necessary, she’d have Uncle Eddie speak to the Association so that they could make sure a similar fate wouldn’t befall Wai-Mae.
“Don’t worry. I’ll look after you,” Ling said.
Wai-Mae smiled at Ling. “I am so grateful that I have you.”
Ling looked into Wai-Mae’s endless brown eyes, and she felt the dream stirring inside her, shifting her molecules, rearranging her atoms, transforming her into something new and beautiful. It made her dizzy.
“What is it, sister?” Wai-Mae asked.
“Nothing,” Ling said, catching her breath. “Nothing.”
“Soon I will be in New York,” Wai-Mae said, a smile lighting up her face. “We will go to your uncle’s opera, or perhaps even Booth’s Theatre. And on Sundays, we can promenade like fine ladies in our very best bonnets. Oh, such fun we’ll have, Ling!”
“No one wears a bonnet,” Ling said, trying not to giggle.
“My village is very small,” Wai-Mae said, embarrassed. “You will show me what’s fashionable.”
“If I’m showing you what’s fashionable, you’re in trouble,” Ling said, feeling chastened for teasing Wai-Mae.
“We will be like sisters,” Wai-Mae said.
“Yes,” Ling murmured. But what she wanted to say as the pearl-white flowers shook down from the low branch of a blooming dogwood tree was No. We will be friends. True friends. Best friends.
“Come, dear Ling,” Wai-Mae said, jumping up and offering her hand.
And they passed the hours dancing under skies so shimmery blue it hurt to look up.
In the city of six million dreams, Evie and Sam were the dreamiest. New York couldn’t get enough of the newest gossip sensation. Everywhere they went, they were mobbed: Sitting ringside at the fights. Posed beside a millionaire’s champion horse at a Long Island stable. Dining in the elegant Cascades Room of the Biltmore Hotel beside an orderly row of potted cherry trees. Watching Bye, Bye, Bonnie at the Ritz Theatre. Stepping out of Texas Guinan’s infamous 300 Club with confetti in their hair or skating on the frozen pond in Central Park. Fans clustered outside the radio station and the Winthrop Hotel and even the museum hoping for a glimpse of New York’s latest golden couple. Nightclubs vied for their patronage. Gifts small and large arrived by messenger in boxes thick with tissue paper—“A token of our ‘divine’ affection!”—and inside would be a brooch or cuff links and a promise of the establishment’s best table on any night Sam ’n’ Evie would care to grace them with their presence and, oh, perhaps the Sweetheart Seer would be kind enough to mention their establishment fondly on the radio or in the papers?
Letters poured in by the thousands. The Daily News posted a picture of the adorable sweethearts in Mr. Phillips’s majestic office, buried up to their necks in fan mail. Radio Star listed Evie’s “Tips for Savvy Shebas,” which included “Never leave the house without rouging your knees” and “Keep your enemies close, and your flask closer.” Thanks to the two of them, WGI was fast becoming the number one radio station in the nation. A line stretched around the block from WGI to get in to Evie’s show.
She loved every minute of it.
“And don’t forget, darlings,” she reminded listeners. “Sam and I will be hosting the opening-night party for the Diviners exhibit at the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult next week. If you buy a raffle ticket, you can win a free object reading performed by yours truly.”
On the West Side of Manhattan lay a congested strip of real estate called Radio Row where an enterprising sort could purchase radio parts of all kinds, from the commonplace to the hard-to-find. What Sam sought now was very hard to find, indeed. It was all he thought about as he walked up Cortlandt Street, past stores blaring music and competing sidewalk salesmen trying to entice passersby with the siren’s call of the newest, most expensive models: “Brand-new crystal set!” “Westinghouse—it’s all electric!” “Radiola means quality!” “Trust Cunningham tubes—they’re insured!” “Sound so clear you could go next door and not miss a note through the wall!”
Sam stepped inside a dark showroom, past the boring suburban mom-and-pops admiring the showroom wares, carefully avoiding eye contact with overeager salesmen readying their smooth pitches. He kept his head down on his way to the sales counter, hoping he wouldn’t be recognized. At the counter, a mustachioed man with slicked-back hair finished writing up a sales slip and smiled at Sam. “Could I interest you in a new radio today, sir? We’ve the newest models in stock—six-, eight-, and ten-tube circuits.”
“What I really need is a Buffalo tube. But so far, I haven’t had much luck finding it. I understand Mr. Arnold carries them?” Sam said, sliding over a folded note attached to a five-dollar bill he’d lifted from a wallet on the way over.
The man’s smile vanished. “Mr. Arnold, you say?”
“Yes. Ben Arnold. That’s the fella.”
“Excuse me for a moment, won’t you?” The man disappeared behind a heavy drape at the back of the store. A few minutes later, he returned. “It seems that we don’t have that part right now, sir. It has been ordered.” The man returned Sam’s note minus the five dollars. “This is your receipt of purchase. But I’m afraid this is the last time Mr. Arnold can order this part for you, sir. Your particular model is very… popular at present. A bit too popular, if you take my meaning.”
Sam grimaced. Sam ’n’ Evie. The spotlight from their cooked-up romance was throwing a little too much glare on Sam’s private life.
“Pal, I hear you like a crystal set,” Sam said.
Out on the street, he opened the note. A key had been taped to the inside. There was no accompanying information. A salesman waved Sam over. “Could I interest you in a Zenith six-tube model with superior musical tone? It’s fully electric!”
“Thanks, pal. So am I,” Sam shouted. He shoved the note and key in his pocket, walking away from the cacophony of Radio Row toward the rumble of the Ninth Avenue El.
Down the street, the men in the brown sedan watched it all.
Every day, the newspapers carried bold warnings about the sleeping sickness.
New York’s health commissioner encouraged citizens to wash their hands frequently, to clean homes daily, and to avoid large crowds, especially open-air markets, protests, and workers’ rallies. Citizens needed to keep clear of buildings plastered with yellow quarantine posters. For the time being, they advised people not to travel to Chinatown or “foreign neighborhoods.” Some parents petitioned to have Chinese students barred from the classroom. Letters to the editor blamed the scourge on immigrants, jazz, loose morals, the flouting of Prohibition, bobbed hair, the aut
omobile, and anarchists. Lawmakers argued about whether to add yet another brick in the ever-rising legislative wall of the Chinese Exclusion Act. They called for a return to traditional American morals and old-time religion. On the radio, Sarah Snow exhorted her followers to turn away from jazz babies and give themselves over to Jesus. Afterward, an announcer assured listeners that “Pears soap is the one to keep your family safe and healthy and free from exotic disease.”
In Chinatown, a large rock painted with a message—CHINESE GO HOME!—shattered the front window of Chong & Sons, Jewelers. An arsonist’s fire gutted the Wing Sing restaurant overnight; Mr. Wing stood in the softly falling wisps of soot-flecked snow, his sober face backlit by the orange glow as he watched everything he’d built burn to the ground. Police broke up social club meetings and even a banquet celebrating the birth of Yuen Hong’s first son. The mayor refused to allow the Chinese New Year celebrations to go on out of fears for public health. In protest, the Chinese Benevolent Association organized a march down Centre Street to City Hall, where the protestors were ordered to disperse or face arrest and possible deportation. The streets smelled of pork and winter, ash from the burnings and incense from the prayers offered to ancestors they hoped would look favorably upon them in this hour. On every street, red plaques appeared outside buildings to guide the dead back home. Talcum powder dusted the thresholds; entrances were watched for signs of ghosts.
Fear was everywhere.
At a eugenics conference in the elegant ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, genteel men in genteel suits spoke of “the mongrel problem—the ruin of the white race.” They pointed to drawings and diagrams that proved most disease could be traced to inferior breeding stock. They called this science. They called it fact. They called it patriotism.
People drank their coffee and nodded in agreement.
As Memphis Campbell made his runner rounds, his thoughts were elsewhere. He and Theta hadn’t spoken since their disastrous night at Small’s Paradise. Memphis didn’t understand how you could tell a fella you loved him and then run out like that. He missed her terribly, but he had too much pride to call. Theta would need to come to him first.
“Memphis, you listening to me, son?” Bill Johnson asked. “You get that number right?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Johnson. One, four, four,” Memphis said. “I’ll put it in for you, just like I did yesterday and the day before that. Don’t know why you keep playing it if you’re not winning.”
“Call it a hunch,” Bill said, but he sounded angry. The bluesman cocked his head, angling it toward the sound of Memphis’s voice. “Heard a peculiar story this morning over to Floyd’s. You know that ol’ drunk, Noble Bishop?”
“I know him some,” Memphis said. His stomach had gone to butterflies.
“Never known him when he’s not stone-cold drunk or shaking like a old dog from the lack of it. But this morning, he showed up to Floyd’s sober as a deacon and asking could he work around the shop sweeping up. Said he had a visitation from an angel. A miracle.” Bill paused a moment to let his next words sink in. “A healing.”
“Is that so?” Memphis said, trying to keep his voice even.
“It is.” Bill’s lips twisted into a sneer. “Seem like a waste of a miracle, you ask me. What’s that old no-account drunk gonna do with a gift like that? He prob’ly be back in the gutter by next Tuesday,” Bill spat out. “The Lord sure works in mysterious ways.”
“That’s what they say,” Memphis said and smiled.
“That is, in fact, what they say,” Bill said, and did not smile.
When Memphis got home, there was a telegram waiting for him.
DEAR POET, SORRY FOR THE DISAPPEARING ACT. FEELING MUCH BETTER NOW. P.S. HOTSY TOTSY TONIGHT? YOURS, PRINCESS.
“Who sent you a telegram?” Isaiah asked, wide-eyed. “Somebody die?”
“Nope. Everybody and everything is very much alive,” Memphis said, feeling like there had been two miracles.
That night, Henry and Ling set their alarms for their longest dream walk yet—a full five hours. The next day, Henry woke to Theta sitting at the foot of his bed, glaring at him through a cigarette haze. Light seeped under the roller shades.
“What time is it?” Henry asked. His mouth was dry.
“Half past three. In the afternoon,” Theta said tersely. “You look like hell.”
“Why, thank you, Miss Knight.”
“I’m not kidding. How long before you can get up outta that bed?”
Henry’s muscles ached like he’d been moving furniture all night long. He ran his tongue across chapped lips. “I’m right as rain. Just got a little cold, that’s all.”
“No, you’re not okay.” Theta slapped down a piece of paper. It was an advertisement cut from the newspaper for a lecture by “Dr. Carl Jung, renowned psychoanalyst” at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. “This egghead fella, Jung—he knows all about dreams. Maybe he knows about dream walking. Maybe he could help you, Hen.”
“I’m fine.”
“I think we should go.”
“You go.”
“You could at least hear what he has to say—”
“I said I’m fine!” Henry snapped.
Theta flinched. “Don’t yell,” she whispered.
“Sorry. Sorry, darlin’,” Henry said, feeling guilty and angry at the same time. His teeth chattered and his stomach hurt. “Come sit next to me. It’s so cold.”
For a second, it looked like Theta might give in and lie down next to him with her head on his chest, like old times. Instead, she swiped back the newspaper advertisement and headed for the bedroom door without looking back. “I gotta bathe. Rehearsal’s in an hour. In case you care.”
At rehearsal, Henry was so exhausted he could barely concentrate.
“Henry! That was your cue!” Wally barked from the front row.
Henry looked up to see the dancers glaring at him.
“Sorry, folks,” Henry drawled, snapping back to the present. For a second, his eyes caught Theta’s. He saw the worry there just before it edged into anger. He tried to make her laugh with a silly face, but she wasn’t having it.
“If there’s anything I hate, it’s having my time wasted. Let’s get this show on the road,” she announced to no one in particular, though Henry understood the comment was meant for his ears.
Other stories appeared here and there: A couple of subway workers vanished underground. Their lanterns were found still glowing in the tunnel they’d been hollowing out for the extension of the IRT. A pocketbook belonging to a Miss Rose Brock mysteriously ended up on the tracks near the Fourteenth Street station. Despondent over a failed love affair, she’d gone to a speakeasy on the West Side with friends and disappeared. Suicide was feared. A token booth clerk was suspended on suspicion of drinking when he swore he saw a faintly glowing ghost down at the dark end of the tracks. One minute, the pale thing was crouched on its haunches, he claimed, and the next, it skittered up the walls and out of sight. Some riders reported seeing odd flickers of greenish light from subway train windows. Diggers working on the construction of the new Holland Tunnel refused to go below. Down in the depths, they’d heard the terrifying swarming sounds of some unnameable infestation. A Diviner had been called in to give his blessing; he insisted it was all clear, but the workers knew he’d been paid to say it, and now they would only go down in groups and wearing every one of their charms against bad luck. The vagrant population was down; all the unfortunates known to frequent subway platforms, sewers, and train tunnels for warmth in the winter had seemingly disappeared in a matter of days.
On the West Side, two boys had been playing near a storm drain when one was suddenly swept away. Police searched the area below the grate, shining flashlights in sewer lines. They found nothing except for the poor boy’s baseball and one of his shoes. But the surviving child insisted that it wasn’t the water to blame, for he’d seen an unearthly pale hand reach up from below and yank his friend down by his ankle, quick as a
rabbit snatched by the strong jaws of a trap.
People disappeared. That wasn’t unusual in a city where ruthless gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz, and Al Capone were as famous as movie stars. But the missing weren’t gangsters “disappeared” after a disagreement or turf war. Handmade signs appeared on lampposts and outside subway entrances, desperate pleas from frantic loved ones: VANISHED: PRESTON DILLON, FULTON STREET SUBWAY STATION. MISSING: COLLEEN MURPHY, SCHOOLTEACHER, AUBURN HAIR, BLUE EYES, TWENTY YEARS OF AGE. DO YOU KNOW: TOMAS HERNANDEZ, BELOVED SON? LAST SEEN ENTERING CITY HALL SUBWAY STATION. LAST SEEN IN THE VICINITY OF PARK ROW. LAST SEEN LEAVING FOR WORK. LAST SEEN. LAST SEEN. LAST SEEN…
But these were insignificant stories in a city full of them. These random accounts were pushed to the newspapers’ back pages, past flashy reports about Babe Ruth driving his new Pierce-Arrow touring car to Yankee Stadium or a shining picture of Jake Marlowe surveying the marshy ground of Queens for his Future of America Exhibition or exhaustive reports on what the Sweetheart Seer wore to a party with her beau, the dashing Sam Lloyd.
For the newspapers, it seemed, were typeset with dreams of their own.
“You write a lot of love songs. Have you ever been in love?” Ling asked Henry on the eighth night as they waited for the train.
“Yes,” Henry said and did not elaborate. “How about you?”
Ling remembered looking into Wai-Mae’s eyes.
“No,” she said.
“Smart girl. Love is hell,” Henry joked. He sat down at the piano and played something new.
“What is this song?” Ling asked. It sounded different from the other songs Henry had been playing. Those were forgettable. But the piece taking shape now was strange and lovely and haunting. It had weight.