by Libba Bray
Theta and Memphis were locked in each other’s arms. Memphis rubbed her back and Theta buried her face in his shoulder. Then she lifted her head and smiled at him. They kissed while the others looked away.
“I, uh, don’t think we’re needed anymore,” Henry said. They started down the steps.
“Hey! Where you going?” Theta called after. “I’m starving!”
Ling grinned. “Lucky for you I know a good restaurant.”
They gathered around a table in the back of the Tea House and demolished plate after plate of Mr. Chan’s best dishes.
With a satisfied groan, Sam leaned back against his chair, his hands on his protruding gut. “Ling. How would your mother feel about a Jewish son-in-law?”
Theta sat next to Memphis and watched Mr. and Mrs. Chan laughing about some private joke. They were a mixed couple, and they were happy. No one seemed to be bothering them. But they were also here in the few blocks of Chinatown. What happened when they crossed Canal Street into the rest of the city? What happened when they went out into the rest of the country?
Memphis passed Theta a bowl of rice. Their fingertips touched and she smiled.
Evie raised her cup of tea. “To Theta.”
“To Theta,” the others echoed.
“What’s the matter?” Ling asked, because Theta was crying.
“This is the first family dinner I ever had,” she said.
“The first of many,” Evie promised.
“You did it,” Memphis said. “You stood up to Roy. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Theta nodded. She had won this round. But Roy would be back. She knew him too well.
On the way back to the Bennington, Theta stopped the taxi outside the theater on Forty-second Street, taking a long look at it. She scribbled something on the back of a sheet of paper torn from Memphis’s notebook, addressed it to Mr. Ziegfeld, and shoved it under the theater’s closed doors. The note read: Dear Flo, Thanks for everything. I quit. Theta Knight.
THIS LIFE WAS GOOD
Papa Charles sat at his polished mahogany desk in his office at the Hotsy Totsy with his ledger books in front of him. Around him were the trappings of the successful life he’d made for himself since arriving in New York at the age of sixteen with nothing more than his wits and his dreams: A photograph of Papa Charles in his Elks Club sash, shaking hands with Harlem’s elite, another of him with Harlem’s winning basketball team, the Harlem Rens. An antique globe nestled in its wooden cradle. The cigar smoldering in a marble ashtray—a gift from a famous bandleader who’d played the club. The last of the Hotsy Totsy’s revelers had stumbled out at six or seven, just as the sun made its entrance. It was eight now, and except for his bodyguard Claude on the other side of the door, Papa Charles was alone. It was good. This life was good.
Dutch Schultz and the white bootleggers were a problem, though. Seraphina had been right about that. He should have made a stand well before now. He’d thought that using Memphis’s talents would appease Owney Madden and forge an alliance. But those men only cared about money and power. They were loyal to a code of violence, nothing more. When the hour was decent, Papa Charles would go to Seraphina. That only left one other thing to make right.
Papa Charles pulled out the letter of recommendation for City College that Regina Andrews had asked him to write for Memphis. He signed his name, sealed it up in an envelope, and left it for the day’s mail.
There was a knock at the door.
Had Claude forgotten something?
“What is it?” Papa Charles called.
The door opened, and two white men in charcoal-gray suits entered so quietly they might as well have been shadows. They shut the door behind them, and even this was noiseless. Where was Claude?
“Charles King?” the smaller man said.
“Who wants to know?”
The man smirked and pulled on a pair of black gloves. “I’m Mr. Adams. This is my associate, Mr. Jefferson. And you are Charles King, Papa Charles to people in the know. Businessman. Banker. Investor. Owner of several nightclubs, pool halls, and various other establishments.”
Papa Charles put on the genial face he used to great effect with policemen looking for illegal booze and drunken customers spoiling for a fight. “Well, well. You seem to know my résumé pretty well. What can I do for you gentlemen?”
There were two of them. One was a warning. Two were a problem.
“You fellas with Dutch? Is that what this is about?”
“No,” the smaller man said. He gave the globe a spin, letting the tip of his finger hover close to the twirling surface.
“Well, then. We open again this evening ’round eight o’clock. Got an outfit outta St. Louis playing, the Bee’s Knees. They’re real good. Some say the bandleader’s the next Duke Ellington. Come back then.”
“Where’s the healer?” the other man, the bigger one—Jefferson?—said.
“Who?” Papa Charles said.
“The healer. Memphis Campbell. And his brother, Isaiah. Where are they?”
Papa Charles realized he had misread the moment. This was bigger than Dutch or Owney. And far more dangerous. His fingers fumbled under the desk for the gun taped there. The smaller man was on him in a blink, the piano wire wrapped tightly around Papa Charles’s neck above his starched collar. The most important banker in Harlem kicked and clawed, but there were two, and they worked in perfect sync like well-trained musicians trading riffs. The big man pinned Papa Charles’s arms to the chair. The smaller man yanked up on the wire. And the last thing Papa Charles saw before the sharp edge of the wire slit his throat and the life drained from him was his opulent office in the basement of an empire he’d built with nothing more than his wits and his will in a country that told him he could.
In a country that could take it all back.
Mr. Adams let Papa Charles’s lifeless body drop back against his velvet chair. He removed Papa’s pocket square and used it to wipe down the piano wire. “Burn everything,” he said. “We’ve got old friends to visit.”
Mr. Jefferson splashed the room with kerosene. It splattered down Papa Charles’s bloodstained bespoke shirt, over the beautiful desk, and across the envelope addressed to City College. Mr. Jefferson trailed the kerosene over Claude’s lifeless body and down the hallway beneath the Hotsy Totsy as he and his partner backed toward the alley door.
Mr. Jefferson lit a match, watched the flame dance down till it nipped his fingers.
With a smile, he tossed it in.
Theta slept snuggled next to Memphis, and for the first time in ages, she had no nightmares. There was only one curious dream. In it, a Cherokee woman, part of a long line of Cherokee trudging, exhausted, across a winter trail, turned to Theta. “It’s just beginning,” the woman said.
BLUE SKIES SMILING AT ME
Evie was still asleep as Sam got up and dressed. It was coming on eight. He hadn’t slept like that—deeply, soundly—in a very long time. There had been a dream, and in the dream, the sun shone down on streets slick with morning dew so that they shone like gold. Sam had walked those streets, and in the dream, he was happy. Toward the dream’s end, the wind had kicked up, hinting at a storm at Sam’s back, but he’d awakened to see real sun leaking through the drawn drapes.
He was happy. He was happy.
He wanted to wake Evie and kiss her again and again, tasting happiness on her mouth as if he could get drunk from it. But she looked so peaceful with her hair fanned out on the pillow that he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he scribbled a quick note—gotta run an important errand. I’ll be back by ten. He wrote I love you, then scribbled it out. Too soon? Too soon. Instead, he addressed the note to “Lamb Chop.”
She’d be so annoyed.
Grinning, he grabbed his fisherman’s cap and coat. “I love you,” he whispered quietly. “Ikh hob dikh lib.” He kissed Evie’s head. She rustled in her sleep, turning away. “Fine. I see how it is. I just wasted my best Yiddish on you,” Sam joked to himself
.
He loved her. Was in love with her. Had always loved her. And it seemed that she loved him, too. It was funny how the world could change on a dime like that. One minute, you were some poor chump pining after a girl you thought didn’t feel the same way about you, and the next, you were lying together, arms entwined, chest to chest, so close you could feel her heartbeat under her soft skin. You were looking into her eyes and seeing your whole future written there.
There was a lot to fight. The future battle was daunting. But right now, this moment, was a time for hope, too. For fresh starts. For forgiveness.
Sam said hello to everyone on the street. He laughed. What was happening to him? What was happening to “Don’t See Me” Sam Lloyd, the lone wolf, the I look after myself bad boy? It was funny how their odd little family of friends had changed him. Made him feel safe. Theta, Memphis, Henry, Jericho, Mabel, Ling, Isaiah, and especially Evie. They’d been there for him. Opened the parts of him he was afraid would be closed off forever. Why had he wasted so much time bottling up his feelings? What did that ever get anybody but dumb fights?
He had friends. He had a home in them.
And Evie was home, too.
The sky had bloomed into endless fields of blue. Not a cloud to be seen. He was walking faster now, that sudden flowering of hope pushing him on. He’d tell Evie everything. Let her know that he loved her. Let her know how much he loved her.
The glory of that sky, the hopeful fluttering in his heart, this was all. And so he hadn’t noticed the two men in the dark suits, following him so stealthily that they might as well have been moving shadows.
“Sergei Lubovitch?”
At the mention of his real name, Sam whirled around, his eyes widening. He put up a hand just as Mr. Jefferson embraced Sam like a long-lost cousin and jabbed a palmed syringe into Sam’s thigh. “Too late. Don’t move,” he whispered. “Wouldn’t want to hit an artery.”
Sam collapsed in Mr. Jefferson’s arms. He heard a woman asking, “Gee, is he all right?”
“Help,” Sam croaked. He was going numb. His mouth barely worked.
“My cousin is sick. We’re taking him to the doctor,” Mr. Adams lied. He and Mr. Jefferson dragged Sam toward the brown sedan.
Sam’s eyes sought the eyes of people on the streets. Help me. Can’t you see this isn’t right? But the people liked the answer the men in the dark suits had supplied; it absolved them of any responsibility, and they moved on with their busy lives. Only one person seemed alarmed—a kid shining shoes. He looked from Sam to the men and back again, suspicious.
“He don’t seem okay, mister,” the kid said. “Say, ain’t that Sam Lloyd?”
Yes! Yes, it’s me, Sam thought.
Mr. Adams tossed the kid a quarter. “Cousin Bob’ll be fine. You didn’t see anything.”
Sam gave the kid a last desperate glance: Trust what you see. “Tell Evie,” he tried to say, but he wasn’t sure if he’d said anything. He needed to warn Evie and the others. They were all in danger. Sam’s legs had stopped working. He felt cold and his eyelids were heavy. The men in the dark suits laid Sam across the backseat of the sedan. Sleep was coming and he couldn’t stop it.
The last thing Sam saw before he lost consciousness was the sweet blue of the sky.
THE FUTURE OF AMERICA
The day came up temperate and dry with a silky morning haze that would easily burn off by noon. Sarah Snow woke with a feeling of loss and foreboding. Her sleep had been haunted by awful dreams of her parents. In her dreams, the ochre dust of Northern China whipped up and coated their mangled bodies like dirty shrouds. They called to her: “Come. Come with us.” In the next moment, she saw Robert lying in the grave. Parasites crawled out of his mouth and eyes. His whispered warning floated on the wind: “Sarah, do not go.”
Sarah had been trained to look for God’s signs. Was this a sign?
The first time God spoke to Sarah Snow, she was thirteen and her parents were dead, though she didn’t know it yet. Her family had been living in China as missionaries, spreading the gospel. It was Sarah who saw what her parents did not: Hungry bellies made for easy converts. None of it was real faith. The smug naiveté of her parents embarrassed Sarah. It hardened her heart to God and miracles. She spoke the words and smiled insipidly when looked at closely, which was rarely. But she did not believe. They could not pry that from her; it was her one rebellion.
It was Robert who changed everything. Robert Thaddeus Carter was fifteen to Sarah’s thirteen, the son of Pentecostal missionaries who received the Holy Spirit in tongues and mystical visions. He had a reputation as a blessed boy, a healer. Spiritual gifts, they called it, and Robert was the most gifted of all.
“I’ve glimpsed heaven, dear Sarah,” he told her once as they pulled water from a well. His voice shook with a joy she had never known. “It’s a beautiful place with shining palaces of pure gold. Oh, Sarah, it’s real, it’s all real.”
The two of them would spend time discussing the Bible, Sarah as a way to get close to Robert, Robert because he believed without doubt. She adored him.
A kala-azar epidemic took Robert. Pale and sweating, he lay on a pallet, his hands and feet grayed with disease. His parents believed him possessed by demons. “We must show the Devil that we are stronger than he is,” Reverend Carter said. For three days, they prayed over Robert as he shook, delirious with fever and prophecy. On the fourth day, they buried him in the hard earth and marked his dusty grave with a simple cross. Sarah felt as if her heart had been buried as well. She read the Bible. She said her prayers. She ministered with her parents. But inside, she was hollow.
On the day her parents died, Sarah had been tidying up the schoolroom when she stiffened as if a warm desert wind passed through her, head to toe. Tears sprang to her eyes, though she couldn’t say why. She felt strangely full and content. It was Robert’s voice she heard, a whisper on the wind: “Sarah, be not afraid, for I am with thee.…” For the space of a breath, she swore she saw him shining in the doorway like a floury thumbprint left on a clean table. She blinked, and the sensation was gone as quickly as it had come over her. “Come back,” she begged quietly. “Oh, please. Come back!” She heard her name called again, this time loud and anguished. Sarah’s earlier contentment was replaced by dread. A convert raced across the plain, waving his hand. There’d been a motoring accident. Her parents’ car had lost control in the mountains and struck a tree. They’d been killed instantly.
A steamer carried the orphaned Sarah Snow back to America, where a well-meaning (if not particularly affectionate) Methodist couple took her in. At seventeen, she married and settled into life in a small town. But her ambition was greater than being a housewife in a backwater town. And when her young husband died rather suddenly, too, Sarah found she was more relieved than grieved.
A touring car took her across the nation. Every time Sarah placed her hands on the shoulders of a broken man or woman asking for God’s grace, she hoped for a repeat of that moment she’d experienced in the schoolroom the day her parents died. The day she thought she saw Robert Carter come back from the dead. A moment when she felt connected to something larger. When it didn’t come, Sarah lost faith a second time. She lost faith in the wonders of the world. In magical boys like Robert T. Carter. Maybe Robert had been sent to tempt her, like Satan tempting Christ in the desert. By making her think she could be so much more. He’d tempted her with the idea that she might be special. Anointed by God. Why else show her such wonders in another human being only to deny her those same wonders?
And then came the Diviners. People like Evie O’Neill and her friends were a cheap imitation of Christ’s glory, a pox on the nation, one that needed curing. And Sarah understood now that the Almighty had been training her all along, patiently waiting for her to ascend to his call. She would answer it with fire, as his soldier.
Yes, God had been waiting for her. That must have been the message of her dream. She would not disappoint him. Why, today was the start of everyt
hing! Hundreds of thousands would come to the exhibition. They would hear her, hear the Word. Besides, Jake Marlowe had chosen her personally. Sarah had been lonely, and Jake had been so kind. Together, the two of them would be unstoppable. She was being silly, letting a dream get to her. Snake oil salesmen. That was what Diviners were. What match were they against the hand of the Almighty?
By the time she pinned the fresh orchid to her Crusaders cape, Sarah had pushed aside her misgivings. Jake had sent a driver for her.
Mrs. Jake Marlowe. Yes, that was a fine name.
Sarah stepped out into the glorious spring day. It smelled of roses. It smelled of success.
From his room high atop the Astor Hotel, Jake Marlowe scowled at his watch. “Where the devil is he?”
“We’ve looked everywhere, Mr. Marlowe,” the man said apologetically.
“He’s six-foot-four and the size of Adonis. You’re telling me he can hide that easily?”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Fine!” Marlowe grumbled, straightening his collar. “We’ll have to head to the fairgrounds without him. But don’t stop looking.”
In her hotel room, Evie paced, stopping only when she realized she was acting just like Will. Where was Sam? He’d promised to be there by ten, and it was now nearly ten thirty.
She was furious with him. And worried. Once upon a time, Sam might’ve run off, chasing after some lead by himself, leaving her in the lurch. But he’d never do that to her now, not this morning, not after what they’d shared last night. That had been very real. She knew it. She felt it deep down.
But what if something had happened to him?
There was a knock at the door, and Evie ran to it, relieved.
“Finally! You’d better have a good excuse, Sam—oh.”
