“Wait! They wear a pin like—” Maria struggled for the word in English. She grabbed the pencil, and in a corner of her sister’s sketch, she drew an eye with a lightning bolt coming down.
Mabel swallowed hard. A few weeks earlier, she had spied two men in a brown sedan across the street from the museum, just keeping watch. A lifetime working with radicals and labor organizers had taught Mabel how to ferret out Pinkerton Detectives, Bureau of Investigation agents, and plainclothes cops, and the men in the sedan had that air about them. When she’d taken a closer look, she noticed that they both wore that same odd lapel pin. Maybe it was time for Mabel to find out more about those men and whomever it was they were working for. So she couldn’t read an object and glean its history, but she could be nosy and ask around.
The bells of a distant church tolled the hour. “Jeepers! I’m later than I thought!” Mabel rolled up the drawing and shoved it into her handbag. It was too big and poked out of the open top.
“Miss…” Maria looked embarrassed.
“What is it?”
“I am ashamed to ask. Could you spare some money? For the children?”
“Oh. Um. Of course.” Mabel fished in her coin purse and handed over the quarter she’d planned to use for a Photoplay magazine and a pastry. She’d really wanted both, but it was better that the money go to feed Maria’s children.
“Bless you, bless you,” Maria said, taking Mabel’s hands in hers. “Please: Be careful, Miss Rose. Those men, I feel they are out there, watching us.”
The bell over the door of the Bohemian Reader jingled as Mabel blew in. Behind the counter, the bookshop’s owner, Mr. Jenkins, was busy chatting with a customer. Seeing Mabel, he jerked his head toward the back of the shop. Mabel nodded and walked past the shelves and tables stacked high with books she longed to stop and read, and slipped behind the heavy velvet drapes, trotting up the set of rickety wooden steps to Arthur Brown’s attic garret. She gave the secret knock, and a moment later, Arthur opened up.
“Sorry I’m late,” Mabel said, bustling inside the tiny vestibule, shedding her coat, hat, and gloves as she did.
Arthur winked. “Don’t worry. You’ve only missed a lot of hot air. Wait right here. I’ll introduce you.”
Mabel peeked around the corner. Cigarette smoke filled the cramped, nearly barren garret. It wasn’t much: Two dormer windows faced the streets. The low roof leaked into a bucket set up in a tiny kitchenette, which housed a bathtub. There was a water closet, a steamer trunk that doubled as seating, an easel in a corner, and, off to one side, an unmade bed peeking out behind a sheet rigged to a clothesline. The sight of the bed, messy and intimate, brought a blush to Mabel’s cheeks. Sketches had been cellophaned to the walls. They were very good: still lifes and street scenes and some figure drawings of nude women, which only intensified the heat in Mabel’s face. If they were Arthur’s, he had real talent.
Two men and a woman sat at a chipped table, arguing. “Marlowe doesn’t care about his workers. He just wants his exhibition to go up on time,” a heavyset young man with a mustache and goatee was saying. His cheeks were a mottled pink, and his thick, round glasses made his blue eyes seem enormous. “The workers want to strike!”
“But they’ve signed yellow-dog contracts,” the other fella said in a soft, Spanish-accented voice. A Lenin-style cap topped his shaggy dark hair.
“Yellow-dog contracts are criminal! You sign away all your rights,” the young woman said. She wore a beret over her thick reddish-brown hair. Her face was delicate and pretty, and as much as Mabel wanted to be above jealousy, she felt its sharp sting anyway.
“Hey!” Arthur said sharply, and the small room quieted. He gestured toward the doorway. “Everyone, I’d like to introduce you to our newest member. Miss Mabel Rose.”
Mabel gave a small wave. Her cheeks went hot. “Hello,” she said, her voice cracking on the word.
The others eyed her suspiciously, except for the girl, who leaned back, appraising Mabel. “Virginia Rose’s daughter?”
“Yes,” Mabel said, irritated. She didn’t want to be known as her mother’s daughter here. She wanted to be enough on her own. “And it’s Mabel. Just Mabel.”
The larger boy with the glasses folded his arms across his chest. “You should have talked to us first, Arthur. We make decisions together. We are not an oligarchy.”
“Sorry, Aron. But Mabel is a real asset. We could use her.” Everyone was silent. “Come on. Where are your manners?”
“Manners are bourgeois,” the pink-cheeked boy said.
“Enough, Aron,” the dark-eyed boy in the cap said. He bowed his head. “Luis Miguel Hernandez. Pleased to meet you, Mabel.”
“Gloria Cowan,” the girl said, shaking Mabel’s hand.
The pink-cheeked boy only nodded. “Aron Minsky.”
Arthur offered Mabel a ratty chair. It was one of only two. Gloria sat in the other while Aron and Luis occupied the steamer trunk. “It’s not much. But as you can see, I’m not living in the Waldorf.”
“I’ve never even seen the Waldorf,” Mabel said, smiling back at Arthur.
“I’ll bet your grandmother has,” Gloria said coolly. “After all, she’s old New York money.”
“So, you’re the infamous Secret Six? The ‘anarchist agitators’ the police are looking for,” Mabel said, changing the subject quickly. She didn’t want to talk about that side of her family. “But there are only four of you.”
“There was trouble at a rally in October. One of us was deported, the other arrested,” Luis explained.
“We were lucky they didn’t catch all of us,” Gloria said.
Mabel had a vague memory of her parents telling her about some explosions at a Sacco and Vanzetti rally that had been blamed on anarchists. They seemed to think Arthur had been involved, which didn’t make them happy.
“The newspapers sure don’t like you,” Mabel said.
“Ach! The newspapers are the tool of the capitalist oppressors,” Aron said, stabbing the air with his fist. “You cannot find real news there. Take this business with Jake Marlowe, for instance.”
“What business?” Mabel asked.
“The strike at his mine out in New Jersey,” Luis said.
Arthur perched on the edge of the bathtub close to Mabel. “Three days ago, Jake Marlowe’s miners went on strike to protest conditions at his uranium mine,” he explained. “They’ve been putting in very long hours. And many of them are sick from the work. When they complained and talked union, management fired them, turned them out of company housing, and hired scabs. Now the miners and their families are living in a tent city in a field across from the mine. They’re cold and hungry and scared.”
“The press only wants to talk about Marlowe’s Future of America Exhibition going up in April. To them, it’s the biggest thrill to hit New York in ages. It’s going to make a lot of money, too. Why write about poor, striking workers when you can write about the capitalist circus coming to town?” Luis added.