The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  “Let’s arrest him and have the courts sort it out.”

  “Arrest him for what? Shopping? He’s got a provable alibi! Oh, and by the way, something else, which you keep forgetting—we got no fucking body!”

  “Yes, we also don’t have her! And we know she was supposed to go to her mother’s and never showed up.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s right.” Whittaker coughed and sat up straight, assuming a proper mock-legal air. “Mrs. McFadden, tell us, how often did you talk to your daughter? Oh, twice a month you say. Sometimes even less. Was Amy reliable? No you say? What? There were many times in the past when she said she’d be coming up for the weekend and then never showed up and never called to explain? Why, that simply can’t be, Mrs. McFadden! We have built our entire case on Amy’s reliability. She simply could not have not shown up and then not called! Why, it is our only incontrovertible proof of murder!”

  Spencer stared blinklessly at his commander. “Whenever you’re done, Chief.”

  “We got nothing, Spence. You got nothing. We don’t have a body, we don’t have physical distress in the apartment, we don’t have a letter from her, a journal entry implicating Quinn, a suspicious phone call. We don’t have a ransom note from her kidnapper, we don’t have blood on the congressman’s suit. We have no witnesses, no fluids, no evidence, no body! We got nuffin’! Time to move on, my friend. Time to move on. You’ve got eighteen MP cases open on your desk and Harkman is getting testy.”

  “Fuck Harkman.” Spencer didn’t even lower his voice.

  “You don’t want me to promote him over you just to shut him up, do you?”

  Spencer wanted to spit as he left Whittaker’s office.

  From that day on, Colin Whittaker began the daily meeting of all the station detectives and patrolmen like this: “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to start our meeting reiterating the following point regarding Detective O’Malley’s McFadden case. As of this morning, have we found a body?”

  In unison the officers would say, “No.”

  “Detective O’Malley, did you hear that? There is no body. Therefore, is it a homicide or a missing persons investigation? Detective O’Malley, I didn’t hear your answer.”

  “Missing persons.” Through his teeth.

  “Good. Now that that’s settled, let’s move on to the next item on our agenda for today.”

  33

  The Laugh Track

  By the beginning of only her third week of chemo, Lily said to DiAngelo, I can’t do this anymore. She thought the words must have come out whispered, because he said, “What?”

  “This. I can’t do it.”

  “Stop it. You’re doing great, this is nothing.”

  “I’m serious. I just…” She wanted to say, I’m too sad, I can’t get over how low I’m feeling, and I can’t shake it. The sadness never leaves. And it was pervasive; the sorrows that afflicted her were assailing her from all sides.

  For example:

  Lily and Spencer were sitting on the stoop outside her building. It was an Indian summer day, and by promising to carry her up five flights of stairs if he had to, he somehow got her to come downstairs and sit for a few minutes in the October afternoon warmth. Both were wearing jeans, jean jackets, both were pale and drawn. He had a buzz cut. She had no hair on her head at all. They were sitting lazily, chatting about nothing when his beeper sounded. He showed Lily the caller ID. J. McFadden, it read. Lily waited quietly while Spencer had a stilted five-minute conversation with Jan. She seemed upset. When he hung up, Lily said, “She calls you even on Sundays?”

  “Lily, she calls me every God-given day.”

  Suddenly she didn’t want to be sitting on the stoop anymore. She knew that something ticked over in him when Jan McFadden called, and he was no longer thinking about his nephews or her nieces, which is what they had been chatting about before the phone rang. As if to confirm that, Spencer said, “Jan McFadden was drawing my attention to page eleven of The New York Post. Did you see it?”

  “No.”

  “I saw it. A girl, sixteen years old, was found floating in the Atlantic ocean, weighted down by chains that were tied around her feet.”

  Lily closed her eyes. “Do I have to hear this?” Why does Jan McFadden continue to read the papers?

  It was as if she hadn’t spoken. “The girl was bound, gagged, and strangled in a Delaware motel room,” Spencer continued, “and then dropped with chains and cinder blocks from an airplane that one of her killers chartered. She’d been missing for two months.”

  Lily was quiet, trying to stave off nausea, trying to decipher meaning.

  “Two young punks killed her. Do you know why?”

  “I don’t want to know why.”

  “One of the killers was dating the girl’s foster stepsister, who didn’t like her. She didn’t like her, and wanted her out of the way. So they killed her.”

  Lily gave a theatrical sigh, replete with vocalization. “And this is pertinent why? Because most killings are done by people we know? By people who are close to us? Or is it that you think you should check out some Delaware motel rooms?”

  “No, no, and no. But I’m glad you asked. The two suspects were apprehended long before the girl’s body was found. Eventually they confessed and were charged with first degree murder. So it is pertinent because it shows you that you can have a homicide investigation without the body. All you need is a potential confession.”

  “Tell that to your boss, not me.” Lily struggled to her feet. “I’m not feeling good,” she said, using her cancer to turn away from Amy. “My throat hurts. And I know what you think. And you know what I think. I can’t hear about this anymore, Detective O’Malley.”

  Other times Lily tried to turn away from the cancer to sift through her brother’s outrageous inflicted miseries, but turning to Andrew meant instantly having to turn away from Spencer; leaning toward her brother meant by necessity turning away from Amy and all good feelings for her, turning away from caring about Amy’s vanishing, from Amy’s happy life in their apartment, from two years of their intimate friendship; turning to Andrew meant invariably turning to a hostility for Spencer, such a naked hostility that after the stoop talk Lily asked Joy to ask him not to come anymore until she got her head together. Lily was so pathetic, she couldn’t even tell him herself.

  There was just one little problem. Vague thoughts of feebly defending a secretive and invisible Andrew weren’t going to replace for Lily Spencer’s very real and solemn taking of responsibility for things that weren’t even his. And what remained, even without Spencer and his crazy Delaware parallels was this: Andrew, her brother, lied and deceived and betrayed Lily and his whole family by being with Amy. Nothing Spencer did or said could change that.

  But there was no avoiding the detective in Spencer. He brought the detective with him even when he brought the chicken soup and the blue eyes.

  She didn’t know of a way to see him and not think of Andrew and Amy. Spencer made it so impossible for Lily to be in denial about so many things in her life, and all at once, that she frequently found herself thrashing from side to side, unable to find comfort in any cranny of her mind. She was sick, but the person who helped Lily feel a little better thought her brother had something to do with the disappearance of her best friend. There was no way to get around that elephant in her head. So this was why Lily did the only thing she could to remain half-sane. She asked Joy to withdraw her from Spencer. Joy refused. Lily said it was an order not a request, to which Joy replied, “You’re getting rid of him, now you’re threatening to get rid of me, too? Who are you going to be left with, Lily? You want him not to come? Tell him yourself.”

  Lily left him a pained message on his beeper. Without even calling her back, Spencer stopped coming around, stopped calling—and now Lily couldn’t face her life.

  Without saying any of this to the doctor, this is what she was saying to the doctor: I can’t do this anymore.

  And what did the good doct
or suggest by way of solution out of the quagmire?

  “You should watch Jay Leno at night. Watch Comedy Central. Old re-runs of Saturday Night.”

  “Completely devoid of humor, by the way.”

  “Just using them as an example. Rent comedies. Buy yourself a DVD player, a new TV, a new couch. Rent movies, only funny ones, I’m going to tell Joy, nothing outside the comedy section.”

  “I don’t think Joy would understand. She doesn’t have a humerus bone in her body.”

  “Funny. Comedies only, Lily.”

  She tried DiAngelo’s approach. With Joy’s help Lily bought Best Buy’s most absurdly expensive television—a fifty-inch plasma TV. The TV was good. She hung it on her wall like a painting. This pleased her. The DVD player was good. The $300 chenille blanket heavy like a sheepskin rug was good. The Pottery Barn couch was goooood. Soft, mushy, with big pillows. The whole thing barely fit into her living room.

  “If I didn’t need all of my money for cancer, I would buy myself that Park Avenue apartment you were talking about, Joy,” Lily said. The bill for September had recently come. With the hospital fees, the anesthesiologist, DiAngelo, the X-rays, the blood, the medicines, the drugs (she couldn’t believe she had to pay to put those into her body!) and Anne’s mortgage and bills, September cost Lily four hundred thousand dollars. At this rate, she better die or get better by spring, because there was going to be nothing left of either her or her money.

  “Money well spent,” said Joy. “You’ll be broke, but you’ll have your life.”

  “Mmm, what joy to be alive and broke,” said Lily.

  “You’d rather be dead and rich?”

  Covered by a heavy blanket, Lily sat through the rest of week three watching Tootsie, Airplane, Animal House, Bachelor Party, Porky’s Revenge, and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the stupider the better. Joy sat with Lily on the couch once or twice, but watched as if the movies were I, Claudius, not Bachelor Party—not a facial muscle moved on Joy in response to the antics on the screen. By the beginning of week four, when the VePesid was being piped in, Lily said to DiAngelo, the movies aren’t helping.

  “Have you tried Conan O’Brien? He’s very good.”

  “Doc, you’re not listening.” She didn’t think that was it.

  “You’re not eating. Lily, you have to eat.”

  She didn’t think that was it.

  “What would you like, a week off? We’ll have to start from scratch. We’ll have to do continuous cytarabine again. Is that what you want?”

  “No. But I don’t want this either.”

  “Only nine more weeks to go.”

  By week four all the hair had gone from her body. Only the eyelashes remained. What were they made of, if not protein? “Don’t worry,” said Joy, who was helping her out of the bath. “It’ll all grow back.”

  “Like I care. I’ll never have to shave or wax again.”

  Week four, Some Like it Hot, Annie Hall, The Great Dictator, My Fair Lady, not technically a comedy, but one of her favorites. The Graduate, Blazing Saddles, Ghostbusters. She rediscovered Bill Murray, and watched Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters again, Ghostbusters II and Groundhog Day. Lily got stuck on Groundhog Day. Something in it stuck in her. She watched it three times on Friday, three on Saturday. And then on Sunday, when Joy had her day off, Lily called Spencer and stammering into the phone asked if he wanted to come and take a look at her new plasma TV.

  He came—bringing Coke and ginger ale and popcorn. His hair had gotten a little longer. He was so sullen, he was like Sinead O’Connor’s “Gloomy Sunday” song right on her new couch.

  But then they watched Groundhog Day and he laughed. After it was finished, Lily asked if they could see it again. “If you want,” Spencer said.

  There was a line in the movie spoken by Bill Murray to one of the regulars in a bowling alley bar: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing you did mattered?” Bill Murray stared at the guy with his deadpan face, and the regular responded, “That about sums it up for me.” Spencer stared at Lily with his deadpan face, and then reached over and took the remote off her lap, and pressed STOP, saying, “Okey-dokey, I think that’s enough Groundhog Day for this evening.”

  They sat on the couch, she at one end, he at the other. Spencer said he had to be going, and Lily agreed that was best.

  On Fridays when she felt like she could move, Lily put on Amy’s skicap and with Joy’s help walked to HMV on Broadway or Best Buy on 6th and bought movies. No renting and returning business with Blockbuster. She would buy dozens at a time. One day at Best Buy, she offered to buy a refrigerator for Joy, who declined. “I’d wait for your October hospital bill before I started buying refrigerators.”

  The October bill was only a hundred thousand dollars. Lily was so excited, she bought Joy a refrigerator and an oven. She gave ten thousand dollars to Anne for her November mortgage and extras, and another five thousand to Amanda for the girls’ birthdays. She bought another $300 chenille blanket for the couch—in case Spencer needed one.

  Lily bought every comedy in the comedy section, even A Life Less Ordinary, which didn’t look remotely funny. Sometimes she slept through them. Sometimes she watched them with one eye. She put the same movies on again and again until she saw them whole. Sometimes she even laughed.

  During week five Steve Martin said, speaking from the TV as if straight to Lily, “You don’t watch enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.” So Lily watched The Out of Towners, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, All of Me, Man with Two Brains, My Blue Heaven, and Lonely Guy to get Steve Martin to answer her life’s riddle.

  “He answered it in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” Spencer told her. “Remember? He said, ‘All dames are alike: they reach down your throat and they grab your heart, pull it out, and they throw it on the floor, step on it with their high heels, spit on it, shove it in the oven and cook the shit out of it. Then they slice it into little pieces, slam it on a hunk of toast and serve it to you, and then expect you to say, thanks, honey, it was delicious.’”

  Spencer could be funnier than any comedy, especially A Life Less Ordinary. Laughing inside, Lily said, “I can’t imagine you really believe that.”

  And Spencer said no, he didn’t, he just thought it was funny. “I think the answer to the riddle of life is more from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure than from Steve Martin. Bill says, ‘The only true wisdom consists of knowing you know nothing.’”

  And Lily, as Ted, said, “That’s us, dude. That’s us.”

  34

  Lily’s Stations

  Lily feels that her body has left her spirit, not the other way around, and only the spirit remains on the bed or the couch. She lies in bed and imagines riding a bike through Central Park or rollerblading through New York City rush hour. She imagines roller coasters, and loop-the-loops, and haunted houses, and river rapids and log flumes. She imagines jet-skiing even though she has never jet-skied, she imagines snorkeling, her legs moving, her arms moving, her lungs filling up with air from a tube, she imagines jumping off a high rock into the sea, into a freshwater lake, as if she were still a child, swinging like Tarzan on a rope over a river, a slow-flowing wide river. She imagines swinging a bat during softball, playing badminton, and table tennis, running, out of breath, doing ten 440-meter sprints with only two minutes’ rest in between.

  When Lily can hold a charcoal, she draws, but the things she draws she hates, and so she throws them out instantly. They’re so black and bleak. When she can hold a pen to paper she writes, doodling all around the words; she pens small poems, even attempts haikus.

  Death stared at me

  I stared back undaunted

  Just false bravado

  Though life beckons me

  I am too busy sleeping

  Sleeping not dying.

  He stands in his suit

  Holds out candy and Coke

>   I wish he would sit.

  Her intestinal tract hurts all the time. Hurts in twisting shards, as if she’s being poisoned.

  Spencer brings soup, the fattiest chicken soup he can get the Odessa chef to make. He makes her eat every last drop. He knows she is being poisoned by the chicken soup, but he doesn’t care. “Eat,” he says. She eats. When he leaves, as inevitably he must, she goes and throws up, as inevitably she must. When she comes out, Joy stands by the door holding out a disapproving towel in her hands.

  Spencer brings her vanilla shakes, strawberry shakes. Lily drinks and keeps them down! Hurrah. Joy must have told Spencer this, because suddenly he comes every day times five with strawberry and vanilla shakes. He comes so often and at all hours and then the intercom breaks and the super is on vacation and Joy has to traipse down five flights five times each day to let him in. That gets old fast, and Lily tells Joy to give Spencer a key to her apartment.

  When Spencer can’t come, he sends the delivery boy from Odessa, Pedro, who brings her stuffed cabbage, red cabbage and schnitzel, Greek salad and Manhattan clam chowder. Pedro brings bread pudding and cheesecake. Joy sits and watches Lily not eat. When is Joy’s next day off? When can Lily be alone again?

  “You’ll be alone when you’re dead,” says Joy, as if hearing her. “Eat.” Spencer was right about her. Lily can’t do without her.

  Amanda calls every day. Anne comes once a week and regales Lily with stories of her financial woes. Lily listens and listens, and then writes Anne a check. She wonders if she should just send Anne a check at the beginning of each month to circumvent the continual blather but is afraid Anne won’t come anymore if she does.

  Her grandmother comes once a week—like Lily used to come to see her once a week. Comes and sits by her bed and reads from newspapers and regales Lily with stories of great suffering, of Death Marches, of burning ovens, of dread, and starvation and fear, of depravity and malice Lily cannot fathom. Listening to Grandma, Lily feels a little better. As long as it’s not about cancer, she can hear it. Her grandmother asks if she wants to hear about Love, but Lily doesn’t. She doesn’t want to hear about Love. Not me, fellas, not me, girlfriends. She has soured on it.