The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen (9 page)

T
oss it back! Do it!” a chorus of voices shouts, and a stream of tequila burns down my throat. The backsplash of it in my nose makes me cough, but then Tyler's shouting, “Bite it! Come on!” and my teeth are sinking into a lime wedge and the burst of acid rips away the tequila aftertaste and my eyelids fly open and Tyler shouts, “YEAH!” and pounds me on the back and then hollers to the bartender, “Same again!”

“Dude,” I cough, laughing, “wait a minute!”

“No waiting!” Tyler cries, grinning. “You can't wait, that's the whole point!”

He licks the back of his hand, sprinkles it with salt, picks up the tequila shot, and vaults onto the bench alongside the scarred wood table where we're sitting in an old-fashioned East Village bar.

“To the two biggest film geniuses to come out of Tisch since nineteen-freaking-seventy-five!” he shouts.

Everyone in the bar cheers, Tyler hoists the shot glass over his head, licks the salt from his hand, tosses the tequila back in one slug, and chucks the empty shot glass across the room. There's a shatter and someone in the back shouts,
Hey!
but Tyler doesn't pay any
attention. Now he's down off the table and biting a lime wedge next to me, leaving the rind in his teeth and giving me a green-rind grin while sliding a shot glass over in front of me.

Obediently I lick my own hand, sprinkle it with salt, and pick up the tequila shot. Tyler and everyone is clapping and cheering. I hesitate, take a deep breath, then in one motion lick the salt off my hand and toss the tequila back. I exhale the fumes with an “aaaaaah” and thunk the shot glass upside down on the table, pick up the lime wedge, and tear into it with my teeth. A warm patch starts to spread across the back of my neck.

“Yes! That's it. That's how we do it,” Tyler shouts near my ear. “Now tell me again what Krauss said about
Most
at the reception. Verbatim. I want to hear it.”

“Come on, man.” I wave him off, but I'm grinning.

“Shut up, shut up. Listen. Do you know what Krauss said about this guy's documentary?” he shouts to a couple of girls who are jammed up next to us at the picnic table. They look at each other, giggle, and shake their heads.

“She said she's heard it's
powerful
, and she can't wait to screen it next week. Tell them,” he instructs me.

“I'm sorry,” I explain to the girls. “You'll have to excuse him, we've . . .”

“Powerful,” Tyler says, jamming a finger into my chest, his arm over my shoulders. “That's serious film talk, right there. That's what that is.” The girls are really laughing now.

“Are you guys, like, filmmakers?” one of the girls asks, half hidden behind one of her friends.

“Damn right we are!” Tyler hollers. “You remember this guy's face, because you're gonna be seeing us on TV. When we get our Oscars. I swear.” He points to me, finger wavering from the tequila.

The girls all laugh, trying to figure out if they're supposed to know who we are.

“Dude,” Tyler says, leaning in close to me. “You have to do sound on my next one.”

“Your next one?” I slur. My eyes are having trouble focusing on one point all together. And my lips are feeling kind of numb.

“Totally! The woman from Gavin Brown wants to see another one from me by the end of the month. She said, at the reception. Do you have any idea what this means?”

He's grinning so wide, I can't help but grin back at him, even though I can't feel my mouth. His eyeliner's gone streaky with sweat, and his cheeks are flushed, and in the background one of the girls has taken a selfie with him and looks like she's posting it to Instagram, just in case he's famous.

“It means,” he says, leaning in close, “that it's really going to happen for me, Wes. For serious. All this time, you know, and I think maybe it's finally going to happen.”

“What is?” I ask, leaning into him in a conspiratorial whisper.

Tyler smiles and takes my overturned shot glass so that he has something to play with on the table. Without looking at me, he says, “You don't know me that well, do you?”

I'm taken aback. I mean, we've seen each other every day for five weeks. I feel like I have a pretty good idea about Tyler. I don't always like him. But he's okay, basically.

“Sure I do, man.” I stumble to reassure him. “Come on.”

Tyler shakes his head, smiling to himself.

“Did you know I had to work two jobs during the year to save up for summer school?” he says lightly. “My dad's dry cleaning shop. And a moving company run by some Russian dudes in Brighton Beach. Cash only, under the table. So sketch. That's how bad I needed this.”

I turn and stare at Tyler. Damn. He plays it close to the chest. The art films. All that 16 millimeter film stock. The hair and everything? The nightclub with the list? My image of his plush Upper West Side life—of framed prints and polished parquet and a mother with a gambling problem—evaporates before my eyes. No, I did not know he was sending himself to school. I'm starting to think that maybe I don't see all that well into people.

He catches me staring and his smile shades uneasy. But whatever he's worried about seeing in my face isn't there. Tyler passes the shot glass back to me.

“Listen. I know I was being kind of a dick about stuff, before. It's just, my dad couldn't pay for it. And even if he could, there was no way he'd think art school was a good use of money, you know? He was kind of on the fence about college anyway. So I just really needed everything to be perfect. I had put too much into it to let myself screw it up.” He's looking at me, needing me to understand.

“Your dad didn't want you to go to college?” I ask. This baffles me. If I'd tried to not go to college, my parents would've sold me for parts. And Gran, forget it. She'd have clobbered me to death with her handbag. The big, hard-sided one from the sixties.

“Nah. I mean, to be an engineer or a doctor, yeah. But my math grades sucked. He was all set I should be a plumber. Make good money, not go into debt. College is just an excuse to waste time that would be better spent supporting the family. According to him.”

Tyler looks me full in the face, his eyes damp at the corners, and for the first time, I start to understand who the eyeliner is for. I nod.

“
Shuttered Eyes
had to be good,” Tyler goes on, his hand tightening into a fist. “I mean, it couldn't just be good. You know? It had to be
perfect
.”

“No, no. I get it.” I rush to close the subject because we're both about to get uncomfortable with all this sharing. Later, he'll blame
the tequila. Or more likely we'll both pretend this conversation never happened at all. “It's no problem,” I continue. “God, look at Krauss! She loved it. Right? And that woman from Gavin Brown?”

I'm not normally Mr. Effusive. But I want Tyler to know that I get it. I really do. I watch him, wondering if I've persuaded him. Wondering if this means we're really friends now.

He weighs what I'm saying, and then his face splits into a delighted grin.

“Can you believe how freaking awesome this is?” Tyler cries, sweeping an arm out to encompass I'm not sure what. School, the workshop, the summer, maybe the entire city. “And
Most
? Seriously? It's art, man. It's freaking beautiful. I've seen what you've been doing. You're a freaking artist, Wes. Next week, Krauss is gonna lose her mind. Everyone will. I'm freaking serious.”

Someone plunks two more tequila shots down in front of us and we look up in confusion, because we didn't order them. The tableful of girls next to us all giggle some more and wave.

Tyler and I exchange a wry look, pick up the shot glasses, and lift them in tribute. Then we clink them together and down the shots in one gulp.

• • •

Somehow my feet are moving, and I'm not sure where they're moving to, because all I can see is the blue screen on my phone. My thumbs aren't working quite right, but I'm pretty sure I'm texting Maddie, and I'm reasonably certain I'm telling her to meet me and Tyler at another bar. Tyler's got one of the girls who bought us tequila shots wrapped around his neck like a scarf, and they're stumbling along in front of me, singing a Taylor Swift song. Tyler started by trying some Velvet Underground, but the girl didn't know what he was talking about.

The phone vibrates in my hand.

Where R U right now?
Maddie wants to know.

I stop, swaying on my feet, and look around. Everything is lights and taxi horns and the smell of hot summer rain, and I squint, trying to make out a street sign, but my eyes will. Not. Focus. I close them, inhale a long, ragged breath, and open them again, but it doesn't help.

“TYLER,” I holler.

Ahead of me two figures pause in the blur of people, and then come swaying back to me.

“WHAZZIT?” he hollers back to me. The girl he's with keeps giggling and giggling.

“What street izzis?” I slur.

“Uuuummmmmm . . .” He squints also, looking around in a circle that makes me dizzy to watch.

“Second,” the girl chirps. “We're on Second and Bowery. Who're you texting with?”

“My friend,” I manage to say. “She's meeting us. Where're we going? I'm sposta giver the address where we're going.”

“Give it here,” the girl says, yanking the phone out of my hands. With lightning speed her thumbs fly over my smartphone. At first I'm okay with this, and then just as quickly I'm not. What's she telling her? This could be bad. I should get it back from her. I should—

But then she's handing the phone back and she says, “Come on! She'll meet us there. She your girlfriend or something?”

“No, she's just this . . . she's, like,” I say, but nobody's listening, so instead of talking I shamble along behind them as we go another block and turn down a side street.

“Dude!” Tyler cries, stopping short. I trip over my feet trying not to run into him.

My heart collapses when I see where we are.

Her,
my mind breathes. My hand reaches out for something to
steady itself against, and finds the bark of the long-suffering pear tree near the curb.

We're standing in front of Annie's house.

The pizzeria is doing a brisk business, kids hanging out along the counter open to the street, its windows folded back to let in the night air. There's music and the smell of garlic knots, and the kids inside are all laughing together, and Tyler and the girl are laughing together, and maybe it's the tequila pickling my brain, and maybe it's a mistake or I'm confused or overtired, but I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying, and I'm so glad it's dark and nobody's looking at me.

Not even the town house is looking at me. All the windows above the pizzeria are empty.

Tyler wraps his arm around the girl's waist and gestures up to Fatima Blavatsky's.

“This is where it all happened,” he explains to her. “Did I tell you I shot it in sixteen millimeter
and
digital? I had to transfer the film to video and then edit it all together. This guy”—he gestures to me, where I'm sagging against the tree with my arms clutching my waist, as if I could hold the despair inside by force—“this guy is a sound genius, did you know that?”

“No,” the girl says and giggles.

But I can't laugh along with them. The neon sign
PALMISTRY CLAIRVOYANT P
SYCHIC TAROT
$15
is shut off, and the curtains are closed. I stare up at the indifferent face of the town house, a void of misery yawning open in my gut.

I was waiting for her. Where did she go? Couldn't she feel it? If she felt it, why didn't she come back?

“Come on,” Tyler shouts, snapping me back to myself.

He and the girl are already halfway down the block, laughing and waiting for me. I'm here, right now. My life is happening, right now.
My life is waiting for me. I cast one last doleful look up at the silent face of the town house, and turn to go.

• • •

The next bar is right around the corner, and when we tumble through the door and into the throng of kids holding beer glasses, I spot her.

Maddie is already leaning over the edge of the bar, waving a hand and trying to get the bartender's attention. Her arms are pressed together, deepening her cleavage, and she's coiled her dyed-black hair into a huge beehive on the top of her head, finishing off her look with 1950s cat-eye glasses. When she spots me, she smiles and lifts her chin in recognition. I elbow through the crowd, and when I reach her side, my hands go around her waist.

“Hey,” she says with some surprise. “Take your time, why don't you. I was just about to give up on you guys.”

“Hey,” I say, nuzzling behind her ear where the laurel leaf tattoo curls up into her hair. “Hey.” She smells good. Like lemon. She smells real. She's warm, and soft, and real, and she's been waiting for me. Maddie is what's good. Maddie Miss Madwoman Malou.

“Whew.” She mock-waves her hand in front of her nose. “What is that, tequila?”

Without answering, I pull her to me, and before she can say anything, I press my mouth to hers.

I love how soft girls are. Their skin. Their lips. The delicious fleshiness of their bodies, smooth and perfect under my hands, which always feel too rough somehow. Sometimes they're so soft I can't believe I'm allowed to touch them. Maddie's lips are so soft that at first I imagine I can't even feel them, they are just this impression of perfect warmth on my mouth. But then, responding to my pressure, her lips move, open, and I taste plummy wine and an underlying lemony sweetness. My hands wander, I'm not even sure where they're going,
but when one moves up the back of Maddie's neck and into her hair I sigh with pleasure, because the nape of her neck is soft, and her hair, that glossy dyed-black hair, is tangling around my fingers, softer still.