After saying good-bye to Theta, Henry hopped the El to Chatham Square and made his way through Chinatown in the brisk chill. He moved in and out of shops, pretending to be interested in ceramic bowls and fabric for a new suit, while surreptitiously looking for the girl he’d only met inside a dream.
A commotion erupted in the street. Police were turning out a restaurant, allowing the health inspector passage. The owner protested the disruption to his business mightily: “This is a clean place! No sickness here.”
“Do you have your papers?” the policeman asked one of the waiters, who didn’t seem to understand. “Your resident permit?”
A translator spoke quickly with the frightened waiter.
“He left it at home,” the translator explained to the police. “He’ll go get it now.”
“Nothing doing, pal. No papers, we take you in.” The policeman whistled for his partner, and they loaded the terrified waiter into the back of the wagon.
“Can’t he go home and get his papers?” Henry asked innocently.
The policeman scrutinized Henry. “We’re just going our job,” he said wearily, and Henry was reminded of a time in New Orleans when he and Louis had hidden under the bar while police raided Celeste’s, rounding up all the boys dancing together. One of the cops, a fella named Beau, had been seen dancing at Celeste’s himself a number of times.
“I’m just doing my job,” he’d said to the owner, as if it would be apology enough.
Henry had been powerless that night, and he felt powerless here. He couldn’t help this man. He couldn’t even find the girl. He was just about to give up and go home when he turned the corner onto Doyers Street and stopped cold. Nestled next to a jeweler’s shop was the Tea House restaurant, just as it had been in his dream.
Maybe he wasn’t so powerless after all.
Henry ducked inside. He hadn’t been hungry before, but it smelled delicious, so he took a seat and ordered a noodle dish, and while he waited, he looked around for any hint of the girl with the green eyes.
“Best chow mein in town,” an older man at the next table said in an Eastern European accent. He nodded to the police out on the streets. “The sleeping sickness.”
“Oh, yes,” Henry said, barely listening. A trio of girls walked past the front windows of the Tea House, but none of them was his mysterious dream walker.
“On my street, Ludlow, there is right now a girl of only twenty, she has been asleep for two days,” the old man continued. “Her mother can’t wake her up. Her father can’t wake her up. Even the rabbi can’t wake her up. How do they take ill? Is it in the food or the water? In the air? No one knows.”
From somewhere in the restaurant, Henry heard a familiar voice. And then he spied her sitting at a table in the back, partially obscured by a screen.
“Do excuse me,” Henry said, walking to the back. He came around the screen and stood beside the girl’s table, his shadow falling across her open book. “So you do exist.”
The girl looked up at him. Her eyes were a hazel-green, greener in the light. Though she was a slight girl, there was something of the boxer’s quality to her, Henry thought; this was someone ready to show knuckles at a moment’s notice. Her mouth opened in an O of surprise, and then, just as quickly, she caught herself.
“I’m afraid you have mistaken me for someone else,” she said with pointed politeness.
“I don’t believe I have. I’ve seen you in my dreams.”
The girl gave him only a disdainful upward glance. “Corny.”
“I did see you in my dreams last night. Didn’t I? I’ve never—”
“Shhh!” she whispered, craning her neck to see if anyone was listening. “Sit down. If anyone asks, I know you from school. Do you understand?”
Henry nodded and lowered his voice. “You’ll have to forgive my astonishment. It’s just that I’ve never met another dream walker before. Have you?”
“No.”
“There must be others, though. Don’t you think? What with all these Diviners coming out of the woodwork now. Oh. Forgive my manners. I’m Henry DuBois the Fourth. Pleased to meet you, Miss…?”
“Ling Chan.”
“Charmed, Miss Chan.”
“I’m not particularly charming,” Ling said, without smiling.
“Well, I make it a point never to argue with a lady.”
The waiter arrived with Henry’s noodle dish and Ling turned suddenly chatty. “As I was saying, the most exciting thing about Mr. Marlowe’s exhibition is the science pavilion. I hear they’ll have a model of the atom on display.…”
As the waiter set Henry’s dish down, he gave Ling a curious look. “A friend of yours, Ling?”
“Yes, Lucky,” Ling said, without missing a beat. “We were in science club together in school. He’s just come to talk about Jake Marlowe’s Future of America Exhibition.”
“Our Ling is very smart,” Lucky said. “As smart as any of the boys.”
“The smartest,” Henry said, playing along.
“I’d better go. Things are very busy without George,” Lucky said before walking away, and Henry saw the girl’s face fall.
“Fine,” she snapped.
It clearly wasn’t, but Henry had been raised not to pry. “Science club?” he said instead, raising an eyebrow. “I suppose now is a bad time to tell you that I nearly blew up my chemistry lab back at boarding school. It’s an amusing story—”
“Why are you here? I assume it’s not for the egg rolls.”
Henry’s easy charm faded, and his smile with it. “I’m looking for someone I lost.”
“Lost how? How do you lose a person? Why don’t you look in the telephone directory?”
“He doesn’t even have a telephone,” Henry said. To make Ling understand, he’d have to tell her about the letter, his father, running away from home. He would have to explain what Louis meant to him. But he couldn’t do that. Not with a stranger. And she was a stranger. Just because they’d shared a dream walk didn’t make them friends. “I thought if I could find his dream, I could ask him where he was, or let him know where to find me somehow. Have you ever been able to do that? Locate someone?”
“Only with the dead.”
Henry’s fork stopped on the way to his mouth. “You see the dead?”
“In dreams I do. Sometimes someone needs to speak to a departed relative. If I take something of theirs, sometimes I can find them.”
“How long have you been able to do this?”
“It started a year ago.”
“Almost three years ago for me,” Henry said. “But it’s gotten stronger in the past few months.”
“The same for me,” Ling said.
“I learned to set an alarm clock to wake me. I found that if I go longer than an hour, I get ill. You?”
Ling shrugged. “I can go longer,” she said, and Henry detected a note of pride in it. Ling Chan didn’t like to be second, it seemed. “You still haven’t said why you’re here.”
Henry toyed with the noodles on his plate. “Last night, for the first time, I finally came close to finding my friend Louis while we were standing outside that old building. Right after I grabbed hold of your arm, I heard his fiddle. It was Louis’s favorite song, played the way he always played it.” Henry leaned forward. “I want to go back in tonight and see if it works again. I want us to try to meet in the dream world.”
Ling scoffed. “You know how dreams work. They’re slippery. We can’t control them—we’re only observers. Passengers.”
“We always have been, but what if we can change that?” Henry said. “Are you at least willing to try? You just said you can locate people. Maybe if I gave you something of mine, you’d be able to find me in the dream world. If that works, we could try to go back to that place where I heard Louis’s fiddle.”
“And maybe I can become Queen of Romania,” Ling said. “There’s no promise that we’ll find each other or that we’ll be able to return to the same dream. It’s like a river, constantly moving and changing.”
“Please,” Henry pleaded. “Won’t you help me?”
Ling looked at Henry for an uncomfortable length of time. She didn’t want to become involved with this dream walker. But she had to admit she was curious. There had been something interesting about their combined energy last night. What if they could do more together? “All right. It’ll cost you. I charge for my services.”
“Very well. What’s your price?”
“Ten dollars,” Ling blurted.
Without a word, Henry removed a crisp ten from his wallet and put it on the table. Ling tried not to let her surprise show. This dream walker was the first person not to haggle over the price. But it wasn’t her job to tell him that. Whoever this lost friend of his was, he must be very important.
“I’ll need something of yours,” she said, pocketing his money quickly. “To find you in the dream.”
Henry passed Ling his hat. “Will this do?”
Ling nodded. “What time tonight?”
“It’ll have to be late. I play for the Rooftop Revue above the Follies at midnight.”
Ling had seen the advertisements for the Rooftop Revue in the newspaper. The girls didn’t wear much.
“I’m hoping to get my songs some attention,” Henry said sheepishly. “I’m a composer, you see.”
“Do I know any of your songs?” Ling asked.
“‘You’re My Turtle Dove, Coo-E-Coo’? ‘September Moon’?”
Ling shook her head. “Never heard of them.”
Henry felt vaguely insulted. “It’s a tough business.”
“Maybe it isn’t the business. Maybe your songs aren’t that good.”
Henry left money for the bill as he rose from the table. “I should be home by three,” he said coolly. “Do we have a deal?”
“Three o’clock is fine.”
“I suppose we’re in business, then.” He stuck out his hand for a shake.
Ling didn’t take his hand. She looked him straight in the eyes. “It’s very brave of you to come down here. Most people are afraid of catching the sleeping sickness.”
“I’m not most people,” he said, his hand still out.
Ling gave it a quick shake. This time, there was no spark.
“I’ll see you in my dreams, Ling Chan.”
“I hope your songs aren’t as corny as your jokes,” she answered.
Henry headed back into the cold city thinking that Ling Chan was possibly the bluntest person he had ever met. But she was going to help him find Louis. It was the first hopeful break he’d had. That hope buoyed Henry’s mood as he passed down Chinatown’s narrow, winding streets. Above his head, laundry danced from lines stretched between tenement windows like pennants decorating Yankee Stadium, where, come spring, Babe Ruth hoped to swing his way into the record books. He reached the wide sidewalks and winter-stripped trees of Columbus Park, where a man ranted from the steps of the park’s steeple-roofed pavilion.
“The Chinaman comes in with Chinese habits—his gambling and his Tong Wars and the opium pipe. He’s a secretive sort of fellow. He can’t ever be an American. And now he’s given us his sickness. I say we should keep America safe for Americans. Send him back to China. Send him back on the next ship.”
“Bigot,” Henry muttered, and moved on. As he walked through the park, he felt a sudden chill for no reason he could name—a strange feeling of dread.
“You all right, son?” a man in a tweed suit asked. He looked like a judge or a minister.
“Yeah. I mean, yes. Fine, thanks,” Henry answered, but the chill remained.
“Here. Have one of these,” the man said, shoving a leaflet into Henry’s hands: KEEP AMERICA WHITE AND YOU KEEP AMERICA SAFE. THE KNIGHTS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN NEED YOU!
Henry tossed the leaflet in the rubbish can without reading it and wiped his hands on his coat.
On the platform of the City Hall subway station, Henry waited for the train, trying to shake off the odd dread that had come over him in Columbus Park. He thought about all the things he wanted to say to Louis when he saw him again. A young man stumbled down the steps. His suit was rumpled, and he smelled of booze. He muttered to himself as if answering private voices, drawing concerned glances from the other people waiting.
“Where’s the damned train?” the man swore. “I need the train!”
“It’ll be here soon,” a businessman chided. “Settle down, there.”
People moved back, keeping a safe distance from the young man as he stalked the platform. “It was so beautiful there. I need to go back. I can’t find it. I can’t find it!”
Henry flicked a glance down the tunnel and was relieved to see the distant train light moving closer. The troubled man swayed dangerously close to the platform’s edge.
“Watch out!” Henry darted forward and yanked him back just as the train screeched into the station.
The young man slumped to the ground, mewling into his hands. “I just want to sleep. I have to get back there! I have to!”
The crowd opened up to allow the police in. One of the officers hoisted the haunted-looking man to his feet. “Come on, pal. We’ll get you a nice bed, and you can sleep this one off.”
“Dream with me,” the man half cried.
He was still muttering the phrase as the police carried him out.