Chapter 25
I let my head rest against the bus window.
It was dreary outside, a gray and cold afternoon, and my head was noisy and cluttered.
I kept seeing the sucking black hole of the gun pointed at me, like the sinkhole opening beneath me in my nightmares, my toes teetering at the edge.
Marisa was gone, somehow, there and then gone, and Joey was still dead, kept being dead, and Alex—
And now Marisa was something entirely different from who I had believed. At what point had I stepped through a portal into another dimension where Alex was a murderer and Marisa was a mom?
I’d freaked out about that closet of gifts, it was that simple. Those careful origami bundles meant something to me that I’d have to try to explain to Sicily. If I got another chance.
If I could explain. What it felt like was that I’d got something horribly wrong, something fundamental. My version of the story of my own life was wrecked, and if I couldn’t be sure of even my own experience, I didn’t know who I was.
Maybe I wasn’t what I’d always thought I was, either.
The bus rolled past a line of shops, an Italian restaurant. We were nearing the northwest edge of the city. Wait—
The bus paused to let someone off just as I realized that I’d eaten at that Italian restaurant. With Joey. With his sister. We’d met Heather and her husband there because it was down the street from her house.
The bus pulled off from the stop, and I felt a gut pang of shame. I owed Heather—something. A call, at least.
But what would you say? To a pregnant woman who’d just lost her only brother. What would you say if you weren’t going to be as broken up about the loss as you would need to be?
If you might be, in many ways, the villain of the story?
I was not a grown-up—that’s what Joey and I had fought about that last time. We’d just learned his sister—his younger sister—and her husband were having a baby, and Joey had turned on me. I could see the renegotiation of terms bearing down like a train I was definitely not trying to catch.
How did people do it? How did they find someone they could say forever to? Take on a mortgage? Get a nameplate on a desk and show up every day?
How did they know they could do it, tomorrow, and the next day? That they’d always want to live in that house, with that person? That this person would always want to live with you? That you could grow a kid, without spikes, into a functioning human?
Hardly anyone ever got it right. Right? It was all such guesswork.
The bus let me off across the street from McPhee’s. The sign was off.
We should have been open, deep into a busy Friday afternoon by now. The red curtains at the window above the big booth had been tied back again. Through that opening, I could see the room was dark.
Maybe the curtains were tied back still, and Alex had never opened.
I crossed the street and used my key. Inside, the room was empty. The chairs were up on the tables, but the floors weren’t swept. The grill had been going, though. It smelled like burgers, and I could definitely use one.
“Alex?”
Ned’s head popped up through the pass-through. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“Uh, I live here, remember? Why aren’t we open?”
“Uh, I think because of the police tape and all? You think?” He was trying for sarcastic, but the joke hadn’t reached his eyes. “I didn’t get the message in time.”
“You have something on the grill? I’m starving. What message?”
“Just a burger order that came through before I could shut down the system.”
“What message?” I repeated.
“Oh,” Ned said. “That Alex wasn’t opening today. Because of…”
“Just cancel the burger order. Text them and tell them we’re closed. Let me have it.”
“Figured Alex wouldn’t mind the sale,” Ned said. “I’ll put a fresh one on the grill for you to finish.”
“The order’s not fresh?” I walked back to the kitchen. The order was already packed up into one of the hated gray to-go containers, sitting on the counter. “Is it pickup? Ned, the doors were locked.”
“It’s delivery, local, but I’ll do it on my way out. I’ll put a burger on for you. Hold on.”
Ned turned, opened the walk-in, and was swallowed whole. A puff of cold air blew at me as the door shut behind him.
I looked down at the delivery slip, then did a double take.
The address for delivery was the empty storefront next door.
Oh, really.
I swept the container into a plastic bag and swung it by its handles through the pub to the front door and out. Next door, the paper in the windows sagged, dark. I knocked on the door and tried the handle.
But someone had to be inside. Who had called in the order?
I went back into the pub and through to the back.
As I passed through the service door, I thought I heard Ned calling for me.
I’d been looking for a reason to have a chat with the new neighbors.
Who were these people who were always banging around at all hours, who never showed their faces? Whose truck was always, always—
Yep. There it was, sitting crooked, running.
At the back door, I pounded until my knuckles hurt. Nothing. They’d ordered the food, hadn’t they?
I had a master key to the building on my key ring. How much trouble would I be in if I used it? Finally, I tried the handle. It was unlocked.
I pulled it open and poked my head in. “Hello?” I said. “Hey, I have your order from the pub.”
I read the slip, checked the address again. “Prepaid? No refunds.”
Had they canceled the order, maybe? Ned had pointed out this loophole in the system before. What were people thinking when they did that? McPhee’s was out the cost, and no one got fed.
We’d had a few of these lately. Ned was right, these food delivery services were killing us.
We had to work with them, because customers liked them.
But we got a smaller percentage of the take if the food was ordered this way.
More mistakes, too, or the driver showed up late and your fries were missing.
And then people went online to complain about us.
This food, for instance, was getting cold. “Hello?” I called.
Nothing. I stepped inside.
Over in this half of the building, they had the same setup as our side: the alcove with the open stairs that led up to an apartment that was the mirror of Oona’s. The fire door to the first-floor storefront was the same as ours, too, but propped open.
Oh, if fire inspectors caught that, that was Citation City.
“Hey,” I yelled through the door. “You can’t prop this door open. You’re going to get the owner in trouble.”
My voice echoed past the doorway. Somewhere, I could hear a moan of wind blowing through another not-quite-airtight window.
Through the doorway, I could see a wide gallery space instead of the setup we had, storeroom and office, the johns. I walked to the door. The gallery went all the way to the front windows with the paper taped up in them.
It was completely empty. And kind of a dump.
A bakery, taco joint, launderette? Oona’s yoga studio?
I looked around, thinking anything we’d been hoping for was still a long way off.
We’d heard drywall going up, that distinctive rhythm of screws being driven into wallboard, but most of the walls were still open to the studs, with only one patch of Sheetrock in place, on the wall that backed up to McPhee’s.
Below that, the floor was a mess.
Oh, those Tanya Tuckers.
They were prying up the original hardwood. I put down the food order and walked over to inspect the mess. Historic oak slats, refinished warm and golden in the pub, were on this side being sawed out and stacked against the opposite wall like a picket fence.
Alex was going to be seriously annoyed. Not showing it, of course, but silent and glowering.
“Goodbye to your security deposit,” I said to the boards.
What had they been doing all this time? Where was the progress?
I bent closer to the wall. The one sheet of wallboard had been installed using a lot of screws, all up and down the studs in the wall.
It wasn’t going anywhere. I was no builder, but it all seemed inefficient, at best, a waste of time.
And screws. I didn’t see any other sheets of wallboard waiting to go up, either. It was nonsensical.
But the damage to the floor was painful. Up close, it was worse than I’d thought. They hadn’t just pried up the hardwood boards, but were also ripping out the solid wood subfloor below it, exposing the supports below. In one spot, they’d opened a hole all the way to the crawl space or—
Did we have a basement?
Between the floor joists, there was … a depth? When I stepped forward, a faint light below showed a dusty wooden floor. Maybe the straight edge of a table?
Looking down into the darkness, I got dizzy and had to step back.
There was nothing to do but take the food back to the pub.
Next door, Ned stood stiffly in the alcove. He looked down at the plastic bag in my hand. “Did you … You didn’t make the delivery?”
“There’s no one over there,” I said.
“Oh,” he said.
“And whatever they are doing over there, it’s a mess,” I said. “Someone has to break it to Alex that the new tenants are digging for Earth’s molten core through the hardwood floor—and it is Tammy Wyn-not going to be me.”
Ned licked his lips.
“You put a burger on for me, right?” I said. “You might as well take this one home.”
He took it uncertainly, but just stood there, as though he meant to say something or expected me to.
I guess we were both having the same kind of day. Joey had been his bandmate, after all—best friend, probably.
“Thanks for coming in today, Ned,” I said. “Even though … you know. Last night.”
Ned swallowed hard, ducked his head but not fast enough that I didn’t notice bloodshot eyes. “Yeah. Joey was…”
A good musician, a good friend. A good guy.
The best.
I was just the worst possible girlfriend, not to have known it.