8

ALL AT ONCE, Jack had money. I guessed that it came from Lily, just as I guessed that the long red scratches on his shoulders came from Lily. He spent his nights with her and his days sleeping at the apartment. I slept whenever and spent my nights chain-smoking on the fire escape in the smothering heat, watching the street.

During the day, the noise from the street was so loud that being inside the apartment felt like standing on the street corner: delivery trucks with battered mufflers and shouting drivers who leaned on their horns; dogfights; twice a day, screeching groups of kids on their way to or from the public school at the end of the block; and at least once an hour, the wail and whine of sirens in the distance. Jack wore earplugs to sleep, but he could always sleep anywhere.

At night, though, it was quiet. We were four floors above the street. The people who passed beneath me as I sat on the fire escape at three and four in the morning were tired or drunk or crazy. None of them ever looked up.

One night when the air was still and dense with humidity, I let my burning cigarette drop from my fingers and watched it fall in a long slow arc to the street. It almost hit a dark-haired man standing on the front stoop of our building. He was digging in his pocket—for keys, maybe. The butt fell inches from his face and hit the concrete step at his feet with a tired burst of orange sparks.

He tilted his head back to look up at me. In the glow of the streetlight, I recognized him. He was the man Jack and I had met in the hallway that first day.

I raised my hand in the darkness, hoping that if he saw it he would take it for an apology.

He raised his hand, too, in an obscene gesture. Then he went inside.

I lit another cigarette.

The next day, while Jack was off somewhere with Lily, I strapped on my sandals to go buy some food, and ran into the man in the hallway. When he saw me, he cocked a finger at me and smiled. “Hey, you dropped a cigarette on me last night.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay. I was a little drunk. You living in Tade’s place?” He pronounced it “TAH-day.” It was the name on the mailbox, the one we never checked.

“Was she the artist?”

He nodded. “If you call what she did art,” he said. “Looked to me like she just spilled paint on everything.” He put out his hand, and this time it wasn’t making an obscene gesture. “I’m Louis.”

I shook his hand awkwardly and then remembered and said, “Oh.”

He grinned. “Don’t believe nothing you heard about me. None of that stuff’s true.”

It sounded like, “Nunna dat stuff’s true.” I smiled.

“I take care of this place,” he went on. “That’s my door you slip the rent under—you need anything, just knock.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He nodded. “That guy you live with, he your boyfriend?”

“My brother.”

“Your brother?” Louis raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, you look alike. I’ve seen him around.” His eyes were careful. “He a nice guy?”

“Of course he is,” I said.

He asked me my name and I told him. “You need anything, Josie, you knock,” he said again.

A few days later, just before nightfall, the bare light bulb in our kitchen flashed, popped, and went out. Jack wasn’t home. After standing and debating for a few minutes, I slipped on my shoes, went downstairs, and knocked on Louis’s door. When he opened it, he had a beer in one hand. I could see a little of his apartment over his shoulder; it looked tidy and had clean, white walls.

“Got a ladder?” I said.

There was one in the basement, and it took both of us to lug it up the five flights to our apartment. I held the ladder steady while Louis fiddled with the light fixture.

After a moment, he made a disgusted noise. “Look at this. Wiring’s all fucked up.” Then he looked down at me, grinned, and said, “Oh, sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“Shouldn’t talk that way around a lady,” he said cheerfully.

“Please.”

“You never know. Some people get offended.”

“Not me,” I said.

He brought a new fixture up from the basement. As he clipped the wires together, I said, “Did Tade get offended?”

Louis laughed. “You didn’t know Tade, babe.”

Just then the door opened and Jack came in. His eyes were shining and he was carrying a plastic bag full of takeout food. When he saw Louis, his expression went blank. He put the bag on the counter. “What’s going on?”

Louis didn’t look at Jack. He appeared to be concentrating on the light fixture.

“What’s going on?” Jack said again, without taking his eyes off Louis.

“The light went out,” I said, and when that didn’t seem to be enough, “This is Louis. He’s fixing it.”

“Is he,” Jack said.

Louis stepped down from the ladder. “Not no more. I’m done.”

“Want me to help you with the ladder?” I said.

“I can get it.” Then, for the first time since Jack came in, Louis looked directly at me. “I’ll see you.”

“Thanks for fixing the light,” I said.

When he was gone, Jack took a beer from the fridge. “Why did you let him in here?”

“Because I wasn’t sure you were coming home, and I didn’t feel like sitting alone in the dark all night.”

Jack’s eyes snapped but he didn’t raise his voice. “Next time, wait. I’ll let you know if I’m not going to be home.”

“How?” There was a phone jack in the wall but we’d never done anything about it.

“I’ll let you know beforehand.”

“You will?” I said, dubious.

“I said I would.”

He didn’t. I don’t think I’d really expected him to.

 

That Saturday Jack asked me if I wanted to come out and have drinks with him and Lily and her friends. I said no. “What the hell else do you have to do?” he said, but I wouldn’t go. Eventually he left without me.

A few minutes later there was a knock on the door. It was Louis, holding a plate covered in aluminum foil.

“Hey,” he said. “I went to my mom’s house today. She always makes too much food. You want some?”

“Sure.” Whatever was hidden under the foil smelled wonderfully spicy.

“You’re too skinny,” Louis said. “I told my mom there was this sweet girl who lived in the building who was too damn skinny, she said I had to bring you some of her chicken and rice, fatten you up. Hey, where’s your brother?”

I shrugged. “With his girlfriend,” I said, and we stood there, awkwardly. I knew that I should invite him in, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Besides, there was nowhere for him to sit.

“Well, then, why don’t you come downstairs? Eat with me,” he said.

Why didn’t I? “I shouldn’t. My brother will be home soon. He’ll worry if I’m not here.”

Louis’s dark eyes shone at me. “Leave him a note.” But before I could answer, he waved a hand in the air. “Yeah, well, if you change your mind, come on downstairs.” He turned to leave and then stopped. “Hey, I got this old mattress down in the basement. I thought maybe you might want it. I don’t mean old,” he said, quickly. “It was mine. I got a new one, like, a couple months ago. So it’s not like it’s been down there with rats living in it or anything. You want it?”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “I’d love it.”

“Be good to get it out of the basement, anyway,” Louis said. “I’ll bring it up for you tomorrow.”

“That’d be great.” I meant it.

He nodded. “You think your brother’ll mind?”

“Why should he?”

“He don’t seem to like me too much.”

I shrugged. “He doesn’t like anybody.”

Louis shrugged. “Some people are like that. They like to keep things to themselves.” He hesitated. “Enjoy the food,” he said and left.

I let him go.

The next day, Jack came home with money and we went to the grocery store. On the way downstairs, I stopped at Louis’s apartment to return his plate. While I knocked, Jack stood on the other side of the hallway, scowling.

Louis opened the door, his eyes flicking to Jack and then resting on me, calm and friendly. He didn’t look in my brother’s direction again.

“You like it?” he asked, taking the plate back from me.

“It was great.”

“She does good work, my moms,” Louis said, just as Jack said, “Josie, let’s go,” from behind me.

When we were outside, Jack said, “I don’t like that guy.”

“He’s okay.”

Jack was walking quickly, looking straight ahead with narrowed eyes. “I mean it, Jo.”

“Mean what?”

He stopped short and grabbed my arm. “Stay away from him. Don’t go looking for him, don’t let him in, don’t take his damn food.”

“Okay,” I said and pulled away. “Christ. Okay.”

His saying that all but guaranteed that I would spend my nights on the fire escape thinking about going downstairs to visit Louis. Sometimes it seemed idiotic—it wasn’t Louis that I was interested in, not really—but other, lonelier times I promised myself I’d do it the next day. Then it was October, and our rent was due, and I couldn’t have gone down, even if I’d wanted to. He’d want money, and we had none left to give him.

I reminded Jack about the rent one night before he went out. He nodded and said that he’d take care of it. I spent the day reading a copy of The Red and the Black that I’d bought on the street for a dollar; I was nearing the end of it when I heard the key in the lock. Jack was home.

“You’re early,” I said, surprised.

He was wearing a new shirt and a satisfied smile. “Success, sister mine. The rent is no longer an issue.” When I asked him what that meant, he said, “Christ, Josie, what do you think? She wants us to come stay with her. What do you think I’ve been doing for the last two weeks?”

“Lily?” I said. I was sitting cross-legged on the mattress Louis had brought up for me. Jack had smiled when he’d seen the mattress, and frowned when he’d heard where it came from. He had said, darkly, that the last Louis had better see of my mattress was bringing it up.

“Now, now.” He started stuffing our clothes into plastic bags. “Don’t snap at brother. He’s only doing what’s best for both of us.”

“Grueling work. Poor brother.”

He crouched down in front of me and put one hand on my knee. “Josie.” His voice was serious. “I’ve been working up to this for two weeks. We’re having trouble making the rent and she wants me close; I told her I don’t go anywhere without my sister. She doesn’t care.” He laughed. “She says she feels sorry for you.”

“She’s a liar.”

“Sure she is. Who cares? She’s got a two-bedroom place on the Upper West Side, and the rent comes out of her trust fund. You think I can’t keep her on the line until we get tired of her? Hell, she’s so high half the time she doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going.”

“Or coming?” I said blithely, but the words had a spiteful undertone and I thought, my God, I sound like Jack.

“Clever. Now get your stuff. I want to get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m not so sure, Jack.”

He sighed and sat down next to me. Then he reached up, pushed a stray hair from my forehead, and placed one finger lightly on the tip of my nose. “Beloved smaller sister. Tell me what there is not to be sure about.”

 

Lily’s apartment was in one of those beautiful old prewar buildings, and everything in it had the kind of clean, simple lines that could only have been exorbitantly expensive. The main part of the apartment was an enormous open room. In one area, two long white couches faced each other over sleek glass coffee tables; in another part, a matching table and chairs served as the dining room. The space behind one of the couches formed a corridor leading to three closed doors, which opened on the bedrooms and the bathroom. The layout wouldn’t have worked if the apartment had been any smaller; as it was, the room was like a decorator’s display, the kind of place where the empty space was as important as the furniture. There were vast expanses of white silk-covered walls and thick white-on-white rugs; the only color in the room came from the thick green leaves and the pale pink throats of the huge, waxy flowers that sat in crystal bowls and vases on every available surface. The air was filled with their strong sweet smell.

“Lilies, obviously,” Lily said proudly and pointed at each vase in turn. “Santa Barbara, Madonna, All-In. My florist downtown makes sure I always have fresh ones.”

“They’re lovely,” I said.

“My favorites are in here.” She led me to the kitchen—chrome and steel, but the pristine marble counters and the tiles on the wall were, of course, white. She pointed to a small round globe about twice the size of my fist, like a miniature fishbowl, that sat on top of the island bar. It was tightly packed with glossy green leaves and short stalks of creamy white bells, dangling all in a row down the length of the stalk, like hanging pearls. There was an identical globe on the other end of the island.

“Lilies of the valley,” she said. “They’re not really lilies at all, or so my flower guy says. But the name works.”

“They’re beautiful.” I touched one of the green stalks. The delicate bells hanging from it trembled slightly.

“They’re damned expensive, is what they are. You wouldn’t believe. They’re weeds, really. My parents’ summer place in Maine has an entire flower bed covered in them. That’s where they got my name,” she added offhandedly.

Jack was standing in the living room watching us, a faint smile on his face.

“The others I rotate, but I always have lilies of the valley,” Lily continued. “When I was a kid I had a cat that died from eating them. Sad.” She shrugged and went to Jack, who slung an arm across her shoulders. Looking up into his face, she giggled. “This will be so much fun. Just like a slumber party.” She kissed my brother and then smiled at me, revealing even rows of white teeth. Then she reached out to me with an alabaster hand. Her nails shone like glass.

“I bet you’ve never even been to a slumber party, have you, Jo?” She gave me a sympathetic look. “Jack told me all about your father, keeping you locked up in that crazy old house all by yourself. It’s so Flowers in the Attic. And I thought my childhood was creepy.” She laughed again, as if she’d made a joke. “It’s a wonder you two turned out as normal as you did.”

“We’re not that normal,” Jack said and winked lasciviously.

She smiled. “Forgive me if I hold out a shred of hope for your sister.”

“Her? She’s the sick one. Far worse than me.”

I drifted over to a window, pulled aside one of the sheer white curtains, and looked outside. The sky was clear and blue, and down the street to my left, the Hudson glinted on the far side of a lush green park. We’d had trees in Alphabet City, but they were withered, scraggly things that starved in holes cut for them in the sidewalk, fenced in by low concrete borders decorated by neighborhood artists and bums with beer cans and bits of cut glass. In Lily’s neighborhood, the trees had leaves; six stories below me, the street was shady and lined on both sides with proud buildings and sleek, shiny cars. It felt like an entirely different city from the one that Jack and I had been living in for the last month.

I heard my name and let the curtain drop. Lily was standing behind me, obviously waiting. Jack’s arms were wrapped around her shoulders and her arms were crossed over his, her small, perfect hands on his wrists.

“I said, do you want to see your room?” Lily pointed to one of the closed doors. “It’s that one. It’s not much. It’s where my parents stay, when they come.”

I looked inside at the big bed and the lacy curtains. There were no flowers here; the only lilies were pale watercolors hung on the walls, trapped in silver frames.

“It’s all yours.” She shrugged. “What there is of it.”

“It’s great. Thanks.”

“No problem.” She smiled broadly.

We went out that night, just the three of us. By the time I was actually able to crawl into that white-on-white bed, I was exhausted, but the mattress was soft and welcoming and the sheets were clean. I still couldn’t bring myself to trust Lily, but I didn’t much miss Alphabet City.

The next morning, after we’d all eaten our bagels and Lily had gone to work (she worked at a fashion magazine, but I got the impression that she didn’t work very hard; her father was on the publishing company’s board of directors), Jack grabbed me by the waist and spun me in the air like a child. The new cologne that Lily had bought for him was strong in my nostrils.

“Beloved sister,” he said. “My sister, my dear, my darling love, my angelically beautiful sibling: is your brother not brilliant, and are you not blissfully happy?”

His smile was wide and his green eyes were happy and relaxed. Suddenly, despite the new haircut and the expensive clothes—both Lily’s work—he was my Jack again. The past two miserable months vanished into memory. I thought, there are people who live their entire lives and never know this kind of love. This will work out. This will be okay.

“Blissfully,” I said.

 

That evening, I was washing dishes and Jack was sitting on the white marble counter watching me, when we heard the door open. Lily called out, “Jack? Are you there?” and came into the kitchen a moment later, wearing a white leather jacket and pearly blue boots that peeked out from the hem of her jeans. I became acutely aware of my cheap plastic sandals.

Jack held his arms out to her and she stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

“Good day?” he said.

“Every Friday is a good day.” She patted his chest. “You want to go out for dinner tonight?”

“Sounds great.”

Then Lily looked at me. I was wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs. There were huge water splotches from the sink on my stomach and my hair was falling down around my face.

“We’ll have to do something about you,” she said. “Let’s have a look at your clothes.”

I followed her into the bedroom where I’d slept the night before and dumped both of the shopping bags that held my clothes onto the bed. She poked the pile once or twice, a look of vague distaste on her face, and then shook her head.

“You’ll have to borrow something of mine.” She looked critically at me. “You’re a little shorter than me. We could do a skirt. What do you have in the way of shoes?” Lily led me into her bedroom. Another globe of lilies of the valley sat on her dark wood dresser, and two lilies of a deep, vivid scarlet sat in crystal vases on the small tables next to her bed. They stood out like twin drops of blood in the white room. The smell of the flowers was lighter here than in the rest of the apartment, although I was growing used to it. I’d opened a window earlier and the fresh air had been a shock.

“Well,” I said and closed my mouth.

“I should have guessed.” She sighed and threw her closet doors open wide. “Your brother wasn’t much better at first. He’s got a great sense of style, though. He always knows exactly what he wants, and it’s always the right thing.” Her clothes were lined up by color, like a pale, expensive rainbow, the lightest silver on one side and the lightest pink on the other. There was a pocket of black and a pocket of grays next to that, and on the other side of the grays were two or three men’s shirts in dark colors. They looked a lot like the one Jack was wearing that day.

“Red lilies,” I said.

“Bright red for danger.” She laughed. “You know what those are called? Science-fiction lilies. I’m not kidding.” She pulled two hangers from the closet. “When in doubt in New York, wear black.” She handed me the hangers and ordered me to get dressed while she took a shower. I heard the bathroom door open and shut. The water started, and then the door opened and shut again and I heard voices.

That would be Jack.

Lily’s clothes felt thick and luxurious between my fingers. She had given me a black turtleneck sweater and a longish black skirt, both made of the same smooth wool. I put them on and looked at myself in the mirror. The dark material made my skin look pale and greenish. Even my hair looked sick. It was falling out of the ponytail I’d yanked it into that morning, and bits stood out from my head like straw.

I look like an overdressed scarecrow, I thought, and sighed. Then I picked up Lily’s hairbrush and went to work.

The water shut off and I heard Lily laugh. She came into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel and a cloud of sweet-scented steam.

“Where’s Jack?” I asked, working the brush through the split and ragged ends of my hair in front of her mirror.

“He went to have a smoke,” she said, watching me. Her wet hair fell in thick, healthy chunks over her eyes.

My own hair felt like a wig in my hands. Lily’s mirror was wide and clear and honest. When Jack and I had lived with Raeburn, my hair had always been thick and shiny. Jack used to beg me to let him brush it, or at least let him watch as I did. Now it was Lily who watched me, wrapped in a towel and dripping on the white-on-white lilies woven into her imported French rug.

At least it still grows, I thought of my hair. At least it’s long.

“Hold on,” Lily said suddenly and disappeared.

She was back in a second, carrying a plastic spray bottle and a small jar. Tucking the towel more firmly around herself, she took the hairbrush away from me, lifted my hair, and sprayed it with water until it was soaked through. Then she opened the jar, scooped out two fingerfuls of the pale yellow cream inside, and rubbed it between her hands. She ran her fingers through my hair, over and over again, and a sweet, rich smell, like caramel, surrounded me. I watched in the mirror, fascinated.

Finally she stopped and wiped her hands on her towel. The little beads of moisture on her shoulders had dried. “There,” she said. “That’ll help. Go dry it. My hair dryer is under the sink.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t know what else to say.

She waved dismissively. “You’d have pretty hair if you bothered to take care of it.”

I stood where I was a moment more, awkwardly, staring at her.

“Can I get dressed now?” she asked finally.

“Sorry,” I said and fled to the bathroom.

The cream made my hair silky again. I twisted it into two long braids and tied them with bits of black ribbon that I’d found in a drawer in the bathroom. When Lily came out of her bedroom, wearing the blue boots and a matching dress, she handed me a pair of clunky Mary Janes and said I looked cute. We went to a restaurant that served delicate Italian food, completely unlike the heavy pasta in red sauce I was used to eating. Then Lily led us to a bar downtown where the only light came from spotlights that shone on single roses in bud vases. She bought us cosmopolitans. We got very, very drunk.

At 4 A.M., when they turned on the lights in the bar, we stumbled our way out to the street and into a cab. Jack sat in the middle and said that he was surrounded by beautiful women. “How am I supposed to choose?” he said, touching my hair and kissing Lily.

“Well, one of us is your sister,” she said pointedly.

He pulled me close on one side, kissed her again on the other. “True, very true. Now if I can only remember which one.”

“Here’s a hint,” Lily said. “She’s the one that doesn’t have her tongue in your ear.”

He laughed and bent to kiss her neck while the hand at my shoulder found one of my braids and stroked it. The cab swerved and dodged in and out of the traffic on Broadway, and silver light from the bars and restaurants and streetlights moved through the windows as we passed.

Back in the apartment, Lily said, “This way a sec, darling?” and pulled Jack into their bedroom. The door closed behind them and for a moment I sat on the couch where I’d fallen. There were noises from behind the door: Lily’s squealing, Jack’s laughter, low and rich and teasing.

I forced myself up and made my way unsteadily to my room. Lily’s turtleneck went carefully back on its hanger. There was a mirror hanging over the low dresser, and I stood in front of it in my bra and pulled the black ribbons from the ends of my braids. Lily’s cream had done miracles, I thought as I started to work through the braids with my fingers. I let myself take a small drunken pleasure in the soft feel of the hair in my hands: satiny, gentle, mine.

I heard Lily’s door open and the bathroom door shut. Then I felt somebody watching me. I turned around.

Jack stood in the doorway. His expression was intent.

“Hey.” I turned back to the mirror.

He moved behind me and then his arms were around my shoulders and his hands were on top of mine on my braid.

I let my hands fall.

His fingers began to move on the rope of hair, stroking it, his fingers probing into the twisted strands and unweaving them. In the mirror, his fierce green eyes were fixed on me and I couldn’t look away. The locks of hair that he’d freed brushed against my bare skin, moving gently with the motion of his hands. There was a rushing in my ears, from the alcohol in my blood and the music in the bar and the warmth of him next to my naked back. He lifted my hair, running his fingers through the length of it and letting it fall like water onto my shoulders.

I shivered.

The toilet flushed; the bathroom door opened; Lily’s voice, confused, called, “Jack?”

His hands lingered on my hair and then slid around my waist. He kissed the back of my neck.

“Coming,” he called to her and left me.

I went to bed with my skin singing. When I closed my eyes I saw the two science-fiction lilies next to her bed like two red flags, and between them her white satin sheets were like the golden pale of his skin and the pink pale of hers.

Lying in bed, I remembered sitting at the kitchen table while Raeburn explained atomic bonds to me. On a subatomic level, electrons are drawn to the atoms that need them. If an atom is unbalanced, with more protons in the nucleus than electrons in orbit around it or vice versa, it will seek out another atom with the opposite condition, and thus find balance. My brother was like those electrons, filling an infinitesimal void that people like Lily and Becka didn’t even know existed. It was a talent that I wished was genetic, as I tried to fall asleep in that wide, unfamiliar bed. There was always someone who needed Jack. He was never alone.

When I woke up the next morning, the sun was streaming through my window. It was a beautiful fall day, warm and friendly and relaxed. The three of us bought coffee on the corner and sat in the park until late afternoon, Jack and Lily twined together on a blanket, me next to them. Separate, but not alone. In all of my time in New York, that was my favorite day.

 

Being with Lily felt like being with a movie star. Everything in her world glittered fabulously. Neither of us had the kind of clothes she wanted us to wear, so she took us shopping. It turned out that she was right about Jack; he had the instinct for it, which surprised me because back on the Hill, Jack had never given a damn about clothes. Lily figured out pretty quickly that I couldn’t be trusted to choose my own clothes, and I suspect that she liked dressing me up. The things she bought me were completely different from those she bought for herself. All of my clothes were black.

She bought Jack a new leather jacket—“And let’s burn the old one, shall we?”—and then spent an extravagant amount of money on a pair of high black leather boots for me. “You can more or less get away with only one pair of shoes in New York, as long as they’re fabulous drop-fucking-dead boots,” she said, but when we returned to the apartment she also gave me the black Mary Janes that she’d loaned me that first night, and a long black skirt that she said she was tired of. She made me try it on right then, watching me turn in front of the mirror with a small satisfied gleam in her eyes.

She said, “You and your brother. It’s unfair.”

“What is?”

“Your goddamned cheekbones.” She smiled. “What I wouldn’t give.”

Jack wore the new jacket as often as he could get away with it. It was black and beautifully cut and the soft leather gleamed. Between the new clothes and the way his hair was always artfully swept back from his face, he was indistinguishable from one of her crowd. Late one night, I took his battered old jacket, the one with the sheepskin lining that I’d worn to the bonfire so long ago, and hung it in the closet in my room, behind Lily’s spring dresses. He never asked about it. Our old clothes, the ones we’d worn when we left the Hill and the ones Becka had bought for me, were stuffed into plastic bags on the closet floor. For some reason I was reluctant to get rid of them.

Lily had high standards. She smoked only French cigarettes; she wore only designer clothes; she drank only cosmopolitans, and she drank them only in bars where they cost ten dollars or more. She liked to have her hairdresser dye little colored streaks into her blond hair, frosty blue or frosty pink, to let people know what a free spirit she was. She and her inner circle (a nebulous social body with a rotating membership, where the faces weren’t always the same but might as well have been) spent all their days planning their nights. Every day was a whirlwind of phone calls about who was going to be where and when and for how long, and whether a certain bar was worth going to after midnight or if all the truly trendy people would already be at the truly trendy clubs. Every night there was a planned itinerary that was set in stone until it was changed with the flip of a cell phone.

In the beginning, Jack and I went everywhere with her.

All her friends loved him. Being pulled aside by one or another of Lily’s drunken girlfriends and hearing a confession of her secret passion for my brother—always with the stern exhortation that I was not to tell Lily—was the rule rather than the exception for me. The next day, I would mimic the girl’s voice and gestures for Jack, which he found hilarious.

Before long Lily decided that she didn’t like our being a threesome. “It throws off the dynamic,” she said, and thus began a parade of her male friends, showing up dutifully at bars and parties and parties in bars. Each of them was highly polished, skillfully groomed, and more beautiful than the last, and I had nothing to say to any of them. Afterward she would extol the virtues of the various Davids and Andrews and Jasons at great length, telling me how much this one or that one had liked me and what complimentary things they had said about me. I didn’t think any of them could hold a candle to Jack, which was undoubtedly why Lily was on his arm and not theirs. Finally, when she figured out that I really couldn’t be bothered, she paired me off with her “very best college friend,” Carmichael. He was very tall, very thin, and very gay—or so Jack claimed. It was all the same to me. I didn’t care and neither, apparently, did Carmichael. I can’t say that we ever had a conversation—he rarely tried to talk to me—but he seemed content to sit next to me in bars and stand next to me at parties whenever it was required.

One night he came up to the apartment for drinks, and after Jack and Lily had disappeared into her bedroom, as was inevitable, he asked me dispassionately if I wanted to fuck.

“I don’t think so, thanks,” I said.

He shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, and we continued sipping our drinks as if the subject had never come up. I wondered why he would want to have sex with someone he wasn’t even interested in talking to, and the more I thought about it, the more absurd it became. Meanwhile, Jack and Lily were clearly trying to be quiet in the next room, but occasional moans and thumps still reached us. By the time Carmichael left, I was shaking with suppressed laughter. Neither of us ever brought up sex again.

Every week, Lily’s florist came to deliver fresh flowers. After a few weeks the scent of lilies was so deeply impregnated in my skin that I could smell it anywhere: on the street, in a bar, in cabs and coffee shops.

 

The night I saw Never again, Lily had taken us to a party in TriBeCa. I was getting a glass of red wine from the bartender—it was the kind of party where there was a bartender—when a familiar voice next to me said, rather nastily, “I hear you made it in.”

I turned. At first I didn’t recognize him because he wasn’t wearing the glow-in-the-dark T-shirt. “Made it in what?” I said.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” he said and grinned. “Maris says Lily pulled you and your life-of-the-party brother out of nowhere. She says you’re her latest bit of window-dressing.”

Maris. It took me a moment to match a face to the name. Red hair, dour expression. Worked with Lily. Her thing was buying drinks; she was one of those people who always picked up a round. I hadn’t known she disliked us.

Never’s eyes were bleary and I realized that he was drunk. “She and my brother have a thing going on,” I said carefully.

He didn’t seem to hear me. “Is that why you blew me off that night? Because I don’t have a trust fund for the two of you to live off of?” He leaned in close and there was glee in his eyes as he stage-whispered, “What are you going to do when she drops you?”

I stared at him. “Is that what she did to you?”

He called me a freeloading low-life bitch and walked away. The bartender gave me my wine. I felt remote and unaffected.

Later I pointed him out to Carmichael, who shrugged and looked bored. “Mark something,” he said. “Pet roach. If you offered to fuck him he wouldn’t say no, no matter what he called you.”

“Pet roach?”

“One of those obnoxious New York fads back in the eighties. Some designer started gluing cockroaches to chains with pins attached, so you could wear them pinned to your clothes like jewelry. I’ve never actually seen one, if you don’t count the human kind. Don’t worry about him,” he said.

The next morning, as we walked to the coffee shop on Broadway, I told Jack about Never and what Carmichael had said. Jack’s lip curled ever so slightly, but he said that we weren’t cockroaches and told me that I shouldn’t look gift Lilys in the mouth.

“I wasn’t talking about us,” I said. But in my more bitter moments I started to think of us that way: Lily’s pet roaches. Which, I’m sure, was what Carmichael had intended.

That night, after Jack and Lily went to bed, the noises coming through the wall were different. Jack’s voice was low and growling, and Lily’s answering cries of passion sounded desperate and painful. A week or so later I came upon her wet and dripping in the living room with a towel wrapped around her, and there was a deep red bruise on her arm that looked as if someone had grabbed her, hard. I looked quickly at Jack and then at her, but they both ignored me.

After that, though, when the three of us were home alone together, Lily wore sheer, delicate tank tops or sweaters with wide necks that fell off one shoulder, and the creamy pale skin revealed was, more often than not, marked with purple bruises or ugly bite marks. When we went out, they were always carefully covered.

 

In the beginning I had marveled at Lily’s ability to go, go, go, no matter how early she’d gotten up for work; there were nights when we drifted in at 6 A.M. and she was up and gone by nine-thirty. I made some comment about it to Jack and he said, “Fairy dust and amphetamines. Check out the drawer in her nightstand sometime.”

The late nights, the more-fabulous-than-thou parties, and the crowded bars—they began to wear on me. All that we ever did was go out at night and sleep it off the next day. My brain felt slow and stupid. Time began to blur.

The weather was turning cool then, and Jack wore his new jacket everywhere because it was the only one he had. Each morning, after Lily left for work, he woke me up by crawling into my bed, and each night when I went to sleep I knew that he would come to me during the night, shaking with the aftershocks of one of his nightmares. During the day, he was never far from me: holding my hand, stroking my hair, pulling me into his lap. At the same time, he grew rougher with Lily, even when I was around. Once in the kitchen I saw him push her, hard, so that she lost her balance and came close to falling onto the stove, but then he kissed her and she was kissing him back wildly, gripping the back of his head with her hands.

She started staying home more. Her exuberant glamour began to seem forced. When we did go out into the dark glitter of the city, there were times when her eyes shone with a desperate need. At home she treated me with a formal politeness that let me know clearly that she didn’t want me around anymore: she didn’t want me living with her, she didn’t want me watching her, she didn’t want me seeing her.

One night, at a bar in SoHo, I opened the bathroom door and found Lily leaning against the sink and Maris standing beside her. Lily was saying, angrily, “It’s none of your goddamned—” But then she saw me, stopped talking, and turned her face away.

Maris saw my reflection in the mirror. “Do you mind?”

“Sorry,” I said.

Lily gave me a strained smile and pushed past me, back into the bar. Her eyes were wet and shining.

Maris fixed me with a bitter, steely glare.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said. “You and your creep brother. Nobody’s fooled, okay?”

Then she walked out.

Sometimes, when Jack was asleep and Lily was gone, I would open my closet door softly and take out Jack’s old leather jacket. When I buried my face in it I imagined that I could smell the morning air in Jack’s bedroom on the Hill. Whiskey, cigarettes, freedom.

 

Near the end of October, Carmichael sent out black roses and invitations to a Halloween party. It wasn’t long afterward that Lily told us, as she was getting ready for work, that she was going to Paris for a long weekend in November.

She was standing in front of the mirror in her living room, making sure that her lipstick was perfect. Jack was standing near her; I was sitting on the couch, with my knees pulled up to my chest. The apartment was chilly; Lily didn’t like to turn on the heat because it wilted the lilies. I could see her porcelain face reflected in the mirror.

“The weather will be horrible,” she said, frosting her lips over with pale pink lipstick, “but it’ll be horrible here, too, and I might as well suffer in Paris.”

“Okay,” Jack said. He was leaning against the wall next to Lily, watching her. His voice was smooth and easy but his eyes on her were hard.

Lily met them without flinching. She snapped the top back onto her tube of lipstick and ran her finger along the edge of her lower lip. “I’ll only be gone for five days. You guys can take care of things here, right?”

“Like it was our own,” Jack said.

Lily’s dark eyes glanced up at him in the mirror. Her expression was almost a glare. “But it’s not.”

Jack stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away from her. He came over to the couch and sat down next to me. Picked up a magazine.

“It’s too damn early for this,” Lily said and went into the kitchen. She took a container of yogurt from the refrigerator and dropped it into her bag.

Then she sighed. “Look, I’m just tired. I need to get out of this damn city.”

“No damage,” Jack said without looking up from his magazine.

She gazed at him. I couldn’t read the expression on her face.

“All right,” she said and left.

Jack didn’t look at me, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. “Everything okay?”

He shrugged. “She goes every year. She was talking about taking us—or at least me—with her this year.”

Leaving me by myself again, I thought. I looked at the floor. “Are you disappointed?”

“At missing the chance to spend five days in a foreign country with only Lily to talk to? I’d kill her.” He shook his head. “I don’t care about the trip. But I’m not sure I know what’s going on with her anymore. I don’t like it.”

I lay a hand on the back of his neck. “It’ll be okay.” I ran my fingers up and down the smooth skin that covered his vertebrae. “She’s moody, you know that. By the time she gets home tonight she’ll be so perky we’ll want to bash her head in again.” He didn’t answer. “She wouldn’t be leaving us here alone if things weren’t cool, would she?”

Jack leaned his head back against my hand. “Could be. I don’t know, Jo. I don’t like it.”

And sure enough, when Lily breezed through the door that night with an armful of shopping bags, she was full of good cheer again. “My costume for Carmichael’s party,” she said, holding up the bags, and giggled. “Wait until you see it. It’s fabulous.” She kissed the air in Jack’s general direction and disappeared into her bedroom.

“See?” I said. “Fine.”

“Maybe,” Jack answered.

The noises from their bedroom kept me awake for a long time that night. Everything seemed to be fine after all.

 

Jack and I were at a loss when it came to Halloween costumes. When we asked Lily for suggestions, she said, “I can’t tell you what to wear. You have to pick your own costume.” Her costume, of course, was fabulous. We didn’t see it until the night of the party. A long dark wig covered her pale hair, and she wore a short black dress with a ragged hem made of many layers of diaphanous material. Gauzy black wings dusted with silver glitter sprouted from her shoulder blades; her arms were bare and dusted with more glitter, and she spent an hour forming cobwebs on her temples with tiny black crystals and eyelash glue. Her lips were a bruised purple and her kohl-lined eyes glittered with something feral. “I’m a fairy,” she said. “The fairy of death.”

Jack decided to go as a priest, wearing black and pinning a piece of white cardboard to his collar. I raided Lily’s closet, went to a few thrift shops, and ended up with a conglomeration of brightly colored scarves and junk jewelry. I added a brightly patterned skirt and an old peasant blouse of Lily’s.

When she saw me, she shook her head.

“You’re the world’s only blond Gypsy,” she said.

“I’m the world’s only many things,” I answered. I was finding the whole costume-party concept annoying. My first and favorite impulse had been to pull out one of Jack’s old T-shirts and some cutoff jeans and go as Josie Raeburn. I’d discarded the idea without genuinely considering it, sensing that it would cause more trouble than it was worth. Still, it would have felt good.

New York City on Halloween: half the population was out on the streets, and in the ten blocks between Lily’s apartment and Carmichael’s, we saw satyrs, politicians, pixies and fairy princesses, devils in red satin, witches in black tulle, and giant carrots wearing sneakers. Children were dressed as goblins, birthday cakes, mice, tomatoes; their adult escorts were tigers, pirates, and tired-looking moms and dads in comfortable shoes. Lily was in high spirits as we walked. She would leave for Paris in the morning.

There was the usual complement of sexy witches and space aliens at Carmichael’s, but for the most part his guests’ tastes in costumes ran more toward the obscure and the ironic. One of Lily’s friends from the fashion magazine had come in a three-piece suit; “I’m boring,” he said when people asked him what he was. Maris, who rarely wore any combination of clothing worth less than five hundred dollars, was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and holding a disposable camera. She said she was a tourist and pointed out her practical sneakers, which she had borrowed from her roommate. Another crony—one of the candidates in Lily’s man-parade, actually—was there in khakis and a polo shirt. He was supposed to be a Republican.

We were all crammed into two rooms. The lucky ones had found places to sit, on couches or tables or windowsills or radiators. Everyone knew Lily was leaving the next day and she was beset by people wishing her bon voyage. Jack’s eyes were guarded and grim, but he stood his ground in his priest’s collar, like a good pet roach. I felt no such obligation and staked out a safe spot in a corner.

Carmichael found me and brought me red wine in a plastic cup. He was dressed as a vampire, his dark hair slicked back from his bony face and a red jewel sparkling in one of his buttonholes. He was drunk.

“Like my fangs?” he said and grinned lasciviously. His eyeteeth were long and pointed.

“They look real.”

“Caps. There’s a place down on St. Mark’s that makes them. They take impressions and everything.”

“Do they come off?”

“Eventually. Lily looks gorgeous, doesn’t she?” He scanned me from head to toe and said, “What are you supposed to be?”

“Gypsy,” I said. “I guess.”

He laughed. “Interesting choice. I guess Lily didn’t tell you, did she?”

“Tell me what?”

“That’s what I thought. Well, you look cute, anyway.” He saw someone across the crowd and lifted a hand. “Hey, you made it!” he called and was gone.

I stayed where I was. That was the party strategy that I had developed: I picked a spot and stuck to it. Anyone who drifted within conversational distance, I’d talk to, provided they started the conversation and I felt like keeping up my half. At this party, at least, there were interesting things to look at. I watched as a thin girl wrapped in hundreds of feet of fluorescent pink tubing passed me, and then Jack was at my elbow.

“What the hell do you think that was?” he said.

“No clue. You know, I think I like these people a lot more when they’re not dressed as themselves. At least they’re fun to look at.”

“Trust me,” he said, “they’re no better to talk to. Christ, get me out of here.”

“What’s up with Lily?”

“Fuck knows. She’s running hot and cold. Where’d you find that drink?”

“Carmichael brought it to me.”

“That doesn’t help.” Jack scanned the crowd. “I need something potent. Listen, if you want to play sick and go home early, I’m game.” He tugged at the scarf in my hair and disappeared into the crowd.

I drank my wine, which was warm and bitter, and stood for a while watching the party move around me like a carousel. Then I went to find another drink. The apartment was small; I expected to turn a corner and find Jack at any moment. Instead I found Carmichael, standing with Maris and a man I didn’t know in the hallway outside the bathroom door.

“Line starts behind me,” Maris said.

“I’m actually looking for a drink,” I said.

“I’ll get you one,” the man said. He was wearing a crumpled top hat and a rusty black tailcoat, his face covered in black smudges.

Carmichael put an arm across my shoulders and said, “Jo, meet my downstairs neighbor—Joe.”

Maris laughed. Her eyes were red and I realized that she was drunk, or high, or both. “That’s funny,” she said. “Jo, meet Joe. Joe, meet Jo.”

“Greetings,” the man said. He had broad, muscular shoulders that strained the seams of his black suit. When he reached out to shake my hand, I caught a whiff of his cologne. It had a sharp chemical smell.

“What are you?” I said.

Joe tipped his hat and said, with a bad cockney accent, “Why, I’m ye old chimney sweep, ain’t I, miss?”

Somebody in the crowd called out, “Hey, the psychic’s here!” and Carmichael excused himself. Maris gave Joe and me a knowing look and said, “Think I’ll go help Carmichael,” and then I was alone with the chimney sweep, standing in the hallway.

“So,” he said. “You’re Lily Carter’s newest protégée, huh?”

“No,” I said.

“Funny, Carmichael told me you and your brother were living with her.”

“She and my brother have a thing going on. I sleep in the spare room.”

“But you don’t work.”

“I’m only seventeen.”

His eyes widened slightly. “You’re seventeen?”

Then the bathroom door opened and a ghost in a white sheet pushed past us.

“You want to come in?” Joe said.

I looked at the open bathroom door. I looked at him. “With you?”

“Sure.”

Past him, on the bathroom counter, I saw a glass full of cut drinking straws and a small mirror next to the faucet.

“Think I’ll pass,” I said.

“Whatever you say.” Joe reached out and touched the tip of my nose lightly. I shrank back instantly. That was something Jack did. “I’ll find you later. I still owe you that drink.”

The bathroom door closed. Then the music stopped abruptly and I heard Carmichael shouting, “Everyone! The fortuneteller is here!”

The crowd made appreciative noises and headed toward the sound of his voice. Somebody took hold of my arms. It was Lily, her eyes too bright. I wondered if she’d been in the bathroom.

“Josie first!” she called, steering me through the crowd.

Carmichael, standing on a chair, saw us coming. “Oh, absolutely,” he said, and then I found myself standing in front of a heavy woman with a hairy upper lip and massive upper arms. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse and a long skirt; her dark, snapping eyes took in my garish costume and grew contemptuous.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Carmichael cried. “For your tarot-rific Halloween entertainment, my very own neighborhood storefront psychic—Madame Olinka!”

Madame Olinka was rummaging in an immense leather bag. She brought out a greasy deck of cards and began to shuffle them on a small table. Her chunky fingers were graceful as they deftly tapped the cards back into an even deck.

“Pay first,” she said.

Carmichael grimaced and took out his wallet.

“See?” he said as he counted out twenties and pointed to me. “We’ve got our own Gypsy here.”

Madame Olinka looked at me. “So I see.” I felt myself blush. She pointed to the chair that Carmichael had been standing on. “Bring that chair. Sit down.”

“No,” I said.

But Lily was still at my back. She grabbed the chair, plunked it down inches from Madame Olinka’s massive knees, and pushed me into it. “Get your fortune told. Maybe you’ll learn something useful.”

Meanwhile, Madame Olinka had laid three greasy cards face-down between us. The pattern on the backs looked like stained glass, angular and cleanly drawn. She gestured at the cards. “Frank Lloyd Wright tarot. Very modern.”

The crowd laughed and Carmichael said, “Only the best for my parties, people!”

Madame Olinka shrugged. “Modern world, modern tarot.” She bent over the cards with an air of great concentration. “I do three-card spread.” Her English was unaccented and economical. “First card tells the past—tells how you got here, to be where you are. Second tells where you are now, what you got to do to make things right, if they’re not right; and if they are right, it tells you how to keep them that way. Third card tells about the future—but just possibilities,” she added, as an afterthought. “Not what will be, necessarily, but what could be, if nothing you do changes. Future isn’t in anybody’s hands but your own.”

“Sure.” Somebody put another glass of wine into my field of vision. I looked up, thinking it must be Jack. Joe the chimney sweep winked down at me.

“Ask if there are going to be any tall dark strangers in your life tonight,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. It reeked of his cologne. Somewhere in the crowd gathered around us, I heard Lily laugh.

Madame Olinka’s eyes flickered. “I think there already is one, right?” Everybody laughed again. Where was Jack? “First card,” she said and turned it over. The card showed the silhouette of a man framed by a stylized window. It was hard to tell whether he was part of the window or standing in front of it, because his body was cut into pieces like stained glass. “The Hermit.”

“That’s her, all right,” I heard Lily say.

The fortuneteller ignored her. “There’s a big difference between the outside world and the world inside your head. So you trying to make sense of things, and now, you got a better sense of time, what it do to you.”

“I do?” I said.

Madame Olinka shrugged. “This card tells where you come from. Seems to me you got a nasty shock sometime, things aren’t what you expected. Now, next card, you see, is the devil.” The card showed a woman wearing a long black dress standing on a white hill against a deep blue sky.

“The devil is a woman?” I said.

“Is she ever,” Joe said from behind me and squeezed my shoulders. I tried to shrug him away, but when his hands left my shoulders they moved to my hair.

“Sometimes she is.” Madame Olinka looked at the cards. “Not so bad. Sounds worse than it is. You surrounded by bad feelings right now. All it means is, you got to be careful. You got to try and think clearly. Don’t get all caught up in plans and schemes. Logic, right? Logic is what the devil likes most. You stay away, think with your heart. But,” and she pointed a warning finger at me, “this all going on right now. You don’t make a choice now, you maybe never get a chance to choose again.”

“Choose what?” I said.

“Choose what you gonna do.” She sounded a little exasperated. “Choose whether you gonna believe those bad feelings swirling around you like smoke, or you gonna see the world the way it is.” Madame Olinka’s eyes flickered up to the crowd and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

“Lots of people here,” she muttered. “More than I thought. Got to hurry. Last card now.”

The last card she turned up showed a circle cut into pieces like a pie. The letters under the picture said “Wheel of Fortune.” Madame Olinka, unsmiling, tapped the card. “But there you go. No matter what you do, things gonna be okay. You gonna end up with no worries and no tears and no questions.”

“Sounds like death,” I said.

Madame Olinka sat back in her chair, losing interest. “What I tell you. Tarot doesn’t tell the future. Could be death. Or could be happiness.”

“My turn,” a pink pixie said. I moved quickly to let her sit down. When I stood up, Joe’s arm was across my shoulder. I stepped away quickly.

Lily appeared in front of me. “Solve all your problems?” Her blackish lips were curled slightly, and her eyes glittered with that feral look again.

“Sure. Lily, have you seen Jack?”

She was staring, distracted, into the crowd. “He’s around. I’ll go find him for you.” She vanished, leaving me standing stupidly, holding the wine that Joe had given me. For want of anything better to do, I took a sip.

“There you are,” Joe’s voice said from behind me, and I felt his arm snake around my waist. “How’s that wine?”

 

The party had lost focus. Where was my brother? I moved through the crowd like a ghost. Every face I saw was a stranger’s. None of them was Jack. I wanted to go home.

Then I was in the hallway outside the apartment. Carmichael was at one shoulder, Joe at the other. They were holding me up.

“Where are we going?” I said. My tongue felt foreign in my mouth and the walls around me wouldn’t stay where they belonged. The men carried me down a flight of stairs. My feet didn’t touch the steps.

“Joe’s place,” Carmichael said. We went through a door and Joe fumbled with keys. “You drank too much. You need to lie down.”

“Where’s my brother?” They carried me through a door and I felt myself fall onto a big, soft bed. I could feel the smooth cotton bedspread under my hand.

“He’s upstairs,” Joe said. I heard the sound of a zipper. One of my boots was gone. Then the other. “He knows you’re here. It’s okay.”

“He told us to bring you down here,” Carmichael said from somewhere above my head.

“Where—where is he?” The room was spinning.

“He knows you’re with us,” Joe said. “It’s okay.”

My limbs were leaden as the two men lifted my arms and pulled my blouse over my head.

“Jack,” I heard myself mumble. I was shivering.

“Jack says it’s okay,” Joe said gently. “Don’t worry about Jack.”

“Jack—”

“Jack told us to take care of you,” I heard Carmichael say. “Jack said we could.”