THE TWO OF PENTACLES
A juggler maneuvers two large coins in an infinity pattern.
Upright: flexibility, adaptability, flux, resourcefulness, perseverance
Reversed: disorganization, disarray, rigidity
Locker.
Home.
Book.
Escape.
Her eyes burn with tired. Her cut hand throbs. Her makeup is smeared. Her feet are dirty and she still wears her thin undergarments.
Also, she carries the stolen, cursed Hope Diamond in a cloth knapsack.
LOCKER.
She is over three miles away from the most obvious public lockers at Grand Central Station. Plus, that’s likely being watched. No, a different kind of locker is in order. So she walks back toward the Potter Building.
(That’s called chutzpah, Friend.)
While the crowd still grumbles and rumbles across from the scene of the crime, while the police presence grows with clanging bells and sizzling spotlights, Kiyoko slips into the post office building, literally right behind this crowd.
Like all post offices, the part of the building that houses the PO boxes is open twenty-four hours.
Kiyoko first slips into the washroom. For hours, she waits.
She pays herself with her part of the haul, tying her portion in a stolen silk scarf.
Slowly she hears the crowd outside the post office thin.
Sunlight begins to peek in the front windows.
At last, someone enters who looks trustworthy: A young mother and her son.
Kiyoko knows she is dirty, barefoot, bloodstained, so she approaches the mother gently. Kiyoko explains what she needs, and though there is a language barrier, the young mother eventually understands, agrees.
That mother leaves the domed post office with her pieces of mail and a new ruby brooch to pawn.
And Kiyoko whispers to the locked-tight PO box, “Just get here before the postmaster, Stella. Everything is ruined if he gets here first.”
HOME.
Kiyoko’s home is many blocks away. She supposes that were she simply bloody and dirty she could take the subway, but she is bloody and dirty and guilty. She assumes that by now, the actual NYPD is looking for her and the others.
(But primarily for her.)
Her sister and father are still asleep. Kiyoko quietly cleans herself up and leaves behind three items, each with a short note: an engraved pocket watch (For Papa), a diamond-and-sapphire bracelet (Sell Me), and a locket containing a photo of Alva Belmont, one of the New York City socialites at the party (Keep Me).
That last bauble is her “just in case”—an insurance policy.
One never knows when leverage might be needed.
She considers adding another note, something along the lines of “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” but this isn’t the first time Kiyoko has needed to lie low for a while. They’ll figure it out. She blows them each a kiss, and she disappears as quietly as smoke.
BOOK.
Kiyoko must wait. She hopes that Laura is one of the staff members who is on the opening shift and that she uses the side door on Forty-Second Street.
She is and she does.
Kiyoko approaches Laura with a key and asks her to place it in a very specific book. Laura quickly agrees. Kiyoko offers her a shimmering bracelet as thanks. Laura shakes her head, but Kiyoko insists.
The braid of the bracelet is silver, gold, and rose gold and it looks stunning on Laura’s thin wrist. Kiyoko breathes deeply and suppresses the sudden urge to kiss the curve of this woman’s hand, her palm, her neck, her everywhere.
Kiyoko walks away. Turns once. Laura is still watching her. She waves at Kiyoko, and when she lifts her hand, the bracelet glitters on her lovely wrist.
ESCAPE.
Grand Central Station is only a few blocks from the library. Kiyoko is tired and lonely, though she’s only been alone for a short time. She drops onto a wooden bench across from the ticket booths and scans the boards. Where should she hide for the next few months? Rochester? Dover? New Haven?
The back of her neck prickles. Even though she is clean of all makeup and blood, even though her clothes are bland and nondescript, she still LOOKS the way she LOOKS.
She feels certain, suddenly, that the police are looking for an Asian woman on the run. So any Asian woman at a train station, at a bus station, on a subway, on a trolley—all of them are now suspects. (She sends up a quick apology to any other Asian woman she might damn with this manhunt.)
Her instincts are correct. (Always.) A police officer meets her eye and without hesitation blows his whistle, alerting his partners to her presence. “There’s one!”
Oh, God. It’s awful, the way humans stereotype. That, I do not miss in the least. On This Side, all light is equally light.
Now note. At this same moment, the moment of that awful shrill whistle, Stella and her team were approaching Grand Central from outside. That moment is when Stella froze.
Had they all been spotted together, they would’ve surely been caught. They would’ve tried to stick together. Together is noble but slow. This situation called for rapidity, not solidarity.
Kiyoko pushes her way through the morning crowd at Grand Central, dodging people and suitcases and jail time. She runs to the steamy train platforms. One is chugging slowly out of the station. She leaps on board, and the ticket taker scowls at her.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says, breathless. She falls into a bench.
The ticket taker holds out his hand. “Ticket please.”
Kiyoko looks out the window, sees the police officer she dodged standing on the platform, spinning, searching for her.
Kiyoko blinks, clearing her thoughts. She pulls out a roll of cash. (Those wallets they lifted had been positively stuffed with money. Who except a fugitive needs that much cash?)
“One ticket to—where are we going?”