The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  “Amy was non-political. Amy didn’t know politics. What are you talking about?” she said weakly.

  “Lily, the universe is so vast, and you are so small, and you barely even know about your corner of it. Amy was radically, wholly, intensely political. She was political in high school, she was political in Hunter, she lived what I lived, she believed all the things that I believed. She was supremely loyal. To me. The art was just a ruse, Lily. And what a good ruse it was.” Milo snickered. “Didn’t you ever notice that Amy couldn’t draw?”

  Oh my God.

  The world in the wet basement had stopped making sense. Life was not being righted, Lily didn’t know how to right it. She wiped her mouth, and couldn’t speak for many minutes.

  There were things like this. Her life had shown her these things in the last year—which were unfathomable. You go merrily along, believing one thing, not even believing so much as just living—unthinking, blissful—and suddenly all the things that once held you together are gone. Suddenly you win the lottery. Suddenly you get cancer. Suddenly Spencer tells you that the single imperative of his life has been a thing you had never even suspected. Suddenly your mother has frost-covered windows in her soul. Suddenly Amy goes missing, and the ground keeps rising and rising, swelling and swelling, and Lily is blindsided by the eruptions, sitting with her back against the basement wall. You have to lose your whole life before you have a hope of regaining it.

  Oh my God.

  “But what did I have to do with anything? Why move in with me? Why single me out?”

  Milo grimaced. “You were Amy’s just-in-case, Lily. She never knew how things were going to go, and she wanted you on our side. And look how handy you’ve become. You’re my last resort and I’m going to get to your brother because of you.”

  “So why didn’t you do it then?” Lily said dully. “Get to him. What were you waiting for?”

  “Who said we were waiting? We tried. We tried to harm him, to show him what it was like to have your life be destroyed by another human being, like he destroyed our life. We just didn’t succeed. We failed in our one planned attempt. Then in another. And then I got unlucky and went away for a couple of years. But we were getting right back on track again, until Amy disappeared.”

  “Milo, you’re sick.”

  “No, you’re sick, Lily.”

  “You were in prison for two years. Why didn’t Amy slip some mescal beans in his coffee if she was going to kill him? Why didn’t she kill him while you were away?” If Lily wasn’t seeing the whole picture, she was sure Milo wasn’t either.

  “She was waiting for me to come back. We were in it together.”

  “So why did she break up with him if she was going to kill him?”

  “It was stupid of her,” he snapped. “Oh, I know the game you’re playing, Lily, trying to sow seeds of doubt in me. But it was just stupid of her, nothing more.”

  “It wasn’t stupid, Milo,” said Lily, becoming less afraid between the bloodletting and the speaking and the not understanding. She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t stupid. It was deliberate. Why’d she do it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re insinuating.”

  “Milo, you were in prison. And while you were in prison, isn’t it possible that Amy and my brother fell in love? Maybe once when she was with you a long time ago, she believed what you believed, but somewhere along the line she stopped believing it. She didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t kill him. When you turned up again, she broke up with him to protect him. Couldn’t that be true?”

  “No! IT'S A LIE! It’s a lie!”

  Lily remembered something else Spencer had told her. “Not only did she break it off with him, but she pushed me to go to Maui last year.”

  “Yes, she wanted you out of the way.”

  “That’s right, Milo. No alibi. No offense, no defense, but out of the way. I’d be safe in Maui.”

  “She didn’t want you safe! She didn’t give a shit about you.”

  “That’s not true,” gasped Lily. “That’s not true.”

  Time ticked away in a theoretical sense only. Time stood still in the wet basement in a building off 9th Street, where Lily sat on the damp concrete pressed against the wall, trying not to faint, and Milo crouched across from her, drumming fingers on his knees, drumming out what remained of Lily’s life on his homeless rags. “I have to go to the hospital, Milo,” she said. “I’m not collateral, I’m not an alibi, I’m not a hostage. I’m sick, and I will be no good to you in five minutes. I need to get to the hospital now.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  There was something wrong with him. Something other than the partial tongue. Lily wished she were strong, were healthy, had red blood instead of Beluga blood, had oxygen pumping through her brain instead of maple syrup, she wished she could jump up, hit him with something, maybe with that fire extinguisher that was hanging three yards away from her, strike him, then run for her life, screaming.

  “Andrew is armed, he’s protected,” she said. “He never leaves the house alone, he has two Federal agents with him at all times. You will never get to him. Never. They wouldn’t let someone like you within half a mile of my brother. There’s an APB out on you, they’re looking for you everywhere. Where are you going to turn, Milo? How could you get to him?”

  Milo laughed and Lily got another glimpse of the blackness inside his mouth. When he finished making his sloshing mirthless cackle, he said, “Lily, did you ever take history in school? Did you ever hear of a Russian tsar, Alexander II? The story of his assassination is a lesson in persistence, a lesson that teaches you that you can kill absolutely anybody, as long as you persevere. Alexander II is a classic study in revolutionary determination.”

  Lily was quiet, waiting for the depleted blood to work its way into her brain. “Why—are—we…talking about a Russian Tsar?”

  “Because he gave birth to the modern revolutionary, he gave birth to nihilist zeal, to ideals that were more righteous than mere human life, to an ideology that was more noble, more visible, and more permanent than mere humanity.”

  “Is there such a thing?”

  “It’s all around you, wake up!” said Milo. “Have you not seen it? It shapes everything this world turns on. It’s everywhere in the modern world, it’s everywhere in the old world. And the Russian Tsar gave birth to it. You wouldn’t understand it now, Lily, wasting your life with painting human beings kissing in your little primordial cave, but you’ll understand it soon.”

  “I think I’m beginning to understand it now,” said Lily on wet concrete, edging toward the fire extinguisher. She moved her legs an inch and then her torso followed. Another inch. And another. Milo didn’t seem to notice. The extinguisher was three yards away. Nine feet. A dozen times perhaps to edge her sitting body sideways. She was nearly diagonal from him. Soon he would notice and she needed to be prepared for this. How could she get prepared? She lay down on the damp floor. He didn’t mention it, notice it, mind it. When she lifted herself up, she was another half a foot closer.

  “In 1879, a school teacher tried to assassinate Alexander II,” said Milo, “He failed and was promptly hanged, as were sixteen of his co-conspirators. A teacher, Lily! That’s how bad things got.”

  “Even teachers can be subverted, even teachers are not infallible,” said Lily.

  “A few months later,” Milo continued in his rasping drawl, “a faction from the original nihilist group called the People’s Will was determined to succeed where the teacher Soloviev had failed. The People’s Will put nitroglycerine on the Tsar’s train, but they had miscalculated and blew up the wrong train. Then they tried to blow up a bridge over which the Tsar was passing and failed there, too.”

  “A bumbling terrorist group then?”

  “Not terrorist! Revolutionary! Radical. They were scientists, scholars, engineers, fighting unabated for a new political order.”

  “A new political order terrorizing innocent people?”

&nb
sp; “Nothing innocent about your brother.”

  “Completely innocent, Milo. What did he do?”

  “Stole an election for one.”

  “He didn’t steal it, he won it. In a horse race by a nose in a photo finish, but a win is a win, even a close one.”

  Milo growled like an animal. “A hundred and twenty years ago, a carpenter started work in the Winter Palace, close to the Tsar, and he smuggled small packs of dynamite with him and hid them in his bedsheets. Finally he built a shaft under the Winter Palace dining room, and the bomb went off just when it was calculated that the Tsar would be having his dinner. But again, the dinner had been delayed and the Tsar wasn’t there. Sixty-seven other people were killed or maimed in the explosion.”

  Lily was quiet. “Just collateral damage?”

  “Completely irrelevant. No one remembers them. They’re dust. But everyone remembers Soloviev, everyone remembers the carpenter. One of the main members of the People’s Will was caught during this brief time and he told the police that nothing they could do would save the life of the Tsar.” Milo stopped. “And that’s what I’m telling you, Lily. Nothing you can do will save the life of your brother. Nothing Amy can do will save the life of your brother.”

  Lily lay down again—because she had to; the listening, the adrenaline, the panic was too much for her. What would Spencer do? she thought. Ah. Spencer carried a 10mm automatic weapon, one of the most powerful pistols ever made. Spencer would not be sick, Spencer would be strong, would be healthy. Is that what she was supposed to do now? Get healthy fast? Lily moved another inch or two while lying down on the ground. Milo, absent-mindedly, because he was so intent on his words, moved sideways along with her on the opposite side of the wall, to be closer to her, to be heard better.

  “On March first, 1881,” Milo continued, “Alexander II was traveling in a closed carriage from one palace in St. Petersburg to another. When the signal was given, members of the People’s Will threw bombs at the Tsar’s carriage. And missed.”

  “Really, the most inept group,” muttered Lily, using it as an opportunity to move once more.

  “Inept or not, the bombs burst among the Tsar’s guards, the Cossacks. He got out of his carriage to inspect the damage, and to check on the state of his wounded soldiers. While he was standing out in the open, another revolutionary threw his bomb, and this one, my dear Lily, did not miss. The Tsar was killed instantly, and the explosion was so great that it killed his assassin as well.”

  Lily stopped inching over for a moment. “Is that what you want?” she said. “Is that the price you’re willing to pay for your beliefs? You’re willing to lay down your life for my brother’s life?”

  “Anything for your brother’s life.” Milo hit his head against the wall, from side to side.

  Lily was under the fire extinguisher when she stopped.

  “There is no justice in American politics,” continued Milo. “Have you noticed? When a congressman is brought into power with only fifty-two votes that he steals, where is the justice in that?”

  “You want more people to vote against my brother? Go rock the vote, Milo.”

  “He stole that election!”

  “Oh, please. Stop. And what do you care? What do you care? Since when does dull Edward Abrams inspire such passions in high school kids—” She broke off, staring open-mouthed at him.

  “When his wife Bernadette Abrams kills herself because she can’t take it any more.”

  “Oh, my God,” groaned Lily. “Oh, my God. You’re—”

  “Ben Abrams. Very good, Lily Quinn. Nice to meet you.”

  Lily stopped listening. Milo was Ben Abrams! Amy was with Ben Abrams, the son of Edward Abrams, Andrew’s opponent! She remembered his mother because after the recount and Andrew’s victory she was made to carry some of the blame for Abrams’s defeat. Lily remembered that Mrs. Abrams had been compared unfavorably with Mrs. Quinn; she was not as gracious as Miera Quinn, as attractive, as young. Miera took this to mean that she deserved more of the credit for Andrew’s victory, which made her even more insufferable. But Bernadette Adams, unfortunately, already had problems with depression and an addiction to diet pills. Three or four months after the election, she overdosed on her medication.

  Her son must have gone into some spiral. And he took Amy with him.

  Milo smiled, horrible, almost toothless. “I am going to get him. With or without Amy. Her faith had wavered a little, but I told her with or without her, with a little perseverance, Andrew Quinn would become Alexander II.” He blanched, made a noise of profound anguish. “Oh, how she was when we came back to New York from Phoenix. She was more determined even than I! The forcible retirement of your brother from politics was the focus of our whole existence. It gave our lives meaning, it was our beauty and our joy.”

  “Plotting to kill my brother gave your life joy?” said Lily. “The ancient Egyptians would be unhappy with you, Milo.” She was single-mindedly focused on the extinguisher mere inches from her hands. But she would have to jump up, grab it, turn to Milo, run to him maybe, and strike him with it. Did it seem far-fetched? “Plotting to kill my brother, a husband, a brother, a son, a father of two children gave your life beauty?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Milo. “Everything that has happened to me is because of him. Everything.” He groaned in agony.

  The fleeting moment of her own existence flew by Lily like a wounded sparrow. Flew and fell to the ground. She sat up, she got up on her haunches, she crouched. When Milo didn’t move from his sitting position, she stood up. Still he didn’t move. The extinguisher was to the right of her. Was it attached to the wall? Was she going to have to struggle with it, pulling at it, tugging at it? Her heart, pumping tar through her veins at 200 beats a minute could not take the pressure anymore. Lily’s knees began to give out and her arms trembled. Her lip continued to drip congealed blood. The terror and the threat of Milo were being removed from her.

  “You lived your only life for killing my brother?”

  “Solidarity with murder is critical! Without it, apathy sets in, complacence, acceptance. We reject authority because authority forces us to measure our words, draining them of meaning. We want change, we want radical monumental change, we refuse all compromise. And because of our beliefs, our actions dictate our lives. To have a life without measure,” said Milo, “we must act without measure.”

  Lily swung to the right, and pulled the extinguisher from its supports in the wall. Standing, she yanked it out, and it remained in her hands, and Milo, strung out, doped out on heroin, didn’t move from his sitting position, his passionate and acute life to be lived slumped in the puddle in the basement. Lily held the extinguisher in her two hands like a weapon, but she held it in her hands for only a moment, because the thing was so heavy, made of cast iron, made of bricks, made of sand and cement, it was a cinder block in her hands, and she held it for seconds—and then it fell to the floor and she fell with it. Milo watched, still drooping over, his head bobbing, and then he opened his mouth and laughed at her.

  74

  Acting Without Measure

  Milo wasn’t getting up, but Lily, having undertaken a course of action that precipitated her latest predicament, was feeling that whatever else happened, one thing that could not happen was her becoming leverage in any negotiation between Andrew and the unhinged being in front of her. But, and also true—she could not lift the fire extinguisher. Kneeling over it, feeling for the release mechanism, leaning it towards her so that when she turned, the rubber hose was aimed at Milo who still sat suspended, looking at her with cold amusement, wholly unaffected and unthreatened by her antics. Lily screamed and pulled the pin out of the extinguisher and squeezed the trigger. Please don’t let it be just water.

  It wasn’t water. It was a dry chemical powder that shot into Milo’s open throat from less than five feet away at what seemed to be a speed of two hundred miles an hour. The stream didn’t just knock him back. It hurled him back, with his head popping ag
ainst the concrete wall. He stuttered once with his whole body and then lay unnaturally still. Lily didn’t stay two seconds to take another look at him. She let the extinguisher fall with a dull thud to the concrete, got to her legs and ran. Ran was probably too strong a word. In slow motion, she wobbled forward, stepping over Milo’s legs, shielding her eyes, panting, crying, she rushed, trying all the doors in the long basement corridor until she found one that led from the boiler room to the laundry facilities. From there, she made her way outside into the rain, ran across the street to the three police cars with their lights flashing, and collapsed unconscious on the wet pavement in front of them.

  Lily came to, lying in a familiar beige room with lousy curtains, but with sunlight in the window. Spencer was by her side, and Dr. D. and Grandma, and Gabe McGill, and the sheets smelled snugly of bleach and the hospital, nothing smelled dank and wet, and she tried to mouth some words, but the only thing she could muster was, “Why, oh why, do they make fire extinguishers so heavy?”

  Spencer, who was sitting so close he was practically on top of her, said, “Yes, we’ll have to make them weigh less than two-and-a-half pounds.”

  Lily smiled and slept—almost in his arms—and remembered a slight raising of consciousness one night, and Spencer still sitting by her, and he told her about the peyote dance, and she said, I think I killed him and he said, I hope you killed him. Did you find him, she mouthed and he said no. Oh, no. He escaped again?

  She had more questions. She took his arm, brought him close, right to her ear, snickered lightly, said, is it wrong for me to feel a small glee that he cut off his own…?

  “I think it’s wrong for you to feel a small glee, yes,” said Spencer.

  “I’m scared for my brother.”

  “He’ll be fine, Liliput. The man lives in a fortress.”

  So did Alexander II, Lily wanted to say.

  She opened her eyes again suddenly. Her mind was clearer. “Spence, have they found a bone marrow donor for me?”