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alligators. They looked like trouble. It was dreamy, watching something wild and alive and different than my own life, up high, so much bigger than anything I know.
    But it only took a minute till I started to feel wobbly. The animals on the screen swelled up, then they floated and waved around in front of my eyes. Something gooey started to boil in my stomach. I turned my head away from the screen but it was too late. I was retching in the aisle like a bum on the corner after the bars closed for the night. Someone shushed me, but then there was someone else by my side, a small hand holding my hair. Some lady, I figured. When I stopped retching I looked up and there was Rudy.
    I said: I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
    He said: Let’s get you outside, Miss Mazie. Get some air in you.
    I put my arm around his neck and we stumbled together through the lobby and out the front door, and then he leaned me up against the cage.
    He asked me if I was sick and I said no. He asked me if anyone in my house was sick and I said no.
    He said: Sometimes one of the boys gets sick, and then we all do. Just out of nowhere.
    I said: It’s not that, I’m fit as a fiddle. It’s looking up at the movies. I don’t know what to tell you. All that jumping around.
    He said: No more movies for you.
    I said: Who needs to go to the movies anyway? Real life’s more interesting. Flesh and blood.
    I was getting my spunk back in the cold air. I was feeling a little humiliated too. Bending over that like that, him seeing me weak, I didn’t like any of it.
    I said: It’s just a movie, who cares.
    He said: So you stick to tickets and I’ll stick to the movies. Front of the house, back of the house, that kind of thing.
    I said: It seems fair.
    We shook on it and it was like his hand nearly disappeared in mine. He’s a strange little doll of a man, that Rudy.

Mazie’s Diary, February 8, 1918
    It’s one thing to walk the streets, and it’s another thing to watch them. I used to be just one of the crowd, stretching my legs, mixing with the rest of those lugs. But now I’m sitting still while the world moves on around me, and I’m seeing things a little differently through the bars of this cage. Hustlers and cons I knew here and there but not so much. Now I watch them every day and I’m learning. They don’t care where they land as long as they get what they’re looking for. Maybe they never hit me up before because I was always on the run on the streets, but now I’m a sitting duck and they won’t leave me alone. I must have a bright red target on my forehead that says Easy Mark. But that sign would be wrong. I’ll teach them soon enough not to mess with me.

Mazie’s Diary, February 10, 1918
    A charmed life’s what I’ve had up till now I see.
    Thirteen-hour days, and all I can do is drink myself to sleep lately. Rosie says it gets easier. Rosie’s got it easy herself right now. Jeanie’s been going to the track instead of Rosie. I can’t say I’m not jealous. How long could it go on though, me sitting here? It’s been two weeks. I’m sure they won’t want me to stay here forever. Whatever lesson they want me to learn I’ll swear I learned it.
    Jeanie doesn’t even like the track that much. She says there’s a man there who’s sweet on her though, always tipping his hat at her, running after her, opening doors she didn’t even know needed opening.
    She said: It’s like he made these doors up out of thin air.
    She told me he was a horse doctor from Long Island. His name’s Ethan Fallow.
    I said: What kind of name is that?
    She said: I don’t know, but he’s taller than me, so I don’t care.

Mazie’s Diary, February 12, 1918
    That train, that goddamned noisy train. I have to yell all day long to be heard over it. People lean in with their hands on their ears to hear what I have to say. At least I’m making them pay attention to me.

Mazie’s Diary, February 22, 1918
    I don’t know what to make of that fella Rudy.