Lair of Dreams

  “No, Sam. A sand castle,” Evie retorted. “Yes, of course, a castle castle. But here’s the strange part: I’ve seen this particular castle before, in my dreams.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow. “And were you married to a handsome prince in that dream? Was there a scepter and a throne?”

  “Ha, ha.” Evie rolled her eyes. “Haaaa. But I have seen it in my dreams. At least, I think I have. Or one like it.”

  “Someday, I’m gonna buy you a castle, future Mrs. Lloyd,” Sam said. He liked the feel of Evie leaning into him, his arm around her.

  “I don’t know what to think when you’re not horrible. It’s very confusing,” Evie slurred. Impulsively, she kissed Sam, then laid her head on his shoulder again.

  Over the past few months, when he wasn’t picking pockets, searching the museum for clues to his mother’s whereabouts, betting on the fights, or sweet-talking chorus girls into passionate encounters in speakeasy cloakrooms, Sam had had the occasion to imagine kissing Evie. At first, these imagined scenarios had been full of hot air and Sam’s ego: Evie saying, Oh, my darling. I never knew it could be like this. Kiss me, you fool! before going limp in his arms due to Sam’s manly demonstrations of love. These fantasies were never quite satisfying, though, as if even Sam’s fevered imagination knew that was a load of bunk.

  What he’d never imagined was a day like they’d had—breaking into an office in a federal building, finding secret coded cards, and narrowly escaping from cops, Evie’s hand in his and a smile on her dusty face because she enjoyed the hunt as much as he did and they were in it together.

  “The room’s gone fuzzy. Does it look fuzzy to you, Sam?” Evie mumbled.

  “I think one of us is drunk, Lamb Chop.”

  “Must be the room,” Evie sighed.

  “It’s not the room.”

  “Well, it’s not me. I can hold my liquor like a sailor,” Evie slurred, her words getting very messy. A few seconds later, she was snoring.

  With a sigh, Sam maneuvered the pos-i-tute-ly dead-to-the-world Evie into the rolling chair and then pushed her into the elevator and up to her room, where he dropped her onto the bed.

  “I’d imagined this evening going a whole lot differently,” Sam grunted as he tucked Evie in. Her mouth was open and tiny snores escaped. “You are not a delicate sleeper, kid.”

  Sam planted a kiss on the top of Evie’s messy head. “Sweet dreams, Sheba.”

  The city is composed of islands crisscrossed by avenues and streets, tunnels and trolley lines—a grid of connections waiting to be made. Majestic bridges span the rivers in steel-spoked splendor, while the ferries carry their loads safely to shore.

  The bridges, the tunnels, the ferries and streets. And do they dream?

  The ferries dock in the terminal. They open their metal mouths to sing out the people who march forward, unseeing, heads like battering rams as they grimace at the blustery cold and sometimes forget to sing, sometimes forget that they were made for singing. The playful wind takes exception to this, and a hat skitters across a sidewalk, chased by a businessman in gray, which brings a chuckle to the audience of news agents and shoeshine boys, the telephone girls hurrying to work in shoes that pinch, the bricklayers, the street sweepers, the sidewalk vendors whose carts teem with whatever the citizens think they might need.

  High above it all, the window washers hoist themselves up by the miracle of rope and hover in midair on small planks to clean away the grit of so many dreams discarded. They wipe with their cloths until the lives on the other side of the glass become clearer. Every now and then, faces appear at these windows. Eyes meet for a second, maybe two, the observed and the observer each surprised to find the other exists. Then they look quickly away, the connection unmade, islands once more.

  The wind whistles down into the skyscraper-bound canyons, across the broad expanses of the avenues and the narrow confines of the streets, where lives unfold in secret, day in, day out:

  Sometimes a man sighs for want of love.

  Sometimes a child cries for the dropped lollipop, its sweetness barely tasted.

  Sometimes the girl gasps as the train screams into the station, shaken by how close she’d allowed herself to wander to the edge.

  Sometimes the drunk raises weary eyes to the rows of buildings rendered beautiful by a brief play of sunlight. “Lord?” he whispers into the held breath between taxi horns. The light catches on a city spire, fracturing for a second into glorious rays before the clouds move in again. The drunk lowers his eyes. “Lord, Lord…” he sobs, as if answering his own broken prayer.

  The cars drive on. The people hurry to and fro. They sigh and want and cry and dream. Taken together, their symphonic whyohwhy might reach the heavens and make the angels weep. Alone, they are no match for the noise of industry. The jackhammers. The cranes. The streetcars, subways, and aeroplanes. The constant whirring machinery of the dream factories. And do these things dream of more?

  Another day closes. The sun sinks low on the horizon. It slips below the Hudson, smearing the West Side of Manhattan in a slick of gold. Night arrives for its watchful shift. The neon city bursts its daytime seams, and the great carnival of dreams begins again.

  Evie woke in the middle of the night with a throbbing headache. With tremendous effort, her eyes struggled open. The room wobbled, then settled into focus. She had a vague memory of kissing Sam. In a woozy panic, she looked down, relieved to see that she was still in her party dress and alone. A wave of boozy nausea washed over her and she stumbled to the bathroom, where she splashed water over her puffy face. It was early, before dawn. Plenty of time to sleep, and to figure out a way to let Sam down easy. Evie angled her head to drink straight from the bathroom tap. Then she crawled back to bed to sleep it off.

  It was the light that woke her.

  Evie blinked, her eyes adjusting to the buttery morning sun bathing her room in a hazy glow. But this wasn’t her room at the Winthrop. This was her room on Poplar Street, back in Zenith. Slowly, she took it in: the dresser with her silver hand mirror, the painting of a Victorian girl selling flowers, the star-pattern quilt sewn by her grandmother when she was born. She was home.

  Hurriedly, she dressed and went downstairs, passing through the living room, where the Philco had been left on and a familiar voice burbled out of the radio cabinet’s speakers: “Now, dear Mr. Forman, you must let me concentrate! The spirits are throwing a real lulu of a party.…”

  How could her voice be coming from the radio if she was here in her parents’ living room in Ohio? She vaguely remembered standing on the platform in a pretty subway station and boarding the sweetest little train. She must’ve fallen asleep. This was a dream. That she knew this was a dream didn’t lessen her excitement. Quite the contrary; she felt everything even more, as if she were one step ahead of the moment and desperate to hold on to it. As if she would do anything to make it stay.

  The smell of bacon wafted out from the back of the house. Evie followed it through the dining room and into the familiar blue-and-white kitchen with the big window over the sink that looked out on a neat row of black-eyed Susans lining the gravel driveway.

  “Good morning, dear.” Her mother smiled as she settled flapjacks onto a plate. “Breakfast is nearly ready. Don’t play too long.”

  “I won’t,” Evie said, her voice quiet and even, as if she were afraid that to speak any louder would break the spell and end the magic of this dream.

  Her father strode into the room and kissed her mother on the cheek before sitting at the table with his newspaper. He looked up at Evie and smiled. “Don’t you look pretty as a picture today!”

  “Thank you, Papa.”

  Still at the stove, her mother called over one shoulder, “Evie, be a dear and call your brother in to breakfast, won’t you?”

  Evie’s heartbeat quickened. James. James was here.

  Light poured through the screen door, so bright she couldn’t see what lay beyond. She pushed through and saw that it was all as she re
membered it—the rope swing tied to the enormous oak tree, the summer garden with its ripe tomatoes, her father’s Buick parked by the toolshed. The hazy sun bathed it all in ephemeral beauty. Birds tweeted at the feeder. Cicadas buzzed pleasantly in the sweet, feathery grass.

  Someone was singing. “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.…”

  Through the hedges, Evie spied a flash of arm, a dangling leg, and her calm fell away as she ran toward the figure sprawled on the weather-beaten bench.

  “James?” Evie whispered so faintly she wasn’t sure he’d heard. But then he sat up, smiling wide at her. With the sun behind him, he glowed.

  “Well, if it isn’t my brave sister, Artemis, come to us from the hunt! Pray, what news from Olympus?”

  Every night, James would read to her from tales of Greek myth. They often spoke to each other in code that way—she was Artemis, he Apollo. Papa was Zeus. Mama was Hera. It was how they made it through insufferable social gatherings: “But soft! See how yon harpies descend upon the buffet,” James would whisper as a group of church ladies took the best treats at a luncheon. “Release Cerberus,” Evie would whisper back, giggling.

  She was supposed to tell him something for her mother, but her heart ached so much that she couldn’t remember what it was. “I… I just missed you. That’s all.”

  “Well, I’m right here.”

  Evie’s throat tightened. He was there—golden and sweet, her brother-protector, her best friend. A thought intruded, a terrible thought. Evie tried to push it away, but it buzzed at the edges of her consciousness, a bee in the garden.

  “No. You’re dead,” she whispered. It felt strange to her that even in dreams, she knew this. Even in dreams, she wasn’t safe from pain. She lost her battle with the tears. And then she felt the shock as his fingers wiped them from her cheeks.

  “Now, now, old girl. Don’t you know brave Artemis doesn’t cry? Here.” He plucked a black-eyed Susan and handed it to her. “Hold on.” From the bench, he retrieved a book of poetry—Wordsworth, his favorite. He nodded to the open page. “Here. Put it here.”

  Evie laid the flower in the book’s crease, and James read the poem beneath it: “Though nothing can bring back the hour / of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; / We will grieve not, rather find / Strength in what remains behind.” Smiling, he slammed the book shut. “There. Preserved for all time.”

  Mama’s voice drifted to them from the back porch. “James! Evangeline! Your breakfast will get cold!”

  “Yon Hera beckons us to Olympus.”

  Evie wanted to grab the edges of the dream like a blanket and wrap it around her, safe and happy. The sun warmed her face. The cicadas grew louder. Across the lawn, her mother and father waved from the back porch, happy and bright. But something wasn’t quite right. The house flickered just slightly. For a brief few seconds, it seemed almost like the entrance to a tunnel rather than a house, and something about the dark inside made Evie very afraid.

  “James?” she said, panicked. “James!”

  She saw him at the gate, dressed in his army khakis, a rifle slung across his back. The dream was turning. Evie was desperate to grab it back before it was too late.

  “James, don’t go,” Evie warned as fog rolled in, rendering her brother a ghost. “You won’t come back. And we’ll be lost without you. We’ll be broken forever. James! Come back!” She was crying now, calling his name over and over, a lament. Her parents and the house were gone. In their place were the tunnel and a woman in a veil. “You can have him back. Dream with me.…”

  “I can…” Evie murmured. All she had to do was say yes. And then James would stay with them forever. The dream made her believe it. Why, it couldn’t be simpler!

  “I—”

  “Brave Artemis!” James said. He stood at the top of the hill in the misty forest of that other dream she hated. “Time to wake up now.”

  “No!” Evie screamed as the explosions started.

  She woke in her bed, her stomach roiling. She barely made it to the toilet before she vomited up the night’s booze. And then she lay on the cold tile floor, crying.

  Across town, Nathan Rosborough stumbled from an all-night poker game quite a bit poorer than when the evening had started. Drunk on Scotch and desperate to be accepted by the other, more important, stockbrokers, he’d played down to the skin of his wallet. He hadn’t wanted them to think he was some kind of quitter. But now, as he sobered a bit, he was worried. He’d be lucky to scrape together enough to eat in the coming week. This thought weighed heavily on Nathan as he stared out at the skyline, the colossus unfurled, and felt a longing so powerful it bordered on obscenity. Then he fished his last nickel from his pocket and stumbled down the steps of the Fulton Street subway station to wait for the train.

  The platform was deserted at this hour. A newspaper story about a missing heiress had been taped to the wall beside an advertisement for a dandruff cure: Nora Hodkin, age eighteen. She had been seen four days ago heading to the downtown IRT wearing a blue dress and a brown hat. The grainy newspaper photograph of Nora Hodkin showed a pretty, wide-eyed girl astride a horse. Her distraught parents offered a five-hundred-dollar reward to anyone who found her.

  Five hundred dollars! Nathan loosened his tie and sprawled out on a bench, thinking about what he could do with a reward like that. Why, he could move out of his cramped room in his boardinghouse and into a nice little place of his own farther uptown with a view of the East River. Come summer, he might even have enough for a week’s rental out on Long Island Sound. He liked the idea of coming back to Wall Street tanned and salt-kissed, with tales of decadent parties where the girls shed their clothes to dance on tables and white-gloved waiters passed around caviar served on little silver spoons. Nathan could practically feel the warmth of the beach sun on his back, and soon, his head bobbed on his neck as he fought sleep.

  A strange noise snapped him back to attention. His skin had bubbled up into gooseflesh for some damned reason.

  “Hello?” he called out sleepily. “Is somebody there?”

  Nathan hurried to the edge of the platform, cupped a hand over his eyes and peered down the long, curving stretch of tracks. By golly, there was someone on the tracks—a girl!

  “Hey—hey you, there!” he called to her. “Miss, you’d better come up from there. You’ll be hit.”

  Nathan looked around for help, but there was no one else waiting with him at this late hour. Since they’d gone to the new coin-operated turnstiles, there were no longer any ticket choppers sitting nearby. He was utterly alone—except for the motionless girl in the tunnel. Some trick of shadow and high, stark subway light bathed her in phosphorescence. She glowed, this girl. Like an angel, Nathan thought. And she wore a blue dress.

  “Miss Hodkin? Nora?” Nathan tried.

  The girl’s head jerked up as if she registered the name.

  It must be her—had to be! And suddenly, this lost, shining girl waiting for rescue seemed like the answer to Nathan’s desires. She was pretty. Her parents were rich. There was a reward. And when the boys back at the Exchange heard about his heroics, they’d clap him on the back, stick a cigar in his mouth, and say Attaboy! He’d be made—a man in full.

  All of this buzzed through Nathan’s brain in a matter of seconds as the girl swayed precariously in the gloom. Then she turned and stumbled around the curve, out of sight.

  “Miss Hodkin! Wait!” Nathan called to no avail. “Doggone it!”

  Nathan was still a little woozy from the Scotch, but the booze also made him brave as he hopped onto the tracks and jogged down the center of the subway tunnel after his damsel in distress, the bright light of the station receding behind him. According to the appeal from her parents, Nora Hodkin had been missing for four days. She had to be weak from hunger, Nathan figured. Yet she was surprisingly quick. His lungs ached from trying to keep up. He was deep into the tunnel now and uneasy. The only light came from two weak work lights set up high
, and Nathan slowed, mindful of the electrified third rail. Steel support beams flanked the tracks. In the eerie gloom, they loomed like giants’ legs. It sounded funny down here, too. He heard a high, tight whine—almost like train wheels, but not quite—and here and there, animalistic growling. What was that? It was enough to make him want to go back.

  Just then, he spied the bright back of the girl’s blue dress as she lumbered across the tracks ahead.

  “Miss Hodkin!” he called, closing the distance between them.

  To the relief of Nathan’s aching legs and lungs, the girl finally slowed, and as she did, he noticed for the first time that Nora Hodkin didn’t move quite right. Her gait was uneven, and her arms twitched in a strange, quicksilver way, her fingers clutching at air.

  She’s drunk or faint. That was his brain talking. But his gut disagreed. The girl’s movement was purposeful, not drunk; she moved as if driven by strong need. There was something not quite human about her. And just as this thought took form in Nathan’s Scotch-hazed mind, she stopped and turned.

  Nora Hodkin might’ve been pretty at one time. But the thing facing him now had a gaunt, bleached face as fissured as a broken vase. Milky-blue eyes fixed on him. Nostrils flared as she sniffed, once, twice. Cracked lips peeled back from sharp, yellowed teeth. Black ooze dripped from the corners of her new smile. And Nathan understood at last what drove her: hunger. She was hunting. Leading him into a trap, like prey.

  She reached out her talonlike fingers. “Dream…? ” she pleaded in a hair-raising growl. “Dream!”

  If Nathan Rosborough had been able to scream, it would’ve rung through the underground and rattled the windows of the trains passing through. Instead, it was Nora Hodkin whose mouth unhinged in an unholy screech.

  “Jesus… oh, Jesus,” Nathan whispered, backing away.

  The glowing girl in the blue dress dropped into a crouch, knees wide as she scuttled toward him, brushfire-fast. Nathan turned and ran as fast as he could toward the Fulton Street station. His earlier hopes deserted him. His one overwhelming desire was simply to survive.