The Girl in Times Square Read online

  She opened her front door, while he remained at the bottom of the stoop. “Very, very interesting, Lily Blaze Harlequin. Well, good night. I still say you might want to look into your mother’s regard for the name Anne.”

  “Thank you, Detective O’Malley, in my copious free time I’ll do that.”

  “Miss Quinn, you can call me Spencer.”

  Lily had a smile on her face the entire five flights of stairs.

  12

  A Little Rented Honda

  Lily was having a rare and desultory conversation with her mother and she could tell it was desultory by the amount of quick, sloppy black circles she was dashing off on her sketchpad, wearing down her nub of charcoal, getting black all over her fingers and her quilted bedspread. She had just come out of her bath—she had been taking baths for a while now, she found herself too tired to stand in the shower.

  Now she was feeling relaxed and sleepy, but her mother was keeping her on the phone. Lily was on her new comfy bed, with the sky-blue curtains behind her tied in bows, billowing in the hot breeze. Black circles, black. Blah blah blah. Then her father came on the line and said, “Did your mother tell you she drove the car into a ditch?”

  There was silence.

  “Can you get off the phone?” said Allison. “Can’t you see I’m talking to my daughter?”

  “What ditch?” said Lily incongruously.

  “Oh, just a little ditch, by the house,” said Allison.

  “Your mother means a ravine, Lil. She crashed the car into a ravine, left it there, and now has to go to court to explain to the judge why she would leave a perfectly good Mercedes in a ditch without notifying either a tow company or the police.”

  Allison had nothing to say to that.

  And the only thing Lily said to it was, “Is that the first time Mom drove the car into a ditch?”

  “Yes, it was an aberration,” Allison said.

  “Oh, yeah?” said George. “Tell that to the stop sign you plowed through and knocked over on Wailea Drive last month.”

  “It doesn’t count,” said Allison. “That was a little rental car. A Honda.”

  “Your mother is on a lot of medication, Lily,” said George, realizing perhaps how all this was sounding. “Sometimes it knocks her out. Makes her shaky behind the wheel.”

  Lily called back the next morning when she was pretty certain her mother was asleep. “Papi,” she said, “You can’t let Mom drive a car. The first time was a stop sign, the second time was a ditch, but the third time is going to be a woman with a baby carriage.”

  “I know, you don’t think I know? I know! Who lets her? I don’t let her. I tell her all the time I’ll drive her anywhere she needs to go. What else do I have to do? But she says she wants to run out for fifteen minutes to the drug store. And Lily, think about it, what am I, her policeman? Did I retire so I could police your mother? She is a grown woman. She knows when she should and shouldn’t drive.”

  “I don’t think she knows. I don’t think she should drive at all. At the best of times she’s a bit…erratic.”

  “I don’t know this? I know this better than you, daughter.”

  “What’s wrong with her, Papi?”

  “Ah. You know your mother. She loves her histrionics. She loves for everything to be about her. Look at me, I’m sick, I’m depressed, I’m not well, I’m going to court. What a sham it all is. There is nothing wrong with her.”

  Lily waited. “Nothing?” she said.

  “There is one thing wrong with her. She keeps falling down. She can’t walk down the one step to the sunken living room, or up one step to the front door to get the mail without falling down. You should see her legs. You wouldn’t believe what they look like. And her arms. They’re covered with black and blues. You almost can’t imagine how terrible and bruised her legs look. And your mother has such nice legs, as you know.” George chuckled. “If someone didn’t know any better, you’d think she was a battered wife.”

  Listening, falling in her sadness for her mother, Lily said, “A person who can’t walk down one step into the sunken living room should not be driving.”

  “Don’t tell me. Tell her.” He paused. “She’s sleeping now. Is that why you called? But you know, she doesn’t go out that often. Not often at all. Maybe once a week. She suddenly rushes out. And usually it’s after a good week.”

  “‘Good’ meaning…?”

  “Meaning, she’s not screaming, or upset, or incoherent. She even goes walking with me. Then suddenly she rushes out, and things turn bad again for a few days, for a week. I think those meds she keeps taking are no good for her.”

  “Papi?” Could Lily get the words out? She took a deep breath. “Something is wrong with mom. She…could she be…”

  “What?”

  Lily said nothing. She was such a coward.

  “What? Drinking, you think?” George said finally.

  She let out her breath. “Yes.” What relief. Yes! Drinking. And she didn’t even have to say it.

  “No, no. I don’t think so.”

  Lily waited. George waited. “Papi, could she be running out of alcohol and then driving to go get it?”

  “I don’t think so. She comes back with bags of stuff: shampoo, soap, lotions, bleach, her pills. I carry the bags in for her. I know what’s in them. There is no liquor in the bags.”

  “Okay, Papi.”

  Lily thought on the way to work that she hoped Spencer was a better investigator than her father, because otherwise Amy was doomed.

  13

  Lily and the City of Dreams

  One late Friday night Lily was wandering the streets of the East Village looking for the posters they’d hung up of Amy, wandering from Avenue C, Avenue B, Avenue A, First Avenue, Second Avenue, Lafayette, and on Broadway, in front of Dagostino’s she ran into Spencer who was with a thirtysomething woman, her arm through his. He was casually dressed in slacks and an NYPD light jacket, the woman was wearing a skirt and blouse. Her hair was long and brown. She was tall. Pretty.

  Lily’s mouth had opened into a gleaming Hi! she had been so happy to see a face she knew, and then she saw the threaded arms and didn’t know what to do or say. Spencer said Hi, Lily, not gleaming, and—

  Lily felt so unbearably awkward she wanted magic powers that would let her fall through the sidewalk and down into the firepit of hell. On a Friday night she runs into Spencer, grins like an idiot, and now the smile is cemented on her face, and she doesn’t know where to look, and how in the devil’s name is he going to introduce her, a lumbering oaf—

  Spencer said, “Mary, this is Lilianne.”

  That’s all he said. Lily shook hands with Mary, who smiled politely, so well-mannered, so groomed, like a smart poodle.

  “Nice to see you,” said Lily, detaching herself. “Listen, gotta go, sorry,” waving and running into Dagostino’s to hide in the frozen food section. Oh, God!

  After an unreasonable time in the French Fries and the Lean Cuisines, she left the store, and meandered back home, so absentminded she nearly walked through Tompkins Park.

  She was disgraced. She couldn’t think straight. She bumped into Spencer while by herself on a Friday night! What kind of a loser was she, roaming the streets of New York at midnight on a Friday? She was loser number six, that’s what kind, Amy knew six deadbeats, of which Lily was the last.

  But also…while alone on a Friday night, she accidentally and surprisingly—even to herself—felt joy at seeing Spencer, a familiar face, a familiar person, and less joy when she realized he was not alone.

  It was days later when Lily finally calmed down long enough to resign herself to the slight aching left by the memory of the female arm through his male arm. But not because…no, not at all because…it was nothing like that, he was too old and not her type, and she was too young and not his, obviously. She knew herself, she knew she was telling the truth—there was nothing untoward in her aching. It wasn’t because of him in the particular. It was seeing the warm f
emale flesh through warm familiar male flesh—the companionship of coupledom that wounded Lily. They were all around her, she realized belatedly—on Friday nights, couples, arm in arm, walking through Greenwich Village in the summer, happy to be alive. And even Spencer, harassed, glum, overworked Spencer, who almost didn’t seem like he was a man, and yet, decidedly—a man! Not a detective, not a cop, not a professional, but a man, walking with a woman, who was touching him, and he was not objecting. That was the aching in Lily. The wanting of the wanting to feel. The envy and piercing sadness at the realization that someone, who she thought was her kindred spirit in this—who she also didn’t think felt—felt.

  Rachel, ever at the ready as a matchmaker, promptly fixed Lily up on three dates, crash and burn all. One barely spoke English, here from Morocco on a student visa wanting to become a professional basketball player—this at barely six feet tall. Even Lily had more sense.

  One was a senior management accountant with Deloit. He was thirty-one, short and square, but wore clothes that were too hip for him, and drove a flashy car and hung out in bars trying to pick up younger girls. He spent the entire dinner advising her to change her choice of future profession from “something in art” to something more sensible, and take a course to become middle management for a large brokerage firm. (“That’s where the money and the security is.”) Lily was surprised to find herself thinking how different Spencer seemed from this man, how sturdy and un-middle-aged, even though there was something slightly grave about Spencer, as if he walked around carrying the feeling that life had already passed him by.

  The last one was a mixed-race kid from Coney Island, who was adorable, but was obviously on drugs from beginning of the date to the end, and possibly went into the men’s room to take another hit of whatever he was on (coke? heroin?) during their dinner on bar stools at a cheesy Mexican take-out in Clinton Hill. He was disjointed and could not focus on anything she was saying, which admittedly wasn’t much. But was he ever cute!

  Lily asked Rachel not to set her up on any more dates. Rachel thought she was being too picky. “You’ve built a wall around yourself, a forcefield, and you’re not letting anyone near.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  “You can’t let Joshua have so much power over you, Lil.”

  “He doesn’t have any power over me,” Lily protested.

  But Paul, who had heard about their exchange, called the following day. “He has all the power. You gave it to him during your relationship, and you’re giving it to him still. Keep going out with the boys, be happy.”

  Lily had gone out with the boys, but how could she be happy?

  She felt something slipping away from her, but didn’t know how to fix it because she didn’t know what it was.

  Just to show what kind of power he had over her, Joshua called, hemmed and hawed, asked a few perfunctory questions, and then asked for his TV back. Apparently Dennis’s broke. He came over for five tongue-tied minutes and took his TV! He asked Lily to open the door for him, and she crossed her arms and refused.

  Paul stopped calling her Harlequin. She missed that. He stopped calling her as often. She missed that, too. He said he was busy, Rachel said she was busy—to think that Lily would care if Rachel was busy! But she did care, she did. Lily couldn’t help feeling a prickle of judgment coming from Paul and from Rachel, characterized by their uncharacteristic and displeasing aloofness—judging Lily for losing Amy and not knowing where she put her.

  Spencer told her the yearbook had proved to be a dead end: Paul could not recall a single one of Amy’s other friends, not even visually. He pointed to three that looked familiar, but upon being checked out, they all turned out to be alive and well, and teaching or mothering on Long Island. Amy’s mother was also drawing a blank. The rest of Amy’s friends she could not recall, but Paul she knew well. Amy’s friendship with Paul was really, really well corroborated.

  Chris Harkman remained behind the desk, plowing through Lily’s phone records. Despite thorough checking, Harkman could not find a smoking gun in the phone numbers. 90% of the calls were placed by Lily to her siblings and grandmother. In April, calls were placed to an upstate New York number. That damn Shona, still repeating like a bad taste in Lily’s mouth! Amy’s phone calls included ones placed to Paul, Rachel, Copa, to ask for shift switches, and that was all. Spencer said to Lily that Amy’s use of the phone seemed just like her ID on the dresser and her lack of mementoes from her two years on the road—all suspect because they were so circumspect. She was so careful, that Amy. “There is something I’m overlooking,” Spencer said. “I’m sure of it. I just don’t know what it is.” Amy left no clues behind because Amy meant to leave no clues behind. But did Amy mean to vaporize? Or was that the unplanned thing? One thing was certain: after May 14, and until Lily returned on June 4, there were no phone calls placed from the girls’ apartment. Wherever Amy was, she was no longer in the apartment after May 14-

  After being seen with a grown-up woman on his arm, Spencer turned professional with Lily, careful and circumspect himself. The two of them would stand at the precinct, or at Noho Star, chat for a few minutes about yearbooks and phone records, and then he would be on his way. He stopped coming around or calling nearly as often—maybe twice a week, Lily would hear from him, about Amy. She missed him a little bit, missed something calming about him, something supportive, and sensible, and true.

  New York, the city of dreams, the city of nightmares. New York for the poor, for the rich, for the homeless, for the multi-aboded, New York for the eight million people who roamed within. New York when it rained, they all went into the bookstores, and when the sun shone they sat on the grass in Central Park with their books. They complained that it was too noisy, too overpriced, too amphetamine-charged, too multicultural, too dusty. They all lived single in the great city, and when they got married and had children, many left. Lily’s friends, Erin and Michael, he a 24/7-admitted workaholic stockbroker for Shearson Lehman, moved out of New York when they had kids. They moved to New Jersey. They bought a high-rise apartment in the Palisades so Erin could look at New York whenever she wanted. He didn’t have to look, spending all his days there, in the World Financial Center, making millions, losing millions, clogging his arteries with stress and bad coffee.

  But Lily wasn’t married and had no kids. There was nowhere else for her to go. She lived close to Lower East Side where her mother and grandmother first lived when they came to America, and every time she wanted to walk off a part of her life, she walked the streets of New York until she walked herself out of it.

  But Lily couldn’t walk far enough to rid herself of the persistent nagging caused by Amy’s persistent, unending absence.

  “It’s because you’re depressed and broke,” said her sister Anne. “The depression is depleting you from the inside out. Being broke sucks. But I gotta go, Lil.”

  “It’s because you can’t walk off something like your roommate missing,” said her other sister Amanda. “Go dancing. That will cheer you up. Go ahead, like you used to. Everything will be okay. You’re young. But I gotta go, Lil.”

  But Lily didn’t have the energy to go dancing.

  Once I had been clarified by Joshua, by Amy. He’s not coming back, and until she returns I’m in limbo. Amy, come back and tell me what I’m supposed to do at twenty-four in the middle of my life. Define my life for me, Amy.

  How long was she going spend all her earnings on Union Square Cafe’s exquisite calamari and yellow cabs? Until Amy came back.

  How long was she not going to cash in her lottery ticket?

  Until she found out who she was.

  Until Amy came back.

  As if not cashing it were insurance against the unthinkable.

  Lily’s exhaustion got worse. Got so bad that she had to cut her hours from fifty to forty, to thirty-five, to twenty-five. She would sit down on her break and fall asleep, and once they couldn’t wake her. They got so scared, they had almost called 911. Turned out
she had walking pneumonia. She took antibiotics and ate calves’ liver for dinner every day until she lost her appetite for everything, not just calves’ liver. She was afraid to get on the scale. Even Yodels didn’t tempt her. Though they tempted her in the Associated supermarket down the street. She had big plans for Yodels, for Chips Ahoy, for Mallomars, for Double Chocolate Milanos, for German Chocolate cake, for strudel, for Krispy Kreme donuts. Then she would come home and put her goods on top of her microwave. She would balance them delicately atop the microwave and once she sneezed and six boxes of Entenmann’s and Pepperidge Farm ended up on the floor. She didn’t pick them up for…

  Well, they were still on the floor, and unopened.

  It was warm, but she felt cold, bundling herself in a thick cardigan that belonged to Amy, and going to the movies to sleep.

  Her mother sent money for August, threatening that it was going to be the last time. When Lily cut her hours down she asked for a little extra, but Allison refused to send it. She yelled into the phone for ten minutes, while Lily, phone cradled to her ear, sketched with her soft charcoal a large black mouth perpetually open in a screaming O.

  “Your father is telling you venomous lies about me, I know. While I sleep, so sick, my body old, shaking, bruised, full of medicines that keep me alive, I know he calls you up and complains about me, tells you I’m drinking, but what about him, does he tell you about himself, how he refuses to be a man to his wife—”

  “Got—To—Go—Mom. Got—to—go.”

  She burned her forearm at work, and over days it became so infected it required emergency medical treatment and more antibiotics. She was a walking mold spore. She tried to eat yogurt to counteract the Ph imbalance in her body, but found that she had gone off yogurt. Lily kept bandaged the burn that wouldn’t heal. Not so much kept bandaged as kept hidden.