“What is who like? Oh—Ahmad, you mean?”
“Of course,” Dima said, impatient.
“I hardly know,” Sophia said. “I told you, we knew each other only briefly. And it was years ago.”
“He told you nothing of himself?”
“Well, he certainly didn’t tell me the truth, at least not at first. He only said that he came from the desert. No—wait.” She cast her mind back. “He told me a story, about a jinni who’d been captured, long ago, by a terrible wizard. I had no idea what it meant, at the time. I thought it was only make-believe. A fantasy,” she said, as the jinniyeh frowned at the phrase. “Something that could never be.”
“Did others know his secret?”
“Perhaps. I’m not sure.” It was a lie, but a principled one. Sophia had thought often lately of his companion, Chava Levy, the woman with her own incredible secrets—secrets that weren’t Sophia’s to tell. How might Dima react to such a woman? Sophia had no way of knowing—and it had occurred to her that, if he and Mrs. Levy were still acquainted, the jinniyeh might prove an unwelcome party between them.
Dima looked troubled. “Do you think—” But then, as though impatient with her own thought, she stood up and began to pace. “If you were alone for years, hiding among strangers or enemies, and one of your own kind arrived—you’d be glad to see them, wouldn’t you? Even if—if they had a defect, or were different in some way—”
“I would,” Sophia said. “And if some part of me wished the person were otherwise, it would be to my own discredit.” She hesitated, thinking of the napkin in her passport. “Dima?”
“Yes?”
But at once she reconsidered. She didn’t fully trust the jinniyeh; she doubted she ever would. It made no sense to divulge information before it was absolutely necessary. She said, “I hope that he’s still in New York, and that you can be friends to each other. That’s all.”
Dima took this in. Then, “Jinn do not have friends,” she said. “We may be allies, or enemies, or lovers, but not friends.”
Sophia considered this. “And I suppose a lover is not necessarily an ally.”
“Not in my experience,” Dima said.
“Nor mine.” Sophia sat up gingerly; her stomach stayed put. “I think I’ll ask the captain about our progress,” she said. She fetched another shawl from her trunk, plucked her passport with its folded napkin from her valise. “I won’t be long.”
Shivering, one hand to the bulkhead, Sophia walked along the passageway to the Kansan’s telegraphy room, considering what message she ought to send. Jinn do not have friends, she thought. And a lover is not necessarily an ally. If he was indeed alive and in New York, then she must also take the lives of others into account, and proceed carefully.
Would he even remember her, and with a different surname besides? Or—as seemed entirely possible—was she merely a faded entry on his roster of long-ago conquests? A dull, resentful anger rose in her at the thought. Well, if that was the case, she’d simply have to jog his memory.
* * *
Charlotte Levy’s apartment was at the corner of Broadway and 136th, only half a block from the Asylum. The address wasn’t rarefied enough for a doorman, but the lock was secure and the lobby clean, its harlequin tiles polished weekly.
She took the stairs to the fourth floor, and opened her door to a welcome cloud of warmth, courtesy of twin radiators and a landlord who didn’t stint on coal. She set down her satchel, hung her coat away, pulled the heavy drapes shut. The apartment was small, but more than suitable for an unmarried working-woman. Besides the radiators, there was a Pullman kitchen with an oven and an icebox, and a bed that stowed itself neatly against the wall. An electric fan hung from the ceiling, to dispel the summer heat. She had a large, cubby-holed desk with its own lamp, an armchair for reading, a bookshelf for her recipe collections and textbooks—and, most precious of all, her own bathroom, complete with a claw-foot tub large enough to stretch her legs in.
She plugged the bathtub drain, opened the hot-water spigot. Her dress she hung on the bathroom door-hook, to let the steam loosen any wrinkles. Her underclothes went into a small hamper below the sink, to be sent out to the corner laundry. The locket and its chain she took off, held a moment—
You wear your death around your neck
—and placed upon the small glass shelf above the sink. Naked, she lowered herself into the water and lay back in the tub, palms upward, fingers loose. Inch by inch the water crept up her neck and ears, then washed across her eyes. Submerged, she stared up through the ripples at the ceiling, inhaled the water, and sighed it out again. Slowly her muscles smoothed, her body softened. No need for walking anymore, not unless she wanted to: she had plenty of hot water all year round. Winter and summer were nearly the same now, the noise in her mind so minor it might truly have been tinnitus.
Her life was one of comfortable simplicity. She taught three classes a day, went to the market twice a week, spent evenings on lesson plans and grocery lists and semester reviews. She subscribed to the New York Times, McCall’s, the Ladies’ Home Journal. She went to Riverside Drive on sunny days, to sit on a bench and take in the view: the long strip of park, the Hudson beyond.
On the rare occasions when she allowed herself to look back at her previous life, she wondered how she’d managed it. To spend her days hiding in the open, and her nights telling the truth in secret: how complicated, how exhausting it had been. Now, she had no need to explain herself, to justify herself, to anyone. She was merely Charlotte Levy. There was no one else at all.
The bathwater was beginning to cool. She pulled the plug and dried herself, avoiding the spot of numbness on her
