Say the Word (13 page)

“Nice,” Nate called from the stove. “Very ladylike.”

His comments only induced more laughter from Fae, and after a few seconds I joined in with her.

“I propose we ex-boyfriend-stalk as a team, and then hit the market as a reward,” Fae suggested.

“Done,” I agreed instantly. The Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market was a labyrinth of second-hand treasures, from furniture, to jewelry, to designer fashions that had been worn once by wealthy owners only to be cast away. We made it a habit to go every few weeks — more often in the summer months. Like a bloodhound on the trail, Fae somehow always managed to find the best deals. She’d once found a vintage Chanel jacket for a tenth of its original value. Another time, she’d bartered a Miu Miu handbag with a broken clasp down $500 from the seller’s starting price.

Fae grabbed Nate’s laptop off the coffee table. “Nate! Can we use your laptop?” she yelled, already powering it on.

“No!” Nate yelled back. “L
ast time you left about seventy-five Pinterest tabs open and you changed all my bookmarks to fashion websites.”

“Okay, thanks! You’re a peach!” she called, clicking the internet icon. Her fingers tapped the sides of the keyboard, impatiently waiting for the search bar to appear. I watched as she typed “Sebastian Covington” and my breath caught in my throat as her index finger hovered over the ENTER key. I had never — not once in seven years — allowed myself this weakness. Looking for him before would’ve been pointless and guaranteed nothing but pain and suffering on my part. And now, ironically, I was being forced into the one thing I’d never wanted to know about — how his life had turned out once I’d left him behind.

“Ready?” Fae asked, turning speculative eyes to me. I was clutching my coffee cup so tightly that my knuckles turned white and I was afraid the thin porcelain might crack beneath the strain. I swallowed roughly.

“As I’ll ever be,” I replied. “Just do it. Rip off the
Band-Aid.”

For the first time ever, I cursed Google’s speediness. Within milliseconds, thousands of results poured across the screen. His personal website. Links to his most famous magazine covers. His online photo gallery. His credentials. The prestigious awards he’d won.

2009 IPA Photographer of the Year.

2011 L’Iris d’Or Award Winner.

2011 National Press Photographer of the Year.

2013 Pulitzer Prize Winner.

I wasn’t a photography buff by any means, but even I recognized some of those awards by name and knew that they were a big deal. Moreover, his client list boasted some of the biggest magazines in the industry, including
National Geographic
,
TIME
,
Sports Illustrated
,
People
,
Maxim
,
Rolling Stone
…

The list went on and on.

As if I hadn’t been intimidated enough whenever I was in his presence, now I knew I’d be sharing airspace with a photography god. Sebastian Covington had been hailed by even the toughest critics as a marvel. A creative genius. A breath of fresh air, who captured real human emotion with his lens.

Fae and I read in silence for nearly an hour, eyes skimming simultaneously over articles about his travels. He’d been everywhere we’d ever talked about going together as kids — and he’d done it without me.

Paris.

The Australian Outback.

Thailand.

Belize.

Cape Town.

Iceland.

Buenos Aires.

Fiji.

I felt my heart swell uncomfortably in my chest as jealousy warred with happiness. He’d done it — everything we ever wanted to do together. That made me feel overjoyed, because it meant walking away from him hadn’t all been for nothing. He’d had a great life without me.

And yet, deep beneath the surface in a place I didn’t want to admit existed even to myself, I was tremendously saddened by that knowledge. Irrationally jealous that he’d lived out our dream without me. He’d gone everywhere. Seen everything. And sure, I was living in the best city in the world — but I’d never left the country. Heck, I’d never left the east coast, or even been on an airplane. The most travel I’d ever done was when I rented a truck and drove for two days straight from Atlanta to New York.

There’s a nonsensical dichotomy that exists within you after you break up with someone — especially if it’s someone you loved deeply. A large part of you hopes they’ll move on, be happy, follow their dreams to the fullest.

That’s the side you show the world.

But a smaller part of you, whether you admit its existence or not, secretly and selfishly yearns for a reality in which that person would never move on. Never forget your love, or replace you with someone else; never be fully complete again, without you by their side.

That’s the side we hide away, the innermost part of ourselves that we push down below the socially-acceptable responses to heartbreak.

“You okay?” Fae asked.

“I could use a shot or two of tequila, but considering it’s ten in the morning I should probably wait at least a few more hours.”

“Valid point.”

Having finished his breakfast and gotten dressed for the day, Nate eventually joined us. The three of us spent a few more minutes scrolling through images of Sebastian — at art gallery openings, at awards dinners, in exotic locales — and I felt my stomach turn at the sight of all the women who’d graced his arm. Models, heiresses, accomplished artists — all of them beautiful, wealthy, and a better match for Sebastian than I’d ever been.

When the tears began to threaten, I knew I’d reached my limit so I asked Fae to turn off the computer. Nate slipped one comforting arm around my shoulders and Fae grabbed hold of my hand, and for a while we just sat there in the quiet. I focused on breathing in and out, lost in my thoughts until the door to Simon’s bedroom was thrown open with a metallic bang, and his voice cut through the loft.

“Jeeze, who died?” he asked, walking into the room. “Or are you guys putting together an ensemble audition for a production of
Les Mis
no one told me about?”

Nate, Fae
, and I all burst into laughter at the same moment.

The crowds were nearly oppressive, but that didn’t deter Fae from her mission.

After we left the boys at the loft, we’d headed back to my apartment for a quick change out of our evening wear. Fae was taller than me by a few inches, so even my largest shorts were booty-hugging on her frame, but she pulled off the look with the same cool confidence she exuded when wearing Prada and pearls. We set out for the flea market not long after, and she soon become a woman obsessed — not, unfortunately, with finding designer deals or hunting down hidden gems amongst the many racks and displays that made up the flea market, but with distracting me from all thoughts of Sebastian. We wound our way through the maze of colorful carts and tables, chatting with the street vendors we knew and giggling at the sight of confounded tourists trying to discern some kind of pattern from the chaos.

The first time I’d been here, I’m sure I’d worn that same shell-shocked look of astonishment as my unaccustomed eyes tried to take it all in at once.  Milk crates full of vintage records were stacked along tabletops, mothball-scented mink coats hung from long racks, plastic bins brimmed with unorganized shoes of all sizes and styles, and various food carts exuded spicy, exotic smells. Though it was the first weekend of September, the day was unseasonably warm and sunny. Fae and I weren’t the only shoppers milling around in cut-off shorts and tank tops.

We wandered for about an hour without purchasing anything, before the unrelenting midday sun began to bake the concrete and my skin started to glisten with a thin sheen of perspiration.

“
I’m going to grab an ice cream before we go, you want one?” Fae asked. “My treat.”

“Sure,” I told her, wiping the beading sweat from the back of my neck. “But I have to make a pitstop
at Vera’s table, just to say hello.”

“Tell her hi for me,” Fae ordered. “What flavor do you want?”

“Mint chip, but only—”

“Only if it’s the green kind. I know, I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t know why I even bothered to ask.”

“It doesn’t taste the same when it’s white!” I called after her.

I heard her answering laughter even after I’d lost sight of her in the crowd.

Turning, I made my way to the end of the row, where Vera always set up her table. We’d met last summer, on one of my many weekend trips to the market, and though our language barrier didn’t allow for much communication, we’d struck up an unlikely friendship through shared smiles, a few odd phrases, and a variety of creative hand gestures. Sometimes, after our visits, I’d plug whatever Albanian words I could recall from our conversations into my iPhone in a pathetic attempt to retrospectively decode the things she’d said to me. It was safe to say, the only words I could keep track of with any kind of consistency were “
Alo!
” for
hello
and “
Mirupafshim!
” for
bye
.

Petite, with glossy brown hair and delicate feat
ures, Vera couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen, yet she spent every weekend sitting behind her table at the flea market, selling stunning handcrafted jewelry and colorful scarves from dawn until dusk. Rain or shine, she was always there — usually alone, sometimes in the company of her little sister, Roza — and she bore her responsibilities with a shy smile. I had no idea where her parents were, and no way to even communicate my concerns that she should be out laughing or playing with kids her own age, rather than working.

Truth be told, I’m not sure why I was so invested in her, specifically — there were many similar young girls who spent their weekends helping their families sell wares here. Perhaps it was that she was alone, and far too young to be supporting herself and her sister. Perhaps it was the warmth in her brown eyes when she’d given me a turquoise bracelet on the Fourth of July last year as a gift, and gently refused to accept any money for it. Perhaps it was because she reminded me of myself at that age — carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, and doing it with the maturity and grace of someone with twice her years.

I didn’t know. But I made it a point to stop by her table and purchase jewelry whenever I came to the flea market. Sometimes, I brought along sweets for the two girls to enjoy, understanding even without the benefit of words that they didn’t have the easiest of childhoods and likely didn’t receive much in the way of surprises.

So today when I came upon the spot where Vera’s table had been stationed every weekend for the last year and a half, only to find it empty, I
drew to an abrupt halt. My first thought was sadness that I wouldn’t see her or Roza, as it had been a few weeks since our last visit and I’d been looking forward to a reunion. My second feeling was worry that something had happened to one of them that kept Vera from setting up her stand. But finally, as I stood examining the unoccupied strip of pavement before me, I felt happiness — maybe they’d finally taken a day off, and were out enjoying themselves like young girls ought to.

I smiled as I turned to go.

“Lux?” The small, uncertain voice cut through the din of the crowd and clutched around my heart like a fist. I knew that voice.

“Roza?” I called, my eyes sweeping the scene as I looked for her amidst the crowd. Finally, I spotted her crouched in the shadows behind one of the adjacent tents. Huddled close to a rack of puffy down jackets and outerwear, her tiny form was barely discernible. She was small for her age — seven or eight at the most — but she spoke more English than her older sister. Not a lot, but enough that we could get by. Whether she’d picked it up from other kids or from television, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t even know if she attended school.

“Come here, sweetie,” I said, approaching her cautiously. I crouched down a few feet away and extended one hand toward her. “Where’s Vera?”

At my words, Roza shook her head back and forth, not meeting my eyes. Her body trembled slightly. She was scared, I realized. I felt my heartbeat pick up speed in my chest.

“Roza, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

Her gaze darted up to meet mine, then quickly skittered away to focus on her threadbare sandals. Though our eyes met only briefly, it was enough time for me to see that hers were full of unshed tears. 

“You can tell me, sweetheart,” I murmured. “I’ll help you, I promise.”

“Vera,” she whispered. Finally, she glanced up at me, and the look in her eyes nearly stopped my heart. Naked fear was etched into her features.

“What about Vera?” I whispered back, hearing a tremor in my own words.

“Gone,” Roza said quietly, taking a step forward into my space. A tear leaked from the corner of her left eye. “She’s gone.”

I stretched out my hand once more and this time she took it, her small, unwashed fingers and quick-bitten nail beds a stark contrast to the bright poppy color coating my own manicured fingernails.

“Where did she go, sweetie?” I asked.

She shook her head again, and her grip tightened on mine.

“It’s okay, Roza.” I assured her with a comforting smile, though I was anything but calm
beneath the surface. My mind reeled with worries. “You can tell me. You won’t get in trouble.”

Roza stared at me for a long moment, weighing my words with a solemnity
I wouldn’t have thought a seven-year-old capable of. Finally, she opened her small pink lips and whispered the words that brought my world to a screeching halt.

“He took her.”

Roza sat on a stack of milk crates, her thin legs kicking at the air as she licked an ice cream cone. Fae had found us a few minutes ago, and I’d immediately handed over my mint chocolate chip to Roza before filling my best friend in on what the girl had told me.

“What does she mean, ‘he took her’?
Who
took her?” Fae asked, her own untended ice cream cone melting down her hand.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But she’s pretty shaken up. Do we call someone?”

“Who? The police?” Fae lifted one eyebrow doubtfully.

“Well, we have to do
something
.” I looked over at Roza. “She was waiting for me, you know. She waited all last weekend, too. She knew I’d come eventually. That’s what she told me, right before you got here.” I couldn’t help but think about the three weeks that had passed since my last visit. If I’d come sooner, if I hadn’t been so caught up in my own life…

“Lux, this isn’t your fault,” Fae told me.

“I know that,” I muttered. “But these girls… They don’t have anybody.”

Fae sighed. “We don’t know that for sure. And we can’t call the police. Vera and Roza might not be legal citizens…the last thing we’d want is to try to help and in the process accidentally get them deported.”

I nodded in agreement.

“Roza,” I called, approaching the little girl slowly. “Can you do me a favor, sweetie?”

She nodded, licking the green ice cream residue from her lips and fingers as she finished off the cone.

“Can you tell me where you and Vera live?”

She stared at me blankly.

“Do you know your address?” I tried again. “Your neighborhood? The name of your street
?”

“Don’t know,” she said, shaking her head remorsefully.

“Could you bring me there?” I asked. “You…take me….home?” I did my best to mime the question with my hands, and watched as comprehension flared in Roza’s dark eyes. She nodded once, then reached out and grabbed hold of my left hand. Hopping down from her milk-crate throne, she turned and began walking, tugging me along after her.

“Where are you going, Lux?” Fae hissed, keeping pace with us. “You don’t know where she’s taking you. It might be a bad neighborhood. You could get in trouble.”

“I know,” I said, catching her eyes with mine. “That’s why you should stay here. If I don’t call you in an hour, you’ll know something’s up. Okay?”

Fae was silent for a minute. “You’re serious about this?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding firmly. “I have to know that Vera is okay. If something happened to her…”

“This is insane,” Fae grumbled.

“That’s why you’re not coming,” I said.

“That’s exactly why I am
definitely
coming.” She scoffed. “At least one of us with common sense should be going on this crazy escapade.”

“I have common sense,” I muttered indignantly.

“No, what you have is a soft heart and a heck of a lot of leftover southern charm. That whole ‘love thy neighbor’ bullshit really doesn’t apply to New York,” Fae explained. “Here, it’s more like ‘tolerate thy neighbor until they play their music too loud, then call the cops on their asses.’”

I rolled my eyes, turned my feet forward, and followed after Roza in silence.

Roza walked for five blocks, cutting across the Garment District and eventually leading us down onto a subway platform on 34
th
Street without speaking so much as another word. Fae and I looked at each other warily for a moment, indecision warring with concern for Vera’s wellbeing. I wasn’t about to force Fae to come with me, but it was too late for me to turn back at this point — I’d promised Roza that I’d help her.

“I can’t let her go alone,” I whispered, tilting my head down at Roza. “She’s only like seven. It’s not safe.”

Fae shrugged her shoulders in agreement and followed me onto the platform with a resigned sigh.

Within minutes, the F line arrived and we were being whisked away southbound toward the lower east side. When the train
screeched to a stop at East Broadway — the last stop in Manhattan before the tracks crossed over the East River into Brooklyn — Roza hopped off her seat and entwined her sticky fingers with mine once more.

“Come,” she said, looking from me to Fae before tugging us toward the car exit.

“If I die on this asinine adventure of yours before ever seeing John Mayer in concert, I swear to god I will haunt you until your dying day,” Fae told me, a simpering smile crossing her face.

“No one’s dying,” I assured her.

Roza led us out onto the street and walked with small yet determined strides down another three blocks, deeper into a neighborhood that was visibly poorer than the sections of Midtown I was accustomed to. Most of the restaurants and businesses we passed by were marked with colorful signs bearing intricate Asian characters, and while many different languages were spoken by the people on the streets, Fae and I were the only ones I heard speaking English. Before I’d made the move to New York, I’d spent months studying maps of the different neighborhoods and enclaves that made up the massive metropolis, but even without my cartographical obsessions I’d have known where we were — the sprawling bridges overhead were a dead giveaway.

Roza and Vera lived in Two Bridges, a neighborhood comprised mostly of
low-income public housing tenements and best known for its location, sandwiched between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge overpasses on the southern tip of Manhattan. It was a well-known immigrant borough and the poverty here was apparent, from the cracked sidewalks and the lack of greenery to the graffiti-sprayed buildings and the heavily-lined faces of the residents. Taking it all in, I felt guilty for ever complaining about my own tiny apartment here in the city, or my money woes as a child.