The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  “I can’t believe she ditched me like that,” I finally grumble, unable to stop myself.

  Maddie looks sidelong at me, and then snorts.

  “It’s a shocker,” she agrees. “Me? I’m shocked.”

  “I’m so screwed. Now I can’t get her to sign my thing. She just ditched me! God!” The complaints crowd out of me, one on top of the other, and only then do I realize I’m actually angry.

  “What thing?” Maddie asks lightly.

  We’re walking south, gradually wending our way east. And then farther east.

  “This stupid release form. It’s not even my film! I don’t know why I care,” I spit. Of course, it’s not the release that’s making me upset. I feel stupid, letting Annie see how much I liked her.

  “Show me,” Maddie says, stopping by the gate to an austere cemetery. It looks like nobody’s been in there for a long time. There’s a historic plaque and everything. A marble angel with outspread wings watches our conversation between gnarls of ivy.

  I prop my camera bag on my thigh, fish out the crumpled paper, and hold it out for her to inspect. In a glimmer the grocery bag is in my arms and she’s holding the release form.

  “Oh yeah. I signed one of these for that guy. Your friend. He was a real dick about it. Got a pen?”

  “In there,” I say, nodding at my backpack. The grocery bag is heavy. It smells like all different kinds of leftovers mixed together, Indian and Thai and collard greens and maybe matzoh ball soup. Glass bottles clink around in the bottom.

  Maddie pulls out a pen from my backpack, which is somehow now over her shoulder instead of mine, and says, “Turn around.”

  Obediently, I turn my back to her.

  “What’s her name?” I hear the click of the pen.

  “Annie,” I say, and when I say it, something weird happens in my chest and then I’m embarrassed, as if someone might have seen.

  “Annie what?”

  “Um . . . ,” I stammer, because I have no idea, and yet it seems impossible that I don’t know.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. You’re ridiculous.” I feel the pen press between my shoulder blades, and then Maddie is waving the paper under my nose. “There. Happy?”

  It says Annie Cinders in loopy cursive.

  “How did you know her last name?” I ask, amazed.

  Maddie gives me a coy look. “I didn’t. That’s my last name.”

  “Your last name? But what if . . .”

  “Oh my God. WES. Nobody cares!”

  Maddie shoves my pen in the pocket of her cutoffs and moves off down the street, hot summer sunlight painting white stripes across her shoulders and hair. Her hair looks even blacker in the day than it did the night I met her, like it swallows the light. I have to hurry to catch up. She’s still carrying my backpack over her shoulder. From behind I can see the laurel leaf tattoo wrapping around her neck, coiling up under her hair.

  “I guess Tyler won’t know,” I muse. “It’s not like the gallery’s going to check.”

  I fish my phone out of my shorts pocket and text Tyler a cryptic note that the paper is signed. Immediately the phone vibrates with a text returned that just says K.

  “Tyler. He’s the guy from the other night, right?” she asks.

  “Yeah.” I’m getting winded from how fast we’re walking, but I don’t want Maddie to notice.

  “He seemed like kind of a tool,” she remarks.

  I laugh before I can help myself.

  “Yeah, well,” I demur. “He’s got a vision. You know. He can’t let little things like being cool to other people get in the way.”

  Now it’s Maddie’s turn to laugh.

  “Oh yeah. Me, neither.” She stops, noticing a pizza box on top of an open garbage can. Before I register what’s happening she’s opened the pizza box, discovered half a pineapple pie inside, and hollered, “Score!”

  “What?” My stomach lurches with disgust as I watch her fold the pizza half in thirds. She pulls out a couple of paper napkins from her cutoff pocket, does a half-assed job of wrapping it, and stuffs the pizza into the top of the grocery bag.

  “They probably just put this out. It’s totally fresh!” She grins happily at me. Then she plucks at my T-shirt and says, “Come on.”

  We walk all Lawrence of Arabia style through the sweltering city, the stench of day-old pineapple pizza filling my nostrils. After all the pizza I’d already eaten that morning, I’m struggling not to retch. Why would she want pizza someone had thrown away? A sour belch rises in my chest and I swallow it back. The effort makes sweat bead on my forehead.

  “Where are we going?” I ask after another avenue passes and we’re still walking east. I didn’t realize the island went this far east. We’ve passed the numbered avenues and are well into letters.

  “Home. Ish. I’ve got to drop this stuff off, and then you can buy me a thank-you breakfast.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Thank you, Maddie is what you meant to say,” she corrects me in a singsong voice.

  “Um . . . ,” I start to say again, because that is absolutely the way I usually am, with girls, when Maddie finally stops up short outside a decrepit brownstone on Avenue D, across from a huge housing project. The building is condemned, with a red rectangle with a white X sign in it plastered up to show that it’s going to be torn down. The first floor has bars on all the windows, with plywood where the glass should be, and the front door is made of metal. It looks locked down tight. There’s an orange sheriff department eviction notice stuck to the door.

  She marches up the front steps and eases the door open with an elbow. Turns out it’s not locked at all. The sheriff department seal is a fake.

  “Honey!” she calls into the house. “I’m home!”

  I hesitate on the stoop, clutching Maddie’s scavenged groceries to my chest. I’m sweating, both from the heat, and from nerves. Am I really going to follow this girl into an abandoned house? Who knows what’s in there. Mice. Rats. Homeless people. Slowly it occurs to me that if she’s squatting, that means Maddie’s probably homeless. Homeless people make me nervous, which is the kind of thing it’s not cool to admit, so I usually don’t, but it’s true. Anyway, I should be getting back. I’ve got to get my workshop film done for next week. And I’m exhausted and freaked out and crushed from Annie’s ditching me for no reason and all I really want to do is sleep.

  I look left. I look right. Nothing is amiss. A black kid pedals up the street on a low-rider bicycle, his knees rising and falling, one hand relaxed on the handlebars. Merengue plays on a radio a block away. A rush of miserable anger floods my chest as I think about Annie leaving me on the stoop. I don’t understand why she didn’t come back. What’s wrong with me? I’m nice! Too nice, maybe. Letting people push me around. Letting people keep me waiting. Well, to hell with that.

  Resolved, I set my jaw and march up the stairs and inside the abandoned building, bringing the bag of scavenged food with me.

  CHAPTER 8

  It had been an actual house, I’m pretty sure. But now it’s like I’ve stepped into a scene from The Matrix, except I’m in cargo shorts instead of a patent-leather trench coat and shades. This had once been a nice hallway, narrow, wood floors, with a skinny staircase stretching up to the second story. Huge patches of plaster have peeled off the lathing and fallen from the walls. Treads have been pried from the stairs, open to a black chasm beneath. Pale patches suggest places where architectural remnants—plaster trim, light fixtures, whatever—have been ripped off the walls and sold. A puffy-lettered spray paint mural winds up the stairwell, reading MADCINDERZ in wild style.

  I’m gawking, I realize, but I hear footsteps in the dim room to my right, which I guess was once the living room. The windows are boarded up, so what little light there is struggles through chinks in the boards and walls. It smells old, like rotted wood. The light m
akes patterns of spots across the floor and the walls, and in those spots glitter clouds of dust.

  “In here, Miss Madness!” another female voice trills from deep within the bowels of the house.

  Suddenly I’m itching to be looking at this scene through my video camera.

  “Maddie?” I ask the dim interior.

  I follow the sound of footsteps and voices, creeping forward, worried about stepping on a nail. Or a mouse. Or God knows what.

  “Check it out! Pizza!” Maddie cries to the other girl.

  I round the corner to find Maddie and a wisp of a black girl in giant platform goth boots standing in a room furnished with a stained mattress, a 1950s aluminum kitchen table, a couple kerosene lanterns, a scented candle (grapefruit? weird), a turntable with one huge 1970s speaker, a milk carton full of record albums, a stained corduroy beanbag chair, and a hot plate. There’s a naked lightbulb dangling overhead, fed by an extension cord that tangles across the floor and out a broken window, but the bulb isn’t turned on. Someone’s painted a huge anarchy sign on the wall in white house paint. It’s a nice touch.

  “Oooooh. And a delivery boy,” the wisp says with a leer. She runs her tongue over her teeth as she smiles at me.

  My backpack is resting on the kitchen table between them. Blood thuds in my ears with my sudden need to hold the camera safely in my hands. I walk up to them with the grocery bag like I do this kind of thing every day, set it on the table with manful authority, and pick up the camera. Maddie notices how anxious I am, though, and arches her eyebrow at me.

  “What’d you get?” the wisp asks Maddie as she rummages in the bag.

  “Couple forties. Muttar paneer. Drunken noodles. Oh, and, like, a totally fresh pineapple pizza.” Maddie smiles at me through the dark.

  “Killer,” the wisp says through a mouthful of pizza. She cracks open a forty and swishes the malt liquor in her mouth, gargles with her head tossed back, then swallows.

  “It’s cute. I don’t think Wes here’s ever been Dumpster diving before,” Maddie remarks.

  “Wes, huh? What is that, like, a prep school name?” the wisp jeers.

  “I dunno,” Maddie says, eyeing me. “Maybe you should ask him.”

  “Screw him,” the wisp says, rummaging deeper in the grocery bag.

  While they make fun of me I’ve been wrestling my camera out of its case and I’ve fixed it safely to my eye with an exhale of palpable relief. Through the comforting pixels of digital video the scene becomes interesting, instead of scary. I zoom in on the wisp’s face. Her hair is bleached a punk yellow-blond, and she wears it gathered into two heavy braids of dreadlocks on either side of her face. She’s wearing so much eye makeup she looks like she’s been punched in the face.

  Or maybe, I realize, she’s been punched in the face.

  “So is it just you guys, living here?” I ask, hitting record. The camera whirs to life in my hands.

  Her cheeks are so thin that I can see the food moving under her skin as she chews. The wisp completely ignores me, thrusting her arm into the grocery bag looking for more leftovers.

  “Sort of,” Maddie answers me. “We’re kind of a collective.”

  “What kind of collective?” I ask.

  My camera hunts for, and then finds, Maddie, who has settled in the beanbag chair, knees knocking together, looking up at me with her head cocked to one side. She’s smiling in a way that suggests maybe I’m not as bad as she thought.

  “Anarcho-syndicalist fregan,” the wisp says through another mouthful of something that I don’t want to see. She’s started vamping for the camera now, sticking her tongue out, turning one shoulder this way and peeling an edge of T-shirt down to reveal a burnished expanse of tattooed skin.

  “What’s fregan?” I ask, zooming in to capture the vamping.

  She fixes me and my camera in a glare so deadly the pixels seem to vibrate.

  “You don’t usually bring me such stupid delivery boys,” she sniffs to Maddie.

  Maddie laughs, hoisting herself out of the beanbag, comes over, plucks my T-shirt, and says, “Come on. You promised to buy me breakfast.”

  “I did?” I swivel my camera around and train it on her face.

  “Yep. Don’t you remember?” Her hand has closed over my upper arm with surprising strength, and she’s started to drag me bodily away. I wonder if Maddie is rescuing me. Like she can tell how nervous I am.

  “Bye-bye, delivery boy!” the wisp slurs. I guess the beer is hitting her. She’s pretty small, after all. “Come back later and you can film me some more. If you know what I mean.”

  “Shut up, Janeanna,” Maddie calls over her shoulder, hustling me through the vacant living room and down the hall. Through my camera lens everything is confusion and darkness, and then suddenly we’re back outside under the hot summer sun.

  Maddie hauls me along as my feet scramble not to trip and I try to stuff the video camera back safely into its bag. A taxi honks as we tumble into the street.

  “Hey,” I say. “Wait up.”

  “Hey, yourself,” she says. “I want eggs.”

  “Eggs? Eggs aren’t vegan.” I’m pleased with myself. I hooked up with this girl in Madison for two glorious weeks last summer who was vegan. She didn’t eat dairy or eggs. She wouldn’t even eat honey. It used to really piss her off when I teased her about caring for the feelings of insects.

  Maddie rolls her eyes so hard I can almost hear it.

  “Fregan, Wes. God.”

  “Yeah, but what’s fregan? Nobody’s told me yet,” I point out.

  “It means vegan, unless it’s free. You’re buying, so it’s free. I want eggs. Also, this place is fair trade, so it’s okay. Come on.”

  When I look up I see that we’re now in SoHo. The sidewalk is six deep in tourists, skinny girls in little sundresses and huge bug-eye sunglasses. It’s hard to believe the burned-out shell of Maddie’s squat is five minutes away.

  “Maddie?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “I didn’t think they still had squats on the Lower East Side,” I say. It’s all Disneyland now, Dad opines in my mind. A movie set for people who’ve watched too much cable television. You should have seen it when I was there.

  She laughs through her nose, steering me into a cavernous natural foods restaurant and then to a booth in the back. It’s the first time today I’ve been in air-conditioning, and the sweat immediately evaporates from my skin, making my scalp tingle with relief.

  “Yeah, well.” She shrugs, propping her knees up on the edge of the table and looking with interest at the menu. “It’s not really a squat, exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A quick scan of the menu reveals that buying breakfast for me and Maddie is going to set me back at least twenty dollars. A twist of anxiety lodges in my stomach, which is already full of pizza anyway.

  I just won’t eat, then. It’s fine.

  “It kind of belongs to Janeanna.” Maddie shrugs. “Her dad’s a developer? His company bought the shell. They’re going to tear it down pretty soon. So we sometimes stay there. There’s sort of a group of us that comes and goes. Everybody contributes. Everybody’s welcome if one of us vouches for you. A collective. Like I said.”

  “Huh,” I remark. “So Janeanna’s, like . . .”

  Maddie glances up at me with arched eyebrows under her bangs.

  “What?” she challenges me.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  I was going to say So Janeanna’s loaded, but that doesn’t seem like the right thing to say. Gran always told me it was rude to talk about money. Though in New York it seems like money is all anybody ever talks about. For sure it’s all anybody thinks about. I don’t know what is the right thing to say, so I go with, “What’s your dad do?”

  Maddie flares her nostrils and focuses more closely on the menu.r />
  “My dad,” she says, “doesn’t do a goddam thing.”

  I sit, watching her browse the menu with unnecessary attention, feeling the cool breath of the restaurant air on my skin, realizing that as soon as I think I understand something, I don’t actually know anything at all.

  • • •

  “So what’s your movie?” Maddie asks me. It’s starting to feel normal, hanging out with her. We had an easy breakfast, laughing and making goofy smiles out of orange slices. She’s not as bad as I thought. She’s actually pretty cool.

  We’re back outside on the sidewalk, my wallet thirty bucks lighter, and I’m starting to get antsy. I want to get back and edit in the footage from the guy in the pizzeria, and the stuff I took of Janeanna, and Tyler’s been blowing up my phone about something, and anyway, Maddie makes me self-conscious. I don’t get why she wants to be hanging out with me. I mean, she’s got a neck tattoo. She lives on her own in a squat. I’m just some guy.

  “It’s a documentary,” I say, shifting my weight and trying to come up with way to escape.

  “What kind of documentary? Can I see it?” she asks. She actually sounds interested.

  I’ve pulled out my phone and I’m scrolling through all the messages I’ve missed. I come upon the film still I took of Annie and stare at it, not answering Maddie right away. Annie’s hovering, gazing off camera at me. She’s smiling, trying to tell me something. Something pulls at me, in my chest.

  “Wes?”

  “Huh?”

  I glance up and see Maddie waiting for me to answer her, and she looks so genuinely interested and friendly that an immediate wave of guilt and remorse crashes over my head, drips down my body, and puddles around my feet. She’s here, right now. She could’ve ditched me anytime, but she didn’t. Instead she invited me to her weird hangout, and she rescued me from her dissipated rich friend, and then she wanted to have breakfast with me like a completely normal person. Annie’s this girl in my imagination. But Maddie is real. She’s realer than I am, even.

  “Know what?” I say with a rush of inspiration. “I’ll do you one better. Come on.”