Oh boy. Double wowzer.
I lunge for my phone and begin texting. First Imani: “staying your house tonight. k?”
It takes approximately two seconds for the ping back: “k”
I now consternate, trying to think what exactly I shall say to Mom, other than “staying at Imani’s.” It’s not that I never lie to my parents, hello, you’ve been there. It’s that I try and stick with things like omission and not deliberate choice. Big exhale. Hands run through short, now sticking up, hair.
I watch Ava watching me as I slowly piece together enough vocabulary to sign something resembling, “easier, tell me, plan,” I hope. I’m not sure about my “plan” sign.
She holds her hands flat, with her palms up, and then does a kind of seesaw thing where one hand raises while the other lowers. Her face kind of matches the movements, a little pouty lip, a slight left-right head toss. Maybe.
And then she is pulling a big fake frown, as her hands move until finally both hands lie flat, make a fist, her index and middle fingers extend together. She leaves her left hand chest-high, flat while her right hand goes up to her nose, touches it, and then moves down to touch her left hand. Fun.
Not as much fun.
And that kind of summed it up, fun, and not as much fun. Mostly, I think, because everything was different, and in some ways exhausting, and in others exhilarating.
It begins with Ava unpacking that backpack. She brought clothes for the party, for us both. And she looks amazing, in a black miniskirt, with a tight turtleneck that matches her eyes, and thigh-high boots. Point for exhilarating.
For me, she brought a shirt, with a tie, or an ascot, or a cravat, or a something. I’m not really sure, but when put on, her shirt choice is all very Gentleman Jack. That show about Anne Lister stars the amazing, stunning, be-still-my-heart Suranne Jones and features an awesome wardrobe by Tom Pye. But that hair kind of scares me.
Yeah. I know. But I am not digressing. I have gotten much better about that. Right now I’m actually stalling.
It’s funny. When I cosplay, I love it. It’s this awesome, artistic, I don’t know, thing. But when I’m cosplaying, I choose the person I become. And yes, this outfit would have looked awesome back when we, the fab five, investigated our way into that steampunk LARP. But that was my choice. Okay, yes, I will grant you, with a lot of help from Imani.
And it’s taken me a long time to incorporate even pieces of my butch truth into public, as exceptionally sharply turned-out as it might be honestly.
But I choose those. This feels, I would imagine, like putting on too much makeup. You know, it’s not that a person wouldn’t wear that eyeliner or lipstick, but they might not wear it to, I dunno, the church social. Although granted, since I’ve never been to a church social, that’s a slightly preconceived notion.
My point is, being dressed like this for a party in a roomful of people I don’t know, is not exactly comfortable.
I know, controlling much.
As for the party itself, it’s way off-campus, taking about forty-five minutes to find, and it’s packed, wild, and, surprisingly for me, incredibly loud. I motion to Ava, pointing first at my ear, then shaking my fists.
She glances around, shrugs, “I guess.” But she keeps looking at me; then a small smile forms, a small head cock to the right, pause, and she signs, “That’s what all you hearing people say.”
She watches me translate, throws back her head laughing, and drags me onto the dance floor.
The rest of the night’s a blur, and by the time we get back to the room, at whatever ridiculous hour that was, I’m definitely beyond tipsy and beyond exhausted. But there’s no sign of Emma, and Ava presses her body next to mine, releasing my tie, then taking her left hand and holding it on my chest, while with her right hand she makes a small “d,” which she then wipes quickly before my face. She then changes to form an “x” which she starts at her cheekbone, moves to her chin, and then changes to a “y.”
Damn. Sexy.
And just like that, exhaustion passes, and I am back once again, exhilarating. Oh yeah!
The next morning, a.k.a. maybe two hours later, we wake up and head to Starbucks. Right down the block from Gallaudet is Starbucks’ first US signing store, and yep, right beneath its signature sign, etched or decaled onto the windows, is S-T-A-R-B-U-C-K-S, all finger spelled. Ava walks herself right up and signs our order, turns to me with a grin, and I realize it’s something so simple, something I do every day, and yet something she can’t do everywhere she goes.
I go grab us two seats and think I should be floating on air or, given my lack of sleep, hovering above the sidewalk, but instead I’m truly overwhelmed, taken by sensory overload on so many levels. Especially the need to use my face. In sign, facial expressions are everything. No one can hear you intone “droll” or “icily” or “enthusiastically,” so one sign can have different meanings and the person signing must convey the one, the intonation, they want.
I feel like my face is one big fake tic of self-conscious bad acting.
Ava arrives bearing gifts, and as I take the coffee I smile a bit tiredly. By the time we are heading back on the train, I sit quietly, completely traveled out. I take her hand and the miles go by. I suddenly realize it’s more than just “traveled out.” I am talked out. Which might just be a first. I have been, as Robert Heinlein once titled, a “stranger in a strange land,” and my brain hurts, but not quite as hard as my heart lusts.
It’s a very odd combination.
But one that lets me navigate my week without too much insanity. Okay, I lie. I am loonier than a tune, but I have learned I have a talent for flirting via text a.k.a. sexting. So that’s something.
Not enough, but something.
And given both our schedules, it will have to do. Unless, perhaps, maybe, the universe has a gift in store . . .
EIGHT
Ah la vache! The white stuff falleth! Qui cherche trouve!
Yes, we are, or at least I am although I think that’s a bit egotistical even for me, the beneficiaries of amazing good fortune. A circumstance completely and totally unpredicted by all those highly paid weather people, an event, nay my friends, a miracle, better known as Snowpocalypse.
Although I shall tell you Jimmy prefers Snowzilla. He thinks I should, too, because Godzilla is the portmanteau, the word merge, from which Snowzilla was birthed. And Godzilla has that entire New York City moment.
And no, we are not confusing it with King Kong and the ape on the Empire State Building. We do know better than that.
He’s referring to the Godzilla series opening credits. Jimmy loves Godzilla. He still has the TOHO Vintage Godzilla Empire State Building Coin Bank that his great-grandmother gave him. It’s the Empire State Building with a huge Godzilla planted to the right side and in front of it. You put in a coin and Godzilla swings about and lights up and monster noises emit. Even I must concede it really is kind of cool. Maybe even borderline geektastic.
Okay, this time I do digress! I know! Hey, come on, you know you’ve missed that.
Or not. But that’s okay. It’s so much easier to stop myself when the topic is Jimmy’s coolness.
Hey, come on, that’s funny.
Or not. Sheesh. So back to Snowpocalypse vs. Snowzilla. I concede Jimmy has a fairly sound argument, but I just don’t think Snowzilla sounds as aesthetically cool as Snowpocalypse does. The pop of the “p” is just more satiating than the zilla.
We agree to disagree.
But zero disagreement, this event is more than a weather phenomenon. This, my friends, is a personal gift from the universe. A boon. A bonanza. With the entire city blanketed by huge drifts of snow, everyone’s school is shut down, meaning Ava can come out and play too. It’s time for Snowball War!
Pings are now circulating madly. I verify the train line is still running and ping Ava to meet me at the statue of Balto in Central Park.
Balto, you may or may not recall, is the sled dog who saved a bunch of childre
n in Nome, Alaska, in 1925 by leading a sled for the final fifty-three miles of the 674-mile trek that started in Anchorage through blinding blizzards and temperatures of minus forty to deliver life-saving medicine.
It’s an incredible story. I mean Balto is an example of dog bravery at its best. And I salute him.
However, to be honest, in a world filled with amazing feats, I’m still not sure I get why everyone was so enchanted by this particular Siberian husky that the people of New York donated money so the city of New York could commission sculptor Frederick George Richard Roth to make him a bronze statue. But they were, and he did. At least Roth was from Brooklyn, so I guess that’s something. And he did do an amazing job.
You will find Balto standing guard near the entrance to the Central Park Children’s Zoo, and when you’re little I have to say there’s really something about having a watchdog protector that is kind of comforting.
Although, just to be clear, the comforting Balto is not a replacement for the dog your parents won’t let you have, no matter how majestic he may be.
Ergo, which I think we can all agree is a great lead-in word. Ergo I pick Balto for our meetup, because first, virtually all New Yorkers can find it, second, it has easy access off Sixty-Seventh, and third and most critically, if you’re going into do snowball battle, a little husky magic is not a bad thing. I have a theory. If you can kiss a Blarney Stone, a little husky nose-to-nose can’t hurt.
And now that I’m thinking about it, for that matter, neither can a little Ava. Nose-to-nose. Or perhaps, feel free to pause and share a lascivious eyebrow moment, even a little mouth-to-mouth.
Neither of which exactly happened.
To begin with, my trek to the statue took nearly three-quarters of an hour longer between train delays, snowdrifts, and slip and slides. And I’m still here ahead of Ava, who finally arrives with Joe in tow, and her face hidden by a big, silky, multicolored scarf. This isn’t completely disappointing, mostly because I do like Joe. He’s infectious to be around. A quality I happen to appreciate.
It does, however, put a damper on my nose-rubbing fantasy.
But not necessarily my hand-holding one! My gloved hand grasps onto Ava’s mitten, which is sadly less tactile, but thermostatically necessary, and we set out trudging and shuffling, ducking other snowballers, spinning through flurries, and slowly make our way through the park, over toward our texted destination, the Black Tupelo in the Ramble, where we will join up with Jimmy, Imani, Ari, and Vik. Let our pummeling begin.
Between bouts of packing and throwing, I look up, and there are those green eyes, and I don’t know, or care, how many times my distractions result in a cold face pounding. Even the icy white stuff that manages to slide under the coat to slip down my pants can’t put a damper on me. As long as I can look at Ava, I am impervious to cold.
It is the best snowball fight ever.
Or at least it is . . . right up until . . . THE SCREAM.
Imani’s tumbling and I’m running and I see Ava looking at me with something I can’t quite define, but I know it’s not good, and there’s no time to stop and figure it out because Imani’s screaming and the cold is bone-chilling and I need to save her.
Now!
NINE
She’s fine. More or less.
Rolling down a hill in Central Park isn’t as dramatic as losing one’s footing in the Alps would be. It’s more of a tumble down a slope, and while I suppose a person could still break a leg or some such thing, today there’s feet of snow for padding and buffeting purposes. But none of that logic applies to we who are the panicked.
Jimmy and I are maybe the sixth or seventh person down the hill, getting there in time to have Jimmy race to help her up. She’s pointing and we realize the scream wasn’t about the fall. It’s about the hand she landed on when she stopped.
Of course, Imani didn’t realize it was a hand at first. When she landed, she kind of felt something beneath her. It was covered in snow, but sticking at her in a most uncomfortable way. So she reached down to pull on what she thought was a stick or something to move it away from her tush; only it wasn’t a stick and whatever it was, it was, in her mind, reaching up and grabbing on, and that, well that is what launched the scream heard up the hill.
So now, at least a dozen of us are standing gaping at what are now uncovered, skeletal fingers.
Staring down, it occurs to me that if Imani hadn’t literally landed on them dead-on, pun only slightly intended, they wouldn’t even be noticeable. But she did, and they are.
I bend down and look at the fingers protruding ever so slightly from the snow. And you know, it is really creepy.
I don’t pause, hesitate, or honestly even think. I just open my coat, take out my phone from the inside pocket designed to keep it questionably warm and reasonably dry, pull off my soaking wet glove, snap a photo and text it to Detective Robert Tsarnowsky’s a.k.a. Tsarno’s mobile.
I follow it with a quick message. Dead body. Central Park. Black Tupelo in Ramble. Then I hit send.
And wait.
Which gives me time to turn back to find Ava, who, I confirm with a glance about, never came down the hill, and who . . . my thoughts trail off. The end of my thought just reared an unexpectedly ugly head. True confession, I was about to complete that sentence with “who . . . I did kind of forget about in all the excitement.”
Wowzerhole. Cringeworthy am I.
Although I don’t really understand why Ava didn’t just come down. Imani could have actually been hurt, and granted she’s not Imani’s bestie, but she is kind of a bestie once removed, and it’s not every day someone you know lands on a skeleton poking out from under the ground.
And even if wasn’t Imani. I mean it could have been a perfect stranger; wouldn’t she want to know?
Well, standing here freezing will not provide answers.
And given the tromped-over, slushed-out area, if there had been a crime scene to protect, it’s probably way too late and not my responsibility, so I should just get myself moving back up the hill and go find Ava.
A more intuitive, insightful, or even self-aware person might have wondered about my hesitation. I am none of the above.
I motion to the gang and set off, only to find between the bodies that slid and skidded down and the sun having come out that the trek is now a footslog, which means I am now fighting to keep my boots on my feet and out of the slushy muck with every step.
A trudge here and a plod there finally gets me ungracefully back up, where I don’t see Ava. But I do see the first responding police car, which is annoyingly not Tsarno’s.
Of course, if Tsarno were first to respond, it would be really odd as Central Park has its own precinct dedicated solely to all 843 acres. It might even be the nicest precinct building in the city, because it’s kind of new’ish, or really oldish newish. And the precinct is pretty famous. It’s the oldest one in the city. It was established in 1936 from what were the park’s original horse stables. But then, which is why everyone knows all about it, they gave it this amazing remodel, just a few years ago.
Yeah, I know. Mini-digress. But only in my mind. My eyes are still scanning for Ava.
And even if Tsarno were here, it wouldn’t matter for two reasons. One, Central Park isn’t in his jurisdiction, and two, I’m betting the not-very-nice patrol officer in charge, the now-staring-at-me Officer Jennings, would not care to share.
I am using not-very-nice as a derogatory understatement. Dude is an asshole.
Although, in all fairness, before he can ask us any questions and get a handle on the events, he had to call in backup to round up—and out—the thousand or so snowballing teenagers who have zero interest in this latest turn of events.
I don’t think he’s really having a very good day himself.
But his mood is not my problem. My problem is a missing Ava. And he is not interested in being part of the solution, which is making him my problem, because he wants me to “wait here” and that isn’t going t
o happen right this second.
Before I dig myself a huge hole by informing said officer of such, I catch sight of Joe frantically waving at me. Once he sees he has my attention, he signs, “Ava. Home. Later.”
I nod and watch as he heads back down the hill. Only then do I realize I don’t know if he means Ava went home and text her later, or Ava went home and, well, later.
New tack. I glance about. No Officer Jennings in sight, so I pull out my phone and shoot a quick text to Ava: “with police will come find you at home as soon as i can. xo.”
Which turns out not to be overly soon at all. The six of us are still strewn about when the ambulance comes.
Sorry. No. I’m a little distracted here. The ambulance was not for Imani, she’s fine. It’s an ambulance for the skeletal hand, which it turns out, is attached to a skeletal body.
So, I’m finding this whole thing really weird. I mean it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know we have a dead body. And not even a freshly dead body. Truly we have a very dead skeleton. So, you wouldn’t think an ambulance is really all that necessary, but apparently it is.
The way it works is the patrol guys come out when you call. They see it really is pretty much a dead body as advertised, so they set about roping off the area, etc. and call their supervisor. It’s the supervisor who then calls EMS, who come out and formally pronounce the body dead and give the time.
While all this is happening, the patrol officers have made their way through about forty or fifty of us, taking down names and contact info.
This, in turn, has left enough time for the squad detectives to get here, and by the time we’re finished with our info dump, a new car pulls up. A man and a woman get out, and are greeted by one of the squad detectives.
We all watch intently as they greet each other.
Say Her Name Page 5
