by Rob Hart
It closed last year. Became a restaurant. I guess that didn’t work out because now there’s plywood over the windows, everything else stripped away, a sign offering it as a rental property. The street is quiet. One of those sleepy little corners of New York where it feels like the world fell away.
I consider pulling the plywood off the door, or picking the lock on the sidewalk grate. I’m sure whatever was left of Apocalypse was torn away, but I wonder if the secret room is still there. Down in the basement, in the bathroom under the stairs, behind the bookshelf. A dingy little room with two couches and a coffee table. An office for me, a place to do illicit shit for a lot of people. Ultimately, for all of us, a little piece of something we felt like we owned, even though we never did.
Once I can’t take it anymore, I turn and walk north to St. Dymphna’s. Step inside, a burst of warm air enveloping me like a hug. Walk up to the bar. It’s crowded. I don’t recognize the bartender. She’s in the weeds, struggling to make four drinks at once, doesn’t even acknowledge me. I look around, don’t recognize anyone else. Walk to the back. Find the smoking patio is still locked. The neighbors upstairs had complained about it so the bar manager closed it. Well then don’t live above a bar, assholes.
I leave. Wander. Find more bars. Don’t find anyone I know. The city feels so different. I recognize it, but it feels like an old friend. Grown taller, lost weight, different hair. That image you had of them slightly skewed.
The people here seem younger. More hopeful.
Maybe I’m less angry.
Even after the burger with Timmy, I’m still hungry, so I head down to Milon. That’s still there, at least. One of four Indian restaurants grouped around a stone staircase. Two at the top of the staircase, two at the bottom. As I make my way up the stairs, waiters of all four restaurants come out and try to hustle me into theirs, but I always go to Milon. Up and to the left. I’ve always understood it to be the best of the four, even though I have nothing to base it on.
It looks the same. Exactly the same. Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling so low I have to stoop, but not because it’s the season, it’s always that way. The seat right by the window is open so I sit and the waiter appears with a plate of papadum and dips. He hands me a menu but I hand it back and ask for meat samosas and lamb kori and garlic paratha. Probably more than I should eat in one sitting but I don’t care.
I chew on the thin, crisp shards of papadum and stare out the window. Watch people scurry by, collars pulled up, hands jammed into coats, going from one warm place to another, Indian techno playing softly on the speakers.
“Earth to Ashley.”
I looked up. I had been rubbing the side of my head where Samson threw his elbow during the pimp job. It was tender. Sometimes I pressed on it hard to make it hurt, because when it hurt enough it distracted me from stuff I didn’t want to think about.
The first thing I noticed when I looked at Chell all those years ago was her left eye. The discoloration in the white part that made it look like there was smoke billowing around the iris. A birthmark, she told me once. Then her red hair, a shade somewhere between a fire truck and the flames it was rushing to put out.
Finally, the smile like she had a secret and would never, ever share it.
“Where’d you go?” she asked.
Someone opened the door of the restaurant. With the air conditioning pumping and the heat wave currently pressing a boot into the city’s neck, it was like standing in front of an oven door. Outside, the sidewalk radiated sunlight. A woman walked by topless, her sweaty shirt draped around her neck. Some men hooted and hollered. She didn’t seem to care but I considered going out and hitting them because hitting people made me feel good.
“I’m right here,” I said.
Chell grimaced. “No you’re not.”
“It’s been a hard few weeks.”
“More than a month, Ashley. You haven’t even spoken to Bombay.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me. He’s worried. We’re all worried.”
It was a dance. We both knew why we hadn’t talked. I had—once again—gotten slightly more drunk than necessary and told her I loved her, that she should give me a chance, that maybe a relationship between us could work. She rebuffed me, again, told me she loved me, but not like that, and we were better as friends. It made me feel lousy and I drank to cover it up and that sent me into a spiral.
Funny thing about a city of eight million people: it’s real easy to be alone if you want to be.
The waiter arrived and put down our food—a shared plate of rice, lamb kori for me, chicken tandoori for Chell, an order of garlic paratha to split. The little cast iron bowl the kori was served in, set atop a wooden block, still sputtering. I picked up the plate of rice, dumped some of it onto the empty plate in front of me, and offered the plate to Chell. She waved it off like she always did.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What are you apologizing for?” she asked.
Shrug. “I dunno. Stuff.”
“It doesn’t count as an apology if you don’t know what it’s for.”
I piled some lamb onto the rice, ate even though it was too hot. Washed it down with the beer we brought in the bodega downstairs. The bottle said it was made with rice and it had a pink tint. “I’m sorry. I’m a fucking mess.”
Chell’s eyes went soft. The way they did when I gave her a peek behind the curtain I spent far too much time and effort trying to hide behind. She was the only person I ever let see me like that. Not even Bombay.
“Ashley…” she started. The way she said it made it clear she didn’t really have a destination in mind.
I shrugged. “Forget it. We’ve had this conversation too many times. You know how I feel, and I know how you feel. You know the things I carry, and I know the things you carry. Just the way it is. I want you in my life and I accept that it won’t be the way I want it. That’s on me. I get it. It’s a cycle. We do the same things, over and over, expecting a different outcome, but there never is.”
“Well, you talk a good game,” Chell said, as she speared a piece of chicken, chewed on it while gazing out the window. Turned back to me. “So how long until you think we’ll end up having this conversation again?”
The words dripped with something viscous and caustic. I didn’t know how to respond.
Part of the reason I loved Chell is that, because of the way my dad died, people always wanted to talk about it. They were always saying they were sorry. And I hated it. One, because I don’t want to talk about it with every fucking person I come across, but two, because I hate that someone would apologize as though it was their fault.
Chell never told me she was sorry. Never pushed when she felt me pull back. Just gave me the space to do what I needed. Sometimes I needed to cry and it felt safe to do that in front of her.
But I could see it on her face. The way she squinted, heaviness to her brow. She was getting tired of this dance.
“Why do you do it?” I asked.
“What?”
“Put up with me.”
My voice cracked when I said it. I didn’t mean for it to, but it did.
The intensity in her eyes disappeared. I was in the process of stabbing a piece of lamb and she reached across the table and put her hand on mine. Her skin was cold from being inside the air conditioning for so long. When she took my hand I kept staring at the plate, at the piece of lamb on the end of my fork.
She said, “Ashley.”
I looked up at her. That smoke billowing around her eye.
“I do not ‘put up with you’,” she said. “Please don’t ever say that again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“See,” she said, smiling. “That one actually counts.”
We ate the rest of the meal in silence. Nothing between us settled. And I think we’d accepted it wouldn’t be. We could find a way to co-exist in that. It was important that we had each other in our lives. That much, we were ab
le to realize.
At the end of the meal, she waved over the waiter and said, “You know it’s his birthday, right?”
It wasn’t.
But it was always one of our birthdays when we ate there.
Two months later Chell was dead.
The waiter clears my empty plates and puts down a small tin bowl with a scoop of mango ice cream.
There’s commotion from the other end of the restaurant. One of the waiters goes over to the light switch, another to the ancient boom box hanging from the wall in the back. The waiter at the stereo blasts the volume and plays an Indian happy birthday song, while the waiter at the switch flicks it on and off, over and over. A third waiter comes out of the kitchen with two tins of mango ice cream. One of the scoops has a small birthday candle sticking out of it, the flame dancing in the dim light.
He places the tins in front of a middle-aged married couple. It’s the woman’s birthday. Supposedly. The waiters clap. The lights flick on and off. I can’t help but smile. I don’t think I’ve ever been here, not once, that this didn’t happen. I wonder how many are lies and how many are actual birthdays. I’m willing to bet more of the former.
And then it’s over. The waiters return to their post. I leave a wad of cash on the table, way more than the bill because I love this place and never want to see it close. Head for the door, back into the cold. Pick a direction and walk. It doesn’t take long before I’m in front of my old place.
The building looks the same. Old, red brick, standing strong. A lot of apartment buildings are getting pulled down. The architectural flourishes that used to be so common, disappearing in favor of flat gray boxes. I test the door but it’s locked. Probably for the best. What am I going to do? Knock on my old door?
It’s not my place any more.
I’m not as sad as I thought I would be about that.
The fear I felt on the ferry ride over has dissipated. I think it’s because I expected this to be way more depressing. That I’d mourn my old life slipping away.
Instead it just is.
I will never live in this neighborhood again. Not unless I win the lottery, or go back working full-time for Ginny. Winning the lottery is more likely. This job is a one-shot deal.
Leaving for more than a year was the hardest thing I ever had to do. There were plenty of nights, especially in those first few months, where I nearly came back. I can see now the good it did for me. It was like a hard reset on my life. A new perspective that let me look at this place as it is, not as I think it’s supposed to be.
Here’s the thing about living in New York City: There are people stretched around the block ready to tell you what the thing is about living in New York City. But those people don’t live here. They live in an idea of what they want the city to be. It ends up defining them, rather than allowing them to define their own experience.
I’m not like that anymore. I’m happy about that. I turn away from the building, walk away.
Put it behind me.
As I make my way down the block, I hear a scratch on the pavement.
Glance over my shoulder, on instinct, and see nothing.
Keep walking.
Hear it again.
This time I turn quick, and I see a flash of something ducking behind a white van.
Could be a rat.
In my experience it’s never a rat.
I’m in the middle of a side street, the streetlights blocked by a large tree so that this whole section is cast in a scatter of shadow and yellow light. There’s no one out. It’s a bad spot to be caught in a worse spot. Second Avenue is in sight, alive with traffic and people. Safety in light and numbers.
The smart thing would be to keep walking.
But I am never good at doing the smart thing.
I walk in the direction of the van.
The night is quiet, air still. I hold my breath for a second and listen, in case I pick anything up. Only the wind rustling the branches of the trees, dead leaves scraping the pavement, that electric hum of the city that never turns off.
I try to walk quietly, though at this point, whoever’s hiding behind the van has to know I’m not retreating. It dawns on me that whoever’s there could have a weapon, so I glance around, see if there’s anything I can pick up. Find nothing, so I step out on the sidewalk, cut a wide arc around the back.
Those last few feet, my heart pounding, I leap forward.
There’s no one.
I look up and down the block again. At the far end is someone turning a corner, but that could be anyone. Maybe I’m being paranoid. I’ve been up for too long. I should go home. Get some sleep.
But then I smell it.
Cigarette smoke.
I crouch down, find a butt dropped on the pavement. Pick it up.
The tip is still smoldering.
The sun interrupts a rotten night of sleep. I can’t stop thinking about the cigarette.
Could be nothing. I’m working a case and that makes me jump at shadows. But that’s the thing about jumping at shadows. Sometimes it’s better to jump than not jump, in case there really is a monster around the corner.
The safest thing to do is assume I’m being followed. It could be Ginny keeping tabs on me, making sure I’m doing the work. More likely it’s related to Brick. The guy at Sanctuary already knows I was asking around about him, and then I had to go wandering around Park Hill. Someone might have seen me and put it together.
I’m putting the odds at 70/30 it’s Brick over Ginny. There can’t be anyone else. At least, I don’t think so. I only just got back. I haven’t had time to piss off that many people.
I climb out of bed, a little stiff and achy, stutter-step into the kitchen. Bombay nods at me from the counter where he’s pouring a fresh cup of coffee. I smile and take it from him. He grumbles and goes into the cabinet for another mug.
We sit on the couch and wait for the coffee to wake us from our morning stupor. He puts on a home renovation show. The premise is that a couple is looking for a home, but can’t afford a new one, so this goofy husband and wife team help them to find a fixer-upper. There are many trials and tribulations related to things like budget overruns and knob-and-tube wiring and the need for open concept floor plans. I find myself oddly engrossed by it, and by the end I’m happy to find that they were able to get the kitchen of their dreams and still complete the guest room despite needing to pay to replace a broken waste pipe. Then I hate myself a little.
“I want to watch this all day,” I say to Bombay. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“Yes. But also I do too.”
“Is this what becoming an adult is like?”
“A few nights ago I went to dinner at five because I knew the restaurant would be empty. And you know what? It was fucking wonderful, bro.”
The next episode starts. I get up, pour myself another cup of coffee, and sit back on the couch. Same series, except this time it’s a gay couple who insist they need a space in the suburbs that’s also close to their jobs in the city, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
“Speaking of food, what happened to Thai last night?” Bombay asks.
“Got tied up on some stuff. Remember Timmy, from high school?”
Bombay takes a sip of coffee. Thinks about it.
“Math class,” I tell him.
He nods. “Right, right. Nice guy. Parents died, I think?”
“I ran into him. He’s having a rough go. Turns out he’s using, which sucks for him, but is good for me, because it might give me a little entree into that community.”
“Still working on Ginny’s thing then?” he asks, making sure to brush on a heavy glaze of disdain.
“How did you know about that?”
“Lunette told me,” he says.
Well fuck. Wish she hadn’t done that. She did it for the right reason—she’s worried about me—so it’s hard to be upset. Still.
“She paid me,” I tell him. “To find someone who’s missing. What else am
I going to do? Sit around all day?”
“You could do a lot of things,” Bombay says.
“You’re in a mood.”
“Just want to make sure you’re not sliding.”
“What does that mean?”
He throws me a sideways glance and a raised eyebrow. “No disrespect. But c’mon. Sometimes things were good with you and sometimes they were bad. And I want to make sure they don’t get bad.”
A little flame of anger ignites in my chest but I blow it out. I get what he means, even though I think he’s off base. Even though I’m a little annoyed he doesn’t realize what the past year has done for me.
“It’s different now,” I tell him.
He nods. Chooses his words cautiously. “Saying and demonstrating are two different things.”
I knock back a big gulp of coffee. “Fine. You want demonstration? Here’s demonstration.” I get up, place the coffee cup on the kitchen counter, and head toward the bathroom.
“What does that even mean?” Bombay asks.
“I’m getting a grown-up job,” I tell him.
Jay Gunner’s office is a few blocks away, in an office building off Richmond Terrace. I take the elevator up to the fifth floor and find the door for AAA Advanced Investigations. Locked, which is a little annoying, but then again, it’s not like I had an appointment.
I figure the best thing I can do is utilize the direct approach. Show him I’m passionate, I’m energetic, I want to be put to work. As I stand in the hallway and wait, I consider whether I should have brought a resume, but then realize, what the hell would I even put on it? Years of odd jobs, for which I either have no references, or references I can’t trust, or references who would straight up incriminate me.
After fifteen minutes of me fucking around on my phone, a young girl, college age, comes down the hall from the elevator. Dark hair tied back in a tight ponytail, glasses with purple plastic frames that match her long coat, skin the color of milk. She’s balancing a cup of coffee and a pile of folders. She tries to keep everything upright and unlock the door at the same time so I step over and ask, “Need a hand?”
