The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  Spencer didn’t want to have Amy’s file, alongside dozens of others, put in the cabinet labeled “UNSOLVED”, left for the next shift, the next detective, the next generation. Every ten years, the department re-opened all the files, sorted through them, and then, if there had been no new information, placed them in a whole different category: “UNSOLVED TEN YEARS AND OLDER.” That’s where the missing persons files went to die. Teenage children of desperate mothers, of divorced fathers, addicts unable to find their way home, disappearing without a trace, and the families went on, and the police force went on. Spencer knew—Jan McFadden would not go on. She was a woman who was stuck in that moment on Friday, May 14, 1999, and from that day her life did not move—and could not move. She held out a crazy hope that her child was alive, would come back. At the very least she wanted a scrap of information, not to live in purgatory for the rest of her life. One way or another Spencer would get her that information.

  Gabe and Spencer walked out of the precinct and went up to Second Avenue to McCluskey’s for lunch.

  “So you think we should go visit Harkman in the hospital?” Gabe asked.

  Spencer thought about it for two seconds. “Fuck Harkman.”

  They had just turned the corner on Second when Spencer heard a voice calling for him. “Spencer!” He turned around and there was Lily, with sketchbooks in her hands, walking up to them and smiling. She had put her choppy hair into a dozen pastel pony tail holders and her head radiated with lilac and pink and blue and yellow rubber bands. It was a glorious early April day. She was wearing all pink today, pink denim skirt, pink denim jacket, pink boots, pink sheer blouse, pink bra. Her legs were bare.

  She came up to them, and her smile was so well-known, he took half a step back, so familiar she was looking to him, and at him.

  “Hello, Detective O’Malley,” she said, pretending to be professional.

  “Hello, Lily,” said Spencer, trying to be serious. “This is Detective McGill.”

  Gabe was grinning at Lily. “Well, hello there,” he said, taking her hand, shaking it, holding it. “Hello, Lily, you can call me Gabe.”

  “Detective McGill will do just fine,” said Spencer.

  “So you’re the famous Detective McGill,” Lily said, smiling. “Detective O’Malley talks so much about you.”

  “Every single thing he’s said to you is a vicious lie.”

  Spencer told Lily what had happened this morning with Harkman and Gabe.

  “I’m sorry to hear about Detective Harkman,” she said. “He must be quite sick. But Detective O’Malley must be happy to have you working with him.” Her eyes were twinkling.

  “Well, I don’t know if you know this about Detective O’Malley, Miss—

  “Quinn.”

  “Miss Quinn, but he is a miserable bastard. I don’t know if anything can make him happy, and personally, I’m not going to kill myself trying.”

  “All right, you two,” said Spencer, nodding to Lily. “We have to go.”

  “Would you like to join us?” asked Gabe. “For some lunch?”

  Lily glanced at Spencer, who kept his lip bit. “No, thank you, perhaps another time. I’ve got to sketch in Astor Place while the weather is still good. Nice to meet you, Detective McGill. See you, Detective O’Malley.” She smiled up at him, her face flushed.

  Gabe frowned. “Did you say your name was Lily Quinn? You aren’t related to—”

  “Gabe, let’s go! I’m not going to stand on the street all day.”

  Spencer turned around once to glance back at her, but she had disappeared.

  “O’Malley, I can’t help feeling that you were trying to pull me away from that colorful adorable creature,” Gabe said when they were inside the bar.

  “For reasons more numerous than I have time to enumerate.”

  “Name me one, aside from the most obvious.”

  “One, oh, all right. Let’s see—your wife and two small children maybe?”

  “I don’t see your main squeeze stopping you from befriending girls half your age. What was with the hair?”

  “Cancer.”

  Gabe looked at Spencer, at Spencer’s own buzz head. “Still?”

  “Touch and go.”

  “Is she related to Amy McFadden’s main squeeze, by any chance?”

  “Gabe, I can’t tell you how much I don’t want to talk about it.”

  48

  The Yellow Ribbons

  Yellow ribbons were tied to the poles next to Amy’s pictures, and the yellow ribbons grew old and faded with time.

  With Paul and Rachel by her side, Lily was putting new ribbons and new posters on the poles when she felt someone watching her from across the street. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, even though it was broad daylight. From the periphery of her eye, across the street, Lily thought she saw a shape standing staring at her, at them, just three young kids on a Wednesday morning before lunch at Veselka on Second Avenue, tying yellow ribbons to poles, and…

  She felt afraid. She was afraid to lift her eyes, and though she continued to go through the motions of tying the ribbons, her hands started shaking. Paul asked what was the matter. With him talking to her, Lily felt a little braver, and she lifted her eyes. There were several people across Second, and no one was staring: there was a man buying flowers in a deli, another man talking to a shopkeeper on the street, a couple standing looking at a restaurant’s menu. And then the brown back of a man in rags, shuffling down the street, but far from her. He started running, not like a man in rags, but like someone who had running in his blood: his legs moved strong, he was fast, his arms swung, his body did not look degenerate. Perhaps Lily had made up the rags, perhaps he was wearing a long brown coat.

  Lily had to wonder…as she, with shaking hands, went back to slowly tying the ribbons under the poles. She had thought she imagined it. It was just paranoia, just an irrational suspicion, the kind that made her draw the shades in her apartment because she felt someone was watching her. She had thought it was Amy’s ghost. But here, on a Wednesday morning in the East Village, on Second Avenue, what was it, really?

  49

  Baseball as a Metaphor for Everything

  On Saturday afternoon Spencer found Lily in the very early April cool, just two bottomless eyes and an unbuttoned coat, sitting on a bench in Tompkins Square Park. She had already sold all her paintings that morning. Around her was a crowd of ten or twelve men. She was giving out twenty-dollar bills. They would extend their shaking filthy hands and into them she would put crack money. “Get yourself something nice with it,” she was saying, and they muttered, “I will, honey, I will, sugar, thanks so much, darling, don’t you worry, and God bless you.”

  Spencer pulled her up from the bench as she handed him a C-note. “What are you doing?”

  “Passing the time,” Lily said, almost brightly. “Answering life’s riddles.”

  “Oh, for Mary’s sake. What are you giving them money for?”

  “I’m hoping to find Amy.”

  “Very good. Are you asking them about Amy? I didn’t see you asking them anything.” He prodded her out of the park.

  “I’m hoping one of them will look familiar.”

  “Have you met a lot of familiar homeless men?”

  “He’ll come, you’ll see. That Milo. I’m looking for him.”

  “Yes, you and me both.”

  “He’ll hear about me through the grapevine, giving out money. He’ll come, I know it.”

  “You’re baiting him with your money? You’re fishing? Very, very good, Lily. But you might want to raise the bait a little. I mean, twenty bucks is not enough to buy a bag of scag.”

  “He will seek me out. The way she sought me out.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Lily said quickly, her gaze clouding. “Are you hungry? Want to go have lunch?”

  “No.” Pausing, Spencer cleared his throat. She frowned at him, confused. “But the Yankees are playing the Angels.”

  �
��They are?” Lily held her breath. Maybe he’ll ask me to go to a game with him. Spend a rare Saturday afternoon with him. Away from cancer, away from Amy, a day with him, just me and him—and fifty-five thousand strangers.

  “Yes. When was the last time you went to a ball game?”

  “When I was sixteen.” Hold breath, hold breath, bite lip, act cool.

  “So you’re a veteran.” Spencer paused. “Want to go?”

  “Sure.” She smiled with a shrug, oh so casually. Sure, yeah, I’ll go, whatever. I was going to go home and be alone and stretch some canvas, but yeah, I’ll go to a game with you. Lily wanted to jump in place. But she remained so restrained, so collected. “Let me run home quick. Put something on my head.” She wanted to put make-up on her face. She wanted to put on a different shirt, nice jeans, some perfume. She wanted to paint her nails, maybe even her toe nails, take a shower, clean up a little.

  Lily wanted to put on lipstick to go to a baseball game with him.

  “Let’s just go,” said Spencer. “Or we’ll never make the first inning. I’ll buy you a Yankees cap to put on your head.”

  “Cool.” What could she do? “Do you have tickets?”

  “I might have some tickets. Is that all the painting money you made today that you just gave away to crack addicts?”

  “Finding Milo is not coming cheap, Spencer.”

  Ten good things about losing your hair:

  10. You can use the men’s room or the ladies room.

  9. You don’t have to rinse and repeat.

  8. No one ever says to you with a fake smile, “Where do you get your hair done?”

  7. Cooties, lice, ticks, dust mites don’t stick around.

  6. Shower now takes ten minutes instead of forty-five.

  5. No hair in the bathtub.

  4. With the sun reflecting brightly off your scalp, you provide lighting services to the permanent patrons of Tompkins Park.

  3. You get a thousand sympathetic stares a day.

  2. When people say, “Oh, you got a haircut,” you say, “No, I got them all cut.”

  And the number one good thing about cancer hair…

  1. When Spencer Patrick O’Malley buys you a Yankees cap, you don’t get hat hair.

  Lily, her head covered by the baseball cap, went to a game with Spencer between the Yankees and the California Angels. That funny Spencer. Through his Benevolent Patrolmen’s Association contacts, he had gotten great seats, right behind the first base dugout. So he must have gotten them in advance, knowing he was going to ask her to go. Why didn’t he just ask her yesterday or the day before, so she could have time to prepare?

  It was April but cold and windy, and though Lily wore three layers of clothes, she was still shivering. Spencer bought them hot dogs and Cokes. “No beer?” she asked.

  “If you want one, I’ll buy you one.”

  She didn’t want one. She was just cold, and when he saw, he gave her his policeman’s jacket that said NYPD on it. It was such a fantastic jacket that the cursing and spitting guy behind them tapped Spencer hard on the shoulder and said, “Hey man, great jacket, where’d you get that?” and Spencer showing his badge and his weapon to the spitting curser said, “From the New York Police Department.” And Lily laughed, and Spencer laughed, too, when he turned around. Spencer laughed! He showed his teeth!

  Lily was shivering, even with Spencer’s great NYPD jacket.

  “Are you still cold?” he said, and when she nodded, he put his arm around her.

  He. Put. His. Arm. Around. Her.

  Carefully she sidled into him. The score in the game was close but not as close as Spencer was to her.

  Lily jumped up and cheered, and the arm came off, and she did the wave and the seventh inning stretch and sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “We Will Rock You.” The squalling April wind kept taking her breath away. It was the squalling April wind, right?

  The Yankees tied the game in the bottom of the ninth, and everyone jumped up, including Lily, including Spencer, and when she, beaming and clapping turned to him, he was staring at her, and she looking up at him, said, “What?” And he bent to her and kissed her. Just like that, during the shouting, the applause, the revelry. Spencer, with the warmest lips, the softest, fullest lips; Spencer Patrick O’Malley, lead investigator, detective-lieutenant, a police officer, with a Glock-26, his off-duty weapon, fastened in his holster, Spencer, forty-three years old, leaned his head in and kissed her with teenage lips, with teenage ardor, and Lily, who had not been kissed in nearly a year (how twisted was that?) raised her face to him, pressed her body to him, lifted her hand to hold his head, to rest on his chest, and then she could barely look at him, and didn’t care anymore whether the Yankees won or lost, but when they won, in the overtime eleventh, all she wanted was Spencer to kiss her again—and he did. And joy drummed on her dimmed-by-cancer heart, and coursed through her weakened-by-chemo veins. We will/we will rock you kept pounding inside her all the way home standing against him on the D train.

  Lily didn’t know how to ask him to stay. She felt sexless. Unsexed. Undesired, under-used, sick. Sickness was so unsexy. Sickness was the opposite of youth, the opposite of beauty, the opposite of sexy, the opposite of sex. Once she had been a little more sure of herself, but now she was sure only of her old age, her ugliness. Perhaps she and he were just caught up in the tied ballgame in the bottom of the ninth; who wouldn’t kiss during that? Or in overtime when the Yanks won—even if the kiss was breathless and open and exquisitely long.

  Shockingly—and despite her crushing fear and evident self-hatred—Spencer came in. No formalities between them. No buzzing in. He kept her key, he used her key. Tonight, there was no, would you like to come up. He just came up like always.

  He sat by her. “You must be tired. It’s been a long day.”

  Lily said nothing.

  He waited. “I don’t want to go—”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  Spencer kissed her on the couch, cupping her face, after a while scooping her into his arms and bringing her into the bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he stood her between his legs and unbuttoned her blouse. It came off; her jeans came off. Lily was left in her black see-through bra, her black g-string. With one hand, he unhooked her bra and took it off her, dropping it on the floor, and she stood like that in front of him in her thong, topless, her breasts, her aching nipples level with his face, while his hands caressed her up and down her arms, her ribs, her hips, her thighs. He was breathing so hard, she was breathing so shallow, and she moved just a little bit forward, just a little bit, oh my God, she thought, I’m being touched by someone other than myself. I’m being touched. “Spencer…” she whispered, desperately wanting his mouth on her.

  “Wait.”

  He undressed to his boxer briefs that looked—because she hadn’t seen a man in so long—like the hottest boxer briefs Lily had ever seen; he lay her down on the bed and straddled her, keeping his weight off her, supporting himself on his knees and arms; he softly kissed her neck and her throat, and very lightly rubbed his chest against her palpitating breasts, and Lily, in a stiffening spasm arched into him, trying to pull him down on top of her. He kissed her and whispered, “I’m afraid, Lily, afraid to hurt you,” and she whispered back in a moan, “God, don’t be afraid of anything, of nothing, I want…I want some sugar in my bowl, Spencer. Come on, anything, everything, leave me nothing but my skin and bones…just…please…put some sugar in my bowl.”

  On the radio Nina Simone continued to wail for some of that sugar, the Pointer Sisters were ridin’ in your car, on fire, Bruce was also on fire, Johnny Cash was walking the line, Peter, Paul, and Mary’s kisses were sweeter than wine, and then Lily didn’t hear any more music. Spencer made love to her as gently as her fragility would allow, but love-making could be gentle before—and was—and after—and was—but rarely during, and so he reaffirmed the motion of life with her, beat back death from her—from her, from Amy, for that one d
riving instant, for that hour in time, and then held her quivering body under the blankets, until he gave her another remarkable hour, and then held her perspired racked body without the blankets, and then! gave her some miraculous more with no gentleness and no fragility, and fell soundly asleep, and as Lily lay in Spencer’s arms, utterly sleepless, her bowl overflowing with sugar, barely even skin and bones left on her, she thought that if today were the last day of her life, she would have no regrets.

  She lived today. She ate comfort food, and drank Coca-Cola, the drink of the Americans, she breathed fresh, crisp air, and rejoiced in someone else’s triumph, she was with her cheering fellow men, she had good conversation, she jumped up, screamed for joy, laughed.

  She was kissed. She was loved. By Spencer. She loved back. Lily loved Spencer back. The air smelled like spring trees and new grass. She was whispered to. “God, Lily, you are beautiful…” Her body was devoured by a man. And then she felt beautiful, felt like a young woman again. It was a perfect day.

  Spencer, you’re beautiful, she whispered to him, but he was blessedly, exhaustedly asleep. You have a perfect face, you have a perfect scarred heart. You have arms that raise you above me, raising me. You have strength—for everything—you have legs for the long run, you’ve got it all in spades, and I can’t believe you gave it all to me tonight.

  She could write that essay now. There wasn’t a spot on her heart this chilly Saturday in April. No shadowlands, no darkness, no penumbras on her soul, no shadows on the flawed yet flawless man who changed her life. Despite her supreme reluctance, Spencer had cleaved her heart, and poured himself in; he brought down by force her forcefield, by virtue of nothing but himself. He had given Lily the one day in her life she wanted to have before she died.

  50

  April Fools