The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen (6 page)

“But—” I get to my feet, palms sweaty where they're crumpling the release form. “Hey. Listen. I'm sorry, look, I know you don't know me, but I really need your help with this.”

She hesitates on the inside stairwell, one hand on the banister, staring back at me.

“Help?” she says in a small voice.

But then something startles her, and she looks up with urgency to the curve where the stairs disappear into the dark.

I can't stand to let her leave. I want her to stay here on the stoop with me, sitting close, making private jokes and elbowing each other. I mount one of the steps on the stoop, reaching a hand toward her.

“Please?” I say. I'm trying not to beg. It's so not working, though.

“I . . .” She hesitates, torn.

She clearly feels bad about ditching me like this. But she is going to do it anyway.

“Look,” I say. “If you have to go right now, I can just wait. Okay? You go do whatever, and I'll just wait down here. It's no big deal. I mean. You won't be long, right?”

“Um . . .” She's almost persuaded.

What else am I going to do with my morning, anyway? Maybe I can hang out in the pizzeria, find a couple more people for
Most
. That would be pretty cool. Maybe she'd want to be in it. Maybe she'd let me film that bowlike mouth with its perfect mole talking, and talking, telling me what she wants most in the world.

“Please?” I say, more softly this time, my eyes pleading.

She chews her lip, hand still on the banister, considering. All at once, she relents. I can see it in her face. I have to suppress the urge to fist-pump in the air.

“All right,” she whispers. “Wait down there. I'll be back as soon as I can.”

“Okay,” I say. I'm grinning like I've just won Powerball. “Okay. I'll be right here.”

She smiles at me and turns to hurry up the stairs.

“Wait!” I call out, and she stops, looking over her shoulder.

“I don't know your name. What's your name?” I don't even care if I sound desperate. I can't let her get away again.

She hesitates, but only for a second, and then she smiles.

“Annie,” she says. “I'm Annie.”

Then she's gone.

I
think what I'd really like is my own place,” the pixelated kid says. “I been living with my moms since I got out of school, right? And she's just . . . You know, she's on my case all the time.”

The frame is tight on his face, his nose the same aquiline one I've seen on ancient Roman sculpture busts at the museum uptown. Heavy eyelashes, wavy dark hair. I zoom out about 20 percent so I can show the pizza ovens behind him and get the deadening quality of the fluorescent light. His white T-shirt is soft from washing.

“Where would you live?” I ask. “When you move out from your mom's.”

He shrugs and his eyes slide to the right, over my shoulder. “I mean, the city, right? I'd like to get out of Jersey. You know. Get some sweet place downtown, like a loft? With a doorman, yo. Then when I roll up in my Lambo, with some tight little model, you know? I just throw him the keys. Forget about it.”

The kid smiles, gazing into his daydream. The digital video camera whirs softly, and I zoom back in, very slowly.

“Hey!” the older guy at the register hollers. “You got people waiting. What's the matter with you?”

Shaken out of his reverie, the kid's face darkens. He looks down, then back up at me.

“We done?” he asks, with a new challenge in his eyes.

“Yeah,” I say, shutting the camera off. “We're done. Thanks. That was awesome.”

“You gonna put that on TV or something? Am I gonna be famous?” The kid grins. He's kidding. Mostly.

“As if anyone wants to see you, on the television. This guy,” the older man behind the register says to a woman he's ringing up for a soda and two slices. She rolls her eyes.

“Nah,” I say. “Sorry. It's a project. For school.”

“Oh.” He's hiding his disappointment, and now I feel guilty for filming him for
Most
. Like I shouldn't have gotten his hopes up.

“I mean,” I stammer. “It's hard to say, you know?”

“Oh yeah.” The kid shrugs me off. “Sure.”

He turns his back to me, ladling out tomato sauce in an expert circle of red on raw dough, showering it with cheese, placing pepperoni like punctuation marks to show that our conversation is over.

I check my phone.

12:32.

I blow an irritated sigh through my nose and lean my cheek against the pizzeria window for probably the thirtieth time, looking at the door to the apartments upstairs. I don't know how much longer I can wait here. I mean, I sat on the stoop for an hour 'til they opened, and I've been parked in here ever since. I've bought about a slice an hour, and now my belly is sticking out a little over the waistband of my cargo shorts. I still haven't showered, my hair is sticking up in all different directions from having been slept on, my chin is bristly, and I think I'm starting to look kind of sketchy, hanging out here all day.

But I told Annie I'd wait.

So I've been waiting.

“This guy,” the register guy says again. I don't pay any attention. “What, he thinks real estate is free in New York?”

There's a pause, and then I feel eyes on my back.

“Huh?” I say.

“You gonna sit in here all day?” the guy barks at me. Having abused his underling enough, I guess now it's my turn. He must be really great to work for. Man.

“Um . . .” I pause, trying to come up with the right response. I guess it's whatever keeps my ass from getting kicked.

Dammit. I told her I would wait here 'til she came back. I can't stand the thought of breaking my word to her. Anyway, I need her to sign the stupid form. This guy is thinking about rearranging my face into a Cubist painting, and it's all for nothing.

“This is a respectable business, you know,” the guy continues.

“Paul,” the Roman-looking kid says, putting a hand on his sleeve. “He's been buying slices. He's okay.”

I spread my hands in a what-can-I-do? sort of gesture, and smile my most apologetic, nice-guy-from-the-Midwest smile. I don't know if those really work in New York, though. Paul glares at me. So much for my big plan of interviewing Paul to kill more time.

“Sorry,” I mutter. I pull out my phone, checking for I don't know what. Do I think she'd have texted me? It's not like she knows my last name.

Instead, I find half a dozen texts from Tyler, wanting to know where I am and what's happening. If I don't get the release he has to cut the footage she's in, and he's running out of time before fiction workshop, and he's going to kick my ass and I'd better text him back.

Great. Just really terrific.

I stuff my camera into my backpack, toss a dollar onto the Formica countertop next to my greasy napkins and stack of paper plates, and slink out of the pizzeria. But on the stoop I hesitate.

I mean, I can't just
leave
.

I try the door to the town house, but it's locked. Outside the front door there's a row of brass mail slots, the kind that open with a small key, and an intercom buzzer with peeling paper labels stuck next to each button.

I spend a long minute inspecting the buzzer, daring myself to push one of the buttons and get let in. There's one that says
FATIMA
, which I think is for the palm reader. Then there's one that says
EINBERG
, with the first letter missing, and one that says
HERNANDEZ
in pretty cursive. The other four are either blank, or whitened from rain.

I cup my hands around my eyes and peer into the stairwell, blocking out the yellow summer sun. Honestly, other than the palm reader on the second floor, it doesn't look like the apartments are occupied. No window-unit air conditioners jut out over the street. No window propped open with a spinning box fan. No catalogues on the floor. No menus.

I take a deep breath, roll my head back and forth on my shoulders to loosen up, and push my thumb against one of the unlabeled buzzers.

Nothing happens.

“Dammit,” I say aloud, stepping back to look up at the indifferent façade of the town house. It stares back at me, giving away nothing.

I don't understand. She definitely hasn't left. I'd have seen her. I was sitting right by the pizzeria window. I had a clear view of the apartment building door. I watched the door the entire time, even when I was filming the Roman kid.

I push the buzzer labeled
EINBERG
.

Nothing.

“Ha,” a voice laughs behind me. “Good luck with that.”

“Huh?” I spin, startled.

I'm met with the amused expression of Maddie, in cutoffs and ripped fishnets and combat boots and tank top. Her bangs perfectly straight, hair braided into Princess Leia coils around her ears. She's laughing at me, and I'm gripped with irrational panic, like she's caught me doing something wrong.

“Making social calls?” she asks me, eyebrows arched. “I hope you've got a calling card. There's nobody here.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, staring back into the depths of the stairwell.

“I mean, there's Fatima Blavatsky's. But the rest of the building's empty.”

Her smile is getting mischievous, mainly by seeming to take over one side of her mouth more than the other. She shifts the grocery bag she's carrying onto her hip, cocking a combat boot out in defiance.

“Empty? Are you sure?” It comes out more suspicious than I mean. But I can't tell if she's just trying to mess with my head. I mean, I
saw
Annie go inside.

“Oh yeah,” she says. “I'm sure.”

Empty? So where did Annie go, if it was empty? If she wanted to brush me off, she could have just said no. I hear no from girls all the time. More often than not. My ex-girlfriend could say no like it was going out of style. Why would Annie pretend to like me if she didn't?

“How do you know?” I ask.

Maddie sighs and puts the grocery bag down at her feet, stretching her arms overhead. I can hear her spine pop when she stretches.

“I know,” she says patiently, “because I was squatting here until three weeks ago. Then they came through and cleared everybody out.”

“You were . . . What?” I'm confused. She seems kind of young to not have anywhere to live.

Maddie shakes her head, dismayed by how dense I am. “Squatting. I told you. Come on. I'll let you carry the bag, and then if you're really nice, you can buy me breakfast.”

“But—” I start to protest.

Maddie's already picked up her grocery bag, which upon closer inspection mostly contains takeout boxes and spotted fruit, and started walking back down the steps to the sidewalk.

“Hurry up,” she calls to me.

I glance one last time into the deserted stairwell, disappointment crushing the breath out of me, pulling my mouth down. I don't understand. I thought we were . . . I really . . . She must have felt it. How could she not have felt it, too?

I sling my bag over my shoulder, shake my head, and turn away.

For a minute Maddie and I trudge along together in silence. The street is busy now, crowded with people picking up lunch, striding with purpose from one place to another. In New York everyone's in a hurry all the time.

“I can't believe she ditched me like that,” I finally grumble, unable to stop myself.

Maddie looks sidelong at me, and then snorts.

“It's a shocker,” she agrees. “Me? I'm shocked.”

“I'm so screwed. Now I can't get her to sign my thing. She just ditched me! God!” The complaints crowd out of me, one on top of the other, and only then do I realize I'm actually angry.

“What thing?” Maddie asks lightly.

We're walking south, gradually wending our way east. And then farther east.

“This stupid release form. It's not even my film! I don't know why I care,” I spit. Of course, it's not the release that's making me upset. I feel stupid, letting Annie see how much I liked her.

“Show me,” Maddie says, stopping by the gate to an austere cemetery. It looks like nobody's been in there for a long time. There's a historic plaque and everything. A marble angel with outspread wings watches our conversation between gnarls of ivy.

I prop my camera bag on my thigh, fish out the crumpled paper, and hold it out for her to inspect. In a glimmer the grocery bag is in my arms and she's holding the release form.

“Oh yeah. I signed one of these for that guy. Your friend. He was a real dick about it. Got a pen?”

“In there,” I say, nodding at my backpack. The grocery bag is heavy. It smells like all different kinds of leftovers mixed together, Indian and Thai and collard greens and maybe matzoh ball soup. Glass bottles clink around in the bottom.

Maddie pulls out a pen from my backpack, which is somehow now over her shoulder instead of mine, and says, “Turn around.”

Obediently, I turn my back to her.

“What's her name?” I hear the click of the pen.

“Annie,” I say, and when I say it, something weird happens in my chest and then I'm embarrassed, as if someone might have seen.

“Annie what?”

“Um . . . ,” I stammer, because I have no idea, and yet it seems impossible that I don't know.

“Oh, for Pete's sake. You're ridiculous.” I feel the pen press between my shoulder blades, and then Maddie is waving the paper under my nose. “There. Happy?”

It says
Annie Cinders
in loopy cursive.

“How did you know her last name?” I ask, amazed.

Maddie gives me a coy look. “I didn't. That's
my
last name.”

“Your last name? But what if . . .”

“Oh my God. WES. Nobody cares!”

Maddie shoves my pen in the pocket of her cutoffs and moves off down the street, hot summer sunlight painting white stripes across her shoulders and hair. Her hair looks even blacker in the day than it did the night I met her, like it swallows the light. I have to hurry to catch up. She's still carrying my backpack over her shoulder. From behind I can see the laurel leaf tattoo wrapping around her neck, coiling up under her hair.

“I guess Tyler won't know,” I muse. “It's not like the gallery's going to check.”

I fish my phone out of my shorts pocket and text Tyler a cryptic note that the paper is signed. Immediately the phone vibrates with a text returned that just says
K
.

“Tyler. He's the guy from the other night, right?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I'm getting winded from how fast we're walking, but I don't want Maddie to notice.

“He seemed like kind of a tool,” she remarks.

I laugh before I can help myself.

“Yeah, well,” I demur. “He's got a
vision
. You know. He can't let little things like being cool to other people get in the way.”

Now it's Maddie's turn to laugh.

“Oh yeah. Me, neither.” She stops, noticing a pizza box on top of an open garbage can. Before I register what's happening she's opened the pizza box, discovered half a pineapple pie inside, and hollered, “Score!”

“What?” My stomach lurches with disgust as I watch her fold the pizza half in thirds. She pulls out a couple of paper napkins from her cutoff pocket, does a half-assed job of wrapping it, and stuffs the pizza into the top of the grocery bag.

“They probably just put this out. It's totally fresh!” She grins happily at me. Then she plucks at my T-shirt and says, “Come on.”

We walk all Lawrence of Arabia style through the sweltering city,
the stench of day-old pineapple pizza filling my nostrils. After all the pizza I'd already eaten that morning, I'm struggling not to retch. Why would she want pizza someone had thrown away? A sour belch rises in my chest and I swallow it back. The effort makes sweat bead on my forehead.

“Where are we going?” I ask after another avenue passes and we're still walking east. I didn't realize the island went this far east. We've passed the numbered avenues and are well into letters.