The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  She giggles as I take her hand. We hurry together down the SoHo streets, elbowing aside people laden with shopping bags, dashing in front of a taxicab as it honks to a halt. We turn down Wooster, laughing, breathless, breaking into a run for no reason, and then I pull her through some glass doors and into a space that is gray and hushed and very, very expensive.

  “Welcome to Abraham Mas,” says a young male voice, and then Eastlin is standing there, looking first surprised, then pleased, and then kind of weirded out, presumably because Maddie and I are soaked with sweat and out of breath and laughing and are probably going to get him in trouble.

  “Hey!” I grin at him. “What’s up, man? How’s it going? You never texted me back.”

  Maddie is stifling laughter behind her hand. A couple of Fifth Avenue blondes pause their browsing nearby long enough to scope Maddie up and down, exchange a look between themselves, and then turn their backs. Eastlin notices, and I see him notice, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Yeah. Um. Not too much. Just working. You know.” He eyes Maddie, and then sends me an inquiring look. I know he’s asking if this is the girl I was talking about. I glance at her sidelong and then give him a proprietary smile, just so I can enjoy letting him think that maybe it is. Maybe I’ll rise in his estimation from “pathetic” all the way up to “lame.”

  “Yeah. I thought you were gonna be in today. Listen. Is it okay if we film here?” I ask him, resting a hand on Maddie’s shoulder. She smiles and shrugs at Eastlin.

  “Film? You mean, for your workshop thing?” Eastlin looks kind of nervous. They probably have rules against that. You probably have to get permission from some central office, and fill out a bunch of forms, and pay them a thousand dollars an hour and promise Gwyneth Paltrow will be there.

  “Yeah. I want to interview Maddie for Most. It’ll take two seconds.”

  “I’m Maddie,” Maddie says, helpfully, pointing a finger at her chest.

  “Eastlin’s my roommate,” I explain to her. “He does fashion design.”

  “Coooool,” Maddie approves, drawing the syllable out and nodding.

  “Ummm . . . ,” Eastlin stalls. He obviously wants us to go away. He scans the store, sliding his hands into his pockets and trying to come up with a reason to get rid of us. The Upper East Side blondes have moved deeper into the back, where they hang all the shirts made of little scraps of oyster-colored chiffon.

  “I don’t know, Wes,” he says finally.

  “Come on. Please? It’ll be awesome,” I plead, rocking on the balls of my feet and jostling my backpack over my shoulder so he can see how excited I am.

  “Please?” Maddie echoes, folding her hands under her chin and giving him big, wet eyes like a Dickensian orphan. “What’s Most?” she asks me out of the side of her mouth.

  “Eastlin?” asks a huge, totally ripped guy with an earpiece and a plain black T-shirt that hugs his biceps who has just come looming up behind my roommate. He folds his arms and his chest seems to get twice as big. I have to stifle more laughter. “Everything okay over here?”

  “Yeah, Duane. We’re cool.” Eastlin rolls his eyes ever so slightly, and then seems to make up his mind. To me, he says, “Right this way, sir. Let’s see how I can help you today.”

  He leads us to the middle of the store, past racks of weird dresses that look to me like frayed flour sacks dyed deep eggplant and mauve. I spot Maddie peek at a price tag in the palm of her hand before dropping it like it’s on fire.

  Eastlin parks us in a dressing room, then closes the velvet curtain behind us and whispers to me “Okay, asshat. That better be her. Also? You owe me.” Aloud he says, “Thirty minutes, then, sir? Can we bring you anything? Ice water? Champagne?”

  “Thanks, man,” I say at the same time that Maddie calls, “Champagne would be great, thank you!”

  There’s a leaden pause from outside the curtain. Then Eastlin says, “Right away, miss,” and his shoes disappear.

  “This place is crazy!” Maddie whispers to me, smiling.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “Don’t worry, though. He’s cool.”

  I’m nestling her on the stool in the corner, against heaps of fine netting and chiffon from the clothes they haven’t put away yet. The light is perfect. I knew the light in here would be perfect. Some places have light that seems to make every woman more beautiful. I grab one of the flour sack dresses from the hook in the dressing room, and hold it under her chin.

  “Know what? You should put this on,” I say. It’s not really appropriate for a documentarian to costume one of his subjects. But the color is so rich I can’t help it.

  The burgundy brings out the blue tones in her skin, making her lips look redder. And the texture is so matte and soft that it makes her hair look shinier. I’m so certain of the rightness of it that it’s almost creepy. I look down at myself, and note with dismay that no amount of expert lighting can save my cargo shorts from sucking. Eastlin’s influence must be rubbing off on me.

  “Are you kidding?” She blanches. “Have you seen how much these things cost?”

  “So what? We’re not buying it.” I grin at her. “Please? Pretend like it’s a costume. For a play.”

  She smiles at me, uncertain, holding the dress in her lap. Then she gives in.

  “Okay, fine,” she says. “I’m going to sweat all over it, though. And you have to step out.”

  “I’m gone,” I say, backing away with my hands raised to show I’m unarmed.

  I duck out through the curtain and mosey up to where Eastlin’s standing behind the counter at the front, fiddling on an iPad. A flute of champagne fizzes enticingly at his elbow. I can’t even wrap my mind around shopping in a store so expensive that they give you champagne while you shop. For free.

  Without looking up, he says, “You are not having sex with that goth chick in my dressing room. FYI.”

  “Don’t worry,” I reassure him.

  “I’m not worried,” he says, eyes still on the iPad. “You and I both know that, if necessary, I could beat you to death with your own arm. I have nothing to worry about.”

  He gives me a challenging look and holds it for a long minute. For a split second I can’t tell if he’s kidding.

  Then we both burst out laughing.

  “I should start going to the gym,” I muse.

  “You really should,” Eastlin says with pity.

  “Listen,” I say, leaning my elbows on the counter and craning my neck to look at the iPad. “I’ve got a favor to ask you.”

  “Oh, goody!” He gives me a wicked look.

  “Sorry.” I smile and shake my head. “Not that.”

  “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it,” he says drily. “So what’s the favor?”

  “Do you think you could try looking up that girl I told you about?” I say. “The one who shops here.”

  Eastlin glances at the dressing room across the store.

  “That’s not her?” he asks.

  “No, that’s someone else.”

  “I knew that wasn’t her.” He shakes his head. “I’d remember. God, I’m so over that nineties’ torn-fishnets look.” He pauses for a moment to regret the rest of the world’s bad taste. “All right, fine. What’s her name?”

  “Annie,” I say.

  Saying her name out loud makes me light-headed enough that I’m actually glad I’m leaning on the counter. Annie. The word feels beautiful in my mouth. As soon as I think that, though, I get embarrassed, like Eastlin might have heard me think it. Is it lame, to look up one girl while waiting for another? It is, isn’t it. But it’s for Tyler’s release, anyway. It’s not like I’m trying to find her because I want to hook up with her or anything.

  Do I?

  “Annie what?” He’s poking at the iPad screen.

  “I don’t know.”

  Eastlin sighs heav
ily and rolls his head back on his shoulders. “Wes. Come on.”

  “What? I didn’t ask.”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “She had to leave in a hurry. I didn’t have time to ask her last name.”

  “Wesley Eugene Auckerman—” he starts.

  “My middle name’s not Eugene,” I interrupt.

  “—need I point out to you that in a mere five weeks of roommating I have been laid eleven times, and you have been laid exactly zero?” To emphasize the zero, he holds his finger and thumb in an O shape, looking through it at me.

  “Thank you,” I say with mock earnestness. “Thank you for pointing that out.”

  “Anytime.” He turns the iPad to face me. “These are all our Annies and Annes. But none of them is her.”

  “How do you know?” I ask, looking curiously at the list of names and addresses.

  “Well, this one’s on the board at MoMA, and this one is a director at Goldman Sachs. This one just landed a walk-on in that new paranormal witch movie, and this one . . .” He ticks them off one at a time.

  “All right, all right. I get it,” I groan. I bring my hands up to my face and rub my eyes with my fingertips.

  He turns the iPad back to face him.

  “The way I see it is, you have two options,” Eastlin tells me. “I suggest the second, which is giving up.”

  “I can’t,” I say, and it comes out sounding sort of strangled and desperate, which is not what I intended. “Not possible.”

  “All right,” Eastlin says, eyeing me. “Then we go with option one.”

  “What’s option one?” I ask.

  He fixes me with an innocent stare, and says, “Find her some other way. Duh.”

  “Excellent. This is a good plan. Simple, and to the point. Thank you.” I stare at the countertop. I am the pizza of dismay.

  He hands me the champagne flute and smiles. “You’re welcome.”

  I start to make my way back to the dressing room, where Maddie is waiting. Maddie. That name feels kind of cool in my mouth, too.

  “Seriously, dude,” Eastlin calls out to my back. “There’re cameras in there.”

  Back inside the dressing room, champagne stashed on an end table, lighting a perfect rose-colored scatter totally devoid of shadow, I pull out my video camera and train it on Maddie’s face. Her eyes are closed, and she’s rubbing a cheek against the silk of one of the dresses behind her. I creep nearer, zooming in without zooming in. I let the camera study her, traveling over her half-closed eyes. There’s something. Yes. She’s very . . . I get in so close that I can’t see her Bettie Page bangs anymore or her neck tattoo, just the round planes of her cheeks, and a soft dimple where her smile deepens. She looks different, this close up. Younger. She looks . . .

  A laugh erupts out of my mouth, and I pull the camera away from my eye and stare at her in surprise.

  “What?” she asks, eyes flying open at the sound of my laughing. “Do I look weird?”

  “No, no,” I reassure her. “You look good. You look actually . . .” A smile pulls at my cheek while I decide. “Beautiful,” I say.

  Then I say, “Malou.”

  She stiffens, her feet scrambling over the dressing room floor as though she’s thinking about bolting. But she doesn’t. She just stares at me, hard, waiting to see what I’m going to do. I smile at her, and bring the video camera back to my eye. The pixelated image of her face in my viewfinder relaxes. Her cheeks are framed by tulle, and she gazes at me with heavy lids, watchful and steady.

  Maybe it wasn’t coincidence, Maddie turning up in my image search for Annie. Maybe I’ve been looking for the wrong girl all along.

  “Guilty,” she whispers, gazing down her nose at me.

  “So tell me, Maddie Miss Madwoman Malou,” I whisper, my camera moving over her skin, lingering on her mouth. “Tell me what you want most in the world.”

  CHAPTER 9

  That Friday night, fiction film workshop night, the screening room is packed, and I’ve never seen Tyler so nervous. The guy is barely holding it together. He’s dressed up, for him, in skinny black jeans with a rubberized wet-look finish and extra eyeliner. His black hair is gelled up higher than usual. And he keeps rubbing his nose, which looks red and raw underneath. He looks like the guitarist in a Japanese Sex Pistols tribute band.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper to him.

  “What?” he whispers back, distracted. “Yeah, sure.”

  His left knee jiggles so fast I can barely see it, and the jiggling is rattling the keys in his jeans pocket.

  Tonight all the live-action fiction kids’ projects get shown in front of the professors and the rest of the film students, including animation, whose workshop is Monday, and documentary—we’re up next week. Up until this point we’ve seen snippets of one another’s work, but nothing complete. Everybody’s films have to have music, sound, credits, the whole shebang. Workshop is half of our grade, but more importantly, workshop is when we’ll judge one another, silently. Taking the measure of one another is even worse than being graded.

  I look around, scanning the faces of my classmates. A couple of them I know are going to pose a serious challenge, but it’s hard to tell. Watchers, like me, don’t always broadcast their talent to the rest of the world. And sometimes the ones who pretend to be geniuses are kidding themselves more than anyone else.

  There aren’t that many film students, only about thirty of us in total, about evenly split between girls and guys. Three workshop professors, each of them looking like she’d rather be doing anything else on a Friday night.

  Only Tyler looks like he’s on the brink of a total meltdown.

  “Stop that,” I hiss to Tyler.

  “What?” he looks at me, irritated.

  “Your knee. It’s jingling your keys.”

  Tyler looks around, confused. “Huh?” Then he seems to hear the jingling for the first time, and puts both his hands on top of his knee. The jingling stops.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Sorry,” he says. As soon as we stop talking, the other knee starts jingling.

  I groan and stare up at the ceiling.

  More acoustical tile. I could count the divots, but I won’t.

  “All right then,” Professor Krauss says. She’s gotten up behind the lectern and is shuffling through some notes. “We’re just about ready. Cleo? Are you ready on the lights?”

  Tyler’s head whips around, hunting through the crowd. It’s pretty much just our classmates in the screening room, though there are a few parents, and some kids from other classes. One group of girls has brought poster boards that read DEEPTI ROCKS.

  “Dammit,” Tyler mutters. “They can’t start yet. We’ve still got five minutes.”

  I check my watch, but Tyler’s wrong—we’re actually five minutes past.

  “Who are you waiting for?” I ask.

  “Nobody.” Tyler frowns into his lap.

  “Is the gallery supposed to be sending someone or something?” I ask, looking over my shoulder, too.

  “No. Forget it.”

  I eye him, but the lights in the screening room start to dim, and whatever Tyler’s thinking disappears in the gathering dark.

  “All right,” says Professor Krauss. “Let’s get started. First up tonight is Deepti Chatterjee, with a narrative piece she’s calling Girl in the Park. It’s seven minutes, shot on digital video, and stars . . . I can’t read this. One of the drama kids. Ready?”

  The cheering section whoops, and one of the voices calls out, “Starring Laura Gutierrez!”

  “Jesus,” Tyler mutters under his breath next to me. “Grow up.”

  The screen flickers to life, and then we get seven minutes of the back of a girl’s head as she circumnavigates Washington Square Park to the dubbed-in tune of “These Boots Are Made fo
r Walkin’” by Nancy Sinatra. While the girl walks, she slowly removes one item of clothing at a time, dropping it carelessly behind her, until she’s (apparently) totally nude. Except the camera never leaves the back of her head, so I’m reasonably certain that Laura Gutierrez was not actually nude in Washington Square Park. She’s probably in swimsuit bottoms and pasties. Okay, I have to hand it to her for the pasties part. You wouldn’t catch me going semi-naked in Washington Square Park, if I were a girl. Actually, you probably wouldn’t catch me going semi-naked in Washington Square Park if I were myself.

  Heads start turning as she passes strangers going about their everyday lives. Nannies with strollers. Office girls on lunch break. Some dudes playing drums. Hare Krishnas. Once we start to get down to serious skin, the music changes to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs singing “Heads Will Roll,” and a few people have started following Laura like supplicants. I can’t tell if they’re part of the film project, or just randos. If they’re randos, that would have been pretty freaky. When the girl loses the last item of clothing, a pair of thong underpants, she comes to a halt directly under the Washington Square arch, then turns to the camera and winks over her shoulder at the very second the music stops.

  The credits roll over a rehash of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” while Deepti’s cheering section goes totally berserker, and everyone starts clapping.

  “God, could that be more derivative?” Tyler says, arms folded over his chest.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Her editing was pretty tight, actually.”

  “Whatever,” Tyler says.

  “Okay,” says Professor Krauss. “Nice job, Deepti. And Laura, too. That took . . . that took some guts. So. What would we say is the narrative thrust of this piece?”

  “Um, I’d say it was about the inherent violence of the gendered gaze? And about a woman’s control of her body in space?” calls one of Deepti’s friends.

  “Okay,” Professor Krauss says. “Sure. And how is that story conveyed in a visual lexicon?”

  I fade out from the class discussion of Deepti’s piece. Maybe Tyler’s right, it was kind of derivative. But I had to admire her technique. I don’t think my sound editing is going to be nearly that sharp. Okay, Most is more complicated. It’s got different scenes, different people, lots of different light levels and transition music. Girl in the Park is basically one long tracking shot, which if I want to be a jerk about it, I could point out it could’ve been done in one take, like, the day before yesterday. Then all she has to do is find music that’s the right length. I mean, everybody loves tracking shots. I’ve probably watched that Goodfellas tracking shot where they go through the kitchen to get into the Copa, like, a dozen times. And in The Player, there’s a whole tracking shot where they spend the entire time talking about tracking shots. The more I think about it, the more irritated I get. Deepti thinks having her friend get naked in the park is, like, some big artistic statement. Like, we’ll all be so distracted by thinking about Laura walking naked through the park that we won’t notice she made a crappy film.