The Diviners (5 page)

“The Zenith O’Neills? Now I feel underdressed. Let me just get my dinner jacket.” He grinned again, and Evie felt a little off balance. He was of medium height and compact build. His shirtsleeves had been rolled to his elbows; his trousers were worn at the knees. Faint black smudges stained the tips of his fingers, as if he’d been shining shoes. A pair of aviator’s goggles hung around his neck. Her first New York admirer was a bit rough around the edges.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, Mr. Lloyd, but I’d better—”

“Sam.” He picked up her case so quickly she didn’t even see his hand move. “Let me carry that for you.”

“Really. I can—” She made a swipe for her case but he held it up.

“I insist. My mother would skin me for being so unchivalrous.”

“Well”—Evie looked around nervously—“just as far as the door, then.”

“Where ya headed?”

“My, you ask a lot of questions.”

“Let me guess: You’re a Ziegfeld girl?”

Evie shook her head.

“Model? Actress? Princess? You’re too pretty to be just anybody.”

“Are you on the level?”

“Me? I’m so on the level I can’t get off it.”

He was flattering her, but she was enjoying it. She loved
attention. It was like a glass of the best champagne—bubbly and intoxicating—and as with champagne, she always wanted more of it. Still, she didn’t want to seem like an easy mark.

“If you must know, I’ve come to join a convent,” Evie said, testing him.

Sam Lloyd looked her over and shook his head. “Seems a waste to me. Pretty girl like you.”

“Serving our lord is never a waste.”

“Oh, sure. Of course, they say now that we’ve got Freud and the motorcar, God is dead.”

“He’s not dead; just very tired.”

The corners of his mouth twitched in amusement, and Evie felt the warmth bubble up again. He thought her clever, this Sam Lloyd with his knowing grin.

“Well, it’s a big job,” he shot back. “All that smiting and begetting. Say, which convent you heading to?”

“The one with all the ladies in black and white.”

“What’s the name? Maybe I know it.” Sam bowed his head. “I’m very devout.”

Evie held back a small
ha!
“It’s… St. Mary’s.”

“Of course. Which St. Mary’s?”

“The absolute most St. Mary’s you can think of.”

“Listen, before you commit your life to Christ, maybe you’d let me show you around the city? I know all the hot spots. I’m a swell tour guide.” He took her hand in his, and Evie felt both excited and unnerved. She hadn’t been in the city for even five minutes, and already some young man—some admittedly quite attractive young man—was trying to get her to go off alone with him. It was thrilling. And a little terrifying.

“Listen, I have to tell you a secret”—he looked around—“I am a scout for some of the biggest names in this town. Ziegfeld. The
Shuberts. Mr. White. I know ’em all. They would string me up if I didn’t introduce a talent like you.”

“You think I’m talented?”

“I know you are. I can tell. I have a sense about these things.”

Evie raised one eyebrow. “I can’t sing. I can’t dance. I can’t act.”

“See? A real triple threat.” He grinned. “Well, there goes the St. Mary’s talent show.”

Evie laughed in spite of herself. “All right, then. You with your keen observations—what, exactly, do you find special about me?” she asked coyly, glancing up at him through her lashes the way she’d seen Colleen Moore do in
We Moderns
.

“There’s just something about you,” he said without really saying anything at all, which disappointed her. Sam rested his hand on the wall above her head, leaning closer. Evie’s stomach fluttered. It wasn’t that she didn’t know her way around the fellas, but this was a New York City fella. She didn’t want to make a scene and come off as a complete rube. She was a girl who could take care of herself. Besides, if her parents heard about this, they’d yank her straight back to Ohio.

Instead, Evie looped under the handsome Sam Lloyd’s arm and snatched her valise back. “I’m afraid I have to go now. I believe I see the, um, top nun going into the ladies’ lounge.”

“Top nun? Do you mean the Mother Superior?”

“And how! Sister… Sister, um…”

“Sister Benito Mussolini Fascisti?”

“Exactly!”

Sam Lloyd smirked. “Benito Mussolini is prime minister of Italy. And a fascist.”

“I knew that,” Evie said, her cheeks flushing.

“Of course you did.”

“Well…” Evie stood uncertainly for a few seconds. She stuck
out her hand for a shake. With a smirk, Sam Lloyd drew her to him and kissed her hard on the mouth. She heard the shoe-shine men chuckling as she pulled away, red-faced and disoriented. Should she slap him? He deserved a slap. But was that what sophisticated Manhattan moderns did? Or did they shrug it off like an old joke they were too tired to laugh at?

“You can’t blame a fella for kissing the prettiest girl in New York, can you, sister?” Sam’s grin was anything but apologetic.

Evie brought up her knee quickly and decisively, and he dropped to the floor like a grain sack. “You can’t blame a girl for her quick reflexes now, can you, pal?”

She turned and hurried toward the exit. In a pained voice, Sam Lloyd called after her: “Best of luck to the nuns. The good sisters of St. Mary’s don’t know what they’re in for!”

Evie wiped the kiss from her mouth with the back of her hand and pushed her way out onto Eighth Avenue, but when she saw the majesty of the city, all thoughts of Sam Lloyd were forgotten. A trolley jostled down the center of the avenue on steel tracks. Motorcars swerved around the throngs of people and one another with the furious grace of a corps de ballet. She craned her neck to take in the full view. Far above the busy streets, men balanced daringly on beams of steel, erecting new buildings like the ones whose tops already pierced the clouds, as if even the sky couldn’t hold back the ambition of their spires. A sleek dirigible sailed past, a smear of silver in the blue. It was like a dreamscape that could change in the blink of an eye. A taxi careened to the corner and Evie got inside.

“Where to, Miss?” the cabbie asked, flipping his meter on.

“The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, please.”

“Oh. The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies.” The cabbie chuckled. “Good thing you’re goin’ to see it while you can.”

“What do you mean?”

“They say the place is in arrears on its taxes. The city’s had its sights set on that spot for years. They want to put some apartment buildings there.”

“Oh, dear.” Evie examined the photograph her mother had given her. It was a picture of Uncle Will—tall, lanky, fair-haired—standing in front of the museum, a grand Victorian mansion complete with turrets and stained-glass windows and bordered by a wrought-iron fence.

“Can’t happen soon enough, if you ask me. That place makes people uncomfortable—all those crazy objects s’posed to be fulla hocus-pocus.”

Objects. Magic. Evie drummed her fingers against the door.

“You know about the fella that runs the place, don’t ya?”

Evie stopped drumming. “What do you mean?”

“Odd fella. He was a conscie.”

“A what?”

“Conscientious objector,” the cabbie said, spitting the words out like poison. “During the war. Refused to fight.” He shook his head. “I hear he might be one of them Bolsheviks, too.”

“Well, if so, he never mentioned it to me,” Evie said, pulling the wrinkles from her glove.

The cabbie caught her eye in the mirror. “You know him? What’s a nice girl like you doing with a fella like that?”

“He’s my uncle.”

At that, the cabbie fell blessedly quiet.

At last the taxi turned onto a side street near Central Park and pulled up to the museum. Tucked away among the grit and
steel of Manhattan, the museum itself seemed a relic, a building out of time and place, its limestone facade long since grimed by age, soot, and vines. Evie glanced from the sad, dingy shadow before her to the beautiful house in her photograph. “You sure this is the joint?”

“This is the place. Museum of the Creepy Crawlies. That’ll be one dollar and ten cents.”

Evie reached into her pocket and pulled out nothing but the lining. With mounting alarm, she searched all her pockets.

“Whatsa matter?” The cabbie eyed her suspiciously.

“My money! It’s gone! I had twenty dollars right in this pocket and… and it’s gone!”

He shook his head. “Mighta known. Probably a Bolshevik, like your uncle. Well, little lady, I’ve had three fare jumpers in the past week. Not this time. You owe me one dollar and ten cents, or you can tell your story to a cop.” The cabbie signaled to a policeman on horseback down the block.

Evie closed her eyes and retraced her steps: The tracks. The druggist’s window. Sam Lloyd. Sam… Lloyd. Evie’s eyes snapped open as she recalled his sudden passionate kiss.
There’s just something about you….
There sure was—twenty dollars. Not an hour in the city and already she’d been taken for a ride.

“That son of a…” Evie swore hard and fast, stunning the cabbie into silence. Furious, she pulled her emergency ten-dollar bill from her cloche, waited for the change, and then slammed the taxi door behind her.

“Hey,” the cabbie yelled. “How’s about a tip?”

“You bet-ski,” Evie said, heading toward the old Victorian mansion, her long silk scarf trailing behind her. “Don’t kiss strange men in Penn Station.”

Evie rapped the brass eagle’s-head door knocker and waited. A plaque beside the museum’s massive oak doors read
HERE BE THE HOPES AND DREAMS OF A NATION, BUILT UPON THE BACKS OF MEN AND LIFTED BY THE WINGS OF ANGELS.
But neither men nor angels answered her knock, so she let herself in. The entry was ornate: black-and-white marble floors, wood-paneled walls dimly lit by gilded sconces. High above, the pale blue ceiling boasted a mural of angels watching over a field of Revolutionary soldiers. The building smelled of dust and age. Evie’s heels echoed on the marble as she made her way down the long hall. “Hello?” she called. “Uncle Will?”

A wide, elaborately carved staircase wound up to a second-floor landing lit by a large stained-glass window, and then curved out of sight. To Evie’s left was a gloomy sitting room with its drapes drawn. To her right, pocket doors opened onto a musty dining hall whose long wooden table and thirteen damask-covered chairs looked as if they hadn’t been used in years.

“Holy smokes. Who died?” Evie muttered. She wandered till she came to a long room that housed a collection of objects displayed behind glass.

“ ‘The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies,’ I presume.”

Evie passed from display to display, reading the typewritten cards placed beneath:

GRIS GRIS BAG AND VOUDON DOLL,

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

BONE FRAGMENT FROM CHINESE RAILROAD

WORKER AND REPUTED CONJURER,

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, GOLD RUSH PERIOD

CRYSTAL BALL USED IN SÉANCES OF

MRS. BERNICE FOXWORTHY DURING

AMERICAN SPIRITUALISM PERIOD, C. 1848,

TROY, NEW YORK

OJIBWAY TALISMAN OF PROTECTION,

GREAT LAKES REGION

ROOT WORKER’S CUTTINGS,

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA

FREEMASON’S TOOLS AND BOOKS, C. 1776,

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

There was a series of spirit photographs populated with faint figures, gauzy as lace curtains in a wind. Poppet dolls. A ventriloquist’s dummy. A leather-bound grimoire. Books on alchemy, astrology, numerology, root workers, voudon, spirit mediums, and healers, and several volumes of accounts of ghostly sightings in the Americas starting in the 1600s.

The Diary of a Mercy Prowd
lay open on a table. Evie turned her head sideways, trying to make sense of the seventeenth-century handwriting.
“I see spirits of the dead. For this they hath branded me a witch….”

“They hanged her. She was only seventeen.”

Evie turned, startled. The speaker stepped from the shadows. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had ash-blond hair. For a moment, with the light from the old chandelier shining down on him, he seemed like some severe angel from a Renaissance painting, come to life.