We Are Here (32 page)

Lydia squinted at the paper. “Chelsea? I lived there, long time ago. Well, crashed in a guy’s apartment. Was a lot less boring in that neighborhood back then, I’ll tell you. The stuff I saw! It’s different now.”

“You walked that road once; you can do it again.”

“And he ain’t going to try to get me down on my knees praising God?”

“He might. But I reckon you’d be a match for him, don’t you?”

She smiled. “What the fuck you doing here talking to me, anyway? Ain’t you got a job?”

Before I went into the restaurant I looked back. I saw Lydia stuff the piece of the paper into one of her pockets. Months ago I’d given her my cell phone number, and she’d done the same then. She’d never called, of course, and I felt sure the paper I’d just given her would be there in two or five or ten years, the day or night when some city employee had the distasteful job of checking for possessions among the clothes of the deceased.

But I was wrong about that.

I went in the back and changed into the black pants and white shirt that Mario insists upon, and got straight out onto the floor. The restaurant was already crowded—like the homeless, tourists and hungry locals have chaotic schedules and routines and it’s impossible to predict how busy any given night is going to be, though that hasn’t stopped Maria (who believes she harbors some kind of clairvoyant ability) from trying. She’s dogged about it, too—making her prediction at precisely noon every day, and scoring herself at the end of every night. She’s been doing it for fifteen years, which is a long time, though evidently not enough to read what her meticulous records are telling her, which is the cat who hangs around the bins at the back of the restaurant would make a better job of it.

By eight thirty she’d thrown up her hands and admitted she’d missed the signs (as usual). We were packed to the point of having an actual freaking line on the sidewalk. I knew Kristina wouldn’t turn up at the usual time because it was book club night and she had a standing dispensation to arrive two hours late, and I didn’t have the time to give her much thought because tonight, of all nights, Mario had decided to give Paulo a trial on the floor.

It wasn’t working out. The restaurant has a strange internal shape due to the position of the pizza oven and the fact that it was carved out of two separate buildings god knows how long ago. There’s a big main area covered by two waitresses, and two arms out—one along the window on the right (my domain, alongside Jimmy, a guy in his midfifties who has been on the job longer than he’s been alive and can out-waiter any other living being), the other on the opposite side, in the back. The latter is the Adriatico’s equivalent of Siberia and gets filled up last, which is why Paulo had been assigned there. Once the area started to fill up, however, it became clear that he wasn’t cutting it. Something needed to be done, and fast.

Mario gave me the nod and I ceded control of the front area (and its higher tips) to Jimmy, who was man enough to pick up the slack. I intercepted Paulo where he was quaking by the kitchen pickup, and let him know I was on the case. His relief was so palpable you could have sat it in a chair and given it a glass of wine. I got him to fill me in on which tables’ service was most obviously falling apart and settled to placating people and shouting at the kitchen to expedite the orders of those dying of hunger (none of them, of course, but customers can be assholes, especially when they scent weakness in a server). For fifteen minutes I was so focused on all this that I didn’t even notice the table in the far corner, whose meal was proceeding in an orderly fashion and thus not on anybody’s radar.

I was picking up from a table eight feet away when someone spoke. “See. I was right. I knew that I knew you.”

Reinhart was sitting by himself. He’d turned so that his face was visible to me now, and was smiling, knife and fork in his hands over a plate of food.

“I know. I know,” he said, shrugging affably. “Two restaurants in one day, right? But I get a lot of exercise. You only get so many meals in your life. You should make the most of them. And I do. I like my food.
Love
it, in fact. I savor all physical things.”

“Good for you.”

“I’ve been here before. A few months back. That’s where I saw you. You don’t remember me from then. Just another customer, right? Busy busy.”

“I’m busy now.”

“So I see. You got people to serve. That’s a waiter’s job. I just need to tell you something.”

People were watching now. That didn’t matter. I could still have done the sensible thing, which was head back to the kitchen with the plates. But I did not.

With a be-there-in-a-minute nod to a four-top who were still waiting for appetizers, I walked over to Reinhart’s table. “This needs to be quick.”

“It will be.”

“So what did you want to say?”

He took one more bite of his steak and put his knife and fork down. “People only embarrass me once.”

I spent years in the armed forces and other institutions of violence. I’ve had training, keep fit, and I’ve got game. But it wasn’t even the plates I was holding that handicapped me. Reinhart was just far too fast.

He was out of his seat like a jump cut, and I didn’t have time to step back before the first punch hit me in the face like a cinder block. After that I barely knew what was happening. I was aware of fists crunching into my ribs and stomach with very regular frequency and intensity—fractionally aware, too, that while I was trying to avoid customers and their tables Reinhart was showing no such compunction. I fought back as best I could, but I was starting from way behind.

I staggered, and then fell back another step, managing to keep upright for maybe ten seconds and trying to throw blows back that dead-ended in the punches coming my way. Then I was on the ground, dimly conscious of people shouting and glasses shattering as kicks hammered into my stomach and chest and head so hard it felt like there was no flesh between my bones and his toe, or his heel when he started stomping down on me with that.

Then it stopped.

It was noisy around me but in the way the waves are when you’re right in among them—alien, tidal, a cacophony with nothing to help differentiate meaning. I tried to push up off the ground but could not.

A patch of white light moved in front of my right eye, getting bigger. I heard a smeary voice above me.

“Call Kristina,” it said, and only then did I realize Kris hadn’t turned up yet and it must be late.

Then nothing.

Kristina was sitting on a bench in a small empty park overlooking the Hudson River. It was cold and dark, silent but for the sound of traffic on the road behind and distant lapping in the water below. The other friends had shaded away on the walk over—either saying goodbye and smiling shyly, or simply reaching a point of not being there anymore—except for the plump girl and her boy, who were sitting on the grass thirty feet away.

“He’s half right,” Lizzie said.

Once Kristina had calmed down a little and consented to go to the park, Lizzie had asked about John, if things had improved since they’d last met. Kristina surprised herself by answering, slowly starting to talk about their lives in a way she’d never done with Catherine. She even admitted that—despite his tendency to be
incredibly
annoying—she loved John. This was a word she’d never found easy to use. It felt okay, though, and she was glad she’d said it. Like weddings, and funerals, there are times when life needs a witness to feel real.

From this she’d gone on to telling Lizzie about John’s theory about Reinhart’s role in their world, and this was what Lizzie had responded to, after a long pause. “Which half is right, and which is wrong?”

“Reinhart does have an arrangement,” Lizzie confirmed. “He deals with one of us called Golzen. It’s his group—they’ve taken to calling themselves the twelve—who are working most closely with Reinhart. It’s not a forced arrangement. They do it freely.”

“Why?”

“They receive things in return. Which increases Golzen’s status and ego … It’s complicated. We’ve never had a situation like this. I hoped it would sort itself out. But I’m not so sure. I’ve been trying to get people to stop taking things. This is bringing them back to it.”

“But why would you steal in the first place?”

“It made us … popular. It’s hard to describe. But the other part is that it’s the most active behavior that most of us are capable of. It … makes you feel alive.”

Kristina guessed she understood. Though she’d never stolen as an adult, like most kids she and girlfriends had lifted things from stores as a dare. Both times she’d thrown away the trinket the same day. Though she had felt bad and compromised, she remembered the anticipation and thrill. Presumably that’s what Lizzie was talking about.

She sensed the other woman was not comfortable, however, and turned the conversation to more personal areas. “Do
you
have anybody? I mean, like a boyfriend?”

“There’s someone who’s more important to me than anyone else.”

“The guy you mentioned last time? Maj?”

Lizzie nodded.

“What’s he like?”

“He’s good-looking and he’s smart and I’m happier when I’m with him than when I’m not. But he spends a lot of his time with his mind on other things.”

“So, he’s a man, then. What the hell is that
about
?”

They laughed quietly together. It’d been a long time since Kris sat talking to anyone about their boyfriends—but for small talk to pass a slow evening with some other bartender, conversations that ran aground after it became obvious the only advice was
dump the asshole, change the locks, and do it now
. With Lizzie it felt different. Lizzie asked questions effortlessly. She was a good listener, too. Kris wasn’t sure she knew how to do this kind of thing anymore. It had been too long since she’d had this kind of friend. If a friend was what Lizzie was, or could become. The funny thing was, it felt like she always had been.

“Where is he this evening?”

“Maj comes and he goes. Some of us like to stay in the same place. He’s not so much like that. Plus he’s got a job. I think he’s on call tonight.”

“What kind of job?”

“He’s a Fingerman.”

“You used that word before. What is it?”

“Someone who’s good at using their hands.”

“Like a craftsman? He makes things?”

“No. We can’t make anything, dead or alive. He touches things, when people need him to. Opens them, presses them, you know.”

Kristina nodded, though she was not sure what this was supposed to mean. “Do you love him?”

Lizzie laughed. “That’s a big question.”

“You asked me. I answered it.”

“True. Well … yes, I suppose I do.”

“A lot?”

“As much as I can, given who I am and what he is. That’s quite a lot.”

Kristina realized that’s what she’d meant, too, and that she wasn’t even sure what loving someone meant anymore. Yes, attraction of course, and wanting to be with; but it wasn’t really about that kind of thing now, was it? It wasn’t raised heartbeats and smoldering glances. It was feeling comfortable and secure and valued; it was less about how you felt right now and more about how you might in the future, about the things you might want until the day you died.

“Do you want children someday?”

Lizzie sat looking at her hands, and Kristina realized she had no idea how old the other woman was. Sometimes she seemed older than her—late thirties, maybe even forty. Most of the time, she seemed about the same age. Right now, she looked about thirteen.

“Kristina,” she said. “I’m not real.”

“I hear you,” Kris replied, with feeling. “But everybody feels like that from time to time, right? Doesn’t mean you wouldn’t make a good parent.”

“No,” Lizzie said patiently. “I’m
not real
.”

Kristina stared at her, unsure whether to laugh. “Okay. Right. So what are you?”

Lizzie looked distant and ashamed. “I’m imaginary.”

“This is … some kind of metaphor thing, right?”

“No.”

“But …
what
?”

“We don’t know how it works. There was one of us who had a theory. Every generation there’s a few who think harder about things. Lonely Clive was one of those. I knew him, and Maj did too, very well. But Clive’s hollow now. Even the strongest lose faith.”

“You mean … he’s dead?”

“No. He’s barely there. His idea was that we hollow when we become wholly forgotten by our real friend—when their mind heals over and loses any memory of us even in dreams. And he may have been right, but it can happen in other ways. I’ve known a few who’ve deliberately chosen that road. Who elected not to exist anymore. The irony is that you have to be strong to make that choice. The rest of us just fade … until the day our friend dies.”

Kristina had decided to let Lizzie keep talking until it started making sense. “What … happens then?”

“The Bloom. A few hours, sometimes as much as a day, when you’re stronger than you’ve ever been. And then …”

She held her hands in a loose ball, as if containing a soul, some energy, an idea; then she gently opened them out, to suggest nothing at all.

“Lizzie, if you guys choose to believe you’re not real, if it’s some big existential … whatever, then that’s fine. But …
it’s not true
.”

“Kris—you saw Flaxon in the house.”

“Who’s Flaxon?”

Lizzie gestured toward the plump girl on the grass. “She was a Dozeno until six months ago. That’s what we call those who don’t understand what they are. Some stay like that forever, which is sad. Most get it sooner or later. When Flaxon realized, she kicked
hard
. Took against real people in the worst way. She did some really bad stuff—and worked for Reinhart for a while, until we managed to get her to walk with us instead. She’s a lot calmer now, but once in a while she still … well, you asked how she could stand there in front of that couple in the house. They didn’t see her, did they?”

No, they had not. And Kristina knew that the people in the house should really have been able to see Lizzie and the other guy under the table, too.