Lomack helped me into my jacket. My arm got momentarily stuck in the sleeve, and I remember standing with my back to him and feeling a rush of excitement at the thought that I was trapped and that I could feel what I imagined was his breath on the nape of my neck, like the scene in his book with Cassandra. When I turned around, though, he wasn’t even facing me. He was turned away, looking up at something in the window.
MAE
The first time Dad left us alone in the apartment, I followed him. I waited for him to get a block ahead like Mom had taught me. In those days, Mom was always with me whether I wanted her in my head or not. I could feel myself descending into a trance, and even though my body was on the street, following Dad, my mind was being trampled. She knew how to draw my attention to all the things that were ugly—a hypodermic needle, a man peeing, a woman talking to herself. She had me convinced that Dad was meeting with someone in order to discuss sending us away, even though I knew this wasn’t the case. I was so relieved when Edie appeared by my side. Once she was there, my mother’s grip on me loosened and I could pretend that my sister and I were running down Broadway on a fun adventure.
It turned out I was right to worry—Dad was meeting a woman, Amanda, who would eventually prove to be a very troublesome person. They met in a dank-looking Italian restaurant in the basement of an office building. Patrinelli’s. It doesn’t exist anymore. Edie and I kneeled by the ankle-level windows in the alley and watched them sitting at a table with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. We watched them slowly eat spaghetti in real time. There was no way for us to hear what they were saying, but it didn’t look like Dad was all that engaged by the conversation. When he gestured to the waitress for the check, Edie and I ran back to the apartment, laughing as we ran.
EDITH (1997)
Mae and I lean against each other, trying to catch our breath. Luis the doorman is asleep at his desk with a baseball game playing quietly on the transistor radio.
…Nice-looking pitch right there, curve ball gets the inside corner, that’s gonna even up the count…
“We can ask Luis to let us in,” I say between gasps. “We should have propped open the door.” Luis doesn’t stir at the sound of his name. I notice a man standing by the mailboxes, looking at a coupon booklet.
Mae shakes her head and jabs several times at the elevator button. “No, don’t. He’ll tell Dad that we went out,” she says.
“So? We’re free to go wherever we want. We aren’t his prisoners,” I say. The man is still staring at his coupon booklet. It must be the most interesting coupon booklet in the world. He’s obviously eavesdropping.
“Excuse me,” Mae calls to him. He looks up like he’s been waiting for this invitation. I’ve seen him before. Something is strange about his face. No eyelashes. But as he comes closer I see that he does have them, they’re just the same color as his hair, yellow-white. “You live here, right?” she asks him.
He nods. Oh God, Mae. What is she about to do?
“I-i-i-i-in…” he stops and clears his throat. “In the apartment under yours,” he says through his cough. “We met the other day. Charlie.” He shakes her hand as he coughs into his other elbow.
“Can we climb through your window to get to the fire escape?” Mae asks. The elevator doors creak open before I have a chance to contradict her or laugh it off. He’s going to think we’re freaks, not that Spooks has ever cared about that. Standing up for her in school was a full-time job.
An old woman limps out of the elevator with a balding Pomeranian. We stop talking and wait for her to pass. She moves between us slowly like a barge, eyes straight ahead.
“Sh-sh-sh-sh-sure,” Charlie says after the woman has gone, and follows us into the elevator. I’m embarrassed that we’ve invited ourselves over to his house. I stare down at the floor. Charlie’s shoes are the strangest things I’ve seen—a wetsuit type of material with each toe separated out. Like gloves for his feet.
“We locked ourselves out,” Mae explains.
“Of course, it h-happens,” he says. He pauses between his words, like he’s swallowing air.
His apartment is the same layout as ours but feels smaller. All of the furniture has been pushed to one end of the living room and stacked to the ceiling—wooden tables with doilies, ceramic lamps, a plaid couch, a rolled-up rug. It’s darker too, because cardboard boxes are blocking one of the windows. It smells like cigarettes, B.O., peppermint, and something else.
“Did you just move in here?” Mae asks, eyeing his boxes.
He nods. “A few months ago. My grandma used to l-l-live here.”
A telescope is set up by the living room window. I stop and look through it. The lights are off in the apartment across the street.
“There’s too m-m-m-much light pollution to see any stars,” he says and playfully taps the telescope so it swings out of position. I’m not sure if it had been aimed at that apartment on purpose or not. “Can I get you guys s-s-s-s-s…” He stops, swallows, tries again. “Water?”
“No, thanks,” Mae says. She’s in a hurry.
“Sure,” I say.
He fills a mug for me from the tap. The door to the room that’s under Dennis’s bedroom is ajar. The ground is covered in sawdust. That’s what the other smell is—sap.
“That’s my wood shop,” he says, handing me the water and pushing the door open all the way. Piles of 2x4s and plywood boards. A table saw. “If you ev-v-v-er want to build anything.”
What could I possibly want to build?
Mae tugs me towards Charlie’s bedroom, the room directly below ours. It’s empty except for a sleeping bag on the floor, a stack of books, a box of tissues, an ashtray, and an Altoids box. I wonder why he doesn’t build himself a bed.
Mae pushes the window up and crawls out onto the fire escape.
“Come on,” she hisses at me. I’m looking at the books. One of them is by Dennis—Cassandra’s Calling. “Hurry up.”
“Thank you,” I say to Charlie. I pass him back the empty glass and crawl out his window.
Through the fire escape steps I can see his face looking up at us. It’s an interesting face. He’s definitely a weirdo, but that’s not necessarily bad.
“Help me,” Mae says. She’s trying to pry our window open. I squeeze my fingers into the crack under the frame and push.
“Go in a little, and then up,” I tell her. The window loosens and creaks as we finally get it open from the outside.
I scrape my leg on the sill as we crawl back in. It stings. I limp into the living room where Mae is already sitting on the couch, pretending like this is where she’s been all night. I sit next to her and we both pant quietly, ready for the sound of the key in the door. A few minutes go by and nothing. I’ve caught my breath. Maybe Dennis isn’t coming straight home. Maybe he’s going to that woman’s house.
“What’d you think of our neighbor?” I ask.
Mae
