“Must you call me that?”
Evie considered it. “Yes. I believe I must. How did Unc become your guardian?”
“Jericho was an orphan in the Children’s Hospital.”
“Gee, I’m sorry. But how—”
“I believe the question has been answered,” Uncle Will said. “If Jericho wishes to tell you more, he will on his own terms and in his own time.”
Evie wanted to say something snappy back, but she was a guest here, so she changed the subject. “Is the museum always that empty?”
“What do you mean?” Uncle Will asked.
“Empty, as in devoid of human beings.”
“It’s a little slow just now.”
“Slow? It’s a morgue! You need bodies in there, or you’re going to go under. What we need is some advertising.”
Will looked at Evie funny. “Advertising?”
“Yes. You’ve heard of it, haven’t you? Swell modern invention. It lets people know about something they need. Soap, lipstick, radios—or your museum, for instance. We could start with a catchy slogan, like, ‘The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult—we’ve got the spirit!’ ”
“Things are fine as they are,” Will said, as if that settled the matter.
Evie whistled low. “Not from what I saw. Is it true the city’s trying to take it for back taxes?”
Will squinted over the top of his slipping spectacles. “Who told you that?”
“The cabbie. He also said you were a conscie, and probably a Bolshevik. Not that it matters to me. It’s just that I was thinking I could help you spruce the place up. Get some bodies in there. Make a mint.”
Jericho glanced from Will to Evie and back again. He cleared his throat. “Mind if I turn on the radio?”
“Please,” Will answered.
The announcer’s voice burbled over the wires: “And now, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, playing ‘Wang Wang Blues.’ ” The orchestra launched into a swinging tune, and Evie hummed along.
CITY OF DREAMS
The girl was exhausted and angry. For seventy-eight straight hours, she and her beau, Jacek, had loped through the dance marathon with hopes of winning the big prize, but Jacek had fallen asleep at last, nearly toppling her. The emcee had tapped them on the shoulder, signaling the end of the contest, and with it their dreams.
“Why’d ya have to go and fall asleep, you big potato!” She punched him in the arm as they left the contest and he staggered, barely able to stay awake.
“Me? I held you up four different times. And you kept stepping on my feet with those boats o’ yours.”
“Boats!” Tears stung at her eyes. She swung at him and stumbled, exhausted by the effort.
“Come on, Ruta. Don’t be that way. Let’s go home.”
“I ain’t going nowhere with you. You’re a bum.”
“You don’t mean that. Here. Sit with me on this step. We can catch the train in the morning.”
The exhaustion she’d fought for so long finally caught up with her. “I ain’t goin’ back like this, with everybody laughing at us like I ain’t nothin’ special and never will be!” she half sobbed. But Jacek didn’t hear. He’d already fallen asleep on the stoop of a flophouse. “You can live there for all I care!” she shouted.
The tracks of the Third Avenue El formed a cage over Ruta’s head as she walked south on the Bowery looking for an El entrance where there weren’t bums lying on the rickety stairs, just waiting. With each exhausted step, she felt the bitter disappointment of returning empty-handed to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where her family lived in a two-room apartment in a crumbling building on a street where nearly everyone spoke Polish and the old men smoked cigarettes in front of store windows draped with fat strands of kielbasa. It was a world away from the bright lights of Manhattan. She looked uptown, toward the distant, hazy glow of Park Avenue, where the rich people lived. She just wanted her piece of it. None of this answering the telephone switchboard at a second-rate law office every day, making barely enough to go to the pictures. Ruta was only nineteen years old, and what she knew most was want—a constant longing for the good life she saw all around her.
Ruta Badowski. Ruta. She hated that name. It was so Polish, brought over by her parents, but she’d been born here, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. She’d change her name to something more American, like Ruthie or Ruby. Ruby was good. Ruby… Bates. Tomorrow, Ruta Badowski would quit her job at the switchboard and Ruby Bates would take the bus to Mr. Ziegfeld’s theater and audition to be a chorus girl. One day, her name would be in lights, and Jacek and the rest could watch her from the cheap seats and go chase themselves.