The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  “I want my mother!” she cried. “I wish I had one. But I don’t want you to be my mother, Spencer. My mother or my father. I want us to be together as equals. I want to help you, too.”

  “Lily…”

  “Forget about everything else, everything. I will get better, I promise. I want to walk by your side, that’s where I want to be. Please.”

  He didn't even touch her when he said, “Lily, you don’t understand anything. Finding what happened to Amy is what I think about day and night. That’s what I do. That’s what I want. If I had one wish…” he stopped. “You want to talk about wrong?” he said coldly. “Well, here. If I had one wish, I would wish not for money, not even for you to get better, but to find out what happened to Amy. And when I’m with you, I have to confess that I am not pure of heart. I am not free of ulterior motive. Amy, your brother, they are always in the back of my mind, sometimes in the front of my mind. They were from the very beginning, they will be till the end.” He took a breath before saying, “I’m still canvassing.”

  “Spencer, no.”

  “Yes, Lily. It’s not easy for me to say that, but it’s the truth. You have the right to remain silent, because everything you say can and will be held against you. And we can’t continue like that. I can’t continue. I have to live with myself, too. For a little while, we cannot even continue as we were, as friends. I have to get my head together. You’ll have to bring Joy back to help you if you need help. I’m losing my edge since I’ve been with you. I’m getting soft. I am getting fuzzy around the eyeballs, all these comedies we’ve been watching, all this focus on your illness.”

  Lily couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  “It’s too much for me,” Spencer continued. “My judgment has been clouded by you, my senses are dulling. I spend the night with you and the next morning I can’t think straight. I’m thinking crazy things and my work is slipping. The missing teenagers are turning into prostitutes, the missing in the projects are being overrun by drugs, the kidnapped are remaining napped. Jan McFadden is losing her marriage. Plus, there is this damn IA thing hanging over me and I have to protect myself, and think on my feet. I have to make sure I don’t end up in prison just because I was blithely daydreaming of your body.”

  Lily thought she heard him say I’m sorry after that, but she couldn’t be sure.

  When Spencer left, he took her key off his ring and set it on the table by the door. Lily never got up from the couch.

  I love you so much…I’d die for you…and all they can say is…he’s not your kind…

  And they were right.

  On the way home past the traffic lights, Spencer was thinking about his black lies to Lily, and about how falsely liberating it was to be free of her, to concentrate on the areas of his life where he could still exist and remain hidden. With her there was no hiding. And Spencer knew that if he had only one wish, it would not be to find Amy. It would not even be to have Lily get well.

  It would be to stop drinking.

  So he could give Lily a whole man, instead of the fragment fraud he had become.

  56

  Unraveling at Home and Overseas

  Maui on the caller ID was one constant distress call. Either from a desperate, at-the-end-of-his-rope father, or from a ranting railing slurring mother.

  Allison said she was divorcing George, she didn’t care what it would cost, because he was a liar and he promised her hundreds of things he had reneged on.

  George opened his own bank account and transferred $30,000 of their money into it.

  Lily’s mother was screaming so loud into the phone about the withdrawn funds that the neighbors came (this was eleven in the morning Maui time) and said she is screaming so loud, if you don’t call the police, we will.

  So Lily hung up.

  Later her father called back and said the police came and, “Your mother lifted her skirt to the officers and said, he beats me, look at my bruises.”

  It was the Titanic sending out distress flares to the Carpathia—the ship that thought the Titanic was setting off fireworks. Lily didn’t think Maui was setting off fireworks. Lily was certain Maui was sinking and by this time in the metaphorical tomorrow would be immersed and unraveled and possibly rent in half. And perhaps Lily might have noticed more, cared more, paid more attention, if only her own unraveling at home and rending in half were not as complete.

  But the unraveling at home was complete.

  Lily didn’t know what to do with the minutes of her life. She didn’t know what to do, what to make of her evenings or her growing hair. What to do with Sundays without him. The habit formation of passion had been surgically removed from her, and it felt as if limbs were missing and the days without limbs lasted years.

  “Oh, thank the Lord you’re not with that awful man anymore,” said Grandma when Lily told her. “The good Lord looks after you, Lily, and here is one more proof of it.”

  Lily didn’t want to talk about it.

  Thank God for Paul, for Rachel. Amy vanished, and Lily had inherited them; they were hers, and she loved them. It was like Amy knew she was leaving and had bequeathed to Lily a way to make life a little bit easier. It was better to have friends, even passed down friends, than to go without. It was better to have sisters, even ones like Anne and Amanda, than to go without. It was better to have a brother than to go without. It was better to have agoraphobic grandmothers. Drunk mothers. Now that Lily was plumbing the sewer of despair, it was better to have them all.

  She spent the days in her studio, lying down in the paint, pressing her face onto the floor that once supported Amy’s bed, and now had paint on it that dripped from the oils and the acrylics and the watercolors she had painted Spencer with. That was all that was left of him now, just the remains of the vivid paint from his lips, from his eyes.

  It was as if he had died.

  It was as if she had died.

  She called Jan McFadden. How are you holding up, Mrs. McFadden, she asked. Not too good, Lily. I know. Me neither. And Jan cried and Lily cried, both having lost the irreplaceable.

  What if Amy was never coming back?

  What if Spencer was never coming back?

  It was better to have Spencer, on any terms, any terms at all, any terms he laid down, than to go on like this—without.

  On Saturday they stood around her tables, they quietly gave her money, they took the paintings from her hands.

  “No love this week, Lily?”

  “No love this week.”

  Her paintings that week: not many, all watercolors. The two windows with the tied blue curtains, beyond them sunshine and spring, and in front of them, the empty bed.

  “How could he give up on me so easily?” Lily said to her friends one Friday evening. They were strolling to St. Mark’s Comics to buy a present for one of Rachel’s nephews. “He spent practically every day with me, how could he just not call me, not ask after me like this? How could he turn off like this?”

  Paul didn’t say anything, but Lily felt he had something to say, just wasn’t saying it. “What? Tell me, what?”

  “Lil, it’s like parents. How can they live without us when we go away to school? They take care of us for eighteen years, suddenly we’re not sleeping in their home, eating their food, we’re not there. How do they manage so well without us? How come they start to travel, and join groups, and take classes, and learn a foreign language, and when we come back for weekends we find them thriving not pining. How come?”

  “I don’t know. Are you asking me? Or are you being rhetorical? What does it have to do with Spencer?”

  “I’ll tell you what it has to do with Spencer,” said Paul. “You won’t want to hear it. But it’s hard to take care of another person. It’s a lot of responsibility.”

  “What about being with me? It wasn’t all about my cancer,” said Lily. “I tried to make my cancer fun for him. We cut hair together, and we did laundry together, and had Chinese together, and I took him out for Sunday brun
ch, and painted him, and taught him medical terms he probably wouldn’t have learned in his lifetime.” And I did other things with him that I can’t believe he surrendered so quickly, so easily. Her heartbreak dripped from her eyes in big wet balls onto the New York City sidewalk, her shoulders shook.

  “Well, I’m not saying that wasn’t fun for him, darling,” said Paul, hugging her. “Come on, buck up.”

  Rachel, taking Lily’s other arm, nodded her head wisely, as if she knew what Paul was talking about. “But still the relationship wasn’t equal. He had to take care of you.”

  “Not anymore. I was getting better. I’m a survivor now.”

  “Well, sure,” said Rachel, and then in an astonishing feat of philosophical fervor, pitched in with, “but he doesn’t know the future. He only knows the past.”

  Lily fell quiet. But she suspected that the straw that broke Spencer was not him taking care of her, for he did that too willingly, but her failing him in his test of her. He wanted from her what she did not give him, perhaps could not give him.

  When Joshua left, Lily barely felt it, she realized only now. Being with her friends was good, it helped pass those anguished eternal minutes without limbs—but nothing was what being with him was, with him, whom her heart loved and needed.

  After getting the new Batman toys from St. Mark’s, they were standing on the corner at Astor Place, debating whether to go for Ukrainian, Indian, or Diner-American, when a male voice said, “Lil?”

  And before Lily turned around, in that one second, she prayed, prayed, PRAYED pleasepleaseplease let it be Spencer, and she turned around, her eager face to the voice, and it was Joshua.

  Her face must have shown her disappointment, because Joshua said, “Don’t look so happy to see me.” He looked surprisingly happy to see her. There were awkward handshakes all around. He asked how she had been. Oh great. He asked how she was feeling. Oh, great. “Really?” he said. “I’m not surprised. Because you look great.”

  He called later that Friday, but Lily was out dancing with Rachel, and he left a message, but when she came home she was too exhausted to listen. The next morning she listened. “Lil, can I come over? I want to talk to you.”

  It was Saturday; she was selling her lousy paintings today. She called to tell him she was busy. He asked to come over for a little while in the evening. He really needed to talk to her. They agreed on a time, and he showed up half an hour early, wanting to take her out.

  Lily had nothing to do and was sick of herself so she went out with Joshua to dinner and a movie. They saw Bowfinger with Steve Martin. Joshua wanted to see a drama but Lily said she didn’t do dramas anymore. “It was a beautiful dream,” she said to him afterward in Republic, a Thai place on Union Square, but he didn’t pay attention, and all they talked about was him and his thoughts and feelings and jobs, which was just fine with Lily who pretended to listen, until she finally said in a tired voice, “Think of this as an errand. Your errand is to run across the freeway until I yell ‘cut.’” And Joshua caught on at last and asked if she was quoting Bowfinger to him, and Lily said yes, and if she was yelling cut, and she smiled, as in, finally he gets it, and he said, so you want go back to your place?

  When they got back and were on her couch (“nice couch!”), Joshua said, “Lily, honestly, you look great. Your hair is so sexy short and red, and your body looks amazing.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Cancer agrees with me.”

  He coughed, choked, spluttered.

  “I’m just kidding.”

  “But seriously, though, you’re all better?”

  “Who knows these things?” Lily wished she could check her messages surreptitiously. What if Spencer called? From the couch she could see the machine light blinking, but she couldn’t read the number of new messages. He could have called.

  Joshua was touching her hair. It was late, they’d had a couple of glasses of wine, the lights weren’t on except in the kitchen.

  “So where’s Shona tonight?” Lily asked.

  “We didn’t work out. She wasn’t you, Lil.”

  “I’m not me either, Joshua,” Lily said, getting up. “Wait, I have to…” She went to the blinking message machine. “It could be my grandmother, something could be wrong.” She pressed NEW. Please please, please Spencer.

  But there was no message from him. Just from her grandmother.

  Lily couldn’t go back and sit on the couch with Joshua.

  “It’s getting late, you better go,” she said, worn out.

  “Go? Why? I just got here.”

  “I know, but I have to go out.”

  “It’s after midnight, where could you be going?”

  She was quiet. He was quiet. Then Lily said, “Josh, there was once a time when I would have given anything to have you touch me nicely, to have you say nice things to me, to have you back. You left, Amy left, and I was so alone. But that time has passed. We had something once, but now that I know the difference, I can’t even say it was a beautiful dream. Please can you go?”

  “Lily, I know it’s been hard for you, and I’m sorry—”

  “You have no idea what anything has been for me. The Lily you knew—she is gone, Joshua. Gone. The way Amy is gone. You don’t know me at all anymore. I’m a stranger to you.”

  Joshua didn’t understand. He thought it was about the way he had left her. But she suddenly grew so tired, so tired of standing, of talking to him, of his presence in her apartment. She didn’t want to be explaining anything—and didn’t.

  “You really want me to go?”

  “More than anything.”

  He left abruptly. And Lily herself left soon thereafter. She ran to Spencer’s apartment, long avenue blocks, from C all the way to Broadway. He wasn’t there. No one was answering and his light was not on. She waited, she called him, she beeped him, she waited by the apartment door, she went to Dagostino’s across the street, bought a pound of cherries, stood at the awning in the night and watched his windows. Two o’clock in the morning, there was still no movement at his place.

  Where was he at two o’clock in the morning on a Saturday night?

  There were other things she could do with her life than stand in the middle of downtown Broadway waiting for Spencer.

  She could go to an art exhibit in Dumbo in Brooklyn.

  A rock concert on top of a roof.

  Comedy improv at Caroline’s.

  Webster Hall, Mondays ladies night, dancing.

  Rachel said she could fix her up with a guy named Martin from the club. Martin was young and very built and very interested. They had shaken hands last night, flirted a little. He said maybe they could go to a movie next week. Me, Myself, and Irene had opened at Union Square. Yes, yes, a movie. And perhaps while they were waiting in line for the tickets, they would run into Spencer, who lived only a few blocks away, with a girl on his arm, and they would smile awkwardly and introduce their dates, and he’d ask, how’ve you been, Lily? Fine, fine, and you? And stand for a few seconds and look at the pavement. And then he would say, well, we’ll see you, and walk on, and Martin would ask, who was that, and Lily would say, oh, no one.

  He was just someone I once knew.

  The forcefield went up around what was left of Lily.

  Wrapping her arms around herself, slowly she crossed Broadway and started to walk back home.

  57

  An Encounter at Tompkins Square

  Spencer and Lily had been walking home one night from Odessa, and a stringy guy accosted them. “I’m not going to bullshit you,” the guy said, a Michael Jackson lookalike, tall, skeletal, barely standing. “I need a dollar to score some scag. Can you give me a dollar?”

  Spencer took out his badge and stuck it in the guy’s face. “You’ll spend the rest of your life in jail if you don’t clean up. Get away.”

  “What are you shoving in my face, man?” the guy said, as if he were blind. “That’s not a dollar.”

  “NYPD. Get the fuck away, I said.” Spenc
er put his arm around Lily to cover her, to prod her forward.

  They continued walking. “Lily, don’t ever walk through Tompkins Square at night alone, all right?”

  “Like I would.”

  That was then. This was now. With the gateway to hell behind her, at two in the morning Lily walked through Tompkins Square and sat on the bench and watched wasted people shuffle through the paths, talking to themselves or to each other, rummaging in their ripped pockets, adjusting their rags, looking for a lost bill, or a bit of old powder that they could eat or snort. People smelling like nothing else on earth, human bodies, caked with sweat and feces, unwashed for months, decaying, and still they shuffled and begged to score some H for a dollar from an NYPD cop. Lily didn’t sit for long, just long enough to wish to be home, to be in bed, to forget this day, this sixteenth day of her deadened life.

  Leaving through the iron gates of the park, she was suddenly shoved from behind by a man also heading out of the park, so close as if he had been walking right behind her. He was moving fast, nearly running; he bumped into her with more force than her startled body could handle and then grabbed her elbow and did not let go. Lily screamed. But not because she had been nearly knocked down. It was this man—his face from a nightmare, from a horror movie Lily had never seen. He smelled like a bum, preternaturally foul, unforgivably filthy, but somehow he had found money to wear regular clothes—jeans, a black jacket—to cut his hair completely off. He was bald, with words tattooed above his eyebrows. Lily couldn’t read the words because she was being overcome by a blinding terror. His eyes were slit and bloodshot, and were the color of crystal blue, like slivers of polished-by-ocean glass. They were almost transparent. Under them he had blood welts and black and blues. One eye had been partially closed after a beating, and one of his front teeth had been knocked out; his nose was badly broken once, twice. He looked menacing and strung out, he looked starved and heartless. Lily gaped at a wide black bruise on his neck, but realized it was another tattoo, a faded hammer and sickle covering his Adam’s apple. Her mouth fell open, she was paralyzed and breathless while he stared at her intensely, panting. And he wasn’t letting go. His mouth stretched into a grimace, exposing his decaying teeth, and a raspy grating whisper came out of him. He whispered—or she thought he whispered—“Lily.”