The Diviners

“She won’t do it,” Theta said.

“I say she will.”

“Fine. Let’s up the ante on it. Ten dollars.”

Ten dollars was a princely sum, but Evie wasn’t about to back down.

“Done!”

They shook on it and put their faces back to the window. Inside, Mabel sat in the barber’s chair and let him wrap an apron around her neck.

“I’m going to buy the swankiest stockings with your ten dollars, Theta.”

Theta smirked. “Ain’t over yet, kiddo.”

Mabel gripped the padded armrests of the barber’s chair as he pumped the foot pedal, lifting her higher. He brought his scissors toward Mabel’s hair. Her eyes widened and she jumped from the chair, threw down the apron, and bolted for the door, setting the bell over it tinkling like Santa’s sleigh.

“Ah, applesauce!” Evie hissed.

Theta held out her palm. “I’m gonna enjoy those stockings, Evil.”

“I’m sorry, I-I just couldn’t,” Mabel stammered as the girls made their way toward Times Square. “I saw those scissors and I thought I’d faint!”

“It’s all right, Mabesie. Not everybody can be a Zelda,” Evie said, linking arms with her pal.

“If I’m going to win Jericho, I have to win him as I am.”

“And you shall!” Evie reassured her. “Somehow.”

At Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, they waved to the policeman perched in the glass enclosure atop the traffic tower with its red, green, and yellow signals. He tipped his hat and the girls laughed, buoyed by the crowds crossing amid the motorcars and double-decker buses. Steam pulsed up through sewer grates, as if the city and its bustling people were but part of a great mechanism powered by unseen machinery. As they waited to cross the street, a ragged man in a rickety wheelchair rattled his tin cup at them. He was dressed in a filthy army uniform; his legs were missing below the knees. “A bit of charity for one who served,” he rasped.

Evie reached into her coin purse and retrieved a dollar, which she stuffed into his cup. “There you are.”

“Thank you,” he said. He looked at Evie and muttered softly, “The time is now; the time is now; the time is now. Careful… careful…”

“If you fall for every sob story on the street, you’ll be broke by next week, Evil,” Theta cautioned as they crossed to the other side of the street.

“My brother served. He didn’t come back.”

“Oh, gee, kiddo. I’m sorry,” Theta said.

“It was a long time ago,” Evie said. She didn’t want to start their friendship on such a sour note. “Oh, look at that woman’s dress, will you? It’s the cat’s particulars!”

When they reached the Strand movie palace, the girls bought twenty-five-cent tickets and a white-gloved, red-suited usher showed them to their seats in the balcony overlooking the enormous gilded stage with its gold curtain. Evie had never seen anything so grand. The seats were plush velvet. Friezes and murals decorated the walls. Marble columns reached up to ornately decorated boxes and balconies. In the corner, a man played a Wurlitzer organ, and down below sat a pit for a full orchestra.

The house lights dimmed. The light from the projectionist’s booth played across the slowly opening curtain. Evie could hear the clack of the film as it moved through its paces. Flickering words filled the screen: PATHE NEWS. GENEVA, SWITZERLAND. THE 7TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS MEETS. Official-looking men in suits and hats stood before a beautiful building. THE ASSEMBLY WELCOMES GERMANY TO THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

“We want Rudy!” Evie shouted at the screen. Mabel’s eyes widened in alarm, but Theta smirked, and Evie felt a small thrill that her rebelliousness had hit the mark. A man four seats down shushed her. “Get a job, Father Time,” she muttered, and the girls tried to stifle their giggles.

On-screen, a movie-star-handsome man inspected a factory and shook the hands of workers. The screen cut to white words on a black background: AMERICAN BUSINESSMAN AND INVENTOR JAKE MARLOWE SETS NEW RECORD IN INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION.

“That Jake Marlowe sure is a Sheik,” Evie murmured appreciatively.

“My parents don’t like him,” Mabel whispered from beside her.

“Your parents don’t like anybody who’s rich,” Evie said.

“They say he won’t let his workers unionize.”

“It’s his company. Why shouldn’t he do as he sees fit?” Evie said.

The disgruntled man waved for an usher. The girls immediately quieted and tried to look innocent. The newsreel ended and the picture began. Metro presents Rex Ingram’s production of Vincent Blasco Ibañez’s literary masterpiece THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE flashed upon the screen and they fell silent, held rapt by the screen’s glow and Rudolph Valentino’s beauty. Evie imagined herself on the silver screen kissing someone like Valentino, her picture in Photoplay magazine. Maybe she’d live in a Moorish-style mansion in the Hollywood Hills, complete with tiger-skin rugs. That was what Evie loved best about going to the pictures: the chance to dream herself into a different, more glamorous life. But then the film came to the scenes of war. Evie stared at the soldiers in the trenches, the young men crawling across the rain-soaked no-man’s-land of the battlefield, falling to explosions. She felt dizzy, thinking of James and her terrible dreams. Why did they haunt her? When would they stop? Why did James never speak to her in them? She’d give anything just to hear his voice.