Chapter II- The Man In The Moon

CHAPTER II

 

She is in a room alone, and he is there, but not there. She is waiting for it to begin, but no one has told her what is coming. There is a window, but it looks out on nothing, looks out on another brick wall and an alley below too narrow for a dumpster, too narrow for a cat. The walls are faintly yellow, and so is the light from the bulb above, but she feels like she is cast in black and white, like she’s in an old movie, like there might be static sputtering across her face, if she went to look in the mirror that hung on the back of the door. She has scarcely left the room in three months, and still it has not begun. The room is familiar, it was familiar when she got here, but it is not her room. There is a white metal bed with pink and yellow sheets, a desk, on the bookshelf is a set of plastic horses. There are books there, too, but they are mouldering, they are rotting. They smell even from a distance, and when you try to touch them they fall apart, fall into pieces on the floor. The horses are shiny, painted. They are realistic, models, not toys and they are running and grazing, and rearing back in twisted shock.

Every day there is a plate of food, and a bottle of water. 

There is a single light bulb above, the light is faintly yellow, and so are the walls. There is a door, but it opens onto nothing. And there is another door, but that door is never opened.

There is night, and there is day, and she is alone in a room, and he is there, but not there.

 

Katie stood by the side of the road with “New York” written in Magic Marker on a piece of cardboard, feeling a little stupid. She’d never hitchhiked before, and more than she worried about being picked up by an axe murderer, she was afraid she looked ridiculous, and that no one would pick her up. But eventually, someone did. It was a fat white man who told her stories about his daughters, aged two and four and living with their mother in Santa Fe. Katie liked him, and she drew two little girls on a pony for him as they drove South. He was going to Vegas for a reunion with his college roommates– he said they did it every five years, and every five years it felt more absurd, the four of them gambling and drinking and chatting up cocktail waitresses when they’d probably all rather be watching old Bruce Lee movies and talking about their kids. But it was a tradition, and they did it every five years. Katie nodded to the rhythm of the story, not sure what to say.

He told her about Tony, who’d become an investment banker in New York and Tokyo, and John and Ollie, who’d started up a construction company in Nebraska, and Sara and Emily, who were his daughters and liked ponies and the color blue, and Katie listened and thought to herself, this is what it’s like to live a life.

He let her out on the far side of town, along the highway. He asked her if she’d be all right, and Katie laughed like she was tough, and said, “I’m a big girl.” 

She watched as he disappeared into the shiny array of buildings, then turned away and started walking. 

 

After an hour, Tia picked her up. She was driving fast in a blue Astro van with the windows painted dark, too dark to see inside. She pulled to a stop a few dozen feet from where Katie was standing, and Katie waited a moment, not sure if she wanted to approach. But a woman leaned out the window.

“It’s just me,” she said, and got out of the car. “Here, look.” She went around to the back and yanked the doors open. Katie couldn’t tell if she were tiny or if she just looked that way next to the van, but she was small and black, with long dreadlocks, jeans and a black t-shirt. Katie peered through the doors and saw there was no one inside, just a couple of suitcases and several pairs of tall, spike-heeled boots flung around from the motion of the road.

“Okay?” the woman said, and Katie nodded.

“Okay,” she said. She climbed into the passenger’s seat, and the woman accelerated all at once, shooting out onto the road in the dusty wake of an eighteen-wheel semi.

“I’m Tia,” she said when they’d slowed to pace with the rest of the traffic. 

“Katie.”

Tia nodded, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel one at a time, back and forth in a wave from one hand to the other. Her nails were short and painted dark red, the kind of of color that made you think of blood but didn’t really look like it, and Katie found the rhythmic motion hypnotic. Tia probably wasn’t much shorter than Katie herself, but she was very thin, her tattooed arms stripped down to the muscle. She looked tough, like she wouldn’t let you fuck with her, tough like Katie had always wished she could be.

“Where are you going?” Tia asked, and Katie gave her half a shrug.

“New York,” she said.

“What part?”

Katie looked down at the bag on her lap, at Lady’s case propped up between her knees. “I don’t know,” she said, “I’m looking for someone. 

Tia glanced at her sideways. “Uh huh,” she said, and Katie couldn’t tell if it were disapproval, disbelief, or just a sound. 

“Where are you going?” she asked, and Tia glanced into the rearview mirror and cast her eyes quickly around the car as if to make sure they were alone.

“Home,” she said quickly. “I live in Brooklyn, in Bed Stuy. Do you know where that is?” 

“No,” Katie said. “Do you have roommates?” It felt abrupt, but she thought vaguely that this was the kind of question you asked someone who lived in New York City. Tia’s face hardened suddenly, and without her seeming to have moved the van swerved underneath them, and Katie grabbed the dashboard to stay upright. But Tia had already recovered control, and she slowed and eased off onto the shoulder again. 

“Can you drive this?” she said bluntly when they’d come to a stop, and Katie nodded, even though she hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car in what seemed like, what must have been years. “Thanks,” Tia said, and opened her door. They switched quickly, and when Katie had figured out the gearshift they pulled back out onto the highway. The feeling of driving was foreign to her after so long, and the van was so big it felt like driving a dinosaur, controlling some great beast through an agreement of mutual benefit, which might be broken at any moment. Minutes passed in silence and the vehicle did not rebel, and gradually Katie began to relax. There was little traffic, and she slowly let her hands loosen on the wheel and forced her spine to straighten. Tia was gazing through the windshield in a trance, and Katie was beginning to wonder if she ought to stop and see what was wrong when the other woman snapped back.

“Do you mind if I put on music?” She asked, and when Katie said she didn’t, she turned on country songs, blasting the speakers out so loud that Katie’s head began to throb. They drove like that for a while, Tia staring vacantly forward again, until suddenly she began to weep, violent, shuddering sobs that shook her body, shook the seat beneath her, seemed to rock the van around them with their weight. Alarmed, Katie slowed down, ready to pull them off the road yet again, but Tia made an urgent gesture.

“Keep going,” she said, “Please, keep going, I’m okay.”

“Okay,” Katie said. “Can you turn the music down?”

Tia switched it off, and the vanished sound was a vacuum around them, filled only a little by the hum of the road and Tia’s shuddering breath.

“You can tell me if you want,” Katie heard herself say, and there was a vast silence from beside her. Miles passed, and Tia might have vanished altogether– Katie couldn’t hear her breath, couldn’t sense her presence. She didn’t look, didn’t try to break the illusion, and the longer she went without seeing her the more she wondered whether Tia there was still herself, or if she’d become another person, become the dead girl through some putrid alchemy and sat there now watching with those eyes that never rotted. 

But at last Tia began to speak, her voice was warm and living, and Katie could look again, see her there and be reassured. But Tia’s living voice was thin and halting, and she talked in a steady stream but somehow without inflection, as if the whole thing had not yet become a story within her mind.

Tia was a dominatrix. (Tia looked like a dominatrix, Katie thought). She and her girlfriend Kyrah had come to Vegas in January, planning to stay three months, until they had enough money to open the cafe they had been planning for years. It was going to be in the neighborhood; they would sell organic cookies and fair trade coffee cheap enough for everyone to buy; have space for community activism in the afternoons and music in the evenings; a radical library and their old ginger cat named Ballou could get fat and sleep in the window. The ceiling was going to be painted dark blue and purple, with the winter sky painted up above. Kyrah was a stripper, and they figured they could make the money in a few months just dancing, if they worked hard. 

And at first it had gone well, the money piled up in the steel tool boxes they kept in the closet under their suitcases, not singles but twenties and fifties and hundreds, handfuls of bills every night they worked. They had resolved not to touch it, not even to count it until the day they left– right now they were living off their savings, subletting their apartment to friends of friends. But they had begun to fight– nothing big, just the stress of being away from home, shut up together in that ugly, rent-by-the-week room with its beige carpet and beige walls, and outside the bright, jolting lights that were an assault on all the senses, this town that felt like a toy-box, like something plopped down in the middle of the desert and left there, just a brightly colored shell to be filled up with dust and eaten by the sand and the hot desert sun. 

And so they had begun to fight, they’d lost their connection, lost the magic that had always been enough, at least enough to assure them that the sun would rise and set and rise again, that tomorrow would come and they would be together.

And then, a week ago, Kyrah vanished.

When Katie heard it her heart began to pound, she felt her fingers convulsing on the steering wheel and she gripped it tighter, staring ahead at the road as if she could force all the other thoughts from her head. But Tia was still speaking, and she brought her mind back to Kyrah.

At first, Tia hadn’t worried. She hadn’t worked that night, she’d been sick, violent spasms shaking her body as it tried to make her vomit up the contents of her empty stomach. She spent the night in a thick delirium, half awake and half asleep, television shows filtering into her dreams, dream figures washing out into her conscious mind. She didn’t come back into herself until nearly noon, when when she woke and found that Kyrah  wasn’t there. Her first thought was that she had come and gone, napped on the couch so as not to wake her or catch the germs, gone out for food or coffee, or just to wander the streets and look at tourists. But evening came, it was time to go to work, and Kyrah had not returned. Tia worked her shift, looking anxiously around the club for her, even though the lights were dim and the crowd was moving fast, and she could have missed her lover from ten feet away. The night came and went, and then the day was over too, and Kyrah had not come back, and Tia began to ask people, “have you seen this girl? Have you seen my girl?” She asked the woman who sat at the desk of their bed-sit, if Kyrah had come and gone, and the woman shrugged– she hadn’t seen her, but who knew, she might have come. A lot of people did. 

Tia asked the other girls at the club, the bouncers, the men she’d seen two days in a row. Somewhere past midnight a customer put his hand on her leg. She didn’t know him, and she turned around with a big fake smile until he said:

“You’re looking for Kayla? 

Tia nodded, that was Kyrah’s other name, her stage name. They joked that they had stripper names already, so they should call themselves Evelyn and Willamina, Gertrude and Temperance. But you couldn’t do that, people didn’t want to be confused, so they were Kayla and Tanya, throwaway names that had no meaning to them, no connection to their lives. The man was looking up at her expectantly, and she found her voice.

“Yes. Yes, I’m looking for Kayla.”

She sat down with him and he leaned in close to her, so close she could feel his skin next to hers, an electric presence there, but it was devoid of sex, divorced from lust. 

“I saw her leave,” he said. “She was here, she was dancing and I swear I fell in love with her in two minutes, I was paying her, but then a group of boys came in, college boys or something and they kept throwing money at her. I was trying to keep up, but I couldn’t, I didn’t have enough, and they were buying her drinks, tipping her twenties up onstage, taking turns with her in the back room, and I could hear them trying to talk her into going home with them. She was shaking her head in the beginning, but they kept asking and asking and asking, I heard them say five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand dollars and I knew that was it. What kind of girl turns down twenty thousand dollars. I got her alone for a second, just a second on her way back from the bathroom, I grabbed her arm and I said, please, don’t leave with those men, I’d seen the whole thing from the beginning, I said, Kayla, if you leave here with these men you won’t come back, I’ve seen this. Please don’t do it. 

“She laughed at me and shook her head. I said there must be something I can do to stop you. She leaned in close and whispered “You got twenty-five thousand?” And she laughed again, that beautiful laugh, and she told me that she was in love with someone, and if she went with those boys tonight, the two of them could leave this town tomorrow. She said she’d come home with the money and put it in the toolbox and then the two of them could throw all their shit in the back of their van and just drive all the way into the sunset, all the way back to New York, till they got back home, back to their life.” He paused for a minute, staring up at the stage without seeing it.

“She lit all up when she talked about it, it was like all the lights in that little hallway just shifted position to focus on her. She really wanted that thing, whatever it was.” He sighed. “I just thought, what a lucky guy that must be.”

Tia’s eyes were wet now, she knew the ending of the story. But he kept talking, and she listened.

Kayla left, he said. He watched her go with them, watched one of them carry her out over her shoulder, still wearing her bikini and boots at 4AM as the bar was closing. In a last, frantic attempt to stop her he grabbed a bouncer and said Don’t You See What’s Happening? And the bouncer looked down at him, down on him and said Sir, We’re Closing. What the girls do on their own time is up to them. Besides, she looks like she’s having fun.

And the door closed on Kayla and the gang of boys, and he’d rushed out into the coming dawn only to see the car pulling out, racing away down the strip, out to the open road. They were gone.

Tia was still, Tia was silent, Tia was screaming somewhere, somewhere deep down so strong and so hard that it brought her whole body to the breaking point, like she might shatter if a single fragment more rose up to fill her.

She knew better. Kyrah knew better, they both knew better. They had rules back home, and one of the rules was don’t ever leave the club with them, don’t even go out to the sidewalk for a cigarette, don’t go past that door with one of them. And another one was don’t believe it when they promise you that much money. If they promised you five hundred dollars, a thousand dollars they probably meant it, but if they promised you five thousand, ten thousand, more– it wasn’t real. It was just a lie, just a trap. But this city was different, it made you think different, and maybe Kyrah had believed them, because here it was just barely possible, because it would have meant they could take the money and be gone forever, back to life and love and the cafe with the ginger cat.

“You’re a friend of hers,” the customer said kindly, and put a hand on her shoulder like a brother, and the thing inside Tia broke, and she began to sob. She got up from the table without speaking to this man who thought he had tried so hard, but who had done nothing, nothing at all to save Kyrah.

She stumbled out of the club, climbed into the back of the van in the parking lot and locked the doors, and bit her arms and howled. She didn’t have to imagine what had happened, she knew it. She’d known from the moment she woke up, and Kyrah not there. 

She stayed in the back of the van for hours, slept there in fits and starts on the hard rubber mats laid down for the dog they used to have. Sometime in the morning a cop knocked on her window and told her to move. She nodded blearily and climbed in the front, kicked the thing into gear. 

“You should be more careful,” the cop said, “some girl got herself killed around here two nights ago.”

What girl.

“She didn’t have any ID, we’re still looking.” He looked at her with new suspicion. “You know something?”

She’s Kyrah.

 

Somehow she had communicated it, somehow he had taken her away to see the body, and somehow it had been her, it had been Kyrah. They wouldn’t tell her much, but she could see it, and when she asked they didn’t say no. They’d raped her, one after another, she’d gone with them willingly but they’d held her down and beat her up because they could, because they cheered each other on, and they’d fucked her and and fucked her as she screamed, they’d choked her and beat her and fucked her, and somewhere, sometime she had died, and probably none of them had noticed right away. And they’d left her dead in the parking lot of a 7-11 down near the club, not even bothered to put her costume back on her body, just thrown it down on her lifeless form, torn and shredded and stained with blood and other things. And Tia drove carefully back to their room, nodding politely when they told her not to leave the area. She’d gotten their things, hers and Kyrah’s, and thrown it all in the van, and driven out of Vegas like a bat out of Hell, Tia said. And Kyrah lying dead in the morgue, in a metal drawer in that cold dead room, when Kyrah had always hated the cold, had wrapped herself in sweaters and polar fleece and big thick socks, and barely made it through the New York City winters even though she’d lived there her whole life.

 

Tia stopped talking.

Katie kept driving. There was nothing to say. She wondered briefly, vaguely whether she were driving a wanted vehicle. 

“They must be able to find the people who did it,” she said at last, and Tia gave a wheeze that might have been a laugh.

“No,” she said. “She was a stripper. She went home with them willingly, that makes her a whore. No one gives a shit, Katie, we’re throwaway people.”

They drove on in silence, on and on as the night fell down around them.

 

They stopped at a diner late in the night when Katie started to feel her eyes drooping and her reflexes slowing. She hadn’t eaten all day not since early morning, and now she took in french fries dipped in mayonnaise and a grilled cheese sandwich that oozed out orange from between the slices of crisp, oily bread. She drank down icy water and felt it as a shock through her body, reviving her from some fog she hadn’t been aware of.

Tia ordered the same thing she did, but ate little of it, and Katie felt herself hang heavy with empathy. They ordered coffee, and Katie went to the bathroom even though she was half afraid to leave Tia alone. The dead girl was waiting for her in the hallway.

“Oh, what do you want?” she asked irritably, but the dead girl said nothing. She put a hand out toward Katie’s face, and Katie grabbed her wrist before she could touch her lips.

“That’s seriously unhygienic,” she snapped, and the girl looked abashed, and yanked her hand free. She walked away, back toward the kitchen, and disappeared through the swinging doors. Katie went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She peed and then froze as she was buttoning up her jeans. Someone was huddled under the sink, crying.

It was a woman. She was white, her hair was a tangled, streaky blonde and she very tall, her legs drawn up painfully close to her face just so she could fit. She was hunched forward, and her hair hung down to cover her face. 

“Kyrah?” Katie said, and the woman didn’t move. She said the name again and was met only with the sound of more crying. Katie needed to wash her hands. She came up by the side of the sink and turned the faucet on, leaned over for the soap and rinsed her hand, trying to ignore the woman crying at her feet. Katie held her hands under the blow-dryer, then knelt down to where Kyrah must see her face.  She was covered in bruises, misshapen with things that had broken beneath the skin. 

“I’m sorry,” Katie said helplessly, and Kyrah’s fresh brown eyes lit upon her own.

“Sorry doesn’t. Sorry isn’t.” She spoke loudly, too loudly in the small room, and Katie glanced at the door, afraid they would be heard.

“I don’t know what to do,” Katie said, and Kyrah shook her head.

“I wish Tia were here,” she said softly, and Katie put a hand on hers. 

“So does Tia,” she said. 

Kyrah nodded. Her hand was cold and strong, and it grasped Katie’s tightly for a long moment.

“Goodbye, Katie,” she said at last, letting her go.

“Goodbye,” Katie said, and she left, closing the door on Kyrah as she rocked back and forth underneath the sink. She paused in the hallway for a moment before going back out into the light– she felt like a crazy person and she hoped no one could see it in her eyes.  She smoothed down her hair and went back out to Tia. There was coffee on the table and she picked it up and gulped it down quickly, even though it was scalding hot.

“My girlfriend died last month,” she said. “Her name was Birch.” Tia nodded, and they drank the coffee down together. Afterward they pulled the van around to the back of the rest stop parking lot and turned off the engine; Tia had blankets and pillows in the back, she and Kyrah had slept here on the drive out. Tia had a bag of weed and a bottle of whiskey and they sat facing each other on the floor, passing the bottle and the joint back and forth in silence. The side windows were painted over black, and the only light came in from the front of the van, streetlights through the windshield and the glow of the neon signs.

Tia had stopped crying. The tip of the joint glowed in the dark and Katie watched the ember rise and ebb as she breathed it in. Katie’s eyes were growing heavy, and she laid down on the blankets, already near sleep. She felt Tia lay down next to her, taking in the rest of the whiskey and breathing in smoke until there was only empty, charred paper.

“I still don’t believe it’s real,” she said, and Katie thought, I’m sorry. But her lips were slow and tired, and she didn’t say it right away, and then the silence had become manifest, and there was no space for words. For an instant she felt the press of the dead girl’s fingers in her mouth, weighting down her tongue, and then it was gone, leaving a cold  liquid trace that dripped slowly down her throat. Tia was breathing shallowly beside her, Katie could see her face without turning her head, her wide open eyes, the shadows on her skin adornments to her grief. There was nothing to say. Katie closed her eyes, and slept without dreams.

 

Katie woke to the van rattling and beneath her, bouncing her against the hard rubber.

“Ow.”

Tia glanced back from the front seat, and the van slowed down.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you up.” 

“It’s okay.” Katie sat up and steadied herself against the seat. “Where are we?”

“Almost halfway. Do you need to stop?” 

Katie made her way into the passenger seat and peered out the window. Highway, more highway, but more trees, too. “I’m okay for now,” she said.

“Okay,” Tia said.

the day wore on slowly. They took turns driving, listened to talk radio until the jarring voices of the right-wing hosts gave them both headaches, stopped for fixes of caffeine and sugar at gas stations. In the late afternoon Tia asked,

“So who is it you’re looking for in New York?”

Katie hesitated, and Tia glanced at her nervously. “Sorry,” she said, “I know it’s none of my business.”

“It’s fine,” Katie said quickly. “I’m looking for Birch.”

“You said she died.”

“Yeah. It’s complicated.” 

Tia nodded. “Okay.”

Katie told her the story in starts and stops, leaving out the dead girls, leaving out Kyrah in the bathroom. “I know I sound like a crazy person,” she said at last. “But I have to go.”

Tia was silent for a minute. “It probably wasn’t her,” she said at last. “She recognized her from a painting. And that white-blonde hair thing is pretty unusual, it’s easy for people to see one feature and get mixed up.”

“I know,” Katie said. “I know it’s not much to go on. But the name-”

“Amanda is a common name, Katie.”

“I know. I know I won’t find her. But I have to try.”

“Yeah, I know. If somebody said-” She stopped. “I get it. I get it,” she repeated.

 

The drive took another day and a half. Katie had never been through most of the states they passed through, and another day, another time she would have wanted to stop and see the world’s largest pancake. But they were just over an hour from the edge of the city when, gazing out the window, she saw the place from the dream. It couldn’t be, not really, and one place looked like a thousand others, but the trees stood still and dead in the water, the space between them filled up with weighted dark, the kind of dark that hid things, and the moon shone down on the white tree bark with a ghostly light. She wanted to stop, wanted to run down the hill and see if there was anyone down there, anyone waiting in the water, but she couldn’t ask. Instead she memorized the road signs nearby, and hoped she’d be able to find it again.

It was the middle of the night when they reached New York City and even then there was traffic backed up all the way out the Holland Tunnel. It took them nearly an hour to get to Brooklyn. Tia found a space on the street in front of a three-story apartment building, and Katie helped her carry the suitcases up the stairs to the top floor, balancing her backpack and the violin on one arm. In the hallway, Tia stopped dead.

“There’s someone in my apartment,” she said softly, and Katie’s heart skipped a beat. She was right. The door was just a little bit ajar, and there was light beyond it. “Stay here,” Tia said, and she set down her bags and shoved the door open with her arm braced out in front of her, standing off to the side, out of range. The door banged against the wall, and somebody inside screamed.

“Kyrah?” The voice shouted, and Tia relaxed instantly.

“It’s Tia,” she called. She picked up the bags and motioned Katie to follow her inside. The door opened into the kitchen. There was someone leaning against the counter, holding a cat in one arm and a bag of cat food in the other hand. 

“Jesus, Tia, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry. I forgot you might be here. This is Katie. Katie, Cobra.”

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Katie said. Cobra was tall and thin, and maybe Native American, with straight black hair hanging down to the shoulders in a messy cut that looked like it had been done at home with a razorblade, which it probably had. Cobra was wearing jeans and a thick wool sweater, and Katie couldn’t tell if Cobra were a boy or a girl, or even if she ought to be able to tell. 

But now Cobra was setting down the cat and filling its bowl with food, and looking expectantly at the door behind them.

“Where’s Kyrah?”

Tia hesitated, and Katie felt herself shrink back, out of the picture, not wanting to intrude on their privacy.

“Kyrah’s dead,” Tia whispered at last, and the scene became surreal. She cried, and Cobra came forward and held her as she wept, and Katie stood by the door and tried not to watch. The cat came over after a little while and rubbed up against her leg, and she picked it up gratefully, glad for something to do with her hands. It was orange with bright green eyes, and it rubbed its face up against hers so hard it was almost an act of aggression. 

“Hi,” Katie whispered, and it began to purr loudly as she stroked its back, feeling suddenly relieved at this brief contact with a living creature. Tia and Cobra had gone into the next room, they were sitting on the couch, and Katie stayed where she was, petting the cat, whose need for attention seemed endless. She looked around the kitchen, at the pictures stuck up on the refrigerator with silly magnets, the light green paint on the walls, the mat in front of the sink with a picture of a cat that looked just a little bit like the one in her arms. Long minutes passed, until at last Cobra came back into the kitchen.

“I’ll come back and check on her in the morning, but right now I think she wants to be alone. Do you have anywhere to stay?”

Katie shook her head mutely and let the cat be lifted from her arms and set down on the floor. “Bye bye, Ballou,” Cobra said, and then to Katie: “You can come crash with me for a couple of days. My roommates won’t care, there’s already five of us.”

“Thanks,” Katie said, and they slipped out of the apartment quietly, turning the lights off behind them. Cobra locked the door, and they left.

Cobra walked fast, and Katie hurried to keep up, the violin slapping against her back. After a few minutes Cobra seemed to notice and offered to take something, but Katie shook her head.

“I’m fine,” she said. They came up on the stairs to the elevated train and clattered up to the station. Cobra glanced around them.

“Do you have a Metro card?” 

“No.”

“Right. Follow me.” There was an agent in the box, but she was reading a magazine and didn’t look up as they passed. Cobra let a couple go in ahead of them, then inched up into the turnstile and pulled the bar back and forth, climbing through. “Come on, hurry up.” 

Katie mimicked the motions and got through, catching her foot and almost falling as she did. Cobra caught her by the arm and pulled her along.

“Come on, walk fast.” When they were around the corner Cobra said, “thanks for going along. I never pay for the Metro. It’s a matter of principle.”

Katie laughed. “Principle?”

“Yup. Also, I’m usually broke.” 

It was cold out, and Katie was shivering in her sweatshirt before the train came, but when it did it was heated, and she sat down on the bench directly underneath the vent. Cobra stayed standing, holding onto the bar overhead as if about to swing from it. “So Tia picked you up on the highway?”

“Yeah.” 

“Huh. It was probably good she had someone in the car with her.”

“Yeah,” Katie said, waiting for the next question, too tired to make up answers that weren’t the truth.”

Cobra asked it: “So what are you doing in New York?” 

“Looking for my dead girlfriend,” Katie said. Cobra nodded.

“Okay. This is our stop.” 

It was another ten minutes in the cold before they got to Cobra’s apartment, and  Katie gazed up at the sky when she could, looking for the stars. It was cloudy and there was too much light to make them out, but the moon was low and full and piercing white. There were bodegas, bars and restaurants all along the streets, boarded up lots that looked like they might hide grass and rusted tools. Finally they came to a building like all the other buildings and climbed the stairs to Cobra’s apartment. There were lights on and the apartment was warm and smelled like bread. 

“Hellooo!” Cobra called out, and there was a vague chorus of helloes from several directions. Someone was in the kitchen and Cobra pointed at Katie and said, “This is Katie. Katie, Sarah and Mark.” Sarah and Mark waved. They were both white, with brown dreadlocks, and they looked like they were probably wearing each other’s clothes, loose pants of indeterminate color and dark, plaid shirts. A loaf of bread sat steaming in its pan on the counter, and they were stirring something in a pot on the stove.

“Hi, Katie,” Sarah said.

“Hey.” 

“Come on,” Cobra said, heading to a pair of doors at the end of the hallway. “You can put your stuff in here, it’s my room. Do you have a sleeping bag?”

“Yeah,” Katie said. As she followed Cobra into the bedroom, the other door opened a crack, and Katie caught the shadow of a human face before it slammed shut again. 

Cobra’s room was mostly empty. There was a wide mattress on the floor in a corner, and a low table with a books, candles and papers scattered across it. The room had only one window, small and high up in the wall, it was screened off and hanging open in spite of the cold. Katie turned, and stopped. The wall above the bed was painted from floor to ceiling in shades of blue. Katie took a step back to look, and it came into focus; it was an ocean scene, or something like it, as if the side of the room had been cut away and set down undersea. There were corals and anemones, schools of fish and small, multi-legged animals scuttling across the ocean floor; far in the distance was the cloudy outline of a sunken ship, and high above against the ceiling hung the belly of a whale. The wall was stuccoed, and the figures were slightly warped with the strange texture, so that staring at it all too long made Katie dizzy.

“That’s really beautiful,” she said at last.

“I like fish,” was all Cobra said.

“I paint, too,” Katie said, and Cobra glanced at her with a flicker of interest, and motioned her back out into the hallway.

“Cool. Hey, come here. Sophia!”

The door they’d passed stayed shut, but Katie heard footsteps coming up to stand there.

“Sophia, open the door, I want you to meet somebody,” Cobra said.

The door opened a crack and Katie saw a sliver of a face, dark hair hanging down over the eye. “Who are you?” Sophia said.

Katie cleared her throat. “I’m Katie,” she said.

Sophia nodded gravely. “You can come in,” she said, and opened the door. 

“Cobra!” A new voice was calling from the kitchen.

“Alexandra’s home. I’ll be right back,” Cobra said, and hurried out of Sophia’s room. Sophia closed the door. 

“What are you doing here?” She sat down on the floor. “You can sit down,” she said. The floor was covered with papers, and Katie piled some on top of each other to clear a space to sit. 

“I hitched a ride with Cobra’s friend Tia,” she said.

“Oh,” Sophia said, “I like Tia.” 

Sophia’s wall was painted too, covered in signs and symbols that looked vaguely like some ancient alphabet, though there were English words thrown in, too. “What’s that?” Katie asked, and Sophia told her.

Sophia said she had things echoing in her head, words like songs getting stuck in the creases of her brain. Sophia said the new words arrived every day at 3:00 PM, and were gone by seven, and she wrote them on the wall in permanent marker. She pointed at a series of symbols. “Yesterday, it was Lefferts Boulevard,” she said. “Today it was Manuel Uribe.” 

“Who’s Manuel Uribe?”

Sophia leaned close to Katie and whispered in her ear. “He’s the fattest man in the world,” she said. “I never met him.”

“Oh,” Katie said awkwardly. She glanced around the room. There were books piled everywhere, the three-foot shelf against the far wall was stuffed full and the floor was stacked high with more. She scanned the titles. Most of them were multiple editions of Shakespeare plays, jammed in with no apparent sense of order. The rest seemed to be books about Shakespeare,  biographies, literary criticism, and a science fiction volume that appeared to depict the bard wrestling a giant octopus.

“Lots of Shakespeare,” Katie said, and Sophia flushed and nodded.

“I’m kind of an enthusiast,” she said. “I’m working on a definitive biography.”  She scrambled for a stack of loose paper, covered in scribbles, and brought it back without showing Katie what was written there. “I’m a direct descendent of the Earl of Southampton,” she said. “Henry Wriothesley; he was Shakespeare’s patron and lover near the beginning of his career. So naturally I’ve taken an interest.”

“Naturally.”

Cobra peered into the room. “Hey, Katie, I’m making something to eat, want to help?” 

“Sure.” Katie stood, and smiled down at Sophia. “Thanks for showing me your book.”

“Anytime,” Sophia said. “Can you close the door on the way out?”

Katie followed Cobra out into the kitchen.

“She’s nice,” she said.

Cobra grinned. “Yeah, the Shakespeare thing is cute, right?”

“Is she really descended from the Earl of Southampton?”

“Beats me. Here, crack these.”

Katie took the carton of eggs and the bowl and started cracking eggs into it as Cobra chopped onions and green peppers.

“So what next?”

“Next?” Katie said.

“Yeah, with your girlfriend. That’s enough eggs.”

“Oh, right.” Katie put the carton back in the refrigerator and looked for something to do. Eventually she sat down at the kitchen table and watched Cobra pour everything into a cast-iron skillet. Something black hurtled down from the top of the refrigerator, barely missing her head, and Katie screamed. The black thing screamed back, and hissed. Cobra was doubled up laughing, and so was someone behind them. 

“Hi, cat,” Katie said at last, and the woman in the doorway leaned down and picked it up. “This is Bilitis,” she said, and Katie reached out to pet it, then snatched her hand away as it tried to claw her.

“She’ll get used to you,” the woman said. “Hi, I’m Alexandra.”

“Oh. Katie, this is Alexandra.” Cobra said her name like it meant something bigger, and Katie felt suddenly like she was intruding on something private. But Alexandra was indifferent.

She had dark hair that fell past her shoulders in tight curls; her skin was pale and her features were large and angular. She wasn’t really beautiful, but Katie couldn’t take her eyes off her. She was dressed all in black, dark jeans and leather boots up to her knees, and the fabric of her tee shirt stretched so tightly across her breasts that Katie could see the outline of her nipples. Katie felt suddenly awkward in her presence, like she was too big, like she was in the way. Alexandra wasn’t smiling. Katie glanced again at Cobra, and it was so plain Katie almost wanted to laugh; Cobra was in love with her, and Alexandra didn’t give a damn.

“Do you want something to eat?” Cobra said at last, “I’m making an omelet for me and Katie.”

“No,” Alexandra said, “I’m good. Do we have any Scotch left?” She set Ballou down on the floor, and the cat shot out of the room and disappeared under the couch. 

Cobra didn’t answer, but grabbed a bottle out of the cupboard and poured some into a coffee mug for her. Alexandra took it without a word and drank it down.

“Fuck,” she said. “I’m tired. I beat a guy so hard he bled.”

Katie felt her eyes widen.

“Long as he’s paying,” Cobra said casually, and Alexandra laughed.

“No shit. Thanks for the drink, darlin’, I’m going to bed.” She kissed Cobra on the cheek and left, banging shut the door to her own room. Cobra went back to the stove, and, after a moment, said, “The plates are in the cupboard above the sink.”

Katie got them plates and silverware, Cobra served out the omelet, and they ate. 

Katie hadn’t been paying attention, but as she bit into the egg she realized she couldn’t remember when she last ate. She felt her stomach contract around the first bite of food as if it were fighting over a taste. “Thanks,” she said, “this is really good. And for letting me stay,” she added.

“Everybody gets stuck sometimes,” Cobra answered. Katie finished the eggs fast and hungry, trying to slow herself down to be polite, and failing. When it was gone her stomach still rumbled for more, but she didn’t want to ask for anything more, and instead she took her plate to the sink and washed it.

“You don’t have to do that,” Cobra said, but handed her the skillet and the rest of the dishes anyway and let her scrub them clean. They went to bed right after; Katie rolled out her sleeping bag against the wall near the door, far away from the painted sea, and she fell asleep to the sound of Cobra breathing, and Sophia scribbling with her markers on the other side of the wall above her head.

 

In the morning Katie woke up late, and found everyone but Sophia gone. Cobra’s bed was empty, the blankets tangled up on the bed. When she opened the door, Sophia peered out at her.

“You can take my key,” she said, “I’m not going out today.” 

“Oh,” Katie said. “Are you sure?”

Sophia nodded. “I’m very sure today,” she said. “I have to discredit Francis Bacon.”

“Cool,” Katie said. “Is it okay if I take a shower?”

“Just don’t use Alexandra’s shampoo,” Sophia said, “It’s mango. You can use mine. I don’t really have dandruff, though.” 

“Thanks.”

Katie showered quickly. From Sophia’s comment she assumed that hers was the dandruff shampoo, and she used it. She had a towel buried in the bottom of her bag, and was suddenly extremely glad she had packed it. Afterward she sat in the living room and flipped her phone open and shut. Courtney said she had seen the girl at a party. After a few minutes hesitation Katie called Jack. He was half-asleep, it was still early back at home, and she spoke quickly, hoping he wouldn’t awaken enough to ask her questions.

“Courtney’s number?” He said when she asked for it. 

“I wanted to talk to her fiance,” Katie said.

“Right, the artist.” After a moment Jack recited her number and Katie scribbled it down.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Sure. Katie, how are you? Are you at your parents’ house?”

“I have to go,” she said, and disconnected before he could ask her anything else. 

It took Courtney a minute to remember who she was, but when she did she was friendly, and didn’t seem to mind Katie calling her out of nowhere.

“What’s up?” she said.

Katie realized too late that she hadn’t thought of a good reason for what she was about to ask.

“Do you remember where you met that girl who looked like my picture? Birch’s cousin?”

“Um…” There were voices in the background, it sounded like a foreign language, though Katie kept catching single English words. Courtney came back. “It was this crazy party, someplace in Brooklyn– this big loft.” She named streets, and Katie wrote them down though they meant nothing to her.

“Thanks a lot,” she said.

“Can’t you just call her mom?”

“Maybe.” Katie said. “I don’t know, I don’t want to bother them right now. And they don’t like me very much.”

“Oh,” Courtney said. “Listen, Katie, I don’t really know you, but if there’s anything I can–”

“You just did,” Katie said abruptly. “Thanks.” They hung up.

Katie took her backpack and left, checking again for Sophia’s key before letting the door swing shut behind her. She retraced their steps from the night before to the train station, walking too far up a few streets before she finally made it. The map in the subway station had red graffiti on the plastic cover, but she peered through the words she couldn’t make out to the streets underneath. After a while she found the streets Courtney had given her and guessed which train to take. The station wasn’t crowded at this hour of the day, and the station agent was looking at her, so she bought a ticket, thinking as she did, that Cobra would probably have jumped the turnstile anyway.

Katie stared down through the rails to the street below– she had a sudden urge to leap down onto them, and took a step away. The platform began to rattle with the coming train and as she watched it she took a step forward, letting the wind rock her as it passed, like it was passing through her. She got on, and rode, and rode.

After what felt like hours, and might have been, she got off the second train and wandered until she found the intersection. The neighborhood was different from Cobra’s- there were more warehouses, and buildings with windows but no doors, or doors and no windows. With no signs, no houses, few people moving back and forth, Katie began to feel like she was walking through a desert. There was graffiti on all the outside walls, but it was mostly gang signs and words she couldn’t read. There was a warehouse on the corner that didn’t look any different from the other buildings around it except for an anarchist symbol spray painted three feet high. She glanced around, but there seemed to be nobody coming or going, and she quickly slipped through the bent gate.

The door was locked. She couldn’t even see any way to open it from the outside, no bar or lock, just a sheet of black metal that presumably led inside. But there was a broken window at the first floor, only four feet above the ground or so. Katie looked around her, but there seemed to be no one in sight. Pulling the sleeves of her sweatshirt down to protect her hands, she hoisted herself up to the window and scrambled through. The leg of her jeans caught on a sliver of protrudent glass and she heard it rip as she landed on the floor inside, but it did not touch her skin. The floor beneath her feet was solid, it was concrete; the place was dark except for the light coming through the windows, but there were few of those, and they were all painted over with translucent color, making a dim stained glass. She glanced around, not sure what she was looking for, knowing there was really nothing there to find. 

The floor was sort of clean. It looked grimy but was free of trash; in one corner were a couple of candles melted down to the ground and a box of matches, and a shapeless canvas bag that might have held anything. Someone was staying here. Katie froze for a moment, listening for the sound of movement, but nothing was stirring in the room, and she began to wander again.

The ceiling was hung with objects; origami animals, dolls, balsa wood airplanes painted in neon colors that glowed slightly in the near darkness, and colored plastic shapes that must have been children’s toys. The walls, she could see now that her eyes had adjusted to the dim light, were covered in murals– abstractions and cartoons, words, it was too much to take in all at once. One entire wall was painted to look like a newspaper, with headlines a foot high and columns and columns of detailed text. 

Someone cleared a throat behind her, and she jumped. 

“I don’t know you.”

It was a child. Or rather, two children, though only one had spoken. They were both girls, both about ten years old, and they were dressed exactly alike in blue jeans and pink sneakers, with matching, slightly dirty, blue and white striped sweaters. Their hair was split into two braids and tied with pink rubber bands, and they were both glaring at her. One was white, with hair somewhere between blonde and brown, and the other was Chinese, and had a single silver ring through one of her earlobes, their only apparent difference. They were glaring at her with identical expressions. 

“Um. Sorry,” Katie said. “Do you– do you two live here?” 

“Sometimes,” said the white girl.

“But you’re just kids.”

“Even kids gotta live somewhere,” the Chinese girl said reasonably.

“Well, does anybody live with you?” Katie said.

“Sometimes,” they said together. “What do you care?”

“We can take care of ourselves,” said the white girl. “Get out.” Something flashed in her hand and Katie saw for the first time that they were both holding knives. 

“… Okay,” Katie said slowly, “I’ll get out. Can I ask you something, though?”

“Five dollars,” they said.

“One.”

“Three.”

“Fine.” The Chinese girl held out her hand while the white girl held the knife up a little more prominently. Katie dug three dollars out of her pocket, along with the photo of Birch. “Have you seen this girl?” They took the photo and examined it with studious care.

“Someone saw her here at a party,” Katie said as they passed it back and forth. 

“Sometimes there are parties here.” One girl said. They whispered to each other for  a moment, then said together: “We might have seen her.”

“Please just tell me,” Katie said.

“Go ask a rolling doughnut,” said one.

“Go ask the man in the moon,” said the other.

“Fine, never mind.” Katie pulled the photo out of their hands.

“Hey!”

“It’s my photo,” Katie said. 

“I was serious,” the Chinese girl said. “Go ask the man in the moon.”

“And how do I find him?” Katie asked. They exchanged a glance. 

“He’ll find you,” they said together.

“Now leave,” the white girl said again.

Katie nodded. “I’m going,” she said, and the two little girls watched silently as she climbed back out the window. One leaned out after her.

“You could have gone out the door,” she said.

“I’ll remember that for next time,” Katie said wryly. But the girls had vanished back into their painted room. She looked around. The party had been her only lead, and with it found and gone she was suddenly struck by how absurd the whole thing was, a medieval quest taken all out of context. Ever since leaving home she’d been running on some arcane spiritual adrenaline, holding fast to the few fragments she held and ignoring the clarity of how impossible a task she was living out. She was still holding the photo of Birch in her hand, and now she put it back into her pocket without looking again at the face. A flash on the pavement caught her eye and she bent down and snatched up a bracelet of red plastic beads strung onto elastic. It was bright and gaudy and not to her taste at all, but she slipped it onto her wrist and hurried away. 

She followed her steps back the way she’d come and stopped when she passed a cafe sandwiched in between what looked like two competing tire stores. The shop had three tiny tables crammed in beside the window, and Katie bought a cup of tea and sat down. She pulled out the photo of Birch, and after a minute got out her sketchpad and started to copy it. She made draft after draft, copying the same image over and over across the pages until her tea was freezing cold and the light outside began to fade. 

“She’s pretty,” a voice said from across the table, and Katie looked up at the dead girl sitting there. “Can I have some of your tea?” she said.

“I guess,” Katie said. “It’s cold, though.”

The dead girl shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.” She drank down what was left of Katie’s tea. She was wearing clothing again this time, the same hoodie and jeans she’d had on when Katie saw her with Jack. Katie didn’t look down to see if she was wearing shoes. 

“Would you like anything, miss?” The barista called out, and the dead girl shook her head without turning around. “No thanks,” she said.

“So, other people can see you?” Katie asked, and the dead girl swirled the dregs of the tea around in her cup. 

“Sometimes,” she said. “It depends. I don’t know.” 

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“Lilith.”

“That’s pretty,” Katie said. “Do you know who the man in the moon is?”

Silence.

Katie met Lilith’s eyes, suddenly wide and frightened. 

“No,” Lilith said firmly.

“You’re the crappiest liar I’ve ever seen,” Katie said.

“I know,” Lilith said. “When you’re dead you sort of forget how. Don’t look for the man in the moon.”

“The girls in the house, they said he would find me. They said I should ask him about Birch. I thought they were telling me to fuck off.”

“That’s probably how they meant it. People say that.”

“People don’t say that.” 

“Oh. Will you buy me a muffin?”

“You know I don’t have a lot of money left, right?”

“Please?”

“Fine.” Katie went back to the counter and bought Lilith a blueberry muffin. “There,” she said, and Lilith took a big bite out of the top. Katie watched her chew and swallow and wished she hadn’t– the parts of her jaw and throat moved too close to the surface of her skin, and things shifted there that didn’t look natural. It was grotesquely fascinating, and Katie couldn’t stop watching.

“How do I find him?” Katie said at last, and Lilith avoided her gaze, staring out the window. A small child passing starred back at her for a moment, then began to wail, pointing and shrieking until its mother picked it up and carried it away. 

“The kids were right, he’ll probably find you,” Lilith stood abruptly. “I have to go now.”

“Wait, why?” Katie asked, suddenly wanting to hold on to the only familiar face she had. But Lilith was bouncing nervously on her heels, looking around the cafe as if she expected something to leap out from the shadows behind the espresso machine. 

“It’s getting really dark,” Lilith said.

 Katie laughed. “You’re afraid of the dark?” she said, and Lilith glared at her.

“The dark’s a lot scarier when you know what’s in it,” was all she said, and with that she flounced out the door with the rest of the muffin in her sweatshirt pocket. Katie stayed a while longer staring out the window into the evening, until the barista started to sweep the floor around her. She went back outside, and headed home. 

She was only a block from the train when she heard music coming from directly above her. Katie looked up. There was a man sitting perched on the stone wall, his legs crossed jauntily. His features were Asian, and his skin was frosty with a pale silvery sheen that gleamed softly in the moonlight. He was dressed in a jester’s costume, sewn together in shades of silver cloth, dark and light– bells dangled from the tips of his pointed toes, from his collar, his sleeves and the points of his jester’s hat. He had in his arms a stringed instrument that he strummed softly–and slightly discordantly– as he sang.

“Would you believe, they put a man in the moon, man in the moon…” He broke off and stared at her sharply. “Katie, isn’t it?” 

Katie met his gaze. “Maybe,” she said. “Anyway, it’s man ON the moon. ‘Would you believe they put a man ON the moon.”

The jester’s lips curled up into an odd smile. “Oh, I doubt that,” he said. He gestured at the case in her arms. “Tell me, Katie, are you a musical girl?” Katie shook her head.

“It’s not mine,” she said. 

He raised an eyebrow. “It was given to you,” he said..

“I’m holding it for someone,” she said, gripping Lady tighter. 

“Gifts freely given can’t be returned,” he said, and began to strum the instrument once more, a tinkling song that sounded like little bells. “You can try and give them back,” he went on, matching the rhythm of his words to the music as he played, “but they’ll always belong to you. Unless you pass them along,” he added, “but that was given to you.”

“It wasn’t hers to give,” Katie said. 

He shrugged. “Maybe not. Andy did you hear about this one…. They put a man on the moon…”

Hey!” 

He stopped playing. 

“I have to ask you a question.”

“You get three, you know,” he said mildly, “it’s traditional.”

“I only need one,” Katie said.

“What will you give me?” The curly smile was back, and he quickly played off a jig, waving his legs around in the air.

“Give you?”

“Surely you must know there’s always a price.” He gestured suddenly, and for less than a moment Katie thought she saw a long, thin metallic tongue flicker over his lips. “Give me the fiddle,” he said. Katie clutched it tighter.

“It’s not mine to give,” she said. His tongue slid out and this time the moonlight glinted off it in a ghastly shiver.

“Its mistress is dead,” he said, “her mother has given it to you. It is yours to barter, yours to give.”

“It doesn’t belong to me!” Katie snapped, and the jester shrugged, and took up the jig again at a maniacal pace.

“So what do you have?” he asked peevishly, still playing. Katie shrugged.

“I have a necklace,” she offered, holding up the string of red beads she’d found on the floor of the loft. The jester sneered.

“Glass beads for the isle of Manhattan. Let me see what’s in your bag.” He took a great leap from the wall and was suddenly standing before her, larger than he had seemed perched above her. He stood only a few inches taller than Katie, but she could see the muscles straining against the thin fabric of his tunic and tights. Up close she could see little stains here and there, and a little tear in one of the points of the hat, where white batting was beginning to leak out.

“Let me see what’s in your bag,” he said again. He took it from her, holding out the instrument for her to take. Reluctantly, Katie made the trade, gripping Lady firmly by the case’s handle and cradling the other instrument in her arms.

It was cold to the touch, and while it must have been made of wood, it felt too smooth, like ice or metal. As the Jester rooted through her backpack, she felt the warmth slowly seeping out of her, leaving cold places where her skin touched the instrument. The Jester crouched on the sidewalk, going through her few things. He pulled her shirts and underwear out and set them carefully on the sidewalk, then held up her watch.

“Time could be a good gift,” he said thoughtfully, and rattled the watch next to his ear. “This is kind of cheap, though.”

“It doesn’t work that well,” Katie said apologetically. He shrugged with great philosophy.

“I’ll take this,” he said, holding up a paperback.

“You want my book?” Katie said, shifting the instrument’s weight from one arm to the other, the cold beginning to burn. He shrugged again.

“Do androids dream of electric sheep? Worth finding out.” Before Katie could answer he had taken back the lyre, leaving her bag open on the ground with her belongings strewn across the sidewalk. She knelt down and started to pack it all up again. Something jingled as it hit the ground before her, and she picked it up. It was a knotted leather thong with three tarnished medallions hanging from it, the cord strung through square holes at their centers. Katie shoved the rest of her things into her backpack and stood up.

“Put it on,” the Jester said, and she tied it hurriedly around her neck.

“Tell me–” Katie began, and he cut her off with another jig. 

“Questions only. And all the usual fairy-tale rules apply, so choose your words very, very carefully.”

“How do I find Birch and bring her back?” Katie said it all in one breath, and found herself gasping by the end.

He frowned suspiciously. “That sounded like two.”

“Fine, it’s two,” Katie snapped. “Answer.”

The Jester shrugged and began to play the lyre again, a variation on the same jig. His fingers moved faster and faster, until they became a blur and the music fell together into undifferentiated noise. Katie felt the coins on her neck grow suddenly cold against her skin. She looked down– as he played faster and faster, two of them began to shiver as the third stayed still at the center, their shapes blurring until they were almost translucent. At last he stopped abruptly, and instantly the two coins vanished. The Jester met Katie’s gaze with eyes that were ice, that were the cold, the airless light of the moon. Katie felt her breathing slow, her blood thicken inside her veins. She shook her head hard and fast, breaking away from his stare. “Where is Birch?” she said and her voice cracked and snapped with bitter strength. 

The Jester smiled. “You can’t get there from here,” he said.

“Tell me where she is.” 

“In the snow, in the cold, in the earth.”

“That’s where they buried her body,” Katie said, and she felt the ice spreading out, starting deep in her stomach and taking root, branching through her veins. “Her family had her buried in Connecticut. Is that what you meant?”

“Is that your third question?” His eyes were on hers again, a dark and dull metallic color, fixed on Katie as though he could feel the cold that spread within her, as if he could drink from it. 

“No. Answer the second one,” she said.

“You cannot bring her back,” he said.

“That’s not the answer to the question.”

“It is the only answer.”

“How do I bring her back?” Somewhere inside Katie knew she was standing on a sidewalk, that the air that brushed her skin was mild and thick with the scent of street-cart falafel. In her peripheral vision she could see people passing by, talking, laughing, shouting, they were within the reach of her arm, but she could no more have reached out and touched them than she could reach across the world.

“Ask Orpheus,” the Jester said.

“I’m asking you,” she said.

“You would have to go to the realm of the dead, which is the kind of club that has membership requirements.”

“Fine. Third question, how do I get there and get her out?” 

In a motion too fast to follow, the Jester darted forward and grabbed the third coin still hanging around her neck. He pulled the leather tight, jerking her upward, cutting off her breath.

“There’s only one way to get there.”

Katie felt her throat spasm, her lungs straining to take in air, fighting against him even though her limbs were barely responding to her brain. There should have been a revelation, should have been bright light and faded memory, but there was nothing, nothing but dark and pain and an abyss behind her, he was holding her over it, he was going to let her go and she would tumble down and down, down forever. She felt his fingers loosen on the cord around her neck, he let her go and she was falling, falling into nothing…

… and then she hit the sidewalk and he was bending over her, he pressed his nose up against hers and it would have been funny if she wasn’t afraid he was going to kill her for real. “Talk to Sharon at the Cat’s Meow,” he said softly, and then he let her go. She fought to catch her breath again, coughing and wheezing there on the sidewalk, and when she could breathe enough again to look up, the Jester was gone, and the moon hung low above her, watching her watching it.

 

Somehow she made it back to Cobra’s apartment, and let herself in with Sophia’s key. Cobra and Alexandra were on the couch watching a movie on a laptop computer.

“Hi,” she said, and they chorused hellos without looking up. Katie stood there awkwardly for a moment, and then Alexandra paused the video.

“Ask her,” she said, and Cobra elbowed her. 

“Fine. How long are you staying in New York, Katie?”

“I don’t know,” Katie said with sudden nervousness, “Maybe a while. I’ll find a place in the next couple of days, I promise.”

“Actually– I’m kind of running short these days,” Cobra said. “The rent here’s four hundred for the room. We could split it, if you wanted.”

Katie hesitated, and Cobra shrugged.

“Or not, whatever. I’d let you paint on the other wall, though.”

Katie laughed. “Deal,” she said.

“Cool.”

“Told you,” Alexandra said. “Rent’s due next week and you clean the bathroom every other Tuesday. Welcome to the family.”

“Thanks.” Katie hugged her backpack to her chest, suddenly happy.

As she went into the bedroom, Sophia poked her head out the door.

“You have to get your own shampoo now.”

“I know,” Katie said. “I will.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Sophia nodded. “Okay. You can stay, then.” She closed the door, and Katie sat down by her new bedroom’s only window, and watched the street below, fingering the third medallion still hanging around her neck.