Chapter 8
Friday dawned sunny and warm. Perfect for shopping. Fridays were always welcome. And sunny ones brought out lots of people
and shoppers on the street. Nannies or mothers with their children on their way to one of the squares to play often stopped
in for toys or children’s books or candy. Men looking forward to a weekend away from the office might indulge in one of the
many men’s magazines at the newsstands. Shopgirls on their lunch break chose romantic novels for a weekend of washing hair
and stockings and mending their work clothes. Couples out for a stroll or dining out at one of the several restaurants along
the Row or around Union Square might buy a card or a little present at one of the novelty shops.
But if Fridays could be a boon for business, Friday nights could undo it all, when droves of students—from Cooper Union and
NYU—finished with their classes for the week, seemed determined to drink themselves into a stupor. Sometimes they were joined
by workers who, having just received a paycheck, seemed determined to spend it before they returned home to their wives and
children.
The rare-books shops tended to shutter early on Fridays.
A few more commercial stores stayed open, hoping to pick up a few sales, entertainment for weekend reading, perhaps the latest Nick Carter.
Almost all were closed or beginning to close by the time the rowdy, and now drunk and disorderly, students made their noisy way back from Union Square after dinners of oysters and too much beer.
Olivia always closed the Arcadia on the early side. Which didn’t mean they took the night off. No movies, dances, or window
shopping at Wanamaker’s. Not the Applebaum girls. They went to bed like always, because they had a shop to open the next morning.
And Saturday night was more of the same. While others lay about or breakfasted late or went to church on Sunday morning, the
sisters took the day to do a weekly cleaning and reorganizing of the books after a week’s handling. Once a month they took
inventory. After all, a bookshop couldn’t just sell books, they had to buy others to replace the ones sold.
Celia didn’t manage to find a lull in the business for her lunch break until after four. And by evening she was beside herself
with worrying about the Tellers. Twice she went out to the front sidewalk to see if the store had opened, hoping against hope
to see Yannis inside. But the shop was dark both times.
Disappointed, she slowly turned back to the Arcadia and was pleasantly distracted when she saw the local beat cop Jimmy O’Halloran
standing at the cart with an open book in his hand, reading it in the light coming from the store window. Jimmy was a sturdy
young man with a cloud of red hair, which tonight was hidden under his NYPD helmet. Whenever Celia saw him, she thought of
the Ghost of Christmas Past, in the Dickens story, whose hat extinguished the light.
He saw Celia and tapped his fingers to his helmet. “Miss Celia, good evening to you. I was just perusing this book.”
“Oh, are you planning to take an ocean trip?”
He laughed in a deep rumble. “Naw, heavens. It took my pa long enough to bring us over here. Ain’t none of us going back anytime
soon.”
“Indeed not.” Celia smiled. “Who would keep us safe?”
“You don’t need to worry about that. Jimmy O’Halloran’s your man.”
He started to put the book back in the cart, looking chagrined. “Heard there was a spot of bother at the Tellers’ shop. A
real shame. You know we would have stopped it if we could.”
Celia nodded. Yannis had explained to her that pornographers, abortionists, and anyone who might be in Comstock’s sights were
generally ignored by the police. After all, they made good money shaking down the various establishments, turning a blind
eye when necessary, and protecting them when they could.
Which is why they didn’t mind making themselves scarce during raids. Their chief was particularly opposed to some crazy old
man and his band of thugs acting in his district, overrunning his court and jails, and then having the gall to expect the
police to help make the arrests and then house the miscreants. Which Celia could only see as a good thing when it came to
women’s needs. She wasn’t sure about pornography—she didn’t believe she’d ever seen any.
But it also meant that they couldn’t help those being raided by the SSV; the best they could do was to not make themselves
available.
“Why don’t you keep the book? It’s been in the cart several days. I don’t think we’d miss it.”
“Thank you, but I don’t have much time for reading. Just waiting for Bertie Sullivan to get here. Ah, there he is now.”
Celia turned to see a taller, thinner patrolman with equally vivid hair underneath his helmet, striding toward them.
“Evening, Miss Celia,” Bertie said, touching his fingers to his helmet. “You closing up early?”
“We are,” Celia said, “but I just came out for a breath of air.”
“We best be getting on with our rounds.” Jimmy touched the brim of his helmet again. “Good evening, Miss Celia.”
Celia waved goodbye, stood for a bit longer watching the two of them swagger down the street, sending an approaching group
of students into the street and back again as they passed, headed no doubt to Union Square and the entertainment that awaited
them there.
She stepped into the door well as the students passed, cavorting, laughing, and tipping their hats toward her in a gesture
of jollity. Some nights she wanted to throw open the door and follow them, to celebrate with the crowd, dance in the streets,
live a carefree life.
She didn’t mind spending practically all her days in the bookshop. She tried not to complain the way Daphne always did. Celia
loved the shop, learned things she would never have learned if she’d worked in a department store or . . . She shrugged. Besides,
it was excellent cover for what she did for the cause.
Time ticked by. There was a rush of customers at five thirty, which meant the day shift had just gotten off work and more
of the newest issues of Adventure would be depleted by six o’clock.
At ten to eight, Daphne rang a bell that warned the customers the store was closing. Celia was waiting for them at the cash register. At two minutes past eight, she saw the few straggling customers out.
Celia was about to lock the door when the upstairs intercom buzzed. She picked up the receiver, already knowing what Olivia
would say. “Have you and Daphne finished closing up?”
Celia rolled her eyes. “Customers are out. I’m on my way to bring in the carts.”
Olivia replaced the intercom’s receiver and leaned back in her desk chair. There was no need for her to call downstairs every
day to ask if the girls had closed up. Of course they had. That was the one thing those two agreed on, cooperated on—getting
the shop closed so they could get on with their lives, such as they were.
And that was the problem. They didn’t have lives outside the store. They both should be meeting friends, going to dances,
having fun. Olivia worried about them. Unfortunately, Celia didn’t seem to be interested in making friends and didn’t care
an iota about attracting a beau. And Daphne, who cared about both, couldn’t be content with those available to her.
Daphne didn’t long for party dresses and dances with her friends; she pined after balls and ball gowns, and unless a miracle
brought Mr. Darcy or some other fictional romantic hero into the Arcadia . . . She’d more likely succumb to the first handsome
face with enough money to turn her head, but not to support her in any way, much less in the mode to which she wanted to become
accustomed.
Olivia sighed. If Daphne could just see Yannis’s good qualities.
Celia, as the youngest, was also the enigma.
She was always on the go, determined, purposeful, sometimes almost sneaky, though Olivia was clueless as to what her purpose was.
Would she ever find satisfaction in whatever it was, or would it always be elusive, just out of her reach, held back by her duties to the Arcadia?
And what about you? asked a traitorous voice, which might be hers but sounded awfully like someone she had once known.
She would manage somehow.
She stood from behind her desk, pressed her fingers into her lower back, then stepped toward the window and caught her hip
on the corner of the desk so hard that it brought tears to her eyes. She cut back an expletive. Her eyes were taking longer
to focus going from the work lamp to the dark.
She knew that, and she was always careful when around others to move intentionally, to think ahead, not to rush and chance
catching her toe on something and falling on her face.
Or running into furniture, you stupid—She rubbed the tingling in her hip.
How much longer could she hide her deteriorating eyesight?
Where was the future for any of them? Olivia, consigned to a chair in the apartment upstairs. The girls struggling along with
half their hearts, just to keep a roof over their heads.
This wouldn’t do.
Since her father hadn’t prepared for their futures, then Olivia would have to . . . somehow. She walked slowly down the long
exhibit room, now unlit, the display cases of rare—but not the rarest—books rising around her, more shadows and shapes than
receptacles of great knowledge.
It had grown late while she’d pored over her latest acquisition, a beautifully illustrated nineteenth-century French prayer book that would need extensive restoration.
She didn’t have the facilities here to do it justice.
It was at times like this she rued leaving what she’d thought would be her future.
But it had never really been hers.
She cautiously made her way to the front window and looked down on the avenue. The street lamps were all lit. Pedestrians
filled the sidewalks. A crowd was forming on the corner and spilled into the street.
She leaned closer to get a better view so that she was watching when the first black sedan screeched to a halt and four men