Lair of Dreams

The driver sang a tune about a girl named Mamie who loved her way to hell, loved the Devil and loved him well. The passenger read the day’s newspaper, licking his finger to turn the pages. The story was about another teacher fined and jailed for teaching evolution. A lawyer had mounted a defense. Some people protested at the courthouse with Bible scripture painted on signs.

“Do you think it’s true?” Mr. Jefferson said, breaking the silence.

“What’s that?”

“That we came down from the trees? Just a bunch of apes in suits.”

“Makes as much sense as the other theory,” Mr. Adams said.

Mr. Jefferson chuckled quietly and took up his song again. Far off, a dark mass of clouds roiled on the horizon. The road purred beneath the sedan’s wheels as they turned their unceasing revolutions.

All morning, Ling had been able to think of nothing but last night’s unsettling dream walk and what she and Henry had discovered inside the tunnel. The burn still hurt. As soon as she had a moment at the restaurant, she’d telephoned Henry, catching him on his way out the door.

“I’m just on my way to Grand Central to meet Louis’s train now,” he said. “I promise to bring him straight to the Tea House. We can talk about it then,” he promised and hung up.

At lunch, Charlie Lee stopped by the Tea House to let Ling know that his grandfather had returned from Boston, and as soon as she’d finished cleaning the tables, Ling took advantage of the afternoon lull to visit Chang Lee at the Golden Pearl, bringing him an offering of oranges for the coming New Year. Chang Lee was nearly eighty, but his mind was as sharp as ever, and Ling held out hope that he might know something helpful to put her own mind at ease about Wai-Mae.

“I understand from my grandson that you had a question about the neighborhood—some matchmakers, was it?”

“Yes, Uncle. A firm called O’Bannion and Lee,” Ling said eagerly. “Do you know it?”

“Yes,” Mr. Lee answered and said nothing more. But she could read the judgment in his silence, and her earlier hope that they might turn out to be reputable matchmakers after all waned. “They had an office here once,” Mr. Lee said at last. “It was in the Bend.”

“The Bend?”

“Mulberry Bend.”

Mulberry Bend. Wai-Mae had been correct about that after all.

“O’Bannion and Lee,” Mr. Lee continued. “Not matchmakers. Procurers. They promise girls passage to America from China to marry wealthy husbands. And once the girls are here in America…” Mr. Lee shook his head sorrowfully. “The girls are sold. Prostitutes forced to work to pay back the debt of their passage here. The girls are poor, alone in a new country, with no laws to protect them. What can they do? They are trapped.”

“Why hasn’t anyone stopped them?”

“Someone did,” Mr. Lee said. “They were murdered. Right down the street.”

“I-I never heard about a murder.”

“I imagine not. O’Bannion and Lee were murdered in 1875.”

“In 1875?” Ling repeated.

“Yes. Murdered by one of the poor girls they’d ruined. She plunged her dagger into each man’s heart.” He shook his head. “They were bad men. I remember seeing her sometimes. An opium addict. She played a little music box.”

A buzzing began in Ling’s belly. “Did she wear a veil?”

“Yes. She did. How did you know that?”

The buzzing raced up Ling’s neck to her scalp. She felt dizzy. “Where is Mulberry Bend, Uncle? I’d like to see it.”

“You see it every day.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“It’s called Columbus Park.” Mr. Lee spread his hands wide. “Mulberry Bend was razed in 1897, and the park was built in its place. Mulberry Bend has been gone for decades. And so have your O’Bannion and Lee.” He blew on his fingers, as if scattering dandelion fluff to the wind. “Ghosts.”

Henry paced the platform of track ten on the lower level of Grand Central, watching down the tracks as if it were his future arriving in billowing clouds of steam. A fresh red carnation poked up from his lapel. At last, a mournful whistle-moan announced the approach of the train. Henry’s pulse beat in rhythm to the wheels, chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga. The metal beast slid past. Henry craned his neck to check each window, but the faces at the glass were blurs. The train stopped in a long, sighing hiss. A uniformed man shouted, “Now arriving—the three-ten New York and New Or-leeeans Limited!”