We Are Here (24 page)

Either that or she was feeling dumb for being here and looking for someone to blame it on.

Yeah, she guessed, it could be that.

So … screw this, Kris. Go to the restaurant, make nice with John. Do the sensible thing for once in your bad-tempered and contrary life, huh?

Abruptly deciding she’d misinterpreted the marks on the window or added two and two together and made a billion, she turned toward the main pathway.

She faltered, however. There was something different now. She could feel it, though at first she couldn’t work out why. Then something else changed.

There were three people standing in front of her.

Two girls, one guy. All were dressed in tattered black, with highlights of rich colors—blue, purple, emerald green. They stood in an arc, very still, looking at her.

She looked behind.

Two people were behind her, too. Both men, also dressed in black, the clothes so very dark that you couldn’t make out what the layers were. There was nothing overtly threatening in the way they stood, except for the fact they were in a circle and were pale and hollowed-eyed and looking intently at her.

Which … was pretty threatening.

Kristina took a moment to wish she’d listened to what John had said, and that he was here, but knew she was going to have to deal with this herself. “You going to get out of my way?”

Silence. Nobody moved.

“Who the hell are you?”

Nobody spoke. They were so very motionless that it was as if they were images layered on top of the park. A gust of wind finally made it down out of the trees, moving branches. Though the people in front of her were dressed in rags and tatters of layers and coats, none of these stirred.

“Kristina,” said a voice.

Another figure had joined the circle. It was Catherine’s follower, the girl Kris had met in Bryant Park that afternoon. She didn’t look harmless now, though. She looked like the leader of a small brigade of unknown allegiance and unpredictable behavior and power.

“Lizzie? Who are these people?”

The girl cocked her head to one side, birdlike. “You can see them, too?”

“Two girls, three guys,” Kristina said. “Dressed like you. They’re freaking me out. I say again:
who are these people
?”

Lizzie looked thoughtful. Kristina was aware of the others glancing at one another now. One of the girls—plump in figure, dressed goth style with dyed white hair—whispered to the man next to her. It sounded like car tires two streets away in the night, or like the door to the bedroom closet falling open an inch in the dark.

“We’re Angels,” Lizzie said. “Would you like to walk with us?”

With that, the girl started walking, going from stationary to moving fast with no step in between.

Kristina hesitated, but followed. “What do you mean, you’re …”

There was no point—the girl was already too far ahead. Kristina had a hundred questions she wanted to ask, but she had to catch up with the woman first. Meanwhile, Lizzie kept glancing back at Kristina curiously. The other people walked in loose formation around her, and were doing the same, casting glances at Kris and half smiles at one another, as if there were something odd and notable about her, rather than them.

“Why do they keep looking at me like that?” Kristina panted, finally managing to get alongside Lizzie as she crossed 14th and headed toward the Village.

“I’d like to walk with you,” Lizzie said, as if she hadn’t heard the question. Her voice was clear, with none of the soft edges from when they’d met in Bryant Park. “But we need rules.”

“What do you mean?”

The girl strode across Bleecker without appearing to care whether traffic was coming. Kristina almost got taken out by a cyclist and had to jump back onto the curb. Lizzie waited on the other side until Kris reached her, then immediately set off again.

“Look straight ahead,” she said. “Instead of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ nod or shake your head. If you
do
speak, keep your head down and don’t be loud. Okay?”

Kristina started to say yes, then nodded instead.

“Excellent!” Lizzie said, delighted, clapping her hands together like a girl who’d laid out the ground rules for a skipping game and received unexpectedly ready assent. “I worked all that out last night.”

“Why are you walking so
fast
?”

“I’m not.”

They’d reached the fringes of the Village, heading toward SoHo, and the sidewalks were getting crowded. Kristina noticed the other people with them had spread out, one ahead and two behind, and that one couple had transferred to the other side of the street. They were holding hands, the plump girl and a rail-thin boy who’d dyed his hair pure white too. They were still glancing at her, though, with those odd smiles. It was like …

It was how Kristina imagined celebrities must feel. Strangers continually slipping glances your way, drinking you in, clocking and logging you as if it were a big deal to be sharing the same space. Why would they be doing that to her, of all people? She couldn’t imagine, but it had the effect of making them seem less threatening, as if she had status in some invisible hierarchy.

Lizzie meanwhile kept surging onward, and Kristina found it increasingly hard to keep up. The girl carved down the street as though on a priority track. Sometimes she overtook other pedestrians, not leaving enough space for Kristina to follow. At others she dodged gracefully out of the way of oncoming walkers at the last second, leaving Kristina to clumsily attempt to do the same.

After glancing collisions with two sets of tourists more interested in gawking in store windows than watching where they were going, Kristina gave up.

“Look, slow
down
, will you? If you want to talk, then—”

Lizzie stopped in her tracks and turned to look at her. Someone banged hard into Kristina’s back.

“For Christ’s sake,” the man snarled. “You have a fucking stroke, or what?”

Still fuming at the idiocy of someone who might pause on a sidewalk, for crying out loud, the man stormed off down the road of his angry little life.

Lizzie remained motionless.

“What?” The girl’s eyes stayed on her, blank and dead. Kristina lowered her head and muttered, taking care not to move her lips much, “Okay, I get it,” she said. “But slow
down
, okay?”

The others had gathered and were clustered around her and Lizzie. A little too close, in fact, looking at her with their unnervingly steady gaze, as if waiting for her to say something else, or do something.

Lizzie glanced around. “Too crowded,” she conceded. “Good for us, difficult for you.”

She considered, then pointed diagonally across the street. On the other side was a doorway next to a café that was shut for the evening. The doorway was dark, recessed, and partially obscured by trees on either side. “Shoo, friends.”

With that, Kristina and Lizzie were alone.

Kristina assumed the girl would lead her into the building—and was weighing up just how dumb an idea it would be to follow—when she realized the doorway itself was their destination. When they were within its shadow Lizzie turned back and indicated for Kristina to stand at a certain angle, her back up against one side of the recess, facing away from the street.

“This should be okay. For a while.”

Kristina realized the woman had positioned her so she could speak normally without being seen by anyone passing by. “Where did the others go?”

Lizzie shrugged, but not in a way that said she didn’t know. “I’m glad you got the message.”

“Was it you who put the other one there? About leaving you alone?”

“Not me. But one of us.”

“Why?”

“You were following me. You and John.”

“We weren’t. We didn’t even know who you are. We were just trying to find out who was stalking a friend of mine. Catherine Warren.”

The girl’s eyes clouded, and she looked away. Kris pressed it. “Why
are
you following her?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“So … what
do
you want to talk about?”

“I’m not used to this,” the girl said, sounding defensive. “I’m so out of practice. I don’t know what to say to someone like you anymore.”

“What do you mean—someone like me?”

“Someone with things.”

“When I asked you what you were, you said—”

“Angels, yes,” Lizzie said. “It’s just a name. Like Journeyman or Dozeno or Fingerman.”

“Okay … so what’s a Fingerman?”

Lizzie held her hand up and placed index and thumb tips together. “Someone who can do this.”

“Well …
you
can do it.”

“Of course. Most Angels have some fingerskills, but we don’t have the precision of someone like Maj.”

“Who’s Maj?”

Lizzie smiled coyly. “A friend.”

“Special friend, by the look of it.”

Lizzie wasn’t saying. “Did you tell John you were coming out to the park?”

“No.”

“Did … you mind me asking that?”

Kristina shook her head, but the girl was sharp: answering the question had made her feel awkward, disloyal. She didn’t talk about John. Ever. When Catherine nattered about Mark—even a corporate merger as successful as theirs experienced occasional interdepartmental gripes—Kristina listened without giving back. Her relationship with John was private, reality’s core, not a subject for status updates.

“Is everything okay with him?”

Kristina was about to tell the girl to mind her own business, but realized that, strangely, she didn’t want her to. The conversation felt appropriate. The usual barriers of embarrassment and caution didn’t feel present. It was like being coaxed into overdue utterance by some friend you’d had back in school, before life got complicated, when it was possible to know
everything
about someone, every fact of their short life, to the bottom of their soul.

“We’re … going through an odd patch,” she admitted.

The girl laughed, but not in a way that diminished what Kris had said. “Even if two people stand in the ocean next to each other, the waves hit you at different angles.” She put a hand on Kristina’s arm. “But it will be okay.”

“You think?”

“Definitely.”

Kristina realized two of the other people were back, and standing beside her—the couple who’d been walking together. They seemed pleased with themselves.

“For you,” the man said.

Kristina couldn’t work out what he was talking about. The girl glanced ostentatiously down. Kristina looked too and saw the guy had something cupped in his hand, held low, as if to prevent passersby from seeing.

“Quickly,” the girl said. “He can’t hold it for long.”

Kristina took the object. She kept her hands down low and saw she was holding a silver necklace, modern-looking. And expensive. “What … what’s this?”

“It’s for you,” the girl said.

“Where did it come from?”

The man pointed across the street. Kristina saw a jewelry store among the boutiques. Women in expensive clothing stood in front of cabinets, heads reverentially bowed. It looked like the kind of place Catherine might head to pick out what Mark might want to give her for an anniversary.

She glanced at Lizzie. The girl smiled, but it looked guarded, or sad. She seemed resigned rather than disapproving. Turning back to the couple in front of her, Kris saw they now appeared worried.

“Don’t you like it?” the girl asked. “We could find something else.”

“No, it’s lovely. But—did you steal it?”

They nodded like a pair of little dogs. “I can’t accept this,” Kristina said. “It’s sweet of you, but—”

But they were gone. Lizzie too.

Kristina was standing alone in the doorway. She shoved the necklace into her jeans pocket, panicked.

There was a man standing on the other side of the street, looking at her. Two men, in fact—one still, the other wandering up and down among the shoppers, hands in the pockets of an old-fashioned suit. The first was staring directly at her. His face was full of flat planes and he wore an ostentatious coat.

Cops?

Kristina had worked thirty bars and never dipped her fingers in the till, held jobs in stores all over the country and not once exercised a five-finger discount either. Now she was in possession of a piece of jewelry that had to be worth several thousand dollars. It wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t taken it. Having it stuffed into her jeans didn’t make it look like she’d been on the verge of returning it to its rightful owner.

Meanwhile the men watched. One moving, the other motionless. The longer she stayed where she was, the more guilty she would look. But if she started to leave, would they come for her? Would they grab her right there, or wait until she hurried up a side street?

What if they weren’t even cops?

Would you really dress like that if you were a policeman? A policeman whose job was trying to bust people for stealing from stores?

“Don’t turn around.”

Not screaming took all the self-possession Kristina possessed. The voice was quiet, female. Lizzie.

Kristina stared at her feet and hissed: “What the
hell
is going on?”

“Just walk away. They’re not looking for you.”

“Then why are they staring
at
me?”

“It’s us they want, not you. Walk away like there’s nothing wrong. But tell me your number.”

Kristina muttered her phone number. There was silence. After a moment she glanced behind.

There was no one there.

She stepped out onto the sidewalk. The shorter of the two men had already disappeared. The man in the coat turned on his heel and strode off down the road without looking back.

Kristina willed herself to keep calm, to walk slowly. She strolled with the early-evening shoppers, doing her best to look like she was in the market for a handbag or an iPod. She allowed herself to look back only when she reached the next street corner. She saw no one.

She kept walking until the other side of SoHo.

And
then
she ran.

Kris was over an hour late getting to the restaurant, and by the time she arrived I was tired of fielding the management’s increasingly irritable inquiries as to her whereabouts, not least because
I didn’t know
. I’d sent her a few texts, but she hadn’t replied, and there wasn’t much more I could do—except be concerned on her behalf and know how pissed she’d be if I let her see it. That’s all I’d done at lunch, and it hadn’t gone well. I was dealing with a table of Midwesterners who hadn’t been expecting little bits of basil all over their pizzas and were extremely perturbed about them, and so when I saw Kris finally hurry into the restaurant I merely rolled my eyes and nodded in the direction of Mario, and then winked—as complex a nonverbal communication as I’m capable of without straining a muscle.