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Arthur jerked a thumb at them. “That’s what sells newspapers these days,” he said, and shook his head as they climbed the steps to the train. “Do you know why people make up ghost stories?”
There were many things Mabel could say to that, but she didn’t want Arthur to know about her work at the museum and think her foolish. She settled on, “Why?”
“Because it’s easier than believing that ordinary people can be cruel and downright evil,” Arthur said.
The minute she got home to the Bennington, Mabel knocked on Will Fitzgerald’s door.
“Mabel!” Sam said. “Say, this is a nice surprise.”
“Sam, could you steal me a movie camera?”
Sam’s eyebrows went up. “That is, without a doubt, the most interesting question I’ve been asked today. And considering the day involved talk about ghosts and the end of the world, that’s saying something.”
Jericho came up behind Sam, and Mabel caught her breath. She wished she could just stop liking him. It would be so much easier. “Why do you need a movie camera?” he asked.
“I can assure you, it’s for a good cause.”
“You wouldn’t take on a cause if it weren’t good,” Jericho said, and Mabel wasn’t entirely sure it was meant as a compliment.
“You don’t really have to steal it, but I figured you might know somebody,” Mabel said. “You always know somebody, Sam.”
Sam stroked his chin. “That’s true. Come to think of it, I do know a fella owes me a favor. If he’s not in jail or hasn’t been shot by a jealous girlfriend, I can get it for you.”
“Thanks, Sam. I owe you.” Mabel kissed Sam on the cheek, stealing a glance at Jericho as she did. Take that, Jericho.
On her way back to her apartment, Mabel reflected on Arthur’s comment about the human capacity for evil. She wasn’t naive; she’d seen plenty of bad. What Jake Marlowe and his management were doing to the workers in the name of profit was certainly cruel, if not evil. But sometimes evil was made up of small acts: cheating someone out of their due or ignoring a wrong, like during the Palmer Raids, when agents had pulled people from their homes to deport them and their neighbors had looked the other way. The longer those smaller acts of wrong went unchallenged, the more they compounded into a monster. But there had to be a counterbalance to that, and it was the human capacity for good. For kindness and self-sacrifice and justice. Toward helping your neighbor because, after all, weren’t we all in this world together? Those, too, were often small acts. Like Arthur leaving his garret to travel uptown—far out of his way—just to make sure that Mabel got home all right. That was good. That was unselfish. It made Mabel like Arthur all the more. It made her want to be an even better person. And those small acts of good carried forward with a breathtaking momentum. Over time, they could change the world for the better. Mabel believed that, perhaps more fervently than any prayer.
Before she’d even reached her apartment, Mabel could hear her father’s typewriter keys clacking away.
“Hello, Papa,” she said, breezing through the door, stopping to kiss his cheek.
Smiling, her father cupped her chin in one hand. “Shayna Punim.” Her father’s Yiddish came out when he was feeling sentimental or whenever he couldn’t quite find the words he was looking for in English.
Mabel rolled her eyes at her father’s sentimentality. “I do not have a beautiful face, Papa. I have a serviceable face.”
She didn’t say, Mama’s the beautiful one. I take after you.
“I know shayna when I see it,” her father said, as if that settled the matter. He pecked out another sentence on the typewriter using just his index fingers and returned the carriage with a cheery ting!
“Papa…” Mabel began.
“Yes, dear heart,” he said without looking up.
“Nothing.” She sat to remove her shoes, letting her toes breathe.
The typing stopped. “That’s a heavy sigh for such a nothing.”
“Have you heard anything about workers disappearing?”
Her father’s thick brows came together in concentration. “Do you mean walking off the job or being held by the police without being charged?”
“No, I mean disappearing. Being taken away by strange men. Government men. Or maybe not government men. I don’t know.” She wasn’t making sense. The whole thing seemed unreal the more she thought about it. “You heard anything about some men wearing a lapel pin—an eye with a lightning bolt?”
Her father shook his head. “Never. What’s all this about, Maideleh?”
“Nothing, Papa. Just… nothing,” she said, and he resumed his typing.
“Why don’t you like Arthur Brown?” she blurted out at last. “He seems like a very smart fellow.”
