We Are Here (31 page)

Kristina whirled around, desperately trying to see a way of escape. There was none. She was in the middle of a room with only one exit. Footsteps were coming along the hallway toward the door—and there was absolutely
no hope
of getting through it without being seen. She had to hide in this room, somewhere, some
how
.

She waited a second too long. A woman walked past the doorway carrying a baby over one shoulder.

Kristina froze, knowing she was caught.

But the woman walked past and to the front door instead, where she shouted something down the street—to the hapless guy with the big cardboard box, presumably. The guy who, it turned out,
didn’t live alone
.

Knowing these extra seconds were all she had, Kristina took four giant steps toward the only thing she could see that might possibly help—the couch—trying to cover the ground as quickly as possible without making a sound. Halfway through the final lunging step her self-possession deserted her and she dived.

She landed with a thump just around the back of the sofa and yanked her long legs up to her chest. She felt indescribable relief to be behind something, but this was nowhere near as loud as the panicky, yammering part of her mind that knew it was a pathetically insufficient hiding place and the only question was whether she was discovered within minutes or seconds.

This dreadful attempt at hiding would only make things worse. If she’d been discovered standing in the room she could have made an attempt to appear demented, some confused lunatic wandered in off the street. No, she didn’t think she could have pulled it off, but to be found hiding behind the sofa was a straight-down-the-line and no-excuses-possible nightmare.

I’m screwed. I’m screwed.

She heard footsteps and this time they didn’t recede back down the corridor but came right into the room.

I’m totally … screwed.

“Lazy asshole,” said a voice—the woman. “Tell him what, five or six
hundred
times before he does the thing, and then tell him one more time how to do it right? Yes?”

There was a chirrup from the baby, responding to the affectionate tone with no understanding of the content. Her mother sat down on the sofa. She landed heavily, in the middle—bang in front of where Kristina lay, eyes wide. Kris felt the air pushed out of the cushions.

The woman sighed—the heavy, brooding exhale of someone who’s exhausted, tired of sleepless nights and having to tell someone what to do the whole time and just the whole damned unfairness of it all.

Kristina tried not to breathe.

A minute later she heard feet coming up the steps outside the house and the front door closing.

“Yeah, so it fits, okay?” A man’s voice.

“My hero. You rock.”

“Why are you being so pissy?” His voice was louder as he walked into the room. How many more steps before he got the angle to see someone was behind the sofa? Two? One?

“I
told
you it would fit,” the woman sniped. “I told you when I asked you to do it
three months ago
.”

“Karen, I’m busy, you know?”

“Too busy to pack up a box of your ex-girlfriend’s old shit after
two years
and drive it to the crazy bitch’s lair? And busy doing
what
? Oh yeah, that’s right—all those YouTube videos don’t watch themselves.”

“I work, remember? I have to leave the house every day and go do shit. To earn money. To
pay for stuff
.”

“I forgot. Because it’s not like you go on about it the whole time. And baby girl here looks after herself. Me, I’m just sitting on the couch watching TV and jerking off.”

It was the man’s turn to sigh.

Trying to ensure she made not a sound, Kristina wriggled a bit closer to the back of the sofa. Doing this altered the angle of her head. She’d been so focused on saving herself that she hadn’t even given a thought as to what had happened to the others.

She saw that Lizzie was under the table down at the end. She sat Indian style and looked insanely relaxed. The short guy who’d suggested they come in here in the first place was next to her, arms around his knees, also apparently at ease.

Kristina titled her head down, looked past her own fetal shape, and saw the plump girl’s friend was still down at the window overlooking the street, standing behind the curtain. She remembered the friend who’d gone straight upstairs, and was presumably still up there.

So they were all hiding. Sort of. Except …

The plump girl hadn’t moved at all. She was leaning against the wall, arms folded, watching the man and woman and child as if they were a television show.

How can that be
? Okay, the man was facing away, in fact had his back to her—and the woman was focused on giving him a hard time.

But there was no
way
they would fail to notice a stranger
standing right there in the middle of the room
.

“Okay, well, it’s gone now,” the man said weakly.

His partner was smartly back in the game. “Not so much. Next time I get in the car it’ll be right …”

“By which I meant
tomorrow afternoon
. I’ll dump it around her place.”

“And have a nice cup of coffee, no doubt. Talk about old times. It’s only polite, right?”

“Karen, the old times were crap. You know that. They ended and thank God. This is a box of old random shit she probably doesn’t even remember she’s missing. You want, I’ll go dump it somewhere and be done with it.”

“You can’t do that. It’s her stuff.”

“
Right
,” he said exasperatedly. “So you
said
. So I’ll drop it on the way home from work and we can get back to enjoying our so-called lives. Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Kristina had settled into a horrified holding pattern—keeping herself rigid, half listening to what was being said, wondering how long it could be before they noticed the girl standing and watching them or before the man happened to glance over the sofa to see Kristina lying there. She was jolted out of this by a sound and looked up. The baby was staring right at her.

Ignored while her parents thrashed over the same old ground, the baby had pulled itself higher on her mother’s shoulder—enough to see over the back of the sofa. She was now staring down at what she’d found on the other side.

She blinked. Somewhere, deep in her tiny, unformed mind, a flag had gone up. The baby knew the woman who was holding her. It knew the man. But who was this other person? Who was this tall, skinny person behind the thing her mother was sitting on? The baby didn’t know, but she sensed from the deep reaches of its instinct that unknown big people in the cave was not a good thing.

Her face scrunched up. She started to cry. Kristina stared at her, aghast, not knowing whether to smile or try to turn her face away or what.

“Great,” the woman said. “Now she’s off again.”

“Here, let me,” the man said.

The woman stood. “Don’t bother.”

“Climb off the fucking ledge, okay? Give her to me.”

“Okay, be my guest.”

Please don’t turn around
, Kristina prayed.
Please … just don’t turn around.

After a moment the baby’s cries started to wind down. “There you go,” the man said to his child, quiet love in his voice. “It’s all okay. There you go.”

“How do you even
do
that?” the woman muttered with grudging admiration.

“She senses a masterful male.”

“What—through the walls, in some other house?”

“Ha-ha.”

There was silence, then the sound of a kiss. A sigh, and the woman spoke again, more softly. “At least you’re not an asshole all the time.”

“Whereas you are a twenty-four-seven bitch.”

There was the sound of a man being swatted hard, but not without affection, on the behind. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know Diana’s stuff pisses you off and I should have done it long ago. My bad.”

“You bad, me bad too.”

“Bad as each other.”

“No, I wouldn’t go that far.”

They laughed together, quietly.

“Don’t you spend
any
time jerking off?
I
sure as hell would.”

“No. I save it up,” the woman said. “You get princess here down to sleep, I may even show you.”

“Deal. I’ll go upstairs and give it a try. You open some wine. Don’t start without me.”

“Drinking, or the other thing?”

“Either.”

And then, praise God, Kristina heard them walk together out of the room.

She jerked her head to stare at Lizzie and the other friend under the table. Lizzie was looking right at her, already holding up a finger.

The message was clear—be quiet and ready to move.

Lizzie waited a beat, then quickly came out from under the table. Kristina jumped to her feet, her joints crackling like rifle shots, and the person behind the curtain slipped out at the same time.

“Yeah, so I guess now would be a good time,” the plump girl sniggered, making no effort to be quiet. “Though I kinda want to stick around to catch part two of tonight’s special presentation.”

The others ignored her. Kris followed Lizzie out into the hallway and to the front door.

“Open it,” Lizzie whispered. Kristina flipped the latch as gently as possible and the friends flooded past and out onto the steps. She followed, pulling the door closed as quietly as she’d opened it.

By the time that was done the others were on the sidewalk. She ran down to join them as they hurried off down the road … all starting to laugh.

“What the
fuck
?” Kristina shouted, stomping after them. “Are you out of your
minds
? Do you have any
idea
how close we were to being caught?”

“Not very,” the plump girl said.

“What about the guy who went upstairs?”

“He’ll be fine,” Lizzie said. “But that’s enough for one night. Let’s go find somewhere quiet.”

“Screw this,” Kristina shouted, all the fear she’d felt spilling over into fury. “I’m
done
here. That was
insane
. I don’t understand why I’m not being arrested right now, and how the
hell
did those people not see someone who was standing right in front of them?”

Lizzie put a hand on her arm.

Kris shook it off. “No. Tell me.
Why didn’t they see her
?”

Lizzie hesitated, then appeared to make a decision.

I had an encounter with Lydia on the way to work. Generally she didn’t wind up near the restaurant until midevening, following the in-explicable tracks you run along when you have neither job nor house nor friends but for a shifting cast of unpredictable individuals whom life has pushed into the same position. There are a lot of these trails in cities. People like you and me may not know where they run, but they’re there all the same, two species sharing the same environment, the only competition for resources coming in the shape of a hand held out and a voice asking diffidently for spare change.

As I came in view of the Adriatico on the way to evening service, however, Lydia was there at the corner.

“S’up, Lyds?”

It was obvious something was different. I don’t know what it is about people who stand to the side of what’s considered sane, but their energy is wrong—something hectic about their eyes or vague in their movements, a sense of the person being trapped in an invisible corner and struggling to gain voice.

Lydia didn’t look so much that way this evening. She simply looked old, and lost, and as if she was sick to death of too many things to start making a list.

She shrugged. “Aw, okay.”

“Really?”

“I guess.” She looked across the street, biting her lip. “I’ll tell you what it is. I ain’t seen him.”

“Seen who?”

“Frankie, of course.”

“Since when?”

“Couple days. Since I saw you that night.”

“Does that happen? Gaps?”

She shook her head uncertainly. “Don’t see him every day. He hasn’t ever been that way. Even way back, when he was … around more. But this seems long.”

“Why do you think that is?”

She lifted her shoulders sadly. I realized how bony they were. She’d always been birdlike under the layers of trash can castoffs, but it looked like she’d lost weight. “Wonder if I finally chased him off.”

I waited, to give her a chance to go on, but she didn’t. I hadn’t missed the reference to a time when Frankie had been “around more.” I’d never her heard her say anything that danced around acknowledging there was something significantly different about her ex-lover’s relationship to the world now.

“Is there anything you can do?” I asked.

“Do?”

“Something more likely to make him come around.”

She stared at me as if I were the most dumb-ass fool it’d been her misfortune to encounter. “If there was, you think I wouldn’t be doing it the whole damned time?”

I laughed. “Yeah okay. Sorry.”

“He’s alive, you know. I know everybody thinks I’m crazy. That he got kilt in that bar. But it didn’t happen. There was some guys after him, that’s true. He pissed them off bad. It’s why he disappeared. Duh. But he ain’t dead. You believe that?”

“You tell me he isn’t, Lydia, then he isn’t.”

“Hmm. I’ll tell you something else. He’s the last man I did it with. And I used to
like
doing it. Was real good at it, too. You believe
that
?”

I did my best to suggest that I did believe her, and also that it wasn’t one of the most wildly uncomfortable questions I’d ever been asked.

“You think I’d have waited if he wasn’t still alive?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t believe that.”

She nodded vigorously, and I saw that she was crying. “Damn straight.”

I reached in my pocket and got out a scrap of paper. I scribbled a note on one side and an address on the other. “You ever go to church?”

“Hell no,” she said. “God’s a cunt.”

“Okay, but I met a guy recently. He’s a priest, but he seems like a good man.”

“So?”

“Sometimes it’s good to have someone to talk to. A person who isn’t going to hassle you about getting into a shelter and when was the last time you had a bath or took your meds, blah blah blah.”