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“Well?” Evie said when Theta exited the gate again onto Avenue M.
The girls rushed forward, eager for news. Theta decided to keep them in suspense. She sighed heavily. “Oh, well…”
The girls glanced nervously at one another.
“Oh, gee. Oh, Theta, why, you’re the darlingest girl in the world! If they don’t want you, why, why, they’re chumps!” Evie declared.
Mabel and Ling nodded decisively.
Theta burst into a grin. She struck a pose like a proper motion picture vamp. “Oh, well… it looks like somebody’s making pictures with Vitagraph!”
With a collective, delighted clamor, Mabel and Evie crowded Theta, hugging and congratulating, while Ling stood at a comfortable distance.
“Congratulations. You should be very proud,” Ling said evenly.
Mabel laughed. “I believe that’s the Ling Chan Hip, Hip, Hooray.”
“One hundred and fifty clams per week!” Theta crowed to her friends. They had spread out in the mostly empty street as if, for just a while, they owned it. “We’ll be living like sheiks! I’m gonna get me a mink! And I’m gonna buy Henry that piano, finally.”
“A mink-lined piano!” Evie said, looping her arm through Theta’s, and Theta knew that this was a day she’d remember forever.
Mabel giggled. “Every single key!”
Evie mimed a phone receiver at her ear. “Yes, sir, I’d like to report trouble with this Steinway. I’m afraid the sound is a bit… fuzzy.” And they collapsed into one another, laughing.
“Come on. Let’s grab some cherry phosphates and a chipped beef sandwich at Schrafft’s—my treat!” Theta insisted, and no one argued otherwise.
Theta spotted a small bookshop. “Wait! Hold on a minute.” She disappeared into the shop and came out a few minutes later cradling a paper-wrapped bundle.
“What’s that?” Ling asked.
Theta peeled back a corner of the brown paper and showed them the leather-bound copy of Leaves of Grass. “Walt Whitman,” she said. “For Memphis.”
When Theta returned to the Bennington, she stopped and blew a kiss to the portrait of Mr. Bennington. “Thanks, Mr. B. You really came through today,” she said. Upstairs in her kitchen, Theta lit the stove, letting the flame catch on the corner of the first note. She watched it burn. Then she did the same with the other card until the threats were nothing but smoke. If she didn’t have them, they didn’t exist. There was a coating of smudgy soot on her fingertips. Theta went into the bathroom to wash it off. She faced her reflection in the mirror.
“I am Theta Knight,” she said.
And watched her past swirl down the drain.
ALL THE WAY
By Friday, Sam had delivered a small movie camera as promised. “It’s a Filmo by Bell and Howell. Like the little brother to the cameras they use for motion pictures. All you gotta do is pop the film in, thread it into the sprockets, close it up, wind this key here on the side, and you’re in business. I could only get you one roll of film, though.”
“It’s more than enough! Oh, Sam, you’re swell!” Mabel threw her arms around his neck and squeezed.
“Shucks. What gives? You planning to be the next Chaplin?”
Mabel gave a Cheshire cat smile. “Sorry. It’s top secret information. Oh, and, Sam? Please don’t tell Evie about this.”
“Now you’ve really got my curiosity up,” Sam said. But he mimed locking his lips with a key. “Good luck, Mabel.”
Luis knew a friend with a truck, and now the Secret Six were crowded into it on the way to Marlowe’s mine in New Jersey. As they drove out of the city, they passed plenty of billboards advertising the good life: “Wilson Brothers Suits for the Man on the Way Up.” “I’m a Lucky Strike Girl!” “Marlowe Industries: The Good Life Is the American Life.”
“That’s what they do, you know,” Luis said over the wind and the hum of the engine. “They want you to believe you must have all of it. Otherwise, you’re not keeping up with the Joneses.”
“And all of it built on the backs of labor!” Aron shouted above the din.
Mabel smiled and patted the camera. “Let’s see if we can change that.”
