The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  Spencer stopped eating his stuffed cabbage.

  Lily coughed. “Amy was evasive when she talked about this period in her life. She told me some anecdotes, of Kansas, of New Orleans, but she barely volunteered information other than to tell me a little about her friends, and to caution me against using drugs.” Lily looked into her cold cabbage. “She was like you with Dartmouth. Cagey.”

  Spencer tapped on the table to get her attention. “You better hope she wasn’t like me at Dartmouth. But are you telling me that of the six people that went in one beat up van—three of them are dead?”

  “If you put it like that.”

  “How would you put it?”

  “Just life, detective. Car accidents, drugs, suicides. What else kills the young these days?” Lottery tickets?

  Spencer quietly studied Lily. “Aren’t you wise. I’ll tell you what else kills young people. Unlawful killing. Homicide. Manslaughter. Killing with depraved indifference to human life. Murder. But two more people missing? Paul must know these kids. They all went to the same high school. Tomorrow you and I will go talk to him.”

  “Spencer—I mean Detective O’Malley…” Lily turned red. He smiled. “I don’t know if Paul knows anything. But these kids aren’t the important thing.”

  “You don’t think so? Six people in one car meeting with extreme fate? Not important?”

  Lily wondered if their birthdays or significant digits were 49, 45, 39, 24, 18, 1. But why would she wonder that? What did her six numbers have to do with six people she did not know?

  She knew Amy. Amy was 24.

  Lily was 24, too.

  This was a stupid line of thinking. Lily wished Spencer hadn’t led her to it with his talk of fate.

  When he went to pay and took his cash out, a stash of lottery tickets fell out of his wallet. She laughed. “Aren’t you an optimist. Are you collecting them?”

  “Yes, when I get to twelve, I check them all at once. But what, you just collect the one on your wall?”

  Her heart skipped a beat, another. “So is there anything at all that you don’t notice, Detective O’Malley?”

  “Obviously, Miss Quinn, or I wouldn’t still be looking for your roommate.”

  They met the next afternoon in the downstairs reception area of the precinct to go see Paul at the salon. Spencer had on a suit jacket in which he looked boiling hot, while Lily had practically no clothes on at all, and still had glistening arms and legs and neck. New York City in July. Hot.

  “A little warm in that jacket, detective?”

  “I am, yes. But who’s going to take me seriously if I wear skimpy shorts and a tank top, Miss Quinn?”

  Lily squinted. Another tease from Spencer? She didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he noticed her summer outfit. He didn’t seem to be the kind that noticed that sort of thing. He noticed everything, as an officer of the law, but not that sort of thing. Yet he said skimpy shorts. When she walked in front of him to cross the street she wondered if he was watching her.

  “Your partner doesn’t come with you?”

  “On little errands like this? Nah. You’ve seen Detective Harkman. He likes to save himself for the big trips. Most of the day, he’s just a housemouse.”

  Lily laughed at the terminology.

  At the salon, Paul declared that he knew “nothing about nothin’.” That period of Amy’s life, he told Spencer, was a two-year hole from which Amy emerged intact, as if the two years had never existed. She graduated high school, she disappeared, she went to find her wild and new self, she came back, her wild and new self found, and re-entered life. She enrolled at Hunter, became a waitress at a cocktail bar, transferred to City College where she met Lily, re-established her friendships, and did not talk about the two years on the road.

  “I’m not asking about the two years on the road. I’m asking about the people Amy traveled with.”

  Paul didn’t know them.

  “You and she weren’t friendly in high school?”

  “Best friendly.”

  Spencer waited.

  “We lived on the same block but we didn’t hang out with the same people, all right. She hung out with some real losers, and I didn’t. They weren’t musicians, they weren’t jocks, or nerds, or in choir. I don’t know who they were. I don’t know them, don’t know their names, don’t know what happened to them. Like I said, we didn’t travel in the same circles back then.”

  “I see. Could you point them out in your high school year-book?”

  “God! I don’t see what it matters. It was six years ago. What does high school matter now?”

  “Could you point them out in your high school yearbook?” repeated Spencer.

  “No, I don’t think I could.”

  “Did they belong to a club?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Were they political maybe?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know about them. Political! They were just a bunch of going-nowhere potheads.”

  “Amy too?”

  “No, not her! She just got mixed up with the wrong people, all right?”

  “Well,” said Spencer, “it would be all right, if Amy weren’t missing for two months, but since she is, it’s not all right, no. Your friend here seems to think it was something stronger than pot.”

  Paul shot Lily a withering look, standing clutching his colorist’s chair. “Does Harlequin know this for sure?”

  “Harlequin knows nothing for sure,” said Lily.

  “Exactly,” said Paul.

  Spencer led her away, his hand momentarily pressing her between her bare shoulder-blades.

  Talking to Spencer about Amy was getting to be bad for Lily’s ego. It was like being with Joshua. It was occurring to Lily with startling alarm how many things she ought to have known that she didn’t know.

  Did Amy live a life that was more troubled and troublesome than Amy let on, coming from white, middle-class, peaceful Port Jefferson? Did Amy have secrets she kept so well? Or was Lily less interested than she realized? She didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

  How long had Lily not been able to speak normally to her mother? When did her mother so thoroughly and completely check out of Lily’s life? Lily didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Ten years ago after that blasted emergency ulcer surgery? Nine years ago in Forest Hills when she fell out of a chair (!) in the apartment and broke her arm, and her father said, “Mommy is fine, she’s fine, don’t worry, she just fell.”? Lily thought it was an aberration, a Polish accident, it was so long ago. But there had hardly been a mother since then. What had her mother been doing for nine years?

  One more layer of bottomless ignorance.

  10 Things in the Closet

  It was five in the morning, the sun was barely up, while Allison, who was up, was up seething.

  She never called, never, Allison thought, as she meandered from her room to the kitchen, wondering if she wanted something to eat. She didn’t even call when Allison sent her half her rent plus a little extra. Since Amy went missing, the entire $1500 has been on Lily’s shoulders, and Allison wanted to help her daughter, who didn’t even call to say thank you! Not even a thank you for sending nine-hundred dollars, as if the money were a given, a birthright.

  Typical of her. Lily always took everything for granted, as if it all were just handed down on a large platter for the youngest child. Allison heard George snoring behind the louver doors of his small room. Hear that? He sleeps as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. Nothing fazes him. Not my ill health, not my depression, not my unhappiness, nothing. He doesn’t need me either.

  She glanced at her bills, in a pile on the desk, at the unopened packages from Amanda and Anne. They kept sending those damn books. You’d think they’d call once instead.

  Nobody calls.

  Oh, Andrew calls every week, to say the quickest hello to her and to then to speak for half an hour to his father. Andrew, who’s got no time for anyone, speaks to George for
half an hour every week! They pretend they’re talking politics, hockey, but what they’re really doing is ignoring her. And even Andrew has been calling less and less lately.

  She went into her bathroom, and examined her face in the mirror. It was bloated and swollen. She examined her graying teeth (because of all the smoking and coffee) and her yellowing skin. She looked for the cranberry juice. She wasn’t feeling well. The cranberry juice would soothe her. Make her feel better. She poured herself a drop of cranberry juice into a highball and stared at it. All she wanted was relief from being awake at dawn. She couldn’t sleep, she didn’t want to eat, and there was nothing at all in the whole world she wanted to do. All she wanted was relief from this.

  She went to her closet that was piled high with clothes on the floor, winter clothes that she no longer wore because they were in Hawaii. They weren’t needed the same way she wasn’t needed. She could be lying in a heap in the closet. Her hand deep down inside the sweaters, she rummaged for something, down below, layers hidden, to the right and at the bottom. It wasn’t hard to find. She struggled a bit and then pulled out a gallon, half-empty, of Gordon’s gin. Before Allison pulled it out, she felt around the bottom to make sure she still had another full gallon left. She did.

  She brought it to the countertop where her cranberry juice waited for her. She stared at the highball for a moment, and at the bottle in her hands. She decided the hole inside her was too big today to fill with such a little glass. Tomorrow she would get herself in control. Tomorrow she could sleep past five, and maybe go for a walk with George…though what for? Really, what for? Why should she get herself in control even tomorrow? Like she had somewhere to go.

  She unscrewed the top of the gallon of gin and with shaking hands lifted it to her mouth. The hands could barely hold such a heavy bottle. She opened her throat and poured the gin in, barely even needing to swallow. The bottle was much lighter, that was good. And her heart was much lighter. That was good too. So good.

  She had to put the bottle away before she lost—

  11

  Spencer Patrick O’Malley and Lilianne Quinn

  To get out of the heat of her broiling apartment, Lily was sitting in air-conditioned Odessa at eight on a Sunday evening having dinner when Spencer walked in. The diner was nearly empty, but she was hidden in a booth a few tables away from the front door and he didn’t see her. He went to the cash register, where Jeanette helped him. He was in jeans, and was wearing an incongruous denim jacket. Lily was nearly naked, she was so hot. Looking at his jacket only made her hotter. She didn’t want him to see her, so she slid down in the seat and surreptitiously watched his exchange with Jeanette.

  He ordered a turkey club.

  “Will that be to go or to stay, Detective O’Malley?”

  Jeanette was twenty-nine and a waitress for eleven years.

  He said it would be to go.

  “Why don’t you stay for once? I’ll be glad to take care of you.”

  And she giggled!

  He said no thank you, just a turkey club, no mayo, a large coffee, a large Coke, and a cup of coffee while he waited.

  Jeanette, all breasts and batty eyes, said she would be right back and went to the kitchen. Spencer turned away from the counter to look at the patrons in the diner. Lily slid down further in her seat.

  He saw her.

  She sort of smiled and waved, and closed her sketchbook as he walked over. She had been sketching the empty countertop of the diner on a Sunday night with herself not Jeanette standing behind it.

  “Hello, Miss Quinn,” he said.

  Lily said hello.

  “Jeanette, I’ll have that coffee now, while I wait,” he said to the waitress, who brought him a cup, eyeing Lily with extreme displeasure as Spencer sat down in the booth across from her.

  Lily asked if he was on duty today.

  “No, I try not to work weekends,” he said.

  He should have looked better for not working weekends. He looked wiped out, like he hadn’t slept in days. He was unsmiling until he surveyed the food in front of Lily—a BLT, a Greek salad, a slice of cheesecake, Jell-O, and bread pudding.

  “Hungry today?” He smiled slightly.

  A little sheepishly she told him she never knew what she was going to feel like until it was right in front of her.

  Jeanette brought Spencer his brown paper bag, placed it in front of him and said, “Here’s your stuff, Detective O’Malley. Would you like me to ring you up now?”

  Spencer said, “On second thought, I will stay and have it here. Could you bring me some mustard, please?”

  They ate their food quietly. She was a bit more chatty than he. She asked him why the jacket in the heat and Spencer pulling it open and revealing the holster with a weapon in it, said, “I prefer not to brandish the Glock when I’m off duty. Makes people nervous.”

  She asked why he carried a piece if he was off duty.

  He said, “The gun may be smaller, but I’m required to carry it at all times. Off duty is just for pretend. To deceive us into believing we’re fairly compensated for our trouble. We’re never off duty. New York City would go broke if they had to pay us for 24/7 of service.”

  She asked if he lived around here, if this was his local diner. He seemed to be so well-known by Jeanette—though Lily didn’t say that.

  “No, I live on 11th and Broadway.”

  "Oh", she said, "that’s so close to Veniero’s! that sublime bakery."

  “I wouldn’t know. Never been there. Don’t care much for sweets.” He eyed her dessert buffet. She shrugged, and said that she did care a little bit for sweets.

  They finished eating and paid their separate checks. Jeanette seemed pleased by the separateness. Spencer opened the door for Lily, and Lily was pleased by that.

  “You spell your name oddly,” Spencer said, as if making a statement of extreme importance and fascinating fact.

  “Oddly, why?”

  They were walking back from Odessa. It was dark now and warm; they were full. Spencer slowed down a bit, Lily slowed down a bit, they were sauntering. From a bar they passed on Avenue A, loud music blared. Bruce Springsteen was out in the street/walking the way he wanted to walk. Spencer hummed part of the song before he answered. “I don’t know. Lily-Anne. I’ve heard of Lilian with one ‘el’ and Lillian with two. But Lili-ANNE?”

  Lily couldn’t tell if he was teasing her, she didn’t know whether to tease back or proceed with solemn caution. In the end she opted for caution. “I was born sixteen years after my brother was born, and my mother, having forgotten that she already named my oldest sister Anne, wanted to name me Anya, or Anita, or something like that. My father said they already had an Anne, but my mother didn’t see his point. They didn’t have an Anita. My father asked if they were Hispanic. That’s when my mother came up with Anya. No Anya, my father said. No Anastasia, no Anika! They had an Anne. No more Anne. So my mother’s valiant compromise, as she calls it to this day, was to name me Lilianne. So she could still get that Anne in there. I don’t know how my dad agreed.”

  Spencer smiled and when he looked at her, he looked at her differently, with more familiarity. “I know how he agreed. The way my father agreed. When I was born my mother put on my birth certificate Patrick O’Malley, and never told my father. She called me Baby for the first three months of my life, so my father never even knew the truth, and never asked, God bless him, until I started to smile.”

  “You didn’t smile for three months?”

  “Would you smile if you were called Baby for three months?”

  “Good point. What was wrong with Patrick?”

  “They already had a Patrick.”

  Now it was Lily’s turn to look at Spencer differently. “They named you Patrick and there already was a Patrick?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many of you were there? Please tell me more than two.”

  “Eleven.”

  Lily’s eyes widened. “You might want to forgive your m
other,” she said. “Eleven kids.”

  “Who said I didn’t forgive my mother?”

  “So did she nickname you Spencer for Spencer Tracy?”

  “Correct.” Again looking at her with friendly approval.

  “Spencer is a nice Irish name.” She stared at the pavement.

  “Quinn is a nice Irish name. Why does your friend Paul call you Harlequin?”

  Lily was discomfited. “Once he saw a clinch novel in my room. Has never let me forget it.”

  “Oh, yeah? My sisters read those and never stop torturing me. According to them the only way I’ll get hitched is if I become more like the man from one of those novels. From which series was your book? Temptation or Intrigue?”

  “Blaze,” said Lily, flushing with embarrassment and then laughing when she saw Spencer’s amused face. They were at her apartment, and she had a tinge of regret that the stroll was over so soon.

  “So why did your mother like the name Anne? Who is Anne?”

  “I don’t know. My mother just likes that name.”

  “Likes that name a lot,” Spencer said thoughtfully.

  Lily glanced at him from the top of her stoop. “Detective O’Malley,” she said, teasingly, “I’m sorry to inform you but my mother’s preference for the name Anne is not one of your MP investigations.”

  “Don’t be so sure. What about your other sister? She’s just plain Amanda.”

  “That was my mother’s continued subterfuge over my father. AmANNEda.”

  Spencer grinned. “Your brother? Was he spared?”

  “ANNE-drew.”

  Spencer laughed. And then he said, “Oh, of course—your brother is the Andrew Quinn, the congressman for the first district?”

  “Yes. The Andrew Quinn.”

  “Well, congratulations. He was just re-elected last year, wasn’t he? I remember it vaguely. That was a squeaker.”

  “You can credit me for that squeaker, I campaigned for him. Me and Amy. And it was a landslide compared to his first election against Abrams.”