I did, Mr. Marlowe. Thanks for setting the record straight.
And that’s today’s Rumor Has It!
Evie crumpled the newspaper into a ball. Harriet Henderson was a snake, but she was a snake on Sarah’s side, and that was a problem. Radio’s true sweetheart. Harriet was gutting Evie in the papers without even showing her blade. No doubt Mr. Phillips and the Pears soap folks read that, too. She had to get in to see Luther Clayton!
It wasn’t only about shoving Sarah off the front pages, though that would certainly be worth it. Deep down, Evie really wanted to know why Luther had tried to shoot her. It seemed too much of a coincidence the way the soldier kept colliding with her life. She remembered meeting him for the second time, how he’d grabbed her arm and cried, I hear them screaming …! as if he desperately wanted her to understand. But what? Why her?
If Woody couldn’t manage to get her in, she’d just have to do it herself. Evie dashed off a letter to the hospital’s warden using her special WGI letterhead, mentioning how much she hoped to also shine a light on the stellar work of the dedicated staff, and signed it, With Pos-i-tute-ly the Utmost Sincerity, Evie O’Neill, WGI’s Sweetheart Seer. She spritzed it with her perfume and spritzed the envelope, too, for good measure. Then she raced into the hall and dropped the note into the hotel’s letter chute for the next day’s pickup, frightening a bellhop. The skin mask. She’d forgotten.
“Boo!” Evie said, and watched the young man hurry away.
When Evie returned to her room, the telephone was ringing. She dove for it, pressing the bell-shaped receiver against her ear as she lay back on her silk pillow. “Good afternoon,” she said in her best radio voice.
“Miss O’Neill? Call for you from Mr. I. M. Hansom,” the operator said.
Evie couldn’t help but grin. She was grateful for the distraction of Sam just now. “You may patch Mr. Hansom through, thank you,” she said around the tightening mask.
“Sheba! What are you doing tonight?”
“Entertaining heads of state. Just the heads, though. Saves on having a butler for their coats.”
“So nothing, then. Swell. I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“Now, hold on a minute! As a matter of fact, I … I have a date. With a darling boy. From New Jersey,” she lied.
“Nothing darling comes from New Jersey,” Sam said. “Listen, can you break it?”
“That depends. What’ve you got in mind? And if you say the words ghost or Creepy Crawly Museum, I’m hanging up.”
“How ya feel about rum runners?”
“Those are two words I pos-i-tute-ly adore!”
“Swell. See you at eight. Oh, and doll?”
“Yes?”
“Wear something you don’t mind getting wet.”
“What does that mean? Sam? Sam!” Evie shouted into the phone, but the line had gone dead.
Now Sam and Evie drove along the quiet nighttime roads of Long Island’s North Fork. Evie had been silent most of the way, her mood darkening as she stared out through the passenger window at the dotting of houses, lonely train stations, and occasional mansion giving way to long stretches of scrubby country watched over by a seemingly endless line of telephone poles, sentinels of human connection that only made Evie feel more alone.
“Okay. Let’s have it. What’s eating you, Sheba?” Sam said as they bumped along, past a shadowy Burma-Shave sign. Long Island Sound peeked up behind the rise of a dune, shimmering in the newborn moonlight.
“It’s nothing,” Evie said on a sigh.
“That’s how I know it’s something. You never say that.”
It was everything. If Evie could’ve unbuttoned her skin to escape her own terrible restlessness, she would have. She angled herself toward Sam. “Do you think I’m selfish?”
Sam laughed. “Is that a trick question?”
“Forget I said anything.” Evie’s eyes pricked with tears. She lolled her head toward the window.
“Aww, Sheba. So you’re working for Evie. Honestly, who isn’t working for himself in this meshuga world? Some people just hide it better than others.”
“People like Sarah Snow?”
“So you read today’s ‘Rumor Has It.’ Okay, sure. Maybe. But honestly, name one person who isn’t selfish.”
Evie didn’t have to think long. “Mabel.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. Mabel.”
“I wish I could be more like that. Like Sarah or Mabel.”
“Yeah? Between you and me, I don’t think you’d make it very long. The real you would come popping out like a showgirl hiding inside a plain vanilla cake. Just my two cents’ worth. Besides, you always come through for your friends in the clinch. So the Bible thumper does a lot of good. You think she coulda faced down a demon like John Hobbes all by herself? You think she’d’a been able to take on those beasties chasing us through the subway tunnels?”
Evie whirled toward Sam again. “But no one will ever know I did that, so what good is it?”
Sam kept his eyes on the dark road ahead. “Oh, I see. It only counts if everybody knows about it. Don’t you get enough attention?”
“You asked,” Evie said, staring out the window again.
“Aw, Sheba. I didn’t mean anything by that. Look, I know I’m no egghead and I’m no saint. I can’t heal like Memphis or play the piano like Henry. And I sure don’t look like Freddy the Giant,” he said, exposing his own soft wound. “But I got my own kind of smarts, from the streets, and when I go after something, well, just try’n shake me off. I’m an odd fella, but I know I’m an odd fella. What I can’t figure out is why you gotta make yourself crackers trying to be somebody you can’t ever be instead of just letting yourself be the one and only Evie O’Neill.”
Because I’m not enough, she thought. That was the terrible echo shouting up at her: Fraud, fraud, fraud. She got drunk and talked too much and danced on tables. She had a temper and a sharp tongue, and she often blurted out things she instantly regretted. Worst of all, she suspected that was who she truly was—not so much a bright young thing as a messy young thing. There were a hundred fears Evie could list. She imagined palming every one of them into a big, ugly rock and watching that rock sink to the bottom of the Sound.
“Anyway. You can worry about new things, like being arrested by the Coast Guard, because we’re here.” Sam rolled to a stop behind an old shed. The car’s headlamps cast an eerie glow on a sardine row of cars parked along the curve of the beach. “Loyal customers,” he said.
They stumbled toward the shore, each trying to get there first. A narrow slipper of a motorboat was stashed up on the beach. “A little help?” Sam asked, and then he and Evie were pushing the boat toward the water. “By the way,” he grunted, “what’s that thing on your head?”
“It’s called a tam, if you must know, and it came all the way from Scotland. It’s very fashionable.”
“Does the poor Scottish shepherd know you took his hat?” Sam said, easing the craft into the water.
“You should talk. You dress like Trotsky. So where is this mystery ship?” There was nothing in the bay that Evie could see.