Henry had been banished to his room, where he found that his suitcase was already packed for him. Military school. If things had been bad at Exeter, the Citadel would be worse. Henry would never survive that. He could save himself, make up a lie: “I had nothing to do with that boy! It’s all a misunderstanding!” Then he could do as his father commanded, give up everything he loved, Louis and music, and go back to Exeter, become a lawyer, then a judge. He could marry the right girl and have a Henry Bartholomew DuBois V and see the same people at the same society balls and dinners, all the while knowing that he was still a disappointment to his father, that this would never be forgotten, only denied. Or he could strike out on his own, be his own man. Wasn’t that what his father was always telling him to be?
There was a gathering that night of his father’s business associates. Henry listened to them downstairs, chuckling with their port and cigars. If that was what “being a man” was, he wanted no part of it. With his father and the servants occupied, Henry knew it was time. He stuffed what he could into a knapsack, climbed out his bedroom window, and shimmied down the tree, sneaking through the cemetery. Henry froze when he came upon his mother sitting with her rosary before a statue of Saint Michael. For a long moment, his mother regarded him, her eyes moving from Henry to his knapsack, then back to his face as if she were trying to memorize it.
“Fly, fly, sweet bird,” she whispered and turned back to her saints, letting her son slip away from the prison of Bonne Chance.
Henry had sneaked down to the Quarter, to Louis’s attic garret, but he wasn’t there. He tried Celeste’s next. Louis wasn’t there, either.
“I heard him say he might play on the Elysian,” Alphonse said.
But by the time Henry made it to the docks, the Elysian was well upriver. Henry was near tears. He thought about waiting for Louis to get back, but he had no idea how long that would be, and Henry couldn’t afford to wait. His father would be out looking for him. Once he got safely settled in his new life, he’d get word to Louis somehow.
Luck had been on Henry’s side. A steamer was just about to head up the Mississippi, so Henry talked himself on board, promising to play piano in exchange for a ride to St. Louis. In St. Louis, he posted a letter to Louis care of Celeste’s, along with the address for the Western Union office there. No telegram came. None came in Memphis, Richmond, or New York, either. Henry thought about the day they’d buried Gaspard. Louis had extracted a promise from Henry that he wouldn’t leave. And what had Henry done but run away? Did Louis hate him for leaving like that, without saying good-bye? Did he think Henry a coward? If only he could find Louis, he could explain what had happened.
Henry didn’t give up. He wrote to a few journeymen musicians from the Elysian. Only one answered, a cornet player named Jimmy. He said he’d heard from the cousin of a friend that Louis might’ve left New Orleans and found work with a territory band, but he couldn’t remember the name of the outfit. Henry groaned when he heard that—territory bands traveled all over the country. Louis could be anywhere.
That was when he remembered walking in Louis’s dream. If this was the only way to make some sort of contact, then so be it. All he had to do was give one suggestion: “Why don’t you speak with Henry? He’s waiting for you at the Bennington Apartments in New York City. The Bennington Apartments. Don’t forget, now.”
But first he had to find him.
Every week for the past year, Henry had tried to do just that. He’d walked through landscapes familiar and odd and sometimes downright frightening, chasing after any clue that would lead him back to the boy he couldn’t forget, the boy he’d loved and left. The boy he hoped would forgive him.
Henry checked his wristwatch.
Five minutes until three.
He wound the alarm clock and set the metronome to ticking.
“Please,” he said and closed his eyes.
Ling’s eyes had barely fluttered open inside the dream world when someone tapped her shoulder, and she yelped. She turned to see a startled Henry beside her, his hands up in a gesture of apology.
“Don’t ever”—Ling let out a shaking breath—“do that again.”
“I’m sorry,” Henry said, but he couldn’t hold back his grin. “The hat worked! You found me.”
“Yes. I did,” Ling said in wonder, her mind already at work trying to understand how it had happened. She’d located the living inside a dream. This was a first. “Where are we? Whose dream is this?”
Like magic, the noises began: the clop-clop of horses, the distant rattle of an elevated train, the shouts of people hawking wares, and the thin, high squeal of a factory whistle. The bank of fog thinned, revealing the same jumble of worn city streets as in the previous night’s dream walk, but now there was action: Two men fell out of a pair of saloon doors, fighting while a crowd egged them on. Half a dozen street urchins pushed after a hoop with a stick. “Anthony Orange Cross…” Their excited shouts lingered after they’d disappeared like wisps of smoke. A ghostly horse-drawn wagon trotted past. “Beware, beware, Paradise Square! The Crying Woman comes!” the driver called just before he was swallowed by the mist.
Pop-pop-pop! Fireworks exploded over the sketchlike rooftops, and a phantasmic man in an old-fashioned vest and coat flickered against the haze as if he were a motion-picture projection.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” the apparition called. “Come one! Come all for a ride on Alfred Beach’s pneumatic train. See this marvel for yourselves and be amazed—the future of travel, beneath these very streets!” The apparition gestured to his right, and the limestone building appeared.
“Devlin’s! That’s the spot where I heard Louis’s fiddle last night!” Henry ran toward it, listening, but no music drifted out from inside its old brick walls tonight. “But I heard it so clearly last night.”
“I told you there was no guarantee,” Ling said. “This is still a dream, remember?”
“But I know the sound of his playing like my own. It was him. Louis! Louis!” Henry felt like he might cry. Having come so close, he couldn’t bear this new disappointment. With a grunt, he swung at the building, hitting it with a hard thwack.
“Ow!” he cried, shaking out his hand.
Ling’s mouth opened in shock. “You… you just touched that. That’s impossible.” Cautiously, Ling reached out and trailed her fingers across the bumps and grooves in the brick. “Impossible,” she said again. “Have you ever been able to touch something while dream walking before?”
“Until yesterday when I grabbed your hand? No. Never.”
“Me, either,” Ling said.
A piercing scream rang out, sending shivers up Henry’s and Ling’s spines: “Murder! Murder! Oh, murder!”
A ghostly figure broke through the haze, heading straight for Henry and Ling: a veiled woman in an old-fashioned, high-necked gown. She ran as if frightened, as if being chased. As she drew closer, Henry and Ling could see that the front of her dress was red with blood. The woman whooshed past in the space between them, trailing cold in her wake. Then she moved through the facade of the limestone building as if she were made of smoke.