Lair of Dreams Read online

  Ling rebuked him with a guttural “ack” of disappointment. Once upon a time, Ling and George had been close. She’d been his protector of sorts. When the Italian boys from Mulberry Street harassed George on the way to school, it was Ling who had told them she was a strega who would curse them if they didn’t leave George alone, and whether they believed her or not, they didn’t bother him after that. George had thanked Ling with a prune hamantasch from Gertie’s Bakery on Ludlow, the two of them laughing as they picked the tiny seeds from their teeth. But over the past year, Ling had watched George grow moody and restless, chasing after things he couldn’t have—tagging along with Lee Fan’s set as they went to the pictures at the Strand, sitting in on picnics arranged by a local church, or squeezed in the backseat during Sunday drives in Tom Kee’s car, one foot in Chinatown and the other outside, angling for a spot they thought was better, a spot that didn’t include Ling.

  “She’s changed you,” Ling said.

  “She has not! You’re the one who’s changed. You used to be fun, before—”

  George cut himself off abruptly, but Ling could fill in the rest of his sentence for him. She looked away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, chagrined. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  Ling drew in a sharp breath.

  “I don’t have the sleeping sickness!” George said quickly. He held out his hands. “Look: No burns. No blisters.”

  “So what’s the trouble, then?”

  “I had the oddest dream.”

  “Probably because you’re odd.”

  “Do you want to hear this?”

  “Go on.”

  “It was incredible!” George said, his voice hinting at wonder. “I was at one of those mansions like the millionaires have out on Long Island, only it was my house and my party. I was rich and important. People looked at me with respect, Ling. Not like here. And Lee Fan was there, too,” George said shyly.

  “I didn’t realize it was a nightmare,” Ling muttered.

  George ignored her. “It all seemed so real. Like it was right there for the taking.”

  Ling kept her eyes on the uneven edges of the bricks. “Lots of things seem real in dreams. And then you wake up.”

  “Not like this. Maybe it has something to do with the New Year? Maybe it’s good luck?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Because you know about dreams!” George said, jogging in front of her. “You can walk around inside them. Come on—it has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

  He was practically begging her to say it was so, and in that moment, she hated George a little bit for being so naive, for thinking that a good dream could mean anything other than a night’s escape from reality until the morning came. For thinking that wanting something so badly was enough to make it come true.

  “I’ll tell you what it means: It means that you’re a fool if you believe Lee Fan will give you the time of day once Tom Kee comes back from Chicago. You can keep throwing yourself at her, but she’s never going to choose you, George. Never.”

  George stood perfectly still. His wounded expression told her that the words had hurt. She hadn’t meant to be cruel, only truthful.

  George’s eyes went mean. “I pity the poor soul who takes you for a wife, Ling. No man wants to have the dead in his bed every night,” he said, and then he marched away, leaving Ling just short of her building.

  Ling tried not to take the words inside, but they’d already settled there. Why couldn’t she have just left George alone? For a moment, she had half a mind to call him back, tell him she was sorry. But she knew George was too angry to hear it now. Tomorrow she’d apologize. For now, she had Lee Fan’s money in her pocket and a job to do. Ling moved slowly toward her building, feeling each bump and brick up her spine. Above her, yellow-warmed windows dotted the building facades, forming urban constellations. Other windows were dark. People were asleep. Asleep and dreaming, hopeful that they’d wake in the morning.

  For all you know, she’ll give you the sleeping sickness.

  It had started with a group of diggers who shared a room on Mott Street. For several days, the three men lay in their beds, sleeping. Doctors had tried slapping the men, dousing them with cold water, striking the soles of their feet. Nothing worked. The men would not wake. Blisters and weeping red patches appeared all over their bodies, as if they were being consumed from the inside. And then they were dead. The doctors were baffled—and worried. Already the “sleeping sickness” had claimed five more people in Chinatown. And just that morning, they’d heard there were new cases in the Italian section of Mulberry Street and in the Jewish quarter between Orchard and Ludlow.

  A group of bright young things marched arm in arm down the street, laughing and carefree, and Ling was reminded of a dream walk she’d taken a few months ago. In it, she’d suddenly found herself face-to-face with a blond flapper. The girl was clearly asleep, but she also seemed aware of Ling, and Ling had felt both drawn to and afraid of this girl, as if they were long-lost relatives having a chance meeting.

  “You shouldn’t be here! Wake up!” Ling had yelled. And then, suddenly, Ling had tumbled down through dream space until she came to rest in a forest where ghostly soldiers shimmered in the spaces between the trees. On their sleeves, they wore a strange symbol: a golden sun of an eye shedding a jagged lightning-bolt tear. Ling often spoke to the dead in dreams, but these men weren’t like any dead she had known.

  “What do you want?” she’d asked them, afraid.

  “Help us,” they said, and then the sky exploded with light.

  Since then, Ling had dreamed of that symbol a few times. She didn’t know what it meant. But she now knew who the blond girl was. Everyone in New York did: the Sweetheart Seer.

  Feeling a mixture of envy and resentment, she watched the laughing partygoers walk away, then let herself into her building. Ling stole into her room and deposited Lee Fan’s two dollars into the cigar-box college fund she kept hidden in a drawer under her slips. The two dollars joined the one hundred twenty-five she’d already collected.

  In the parlor, Ling’s uncle Eddie was asleep in his favorite chair. One of his Chinese opera records had come to the end on the phonograph. Ling lifted the needle and covered her uncle with a blanket. Her mother was still at a church quilting bee, and her father would be another hour at the restaurant. This meant Ling finally had control of the radio. Soon, the comforting hum of the Philco warming up chased away Ling’s unease. An announcer’s voice burbled through the speakers, growing louder.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of our listening audience. It’s precisely nine o’clock and time for the Pears Soap Hour featuring that fabulous Flapper of Fate, the Sweetheart Seer—Miss Evie O’Neill.…”

  “… Miss Evie O’Neill!”

  The announcer, a tall man with a thin mustache, lowered his script. Behind the glass of the control booth, an engineer pointed to a quartet of male singers back in the studio, who crooned into their microphone:

  “She’s the apple of the Big Apple’s eye.

  She’s finer—Diviner—and we know why.

  She’s the Sweetheart Seer of W… G… I!”

  “Yes, gifted with talents from beyond,” the announcer purred over the soft hum of the quartet. “A Diviner, she calls herself, like those soothsayers of old, but a modern girl, through and through. Who knew that such gifts lived in the heart of Manhattan—and in the heavenly form of a pretty pixie of a girl?”

  “Oh, Evie, won’t you tell us true?

  What would fate have us do?

  Whether watch or hat or band,

  You hold our secrets in your hand.

  Revealing mysteries pulled from the sky!

  You’re the Sweetheart Seer of W… G… I!”

  The orchestra rested. Script in hand, Evie stepped up to her microphone and chirped into it: “Hello, everyone. This is Evie O’Nei
ll, the Sweetheart Seer, ready to gaze into the great beyond and tell you your deepest secrets. So I certainly hope you’ve got something pos-i-tute-ly scandalous for me tonight!”

  “Why, Miss O’Neill!” the announcer sputtered.

  The audience chuckled, covering the sound of Evie and Mr. Forman turning the pages of their scripts.

  “Oh, now, don’t you cast a kitten, Mr. Forman,” Evie reassured him in her upbeat tone. “For if anything can clear away the dirt of scandal, it’s Pears soap. Why, no soap on earth is finer for cleaning up a mess than Pears!”

  “On that we can agree, Miss O’Neill. If you value your complexion, Pears soap is the only soap you will ever need. It’s—”

  “Gee, are you going to talk all night, Mr. Forman? Or can I do a little divining for these fine folks?” Evie teased.

  The audience chuckled again, right on cue.

  “Very well, Miss O’Neill. Let’s take our first guest, shall we? Mrs. Charles Rutherford, I believe you have something you wish to share?”

  “Yes, I do!” Mrs. Rutherford rose from her seat, smoothing her dress on her way to Evie, though there was no one to see it beyond those in the small room. “I’ve brought this money clip.”

  “Welcome, Mrs. Rutherford. Thank you for coming on the Pears Soap Hour with the Sweetheart Seer—Pears, the soap of purity. Now, Mrs. Rutherford, tell Miss O’Neill nothing of your object. She will divine your secrets using her talents from beyond the veil.”

  “So if there’s anything you haven’t told Mr. Rutherford, you might want to let him know now,” Evie joked. It was a little naughty, but naughty kept people listening.

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Rutherford tittered.

  “And to whom does that money clip belong?” Evie asked.

  Mrs. Rutherford blushed. “This… well, it… it’s my husband’s.”

  Evie didn’t have to be a Diviner to know that. Married women almost always wanted to know about their husbands and whether they were stepping out.

  “Now, Mrs. Rutherford, one doll to another: What’s the story?”

  “Well, you see, Charles has been so very busy lately, at the office every night with only his secretary for company, and I, I worry that…”

  Evie nodded sympathetically. “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Rutherford. We’ll soon get to the bottom of this. If you would place the object in the center of my right palm, please. Thank you.” With a magician’s flair, Evie placed her left hand on top of her right and pressed down, allowing the money clip to yield its secrets to her.

  “Oh, dear me,” Evie said, coming out of her light trance.

  “What is it? What do you see?” Mrs. Rutherford fretted.

  “I don’t know if I should say, Mrs. Rutherford,” Evie said, drawing out the tension for the radio audience.

  “Please, Miss O’Neill, if there’s something I should know…”

  “Well…” Evie’s tone was grave. “You do know that the objects never lie.”

  An anticipatory murmur spread through the studio audience. I’ve got them! Evie thought. She lowered her head as if she were a doctor delivering grim news. “Your husband and his secretary are in cahoots, all right.…” Head still bowed, Evie waited, counting off silently—two, three—and then she looked up, grinning triumphantly. “To plan your birthday party!”

  The audience responded with relieved laughter and thunderous applause.

  “Now it won’t be a surprise any longer, I’m afraid,” Evie said. “You’ll have to act like a Dumb Dora about it. And that goes for all of you folks listening in, too!”

  “Thank you! Oh, thank you, Miss O’Neill!”

  The announcer stepped up to his microphone again as Mrs. Rutherford was escorted back to her seat. “Let’s give a warm round of applause to the brave Mrs. Rutherford.”

  When the noise died down, Evie welcomed her second guest. When she’d finished with him, telling him where to find a cache of old war bonds his grandfather had hidden in the house, Evie waited for the Seer Singers to croon the Pears soap jingle, then stepped again to the microphone, the studio lights blazing in her eyes. Even though the home audience couldn’t see her, she knew from her daily elocution lessons that a smile could be communicated through the wires, so she kept hers bright.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, when I finish my radio show, I love nothing more than to relax with a nice hot bath. But when I bathe, I’m not alone.”

  “You’re not?” the announcer shot back, shock in his tone.

  “Oh, no! I have company in my tub.”

  “Why, Miss O’Neill!”

  “Dear me, Mr. Forman! It’s Pears soap, of course! Pears keeps a girl’s complexion smooth and lovely even when the winter winds are howling like a jazz band. Why, it’s so pure, even I can’t see anything in it!”

  “That’s pure, indeed! Choose Pears—the modern choice for you and your loved ones. Now, Miss O’Neill, before we say good night, can you tell the fine members of our listening audience what you see?”

  “I’d be happy to.” Evie let her voice take on a faraway tone. “Yes… I can see into the future and I see”—she let the silence hang for a count of three—“that it’s going to be a swell evening here on WGI, so don’t dream of touching that dial! This is Evie O’Neill, America’s Sweetheart Seer, saying thank you and good night, and may all your secrets be happy ones!”

  As Evie passed down the long Art Deco hallway of the radio station, people called out their congratulations: “Swell show, Evie!” “Gee, that was terrific!” “You’re the berries, kid!”

  Evie drank up their praise like a champagne cocktail. She stopped for a second in the foyer of a large, wood-paneled office with gleaming black-and-gold marble floors. A secretary waved to her from behind a desk.

  “Great show, Evie.”

  “Thanks, Kaye!” Evie said, preening.

  There were only two rules she followed on her show: One, she never went in too deep. That was what kept the headaches manageable. And two, no bad news. Evie only told the object holder what he or she wanted to hear. People wanted entertainment, yes, but mostly they wanted hope: Tell me he still loves me. Tell me I’m not a failure. Tell me I did right by my dead mother, whom I never visited, even when she called my name at the end. Tell me it’ll be okay.

  “Loved the way you played with the money clip,” the secretary continued. “I sure was nervous for that Mrs. Rutherford.”

  Evie strained to see into the office just beyond the secretary, but the burnished gold doors were shut. “Did… did Mr. Phillips like it?”

  The secretary smiled sympathetically. “Gee, honey, you know how the Big Cheese is: He only shows up for the biggest names. Oh!” she said, catching herself. “Gee, I didn’t mean it like that, Evie. Your show’s very popular.”

  Just not popular enough to get the full attention of WGI’s owner. Evie tried not to dwell on that fact as she grabbed her new raccoon coat and gray wool cloche from the coat-check girl and headed out front, where a small but enthusiastic crowd waited in the January drizzle. When Evie opened the door, they surged forward, their umbrellas like fat black petals of the same straining flower.

  “Miss O’Neill! Miss O’Neill!”

  Slips of paper and autograph books were waved at her. She signed each with a flourish before dashing down the alley toward a waiting taxicab.

  “Where to, Miss?” the cabbie asked.

  “The Grant Hotel, please.”

  The rain was coming down; the taxi’s windshield wipers beat in time to some unseen metronome as they cleared the fogging glass. Evie peered out the taxi window at the study in smoke, fog, snow, and neon that was Manhattan’s Theater District at this late hour. A lightbulb-ringed theater bill featured an illustration of a tuxedoed man in a turban holding out his hands like a soothsayer while comely chorines danced under his enchanting sway. A sash at the top read COMING SOON—THE ZIEGFELD FOLLIES IN DIVINERS FEVER! A MAGICAL, MUSICAL REVUE!

  Diviners were big and getting bigger, but so far, no Divi
ner was bigger than Evie O’Neill. If only James were around to see her now. Evie traced the empty space at her neck where the half-dollar pendant from her brother used to rest, a reflex.

  A billboard for Marlowe Industries loomed above the jostling cab as they waited for the light to change. The billboard showed a silhouette of the great man himself, his arm gesturing to some nebulous future defined only by rays of sunshine. Marlowe Industries. The future of America.

  “He’s coming to town soon, you know,” the taxi driver said.

  Evie rubbed her temples to keep the headache at bay. “Who?”

  “Mr. Marlowe.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I do say! He’s breaking ground out in Queens for that whatchamacallit—that exhibition he’s planning. Traffic’ll be murder that day. I tell ya, he’s already given us the good life—automobiles, aeroplanes, medicine, and who knows what else. Now, that’s a great American.” The cabbie cleared his throat. “Say, uh, ain’t you the Sweetheart Seer?”

  Evie sat up, thrilled to be recognized. “Guilty as charged.”

  “I thought so! My wife loves your radio show! Wait’ll I tell her I drove you in my cab. She’ll have kittens!”

  “Jeepers, I hope not. I’m all out of cigars.”

  The light changed and the cab turned left off the arterial throughway of Broadway, following the narrow tributary of Forty-seventh Street east toward Beekman Place and the Grant.

  “You’re the little lady who helped the cops catch the Pentacle Killer.” The cabbie whistled. “The way he butchered all those people. Taking that poor girl’s eyes? Stringing that fella up in Trinity Cemetery with his tongue cut out? Skinning that chorus girl and—”

  “Yes, I remember,” Evie interrupted, hoping he would take the hint.

  “What kind of person does that? What’s this world coming to?” The cabbie shook his head. “It’s these foreigners coming over, bringing trouble. And disease. You hear there’s some kinda sleeping sickness now? Already got about ten people with new cases every day. Heard it started in Chinatown and spread to the Italians and Jews.” He shook his head. “Foreigners. Oughta t’row ’em all out, you want my opinion.”