The Lavender List

by Meg Harrington

  Though she definitely smirks when the kid kicks Amelia in the shin.

  All because Amelia needs the kid to get her a week-and-a-half’s worth of newspapers without gouging her like a freaking Wall Street suit.

  “All right?” Laura asks when Amelia limps back inside.

  “Kid kicks like a mule.”

  Laura laces her fingers together and balances her chin on them. “Lot of experience with those?”

  “Loads of ’em past Atlantic Avenue. You didn’t know?”

  “I don’t find my way that deep into Brooklyn often.”

  “You’re pullin’ my leg.”

  “I wish I were.”

  “Even Coney Island?”

  She shakes her head.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing. Hot dogs. Rides. Way better than anything you’d get up in Connecticut.”

  “Well, of course it is.”

  She rattles her leg real quick to get the last sting of the kick out of it. “Hang in there, Laura. You’ll get there one day.” It’s as gentle a tease as Amelia can muster under the circumstances.

  “That an invitation?” Laura fires back.

  It’s a joke, but there’s heat in her words, and Amelia hopes Laura can’t see her freeze. She swallows. “You want it to be?”

  Laura’s been looking down, writing some notes in a pad, and she looks up at that. Her dark eyes fall briefly on Amelia’s mouth before she pegs her with a stare that’ll haunt for a shameful night or two. But then she smiles. The heat is gone, and it really is just a joke. Nothing too sincere. It rarely is with Laura Wright.

  That’s A-OK for Amelia. Because those brief moments of belly-warming and knee-weakening sincerity between the bits of infuriating insincerity are enough.

  That twelve-year-old paperboy drops off a week-and-a-half’s worth of newspapers at the Sebastian in a rucksack big enough that fellow Sebastian resident, Sarah Trellis, asks if there’s a body in it.

  She almost tells her it’s her boyfriend, just to see Trellis fume, but doesn’t. Knowing that cow, she’d want to see inside, and the whole hotel’d start worrying about Amelia hoardin’ papers like that crazy old man that got crushed under twenty years’ worth of cat hair and back issues of the New York Times.

  The first thing she learns, ensconced in her room and armed with a bright light and a big pot of coffee, is that combing through a week-and-a-half’s worth of papers for one of the largest cities in the world is boring. Back-aching and mind-numbingly boring. She can only go for twenty minutes at a time before she’s pacing the rug her mom gave her into ruins and stretching like an alley cat.

  The second thing she learns is that peering at newspaper print for hours on end is painful on the eyes. So, she stops, opens the window wide, leans out, and stares at the skyline instead.

  The sun’s setting and the sky’s red. It hits the glass of all the buildings on the horizon and when a train, a truck, or even a big breeze rattles those windows, it’s like the whole city is on fire.

  It’s a pretty sight, and Amelia rests her head on her fist and sighs. She sounds wistful. She ought to remember that exact sigh for the next audition.

  The window to her right scrapes open and Laura sticks her head out. She doesn’t look surprised to see Amelia there. If anything, it’s like she was looking for her. Or maybe Amelia just imagines the softening around Laura’s eyes when she catches her doing her best Juliet.

  “It’s Sunday,” she says. “I thought you’d be in South Brooklyn visiting your family.”

  Amelia waves her off. “They see enough of me as is. I figured I’d take a day for me for a change.”

  She smiles. “I quite like that idea. Taking a day for yourself.” She holds onto the window sill, pointedly staring at the skyline instead of Amelia.

  “What about you,” Amelia asks. “Taking a day?”

  “There’s no rest for the wicked.”

  Amelia laughs. It’s too soft in her ears. “You’re a lot of things Laura, but I’d never peg you as wicked.”

  Laura just murmurs.

  Neither of them talk for a while. The sun sets slowly and the drone of a whole city tickles their ears. It’s just the second floor, but even from this high up, it sounds less like a city and more like a river. A distant, cranky river with more than one timing belt in need of changing.

  “How’d you know I was in,” she eventually asks.

  “I heard you pacing about. Everything all right?” Laura sounds genuine.

  “Audition,” she lies.

  That catches her interest, and Laura perks up. “Need help? I played a mean Hamlet once upon a time.”

  “No foolin’?”

  “Boarding school before the war.” She shudders comically, but then smiles softly like she’s got an old joke in her head. “Nothing worse than youths trying to be actors. Though a few have done well for themselves since.”

  Amelia grins. “You know famous folks, Laura Wright?”

  “Oh, all sorts.”

  “Who? Specifically.”

  Laura’s coy, and it feels, for a second, like before Amelia knew she was moonlighting as a prostitute. “That’s in the past, darling.”

  Amelia sighs theatrically. “So’s that time I shared an elevator with Greta Garbo.”

  “Did she ‘just want to be alone’?” Laura draws her face down and affects a really bad accent for the impression, and Amelia has to roll her eyes.

  “Jeez. That one’s old enough to be my dad.”

  “You’re quite developed for a ten-year-old.”

  “We bloom early in the Maldonado family.”

  “We were all late bloomers in the Wright family. Mother thought I’d never ‘blossom.’”

  Amelia snorts. Laura smiles again.

  It’s enough to almost forget that hazy look Laura had in her eyes when Amelia found her in the alley and the gajillion pounds of newspaper taking up space on her coffee table.

  Almost.

  “Hey Laura, you doing all right?”

  Laura’s still smiling and nods. “I’ve ‘blossomed,’ if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It isn’t.”

  Just like that, it’s like someone’s stuck a knife in their tires. Any fun whizzes out in a pathetic sigh.

  “I’m all right,” she says so seriously, attention still on that skyline.

  “And your fella?”

  “Amelia…”

  She’s gonna tell Amelia to leave it alone, and Amelia really doesn’t want to hear that. “I worry.”

  “You mustn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” God, she can sound like a real bitter hag when she wants to.

  Laura, who always has a story, can’t figure out what to say. Her jaw works, but nothin’ comes out, so Amelia nods and shuts the window.

  A minute later, there’s a knock on her door, but she isn’t in any mood to answer. Not when she’s looking at a little blurb in the afternoon paper just a day after Laura’s attack. One unidentified woman. Two men. One guy in the hospital, but the other guy and the woman are long gone.

  She stares real hard at the name of the guy in the hospital. Then she looks up at her door and sees Laura’s shadow under it. And she bites her lip and regrets every choice that’s ever led her to this moment. Because the guy in the hospital?

  That’s her cousin.

  CHAPTER 3

  Laura’s waiting for Amelia downstairs with a spot across from her saved. Just like they normally sit for breakfast. Cozy and content even in a room of other gals. But Amelia’s worried. Laura’s got a smile on her face and it’s like she’s gonna toss off that prickly coat of “massive asshole” she normally wears to—Amelia doesn’t know—ingratiate herself.

  Worm he
r way back into Amelia’s good graces without even an apology or an acknowledgment of what’s happened.

  “We’re making this a bad habit,” Laura says, her eyes on her newspaper, but her tone is real teasing. Like they don’t see each other every morning and most nights. Like a quiet breakfast between the two of them isn’t the best part of either of their days.

  “Real easy to break this habit,” Amelia fires back.

  Laura purses her painted lips. She looks around, and Amelia does, too. They’re alone for the moment, but a group of girls are incoming, and their little bit of quiet morning paradise is about to go up in a gale of girlish glee.

  “I don’t do friends easily,” Laura says urgently. “And I appreciate your patience, but—”

  “But you’re about as talkative as an OSS agent.”

  Laura jokes, “Hopefully less.”

  “See!” She catches her rising voice and glances guiltily around the room before hunching over the table and whispering, “See, that’s what I mean. You’d rather joke than talk.”

  “I talk. We’ve talked, Amelia.”

  “Where was I born?”

  “South Brooklyn,” she snaps.

  Amelia nods. “Yeah? Now ask me the same question. Guess what my answer would be?”

  “New Haven,” Laura ventures.

  “Or Boston. Or Princeton. How would I know?”

  “Neither of those are in Connecticut.”

  Amelia glares.

  Laura looks down at her coffee and spins the cup on its saucer. The group of girls sit beside them and talk a mile a minute. Amelia butters her toast and listens lazily. Laura takes too big a bite of a biscuit and stares at Amelia while she chews it.

  Even though Laura’s been at the table longer, Amelia’s the first one to leave. There really is an audition she could have spent her Sunday working on. Now the audition’s after work and she hasn’t prepped. If she clocks in early, maybe the boss’ll let her go early, she hopes.

  The click of heels on the tile tells her that Laura followed her out of the dining room and into the foyer.

  “It’s Hartford,” she calls. She’s being serious again, and Amelia has to stop walking or she might trip. “And I’ve got a family that cares for me, and I even have friends—spread across four continents, but I lost too much in that blasted war.”

  Amelia can see Laura’s reflection in the glass of the front door. So serious and urgent, looking at the back of Amelia’s head with the kind of intensity that could melt a girl. She means she lost someone.

  Amelia turns carefully. “A friend? Or boyfriend.”

  Laura winces.

  Amelia speaks softly—which is a chore for her. “How’d he go?”

  Laura swallows, and it looks like she’s on a razor’s edge between her status quo and what the rest of the world calls feelings. “Nazi interrogation.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  One side of Laura’s mouth crooks up. “I believe that’s my line.” She lifts her hand up, like she’s gonna run it through her hair, catches herself, and lets it drop to the back of her neck. “Amelia…I told you, I’m not very good at being a friend.”

  “Yeah, you’re pretty lousy at it.”

  “But I want to change.” She starts to reach for Amelia’s hand and stops and smiles in that friendly way that’s never quite believable. “I happen to have a bottle of brandy that needs to be emptied.”

  “Yeah?”

  Her hands are at her side, fidgeting like they need something to do. She takes a step toward Amelia. “I can’t think of anyone better to share it with.”

  Amelia steps closer. There’s about a sliver of light between them.

  “That all you’re sharing?” It comes right out of her. A reflex like kicking the doctor when he taps you on the knee. She can’t believe she said it and holds her breath, waiting for Laura to say something back.

  Laura, when she wants to be, is a damn cipher. “Tonight,” she says, and Amelia can’t tell if she’s being set up or if Laura, standing so close she can smell her perfume, wants to kiss her.

  She nods. “See you after work.”

  She doesn’t get around to making the call she’s gotta make until after the post-lunch rush. The boss steps out for a smoke and that leaves the broom closet he’s christened his “office” empty.

  The dial on his phone sticks on the three but she finally manages to get a call out to her cousin Al. He is, as one would expect after what the newspaper recounted, still in the hospital, but his wife seems to think he’ll be okay.

  “His skull got nearly cracked in half, but the doctors are saying he’ll be talking real soon.” Al’s wife is the exact kind of optimistic idiot a fella like her cousin needs.

  Then she tells Amelia to hold and doesn’t bother covering the mouthpiece as she shouts across the room to Amelia’s uncle that his niece is on the line and does he want to talk to her.

  Amelia does not want to talk to her uncle, but if she hangs up, she’ll wind up with a little, bald Italian man on her doorstep and her date that night’ll be ruined.

  If it is a date.

  It might not be a date—

  “Amelia, baby doll, it’s been too long.” Her uncle Vince got a voice that’s smooth like that last drag of a cigarette. And he’s the only man that she’s never wanted to punch when he compares her to a toy.

  “Hi,” she says. ’Round him, she always has trouble finding more than three words to put together. There’s a kind of menace to her uncle. He’s the guy that slaps kids for having a smart mouth and can turn a grown man mute with a glare.

  “You’re calling after Alfonso?”

  “I saw his name in the paper.”

  He hems and haws about his son and then invites her to come visit him. He misses her. He’d like to see her.

  You don’t turn down a fella like Vince Pedrotti. Ever.

  She tries. “Well I got an audition tonight…”

  “So tomorrow.” Vince Pedrotti doesn’t make requests. He says something and it happens. He’d tell the moon to rise at noon, and there it’d be, shining in the sky.

  “I—”

  “You can come after work, can’t you?”

  She can. She doesn’t really want to, but she can. Phone still pressed to her ear, she thumps her head against the wall and wonders, again, why she thinks she needs to save Laura Wright.

  “Yeah,” she finally says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  The back door of the diner slams open, and she hangs up fast, slipping out of the closet before the cloud of pomade and cigarette smoke she calls a boss can see her.

  The audition, from Amelia’s view, does not go well. Something about staying up all night reading old newspapers. Something about thinking about her family and about her next door neighbor, left Amelia so distracted that she starts by reading the other person’s lines.

  Twice.

  Her head and feet and everything in between aches by the time she clomps up the stairs to her room. Girls say hello and Sarah Trellis tries to talk to her like they’re friends, and she’s proud of herself for not shoving her over the banister.

  The lights are out in Laura’s apartment. Hayseed is coming out of her room on the opposite side of Laura’s. Her real name’s Judy something, but Amelia’s not keen to remember because the gal’s not real likely to make it more than a month. She smiles at Amelia all big and wide the way only people who’ve never seen the Atlantic can.

  Amelia plasters on her biggest, broadest smile, nods, and says “yeah” a lot as the girl talks about how big! and exciting! everything is in New York City.

  “Have you seen Laura,” she asks, and that snaps Amelia out of her “yeah” phase.

  “Not since breakfast.”

  Hays
eed looks sad. What the hell does she think Amelia does all day that she has time to just go and see Laura?

  “I just…I had a question for her.”

  Amelia raises an eyebrow because most girls avoid Laura with a ten-foot pole outside of breakfast. “She’s all right for conversations,” they say. “But you wouldn’t want her for a bridesmaid.”

  She wouldn’t want Laura for a bridesmaid either.

  “If I see her, I’ll tell her you’re looking?”

  Judy nods and thanks Amelia “soooo much,” and by the time Amelia pushes her way into her room, she’s ready for bed—brandy and date be damned.

  “Is she gone?”

  Never mind. Sleep is for idiots.

  Laura’s sitting at her table, drink already poured. She’s got on a black and purple silk robe and those red lips of hers are poised to smile.

  “So, you say we’re friends, and then you just sneak into my place?”

  “To avoid that.” Glass in hand, she points at the door.

  “Way to jump on the grenade, soldier.”

  “Oh Amelia, I’d always jump on a grenade for you. Unfortunately, she’s more like an atom bomb.”

  Amelia pops her shoes off and groans in relief because it’s her own damn apartment. “A real cheerful one.”

  “How does she smile so much?”

  “Right?” She starts unbuttoning her dress as she hip checks her closet open. “You’d think her cheeks would hurt.”

  As she sips her brandy, Laura goes quiet, and after Amelia’s out of her uniform and into her dressing gown, she turns to find Laura staring straight ahead with her jaw as rigid as a Mount Rushmore president.

  “So you gonna tell me how you dodged that atom bomb? Because I’m pretty sure my door was locked.”