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It wasn’t the best likeness of him, but even with the too-broad shoulders, the too-strong jaw, and even without needing to read the placard below, Harte recognized the attempt to represent Jack Grew.
“This should be George M. Cohen,” Esta said, horror clear in her voice.
“One of the Vaudeville troupe?” Harte asked, confused. The Cohen family had been a staple on the circuit, but none of them had been famous or important enough to warrant a statue. Especially not one this large or prominent.
Esta didn’t answer. She was still staring up at Jack’s image cast in something that looked suspiciously like gold. Then, slowly, she turned her head from side to side, taking in the city around her. Her hand tightened on Harte’s as she let out a curse that would have made a sailor blush.
He turned and found what she was looking at. There was a wedge-shaped building across the street from them emblazoned with the directive to “Drink Coca-Cola.” It was twice the size of any billboard he’d ever seen, far larger even than the one Wallack’s had put up for his show. But Harte understood that the advertisement wasn’t what made Esta curse. Twenty or so feet above the street, words made from light chased around the building. They moved like magic, though he suspected it was a simple matter of electricity.
They weren’t the only ones who were watching the words scroll past. Around them, others had paused to watch, reading what seemed to be the news of the day. And the news of the day was them.
Escaped unregistereds. Last seen in Bowery Station. Considered extremely dangerous.
“They’re looking for us,” he said.
Her jaw was set as she nodded. “I knew they would be, but… this isn’t right,” she told him. But he had the sense that she wasn’t talking about the risqué signage all around him. “That statue of Jack—” She glanced over at him. “It’s not supposed to be like this. He’s not supposed to be anyone.”
The sign above the words changed suddenly, like magic.
No, not magic, Harte realized. It was a sign made from slats of wood that had rotated to evolve into a new image. Now, instead of Coca-Cola, it displayed an image that looked unmistakably like the banner that had flown from the Coliseum back in Chicago: the Philosopher’s Hand. The image shifted again, but this time not from any mechanical manipulation. Like the banner in Chicago, the image was enchanted somehow.
Esta cursed again as their faces looked down on the bustling streets from above. The whole street seemed to pause, holding its breath. Excited murmuring whipped through the crowd around them. Suddenly Harte was acutely aware of the dark-suited police officers standing on a corner nearby.
“We have to go,” Esta said. She pulled him through the crowd and across the street, dodging the traffic that was slowly inching around the square, but Harte felt more than one set of eyes upon them as they left.
He glanced down at her, saw her skin pale in the bright daylight and noticed the tear in the heavy overalls she was wearing and the dark stain spreading around it. “We can’t just keep running. You’re still bleeding, Esta.”
“I know.” She swallowed hard, and he could instantly see the pain she’d been hiding from him. “We need supplies. And we need to find a place to lie low until we figure things out.” When she looked up at him, her golden eyes were tight. “But I don’t know where to go. I can’t quite feel my affinity yet. I don’t know what to do other than to keep moving.”
Harte reached for his magic, but he couldn’t quite sense anything more than the faraway feeling that his affinity was still there. Just out of reach. “Me neither. But it’s like you said, we’re more than our magic.”
Her lips pressed tightly together, and he could practically hear her thinking. Finally, she came to some conclusion. “You’re right. We’ll just have to do this the hard way.”
When the light changed, she tugged him across the street through the press of suited bodies that smelled of cologne and sweat. They followed the crowd along the sidewalk, moving with the tide of pedestrians uptown for a block or two as Harte tried not to run into any of the peddlers selling handbags and trinkets on the edge of the sidewalks.
Esta handed him something that seemed to be a hat declaring that he loved NY. “Put it on. The bill goes in the front.”
He did as she instructed, pulling the broad brim low over his forehead as she slipped on a pair of dark glasses she hadn’t possessed a second before.
“Where did you—”
“Thief. Remember?” she said, tossing him a sharp-toothed smile. If he didn’t know her so well, he might have missed the pain and tightness bracketing her mouth. “Come on. I think I see a pharmacy up there. It’ll have what we need.”
The shop was like nothing he’d ever seen before—not even in 1950s San Francisco. The lights felt brighter. The products more garishly colorful. The whole store smelled of bleach or some other sort of astringent and stale air.
Grabbing a brightly colored basket from a stack by the door, Esta dragged him past row after row of metal shelving filled with a dizzying array of products. Occasionally, she would toss something into the basket. When they reached an aisle with packages emblazoned with red crosses, she grabbed even more, tossing items into the basket without seeming to consider her choices.
Harte followed wordlessly, overwhelmed by the abundance and astounded at the lack of shopkeepers. One surly-looking woman glared at them as she stocked shelves at a slow, plodding pace, but she didn’t offer to help. She glanced away just as quickly as she’d noticed them. He’d never seen a pharmacy where you could simply walk through and select your own merchandise. But he barely had time to marvel at the system before they’d reached the clerk at the front of the store. Esta placed the basket filled with supplies on the counter to be tallied up, and while the old man pushed buttons on a strange contraption that must have been a cash register, she tossed a couple of chocolate bars onto the counter. Somehow, he wasn’t even a little surprised to see Esta pull out a leather wallet filled with cash as she waited for him to finish ringing them up.
The man looked up at his machine and started to read the total, but he paused. His eyes narrowed and then focused on something behind them. “Hey, wait a minute.…”
Harte turned and found himself face-to-face with… himself. The shelf behind him held newspapers, and he and Esta were there, right on the front page.
“You’re them,” the man said. “The maggots they’re looking for.” He backed away, fumbling for something under the counter, and somewhere in the distance, a siren started to wail.
THE ALGONQUIN
1980—Times Square
