Theta resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Can I do that? Pal, that’s what every girl learns along with her ABCs,” she mumbled. “Just keep that contraption pointed at my face.”
Theta lowered her head and looked up longingly at the camera with her soulful brown eyes. Lips parted slightly, she stared back at the camera as if it were her lover while she crept a hand up her neck in a desperate caress. She closed her eyes and shuddered. Then, just when she was on the brink of wanton, she clutched the picture of her soldier boy to her chest, kissed his face gently, put it down, and clasped her hands in prayer, beseeching the heavens for his safe return.
“You and your lover have been separated by cruel fate! You fear you will never see him again!” the director yelled.
She kept her eyes trained upward and thought of Memphis. His sweet, slow grin. The way he looked at her sideways from under cover of those long lashes, his head slightly bowed, like he was almost embarrassed by how much he liked her. When Theta was with Memphis, she felt as safe and happy as she could allow herself to be. She could be not just herself but all her selves. So why was she so afraid to tell him about the fire that burned inside her? About Roy and Kansas and the menacing notes that had been left for her? It was like being in a dream and reaching for something that was always just beyond your grasp. Would she always be reaching for a happiness she couldn’t hold?
A single tear coursed down Theta’s cheek, and then she was crying openly.
“That’s incredible,” the cameraman said. “Oh, baby. Keep it coming.”
“And cut!” the director shouted. He applauded enthusiastically. “Astounding.”
“Big word. Was I good or bad?” Theta said, wiping her eyes. They didn’t need to know how real it had all been.
“Good. Very, very good.”
Theta sniffed up the last of her tears and took out a cigarette. “Swell. Anybody got a light?”
“Miss Knight. How’d you like a contract at one hundred and fifty per week?” the director said.
Theta’s mouth hung open. “Are you pulling my leg?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Forget the light. Got a pen?”
The cameraman finally offered Theta a match. “Honey, you should see yourself through that thing. Why, it’s like you’re lit from the inside.”
“Oh, um. Is that good, too?” Theta’s hands trembled on her cigarette, but at least they didn’t feel warm. Yet.
“You kidding me? It’s better than good. You’re a born star.”
A born star, Theta thought on her way out of Vitagraph Studios, past the revving sewing machines and hammering carpenters engaged in the world of make-believe.
A born star.
For no reason she could name, she stopped and said a silent thank-you to Mr. Bennington. “Just in case,” she told herself.
“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.
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.”
Eventually, the billboards and congestion gave way to farmland, a filling station here and there, and even a log cabin tucked into the hills as if modernity were just a passing phase it hoped to ride out. Mabel could hear the mine before she saw it: The gunfire retort of the drills and the rumble of a mine train carrying its load on the tracks were loud even from this distance. As the truck rounded a corner, the mine at last came into view. Three smokestacks belched sooty black plumes into the blue sky. Rocks chugged along on a conveyor belt. Behind it lay a group of modest shotgun-style houses, a school for the workers’ children, and a company store. Mabel knew from her parents that the miners were paid in company scrip, which would buy them goods only at the company store, where the prices were often high. It was a vicious cycle that made it nearly impossible for the workers to ever get ahead.