Jaclyn Dolamore - Dark Metropolis

The neighbors were all gathered around watching. Thea didn’t speak to any of them; she just bolted for the stairs.

All the forced smiles and lies to Mother’s friends, all the nights she’d rushed home to keep Mother from wandering off or hurting herself…and now Mother was going to the asylum anyway.

Thea climbed into Mother’s bed and cried. She wished, more fiercely than she had in years, for her father to walk through the door. Occasionally, a creeping tendril of relief would reach her: I’m free. I can go out with Nan after work. Go to the pictures. See boys if I want.

But how horrid to be glad, even for a moment, that her mother was gone, just so she had time to try on new hats.

Mother’s words haunted her. I know he is alive! Suppose she was right all along. Suppose Father had lived through the battle, and the vision was a sign? If there was any chance at all, she had to find out. She owed it to Mother, who was now trapped behind the asylum walls, losing her precious memories.

Thea knew going to work could only help her feel better. Distract her. But it was still hard to drag herself into the world on Monday.

As usual, the floor of the streetcar was scattered with pamphlets. They were underground publications, often written badly and peppered with capital letters and exclamation marks, warnings of doom and gloom. MAGIC MAY BE FORBIDDEN, BUT IT IS NOT WRONG! THE GOVERNMENT IS FEEDING YOU LIES! MAGIC IS THE TOOL OF THE PEOPLE.

An old woman settling onto the car kicked several of the pamphlets under her chair with a look of disgust. She glanced at Thea with disapproval, as if merely being a young person made her complicit, and Thea shook her head. The last thing she wanted was a revolution, when everyone finally had food and coal, and even hats and chocolates and hair curlers and everything else. Had people forgotten standing in breadlines so quickly?

“Good, you’re here,” Elsa said as Thea walked into the club a few minutes late. “Nan’s late, too.”

Thea’s face fell. She needed a friend right now. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon,” she said, reassuring herself as much as Elsa. “She’s never missed a day.”

“I hope she’s not sick.”

“Nan is never sick.” Nan seemed like the type who could repel germs by force of will. But other things could happen. Thea had seen less of Nan in the past couple of months, and Nan talked of politics when she used to not care. People disappeared sometimes, Thea heard, if they read the wrong papers and spent time with the wrong people in the wrong places. But it wasn’t like Nan was a revolutionary just because she was more informed than Thea.

All this worry, and probably Nan’s streetcar was just late. She’d be here soon, and they could go to Café Tops for coffee after work and have a good, long chat.

Mr. Kortig had Thea handling the private rooms tonight, the only tables without any view of the show. They were as exclusive as the balconies, being few in number, and the best tips often came from these privacy-seeking groups. Right now it hardly seemed to matter. She just had to get through the night. Would she see Freddy and Gerik again? she wondered.

When the first performance ended, she began to lose hope on that account. Last time they had come early. Anyway, it was Monday. They might appear next Saturday. She had a table of military officers who lingered awhile and got quite drunk, and a large, jolly group. They were, at least, very polite and left plenty behind for her. Thea would be glad of the money later, she knew, but money couldn’t buy her mother back.

And there was no sign of Nan. Thea kept looking for her, asking if she’d turned up, but no one had seen her. What if she was sick? Thea thought of a classmate who had died from influenza when she was a girl; one day she wasn’t at school, and a week later they were burying her. She ought to check on Nan, really, except she didn’t know where she lived. Thea had never been able to pay a visit, on account of the need to get home to her mother.

Her night was half over, the second performance of the revue in its opening number, when she approached an older couple in the smallest of the private rooms. “Welcome,” Thea said. “How are you this evening?” Then she almost did a double take; the man looked so much like Father Gruneman in the soft light.

No—it was Father Gruneman, she realized, as he gave her the briefest shake of his head, a gesture that said, Here you don’t know me.

“Hello,” the woman said. “Nan isn’t here tonight, dear girl?” She was looking down, searching inside her purse and then snapping open a cigarette case.

“Not tonight,” Thea said.

“Well, can you get me a gin cocktail?” She was wearing clusters of carved ivory bangles at her wrists, diamonds at her ears, and a fur stole around her graceful neck. Such an elegant woman didn’t look like she belonged at a table with humble Father Gruneman.

But then, the Father Gruneman she knew would not be at the Telephone Club, wearing a plain dark suit instead of church robes. “What about you, sir?” Thea asked him.

“Just a glass of port.” He handed the menus to her before she could even gather them, his expression almost apologetic. It was a clear signal that she should leave them alone, so she did.

She felt as if the world had turned on its head, and she was the only one who noticed. Mother gone, Nan absent from work, and now Father Gruneman at the Telephone Club with some rich woman?

She brought the group in the next room the fresh fruits and cheeses they’d ordered, and then got the drinks. Onstage, the moon was singing her big star-crossed number about how she could never be with the sun, spreading her arms so that her spangled cape glinted in every direction. The Moonling chorus in white sang softly behind her on the stairs. Thea paused outside the curtain. Mr. Kortig would have her head if she were caught trying to eavesdrop on customers, but she had to know what Father Gruneman and the woman were talking about.

“She knew he was alive,” the priest was saying. “That’s why they took her away.”

Was he speaking of Thea’s mother?

“I think it’s gotten too big for them,” the woman said. “They’re stretched thin, trying to keep up with all the loose threads. It’s time to kill the witch. Cut them all in one blow.”

“But we can’t be hasty. We’ve already lost too many people by being hasty. If we act without enough intel and none of the workers can escape, they might cover up the entire operation.”

“It’s better than just sitting around talking while they take more people every day!”

“Don’t you want to see your daughter again?” Father Gruneman said, more gently.

“You know I do,” she snapped. “Don’t say such a thing. But I need you on my side. Like you used to be.”

The response was too soft to hear over the music. Thea’s ears were already straining to piece the words together, and she didn’t dare stay there any longer. She lifted the heavy curtain aside. Father Gruneman sat back.

“You know it’s gone too far for mercy,” the woman said.

Father Gruneman looked uncomfortable. Thea suspected she was part of the reason for that. “Nothing is ever too far gone for mercy,” he said.

She put the drinks down and smiled at them, trying to act casual and happy, as if she hadn’t heard a word and didn’t find Father Gruneman’s presence at the Telephone Club unusual in the least. “Did you need anything else? A bite to eat?”

“No, dear,” the woman said.

“I’ll come back in a bit to see how you’re doing, then.”

“Actually, would you bring us the check now?” Father Gruneman said.