Part III: The Cat’s Meow

Part III: The Cat’s Meow

 

Weeks pass, months pass, or maybe it is only seconds, coming and going through the interstices of millennia. Nights come and go. Living things crawl through the windows and under the door, boil up from the cracks between the floorboards, invisible insects and formless rodents, and shadows that skitter from corner to corner, or hover above the bed impatiently. Birch waits. She reads the moldy books, forgetting the beginnings long before she reaches the endings; she paces back and forth across the floorboards, looking out the window at the tracks that stretch past at eye-level, watching as the train comes on from miles away and shoots on past– there isn’t a stop near here. 

The bedroom door is open, but Birch never leaves except to use the bathroom. It is across the hall, and each time she darts from one door to the other as fast as she can, not looking from side to side. She doesn’t know how long the hallway is, or what lies at either end, but it feels bright and exposed, the sallow walls bearing down on her with malicious sentience.

The bathroom door has no lock. The walls were once white, and it is always cold, the water running out in a freezing trickle, now and then spurting out orange and thick with rust. She showers once in a while, when she can feel the grease building in her hair, but she does it fast because of the cold, and because it feels like the door might open at any moment. Some things have changed. He comes at night, now, and she feels the night coming on from hours away, long before the sun begins to set, before the room begins to dim. The days are uneven, as if the light comes and goes without pattern, but dinner always comes after dark. He brings her wine, red wine in a bottle with the cork already off and a single stemmed glass, and he pours it out again as soon as she has finished a glass, sometimes before it’s even drained, and she drinks again as he asks her questions. He asks about her life, skipping around from age to age. One moment he asks her favorite book when she was eleven, the next what color the covers had been on the bed she shared with Katie. He wants to know how she feels about her mother, what kind of ice cream she likes best, and whether she has ever had an abortion. 

At first Birch lies. She invents on the spot, making up fights with her mother over lipstick and parties, and claiming she never caught a newt in the river by her house. But the questions become recursive, referring back to one another, covering the same ground in different words, and though he never appears to doubt her, she grows weary of keeping track of the stories in her head and she begins to answer honestly, staring at the floor, not looking at his face. And all the while as they talk she eats and drinks, and he refills the glass and she drinks it down again, not fast but steady till it’s all gone away, till she’s all gone away, till she can barely feel her limbs, till she’s heavy and dizzy and silent, and then she closes her eyes, and there’s nothing but the dark, nothing but the bursting colors and the patterns on the inside of her eyelids. She’s spinning out, she’s lost in space, she’s moving at a velocity of lightyears, and there’s nothing behind her but the vacuum. And in the morning when she wakes up she’s tired like a thousand years have passed, she aches like a battle’s been fought again inside her, and she cries herself awake, and back to sleep again.

 

Katie slept soundly.

 

 

 

 

In the morning Cobra woke her with a swift shake, and they went with Alexandra and Sophia, an army to comfort Tia. Her mother was already there, hovering close to her daughter and and weeping with a hollow grief as if Kyrah, too, had been her child. Tia herself seemed to be at a loss. She stalked across the room as if she could go somewhere, then turned around and paced back again. As they made their way into the apartment, stopped up at the door, Katie hung back, feeling like an intruder into this strange place, upon this woman she scarcely knew. But Tia took her hand without a word, and held on just a little too tightly, and Katie realized that she was the closest thing Tia had to a witness. She sat down on the couch, and Tia beside her, and Katie was quiet as the rest of them talked of Kyrah. 

 

As morning turned to afternoon two of Tia’s other friends came, older than the four of them, closer to Tia’s age, women in business suits and heels and chemically relaxed hair, carrying food. One had a toddler with her, and the baby stretched out her arms happily when she saw Tia. “It’s Aunt Tia,” her mother said, “Tia Tia.” 

 

“Tia Tia,” the girl repeated, and Tia spun her around.

 

Katie and the rest of them took leave, feeling as if some duty had been taken over by people more competent to handle it. They went separate ways– Alexandra had to work and so, apparently, did Cobra. 

 

“I have to work, too,” Sophia said when they had gone. “You can come.”

 

 

“Okay,” said Katie.

 

They stopped at a Starbucks and went straight back to the bathroom without buying anything.

 

“Come on,” Sophia said, and pulled her inside. 

 

 

Sophia was already dressed up, wearing a knee-length navy blue skirt and a button down shirt under a tailored coat. Now she checked herself in the mirror, smoothing down her flat black hair to invisible effect, retracing her lipstick, fixing the lines of her pantyhose on her skinny legs. 

 

“Okay, we can go,” she said finally, and they rode the train to the Upper West Side.

 

“You have to wait outside,” Sophia told her as they stopped in front of a high-rise, the doorman looking out at them with no apparent curiosity. “You’re not dressed right,” she explained, and Katie glanced down at her jeans and sweatshirt as Sophia disappeared inside. She was back again in a few minutes with three dogs in tow, small and fluffy and tan with matching blue collars. They walked down along the river, but Sophia wouldn’t let her take a leash. “It’s my job,” she said with gravity, and Katie didn’t press the issue. 

 

Instead she asked Sophia how long she’d lived in New York, and got a significantly longer answer than she’d anticipated.

 

Sophia told Katie that she was half-Chinese, half-Greek, and while her Greek ancestors had been here only three generations, her Chinese ancestors had come over with the first expedition to the New World in 1421. She explained that, not liking what they found, they had gone back home again, but that when her great grandmother arrived again on the shores of California as a young woman at the end of the 19th century, she had a visceral sense of homecoming, derived of racial memory. Katie listened closely, then told her the story of how her own great grandparents had fled the Russian Revolution by stowing away on ships out of Saint Petersburg. It was family legend, and probably as true as Sophia’s story.

 

An hour later they dropped the dogs off again, and Katie waited on the sidewalk, feeling as if the doorman was watching her, even though she never caught his eyes even glancing her direction. 

 

Back on the J train, Katie glanced at the digital clock at the top of the car. 4:32 PM. “What’s the word today?” she asked, and Sophia smiled and motioned her close to whisper in her ear, even though there were only two people in the car with them.

 

“Delorian,” she said, and Katie laughed.

 

“That’s a great word.”

 

“Yeah, it’s a good word. I’ll write it down when we get home.” Sophia glanced nervously around the train and her eyes lit briefly on the man sitting beside Katie. She leaned in again to whisper, “Can you see what he’s writing?”

 

Katie sat back and looked quickly. He was scribbling on a newspaper, in the margins and between the lines, circling words in the text and underlining passages. He was middle aged and white, dressed in a pressed buttoned shirt and khaki pants with shiny brown shoes and wire-rimmed glasses. He didn’t seem to notice her at all, so she looked again, and this time caught a single line: “douse with kerosene, ignite, then dance.” 

 

Katie relayed it, barely breathing out the words directly into Sophia’s ear. Sophia froze.

 

“We have to leave,” she said aloud, and stood up, grabbing Katie’s arm and trying to pull her along. 

 

“We’re on a moving train,” Katie said.

 

But at their movement, the man noticed them and he stood, lurching as the train caught a corner and grabbing at the handrails. He was glaring, and he seemed to be staring straight through Katie to Sophia.

 

“Are you reading my thoughts again?” He said harshly, and Katie felt Sophia’s hands tighten on her arm.

 

“We’re not trying to read your thoughts,” Katie said as calmly as she could, and he seemed to see her for the first time. 

 

“You don’t even know what she is, do you?” He said. “She’s a prophet, she’s a saint she’s the divine Sophia but she’ll rip your heart out and marinate it in a garlic sauce. So DON’T say I didn’t warn you!” He took a step toward them, waving the newspaper, and Katie stood her ground as Sophia shrank back. The train juddered to a stop, and before they could break for the door he stalked off onto the platform and vanished down the stairs. Sophia was still clinging to her. The train started up again, they sat down, and Sophia buried her nose in Katie’s shoulder like a little child. 

 

“I hate crazy people,” she muttered into the cloth, and Katie suppressed a smile.

“Do you know him?” she asked,  and felt Sophia shake her head. 

“They just recognize me. It’s like gaydar. Psychodar.”

“You’re not psycho,” Katie said, and realized as she did that she meant it. 

“I know. But normal people don’t get coded messages, though.” Katie opened her mouth to speak, but Sophia sat up and waved the words away before they came . “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just I try really hard. I never leave the house without pantyhose. I don’t know how they can always tell.” 

“Pantyhose is the new barometer for sanity?” Katie said lightly, and Sophia laughed. 

“Unless you roll it down around your ankles.” 

 

The train stopped again and Katie looked up just as the doors were closing to see that it was their stop. She ran for the door and jammed an arm into the narrowing space, and Sophia helped her force it apart until it opened on its own. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, for your safety please do not hold the doors open while the train is in the station…” 

And they were out, the train was pulling away as they hurried down the steps.

 

The days went by, and Katie made no more progress. She came and went each day,  half-heartedly looking for work and finding nothing.  Mark and Sarah had real jobs, it seemed, and they came and went and ate and slept with the regularity of people who actually had to get up in the morning.

Sophia left the house only rarely to walk the dogs or buy some few groceries, and whenever she did she put on skirts and pumps, with lipstick and mascara and her pantyhose pulled up straight. Sometimes Sophia let her come to work with her, and always made her wait outside, and never let her touch a leash.

“You can pet them,” she said on the third such outing, and she let Katie rub their heads and have her face licked for a few minutes before saying, “okay, that’s enough,” and pulling the animals along the path again. At home Sophia’s door was almost always closed, but sometimes she motioned Katie inside, and they’d talk about Shakespeare. Sophia had considered and discarded every theory that the Bard’s work might have been written by someone else. 

“I kind of wish it was Queen Elizabeth,” she whispered once, then flushed, and rearranged her papers on the floor.

Cobra mostly came home late, and sometimes not at all (and Sophia whispered to her that Cobra had lots of girlfriends, but didn’t like Alexandra to see them), and at home, read book after book after book. Novels with strange bright covers and incomprehensible titles that stuck in Katie’s mind for days as she tried to puzzle out their meaning You Don’t Love Me Yet Now Wait For Last Year As She Climbed Across The Table Special Topics in Calamity Physics Burning Chrome– They all ran together in her mind as she forgot where one sentence fragment turned into another, and as Cobra lay on the mattress reading, Katie borrowed and scrounged paint and brushes and began to cover the facing wall in darkness, and in stars. Galaxies, constellations, sprays of light. Inaccurate, but she didn’t care, this wasn’t the universe as it was, but the universe as it might have been. A spinoff world, an alternate potentiality. 

As she made it,  she began to suspect that it might be true about the multitude of universes, present moments splitting off into an infinite number of moments, all happening at once, except that if it really happened, there’s no such thing as “at once”. She mentioned this to Cobra, who looked up from a novel with a robot on the cover, and nodded enthusiastically. 

“Would you have sex with yourself?” Cobra asked, and Katie thought about it for a second.

“I don’t think I’m really my type. You?”

“Oh, yeah!” Cobra answered a little too quickly.

“What are you talking about?”

Sophia was there in the doorway, only peering in with her eyes.

“The multiplicity of worlds,” Cobra said, and Sophia’s eyes widened.

“I hate to think about that,” she said, but came in anyway and settled herself on Katie’s bed.

“Would you do you?” Cobra said, and she tilted her head to the side, considering.

“There would be no risk of cross-contamination,” she said finally, which Katie took to be a yes, and then all at once Sophia spilled out the reason she hated to think about it.

She had considered the theory of multiple worlds from the age of six, when she first stared up at the stars in the sky, and comprehended the distance between them. Infinity had been taught her by an older cousin, a whispered secret from one sleeping bag to another as they stared up at the night summer sky. She extrapolated from the word infinity the theory of splitting moments. But as she thought about it she became convinced that in every other moment, every other present, the she that was she and not yet she, had died. Alone not only in the universe but in all the universes, all possible worlds lacking even the fragmented possible selves. No possibility of a kindred spirit.

Sophia stopped talking abruptly, staring at Katie’s wall and the unfinished mural.

“That’s extremely inaccurate,” she said.

Katie smiled, wanting to hug her but knowing Sophia would never allow it. “I know,” she said. “It’s a possible world.”

Sophia nodded. “Did you give the constellations names?”

“I didn’t think of that.”

I’ll do it,” Sophia said, and came to the wall, running her hands over the picture without touching the surface, and whispering quick words under her breath. “It’s not finished,” she said aloud. “Tell me when it’s done and I’ll give you the names.”

“Okay,” said Katie, “Thanks, Sophia.”

 

Sophia smiled at her, and fled the room.

There is paper in the room, and pens, and though he never mentions it she knows he hopes she’ll use it to write a story of her life, a second set of answers to all the questions he likes to ask, put it all into a form he can deconstruct. There’s a whole ream of paper, stacked up tight like it was still wrapped in its package, and a box of ballpoint pens, blue ink, still sealed. He wants her to write him a story of his sins. And when one morning she discovered a needle in a hidden corner of the room, fallen into a crack in the floorboards, she begins to do so. 

He sees it at once, of course, and he doesn’t say anything, only laughs and kisses her forehead. But in the morning when she wakes up, there is a second box of pens, and a package of shiny, fine-point needles. She takes them, and continues.

She starts slowly, on the tops of her feet where the needle digs down to the bone, bleeds and raises red welts that heal into smooth white and blue. Her veins still show through under the words, a poorly scraped palimpsest, and the combination makes it hard to read.

On her feet she makes a latticework of words that matter, but have no relation to one another. The skin there is close to the bone, and it bleeds and hurts until she makes her way to her ankles, where she plans to make a map of the Connecticut arctic circle up the whole of one leg, and lay out the anatomy of an opiate high down the other. Across one side of her torso, upside-down, she lays out the mathematical formulae for the life, death and resurrection of a North American tree frog in an elementary school backyard. She knows there are errors, but it doesn’t seem to matter. 

He sees the wounds and the healing tattoos each day as he comes in, but he does not ask, and does not try to look at them, at least not while she is awake.

Time does not pass, even though the seasons change from day to day. This morning she sees that the few trees have lost their leaves, and she can’t remember, if yesterday was summer or fall, if she missed a whole season or just didn’t notice it’s passing. She thinks he still comes every day, but she can’t really be sure, sometimes she thinks she sleeps through weeks at a time, she sleeps as long as she can, till she’s sick with sleep, her nerves on edge and her brain fogged over, and at last she has no choice but to wake up and move about, and then she reads the moldy books, does push-ups off the bed like prisoners do in movies, and when she can stand it no more she takes the needle and the ink, and keeps on with the tedious work.

Last night he asked about her name. She had hoped to hide it from him– he called her Amanda when he first came for her, she had answered to it, but he knew so much already, it would be mad to think he would not know her other name. And so when he asked, she told him. 

She changed it when she ran away, when she was fourteen and Annika was dead. She saw birch trees out the window of the car as the drove home from the grocery store one afternoon. They were strung out along the highway in a small clutch, stripped bare for winter even though the snow was gone and it was not yet spring. She gazed out at the pale limbs and the bark peeling back to show the insides and the dark spaces between the trees where anything might be hiding. That night she left the house for the last time and walked with her brother’s backpack to that same place in the ersatz forest by the side of the road and touched the bark, smooth and thin like scraped vellum. Minutes passed and she felt silly standing there with the mud seeping into her leaky canvas shoes, and she made her way to the side of the road.

 

And when a trucker pulled her rig over onto the shoulder and told her she was too young to be traveling alone, she climbed up into the cab, and said her name was Birch.

More days went by, and Katie thought of Birch. Up until the night she met the Jester, she had been thinking of it as a quest, thinking only of following the clues, of getting her back, of seeing her again. But now when she closed the door to the room she shared with Cobra, or when she went for hours-long walks back and forth across Brooklyn, she thought and thought of Birch. She told herself the story as she told it to Sophia, to Cobra, to Tia: I met a girl and she met me. I loved her, and she loved me. And we were happy. We were meant to be, and we were happy. Birch was happy. 

But Birch wasn’t happy, or she was bizarrely happy, she was quiet, she was silly, she closed her eyes and played music all day long, she loved me. But Birch wasn’t always there. Birch closed her eyes and played music all day long, and sometimes didn’t stop to eat or talk or go outside. And Birch had started having nightmares. She didn’t cry out or thrash against invisible enemies, or any of the other things people did when they had nightmares, but for nights in a row she woke Katie up, all in a panic. 

“What? What’s wrong?” Katie whispered through the weight of sleep, scarcely able to make her body move. 

“Nothing,” Birch said, “It’s nothing, it’s just a dream. Come here.” And Katie moved to her, took Birch, gathered her up in her arms and pulled her close, like a talisman, like her sleeping body might be a shield to the things in Birch’s head. 

In the morning she asked, “what did you dream about?” But Birch never remembered what the dream had been, or even that she had awakened. Or at least, that was what she said to Katie. 

Katie told Sophia about the nightmares, one night as midnight turned to morning, sitting crosslegged on the floor among the handwritten pages of her book. Sophia listened earnestly, her knees drawn up under her chin. 

“My word today was somnambulist,” she said, and pointed to a set of symbols just above her head, the paint red and still tacky. 

“She never walked in her sleep,” Katie said, and Sophia shrugged.

“Maybe she walked somewhere you couldn’t see.” 

“Maybe,” Katie said.

“I used to have nightmares,” Sophia said. “Until I was twelve I dreamt there was a man who came into my room with a knife.”

“What happened when you were twelve?” Katie asked, slightly horrified.

“I bought a lot of deadbolts for my bedroom door,” Sophia said cheerfully. She gestured to the array braced along the door.

“Oh,” Katie said awkwardly. “I guess that works. I just wish I knew what was going on in her head.”

Sophia nodded. “There’s more things in Heaven and Earth,” she began.

“Please don’t quote Hamlet,” Katie said, and Sophia frowned, hurt. “Sorry,” Katie said hastily, “I’m just tired.”

Sophia nodded. “I understand. I don’t sleep much so I forget other people need to.”

Katie nodded. “Yeah. Good night, then.”

“Good night!”

Katie closed Sophia’s door behind her and heard the bolts slide into place one after another, seven in all. She stood outside the door until Sophia was done, as if she might be guarding the door. In her own room, Cobra had fallen asleep with the light on, one hand still holding a book dropped halfway onto the floor. Katie switched the light off, and Cobra sat up suddenly.

“Shit.” 

Katie smiled into the darkness. “You fell asleep.”

“Shit. I meant to stay up.”

“Why?”

“I never finish this book,” Cobra said, turning the light back on. Katie picked up the book. Perdido Street Station. 

“I think if you can’t get through a book it’s not usually worth finishing.” 

Cobra laughed. “I love this book. I just don’t want it to be over.” 

Katie smiled. “Oh.”

Cobra shrugged. “I really love books.” Katie handed it back, and Cobra set it on the bed next to the pillow. “I haven’t seen you the past couple days. How’s the search going?”

Katie shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

“Did you find anything?” 

 

“I don’t know,” Katie said, and without warning found herself in tears. 

Cobra watched her awkwardly, then gestured at the mattress. “You can sit down.”

Katie sat. “Sorry. It’s just kind of– overwhelming or something.”  

 

“You know me and Alexandra, we ran away from home when we were sixteen. We lived in Atlanta for a while, in a shelter there. It was a rough place, you know? But we made it, traveled a while. And then we came to New York, eighteen years old, we knew what was what. We were living places, a couple of squats we’d stay at. 

“Anyway, it was like our third week here, it was winter and it was freezing cold. I was walking back to the place we were staying at by myself, and I was looking up at all these apartment buildings along the street, with their lights all on, I was staring in at their ceilings– ’cause that was all I could see– and thinking about what it must be like to live there. It all looked so warm, like they were places that had a bed and maybe a table to eat dinner at, and a stove you could make tea on, a place you could have a cat. And there was this one, the window didn’t have any curtains and I could kind of see into the kitchen, pots and pans and stuff, I walked past it and looked back again, and there was a woman. She was hanging from the ceiling.”

“What did you do?” Katie said quietly.

Cobra wasn’t looking at her, staring at the seascape by the bed as if the scene was playing out again between the anemones and the coral, behind the wrecked ship. “Nothing. I didn’t know what to do. I stood there for a while and stared up at her, I knew she was dead. She was wearing blue jeans and a white tee shirt, and her feet were bare. And then I just turned and kept walking until I got home to Alexandra.”

There was a silence, and then Katie said, “oh.”

“Yeah, and I just thought right then that New York was the most fucked up place I’d ever been. So it’s not just you.” Cobra grinned. “So what did the moon man tell you?” 

Katie pulled the collar of her sweatshirt down a little– the bruise on her neck had faded, but it was still visible.

“What the fuck, who did that?” 

“It’s fine,” Katie said. “I’m fine. He told me to talk to Sharon at the Cat’s Meow. I don’t know what that means. It sounds like a club or something. I looked it up at the library, but if it’s a business it’s not online.”

“Hang on a sec.” Cobra knocked on the wall and went out the door, returning a minute later with Alexandra trailing sleepily behind. 

“I’m asleep,” she said. She was wearing pajamas, a white tank top and blue flannel pants with penguins all over them. Katie smiled.

“I like your pants,” she said quietly, and Alexandra glanced down at herself. 

“In memorium,” was all she said. 

“Katie wants to know about the Cat’s Meow,” Cobra said. 

“It can wait, though” Katie interjected.

“She wasn’t really asleep,” Cobra said, and Alexandra scowled briefly.

“I might have been,” she said.

“Meow,” Cobra said again. Alexandra sat down on the mattress, pulling Cobra down with her to be used as a pillow. Katie watched Cobra put an arm around her waist and brighten suddenly at the little contact. Katie sat down too, leaning back against the painted wall.

“What about it?” Alexandra said. “I worked there, Tia worked there, Kyrah– everybody works there at some point. Cool place. Kinda freaky, though, and there’s not enough money.”

“It’s a strip club?” Katie asked.

Alexandra smiled. “Kind of. Yeah. It’s sort of a mystical experience.”

“The Man in– Someone told me I should go there and talk to Sharon. He said she might know about Birch.”

“Sharon.” 

“You know who that is?”

Alexandra was nodding. “Yeah, I know Sharon. Everybody knows Sharon. If you want to talk to her you better bring a present.”

“A present?” 

“Yeah, something–” she cast her eyes around the room quickly. “Something like that,” she said, pointing to the string of red glass beads lying on the floor beside Katie’s backpack. “Maybe a little nicer. Something pretty. It’s really just a gesture. Respect.” 

“Okay,” Katie said, “I’ll find something.”

Alexandra hesitated like she was going to say something, then opened her mouth to say something else. “I should go with you. Not tomorrow, Wednesday, though. We could go Wednesday.”

“Okay,” Katie said again. 

Alexandra yawned. “Find a present,” she said, and stood. “Night.” And then she was gone and the door shut behind her.

“See?” Cobra said, “Alexandra knows everybody.”

“Thanks,” Katie said. Cobra reached up and ruffled her hair like a child or a pet.

“No problem.” Katie switched the light off, and before the afterburn had faded from her eyes Cobra spoke, as if the question had been waiting for dark.

“Can I ask you something?” 

“Sure,” Katie said. 

“How come you’re so sure she’s alive?”

It was black in the room, Katie blinked but her eyes still weren’t adjusting. “She’s dead and it didn’t kill me, so she must still be alive, you know?”

Cobra didn’t answer. There was music, faint, coming through the wall from Alexandra’s room. It was a woman’s voice, and

Katie thought she knew the song, but she couldn’t make out the words or the tune. 

“Amanda Palmer,” Cobra said softly. “Fuck.” The sound went on, and Katie leaned her ear against the wall, letting the piano and the words she couldn’t quite hear fill up her head.

After a minute short, sharp gasps began to come from the other side of the wall, the bedsprings creaking just a little as Alexandra writhed and stifled moans beneath her own touch. Katie suddenly felt Cobra’s presence beside her, not touching but warm and electric against her skin; Cobra’s breath was shallow, she could hear it, feel it on the air. Alexandra made a sudden high pitched sound, and Katie felt herself tighten, felt it go through Cobra too. The music got a little louder, like it was in the room with them, but Alexandra was still there underneath it. 

“Hey Cobra?” Katie said, and the words half stuck in her throat.

“Hmm?”

“Are you a boy or a girl?”

Cobra laughed at that, full and low, and then Cobra’s breath was on her neck, lips brushing against her earlobe. “Katie,” Cobra said, “That is the least interesting thing you could have asked me.” Alexandra sighed behind them, and Katie swallowed. 

“I should probably get to sleep,” she whispered, and she felt Cobra nod.

“Me too.” She meant to get up, but instead she reached for Cobra’s hand and gripped it tight. Cobra squeezed back, and

they sat there in the dark side by side for what seemed like hours until at last Alexandra switched the music off.

In the silence the spell was broken, and Cobra let go her hand. Katie started to get up, but Cobra said quickly,

“You can sleep here if you want.” 

“Okay.” 

They laid down together on Cobra’s bed, and fell asleep all tangled in each other’s arms. In the morning when Katie woke, Cobra was gone, and didn’t come back until the next night, when Katie was already asleep along her own wall.

 

Wednesday night, Alexandra called her and said she was running late.

“I’ll meet you there,” she said, and told Katie how to get there. Katie wrote the address down, vaguely relieved she wouldn’t have to ride the subway with Alexandra, alone with her among all those people. She’d bought a hematite pendant on the street for four dollars; it was an odd shape, but it was pretty, with a rune of some sort blackened onto the surface, and Katie hoped it would be nice enough, and vaguely wondered whether she was heading off to meet a dragon, with a gift to feed the hoard.

She got to the place just as rain started to fall, and she waited in a cafe down the street for a while, but twenty minutes after she’d finished her tea the barista started giving her inquisitive looks from behind his counter, and she packed up her bag and went down the street. She checked her phone again, but there was nothing from Alexandra, so she went on alone.

“Do you work here?” Katie stopped. The bouncer was there, staring down at her with his arms folded. He wasn’t very big, but she still took a step back. 

“I just want to go in,” she said.

“Can’t go in by yourself,” he said.

“I’m twenty-three, here.” She started going through her pockets looking for her ID. 

“No, we don’t let girls in alone.” Katie stared up at him. It had started to rain harder, rolling down off the awning and splashing up onto her sneakers. She edged inward, closer to the door.

“So I need to come with a guy?” He nodded. “Any guy?” she said. He nodded again. Katie grabbed the arm of a middle-aged white man walking up to the door at a quick pace. “I’m with him,” she said, and followed him inside before either of them could object. Once inside, she dropped his arm.

“Have fun,” she said, and darted away through the crowd. It was full, there were men standing three deep around the bar, throwing dollar bills up at the dancers on the raised stage behind the bar. Some of the bills made it across, others fell down to the floor behind the bartenders. The men at the front climbed up on their chairs and stretched forward across the bars to let the girls take money directly from their hands. 

 

The place was dark and lit with red, and it smelled of incense and and a little bit of weed, and the crush of bodies night after night. The music was semi-familiar, songs she’d heard in passing but never listened to on her own. She could barely

see the dancers over the heads of the men, and she inched backward in the crowd until they came into her line of vision. 

She had never been to a strip club before, and was vaguely surprised by how much it resembled what she would have imagined; there were five girls up onstage, moving their hips to the beat and showing body parts one at a time, their skimpy clothing falling to the floor piece after piece. Someone  put a hand on her shoulder and she shied away, turning around fast. The man she’d come in with was standing there, looking at her with narrowed eyes. 

“You work here?” he asked, and Katie shook her head.

“I’m looking for someone,” she said, and he nodded. 

“I know everybody, I’ve been coming here thirty years. Who do you want?”

“Sharon?” He was standing too close to her, and Katie steeled herself, trying not to step backward.

“I know Sharon. Everybody knows Sharon. She won’t be out before midnight, come have a drink with me.”

 

Katie glanced around nervously, spotting the clock above a door leading to the back. It was only eleven o’clock. “I don’t work here,” she repeated, and he shrugged. 

 

“So I won’t ask for a lap dance,” he said, and shouldered his way to the bar, holding out a hand. She didn’t take it, but she followed him through the crowd up to the bar, where two seats had miraculously cleared.

The bartender, a blonde woman in her thirties, handed over two glasses; one was stemmed and filled with white wine, and that one she set in front of Katie. The man lifted his martini glass expectantly, and Katie held hers up for him to clink. 

“I’m Bob,” he said.

“Natalie,” Katie said after a moment’s hesitation.

“This place is hallowed ground,” he said, and she nodded. “People come in here, they don’t know.”

“Oh,” Katie said awkwardly. She looked back up at the stage uncomfortably, feeling it must be rude to look away, or maybe it was rude for her to be there at all. She glanced from one woman to the next, then smiled suddenly. Lilith was there, up on stage at the end, near the stairs and only half in the light.  She was wearing fishnet stockings and a fishnet dress, dancing shoeless to an awkward beat. She saw Katie and waved quickly, and Katie raised a hand in acknowledgment. No one but Katie seemed to see her, and here and there she reached down furtively and stuffed a handful of bills into her tights. 

“Hallowed ground,” Bob said again, and drained the martini. “I’ve been coming here thirty years. Used to be a hell of a place, used to be beautiful girls, girls like that one, all over the place.” He gestured toward the stage, but Katie couldn’t tell which woman he was referring to. “It’ll come back up, though,” he said. “Up and down, ugly girls now, but the pretty ones ‘ll be back.” 

“I think they’re pretty,” Katie said, seized by a brief solidarity.

He looked down at her and laughed. “Course you do. How would you know? You know this place got hit eight years ago, half destroyed by debris. My twin brother and I were in the first one, the first tower. I was on the third floor and he was all the way up at the top, and I made it out and he didn’t. Hey, Natasha!” He called out to the bartender and held up his glass, then leaned down to whisper confidentially to Katie, “Her name’s not really Natasha, I just call her that.” 

“Oh,” Katie said, and they both fell silent again until not-really-Natasha came back with a second martini. Bob left it sitting on the bar. 

“This place was closed for over a month, while they fixed it up, and then the day it opened back up again it was full to busting. All the girls, all the men who used to come here, all the people who wouldn’t be coming back, this place, it was full to busting with ghosts, and people who might as well have died, and all the rescue workers, men who’d been going in and out, day and night, cleaning out the bodies, watching each other die.

“There was this girl, Jinx. She was a bartender, and she was the most beautiful girl I ever saw in this place, in any place, and everyone was always asking her to get up onstage and she never ever would. And this night, all the firemen started asking, they were chanting her name, and she kept saying no, she didn’t do that.

“And I said, Jinx, you know who these men are. You’re going to get up there, and you’re going to dance.” He picked up the martini and drank it down all at once. “And she got up there. And my God did she dance. Never saw anything like it.

My God did she dance.” His eyes were tearing, and Katie looked away, down at the floor. “People don’t know,” Bob said again. He walked away without another word.

 

Katie stayed where she was and sipped the wine nervously. 

 

A hand clapped her shoulder suddenly, and Katie dropped the glass; it landed on the bar and didn’t break, but rolled away, spinning out all the liquid.

“Shit,” Katie said, grabbing for napkins, and turning to see Alexandra behind her. 

“You could have waited down the street,” Alexandra said, and Katie shrugged. 

 

“It’s okay,” she said, and Alexandra grinned at her, and flagged down the bartender, who smiled when she saw her. 

“Oh, no, nothing for this one,” she said.

 

“Hey, Sally,” said Alexandra. 

“Hey, hon. You back to work?” 

Alexandra shook her head, and Sally poured scotch over ice and gave Katie another glass of wine, and hurried off to take another order. 

“Come on.” Alexandra led her back through the crowd to one of the couches against the wall, and they sat down. After a moment a pairing came over next to them, a blonde girl stripped off her top and began to grind on top of a suited man beneath. 

“This place has been here forever,” Alexandra said. “I think since like the 1880s.”

“Wow,” Katie said, trying to keep her eyes off the couple next to them. “Has it always been the same kind of place?”

Alexandra shrugged and knocked back the rest of her drink. “I think so. I guess back in the day the girls just showed their knees or something.” 

Katie laughed. 

“Damn, that’d be great,” Alexandra said. “Can you imagine getting paid just to show your ankles? I’d be a fucking millionaire.”

“But you couldn’t vote.”

“Oh, yeah. Shit, nothing ever works out perfect, does it?”

T

hey sat there for a while, and Katie tried not to look at the naked girl beside them. Her stiletto heel kept grazing Alexandra’s leg in time to the music, but Alexandra either didn’t notice or didn’t mind.

“Somebody said Sharon won’t be out till midnight,” Katie said, and Alexandra nodded, half-listening.

“Yeah, probably.”

The music changed and the girl next to them climbed swiftly off her client and waited as he dug around in his pocket to pay her. She took the money and tucked it away into the purse she pulled out of the cushions as he hurried off. 

“Hey, Skye,” Alexandra said, and she turned. 

“Hey! I haven’t seen you in months!” She leaned down to hug Alexandra. “Can you tie me up?” She turned her back and repositioned her bikini top, and Alexandra caught up the strings and tied them tight, then let one hand trail down to Skye’s waist and linger there for a second, until she turned back around. 

“Thanks,” she said. 

“Sure,” said Alexandra. 

“See you later?” Skye said, and Alexandra shrugged. 

“Probably.” Skye slipped back into the crowd, and a moment later Katie caught sight of her on the arm of a new man, leading him toward the back of the club. 

“I used to be in love with her,” Alexandra said conversationally. 

“Really?”

Alexandra thought about it for a second. “I liked her a lot,” she amended, and Katie smiled. 

Suddenly the music stopped. The stage cleared immediately, the women dancing grabbed their clothes and purses and their cash and hurried down without stopping to dress, heading naked for the dressing room, leaving dollar bills scattered on the stage. Katie looked for Lilith among them, but she had vanished. From the other side, where Katie hadn’t even realized there was an entrance, a woman came out. 

She was dressed like a belly dancer in gauzy skirts and a bikini top, all in black with small, irregular metallic discs hanging from the fabric, some of them shining under the light, and others dull and blackened with age. She was fat, and pale under the lights, her hair was an unnatural red, but somehow it didn’t look dyed, looked like it sprang that way from her head. And she was dancing, and dancing and dancing. She was Salome, she was Pavlova, she was calling down the rain. It was nothing Katie had ever seen before, but it was stunning, riveting. There was music behind her, it was mostly bass, so deep and loud that it seemed to bypass her ears and pound itself straight into her body. 

There were shadows onstage with her, moving in an uncanny rhythm, they danced behind her in the shape of strange things coming, they were following her movements but they weren’t cast by her figure, weren’t cast by anything Katie could see, shadows growing out of shadows and playing over the mirror, reflecting back on the faces in the crowd.  And then something happened, a shift, a movement, and there was only Sharon on the stage, and Katie on the floor, and the music gone. The crowd was silent, vanished, they were alone in the empty bar and it smelled like cinnamon. Sharon was still moving, still in the dance, but the shadows behind her were frozen, smacked on the wall in an abstract tableau.

Do you have something for me? The words were there in her head, though they had not been spoken aloud. Katie reached

into her pocket and pulled out the necklace, held it up above her head like an offering. Sharon peered down at it, and held out her hand. Glancing around at the empty place, Katie scrambled up on the bar, kneeling up like a supplicant and holding out the necklace. Sharon took it, snorted and tossed it back. Do you even know what this means? She threw the words into Katie’s head, and Katie reeled back, catching herself on her hands and just barely stopping herself from falling off the bar. Signs of life, and you try to pass them off to me. Come here. Stand.

 

Katie stood, and in an instant Sharon reached out and grabbed at her head, and Katie yelped as hairs were torn from her head. She watched as Sharon twisted them into a ring, and opened a locket around her neck, stuffing them inside with what looked like several similar rings.

“Ow,” Katie said, but Sharon was dancing again, and this time Katie realized that the silence wasn’t fully silence– there was nothing to be heard, but she could still feel the beat through the bar under her feet, through the air, like the inside of a heartbeat. Suddenly struck with vertigo, Katie climbed down from the bar and steadied herself on the floor again.

“What happened to Birch?” She said, and her voice was thin and small in the space, which now seemed impossibly vast. Sharon looked down on her from the stage. 

 

She made a deal, Sharon said. She reached up to her breasts and yanked something from the fabric, coins that jingled together in her hand, and she flung them down at Katie. They struck her in the face and hit the floor, and she scrambled to pick them up, a penny and a nickel. 

“Please,” Katie said, “please tell me something that’s real. She made a deal, does that mean she went willingly? Did she kill herself? What are these?” She held up the coins in a fist.

Keep those, she said. Pay the piper. 

“Please,” Katie said, “no more riddles,” and Sharon threw back her head and laughed so loud it shook the walls, and plaster rained down from the ceiling. 

When in all of this has there been a riddle? She cried out, and a ceiling beam began to shake on its girders. When have you been told a lie?

And then the shadows were moving again, the music was audible, the ceiling was still and solid, and Alexandra was coming toward her, fighting through the crowd and then grasping her arm. 

“Hey, come on.” Alexandra was pulling her to the side, through all the people, and Katie ducked her head and followed.

 

“She’s good, right?” Alexandra shouted into her ear. She was pulling Katie to the side of the stage as Sharon stepped off, waving to catch the older woman’s attention. 

“Sharon!” 

Sharon’s eyes lit on them and the crowd parted around her as she came down to Alexandra and swept her up almost off her feet in a hug, then let her go just as quickly. Katie stifled a grin as Alexandra teetered back into balance.

“Sharon,” Alexandra said, “This is my friend Katie, she needs to ask you something.” Sharon glanced at Katie swiftly like she hadn’t seen her before, like she couldn’t be bothered. 

“No, she doesn’t,” she said, and held up a hand as Alexandra began to protest. “Katie has what she needs,” Sharon said, and Katie nodded when Alexandra looked the question at her. She opened her palm to show them the two coins, and the woman nodded.

“Come have a drink with me in the back, she said to Alexandra, “Unless you’ve come to beg for your job back.” 

Alexandra shook her head. “Not yet,” she said, and Sharon shrugged. 

“You were never a very good dancer anyway,” she said. She led them to the back. where there was an emergency exit. Sharon opened it and gestured them through, not to the outside but on a flight of stairs. 

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Katie whispered to Alexandra as they descended. “Like if there’s a fire?”

“Probably,” Alexandra said, and behind them Katie heard Sharon listening. 

The stairs went on and on, endless, until Katie thought they must be beneath the sewers, beneath the subway. She could feel the air getting thick and hostile, like when the train passed underwater, though it might have been all in her head. 

At last the staircase ended, spilled out into tunnels pointing this way and that with only dim lights hanging caged from the walls at odd intervals, as if it were a mine. Alexandra stopped, and Sharon brushed past her. 

“Forgot the way already?” She said, and laughed at that, and then took off down the pathway straight ahead. They followed, Katie was expecting a further trek, but in a few seconds they turned and were inside a dressing room that seemed to be covered entirely in purple plush. The lights were soft, and the long dressing table mirrors reflected back glowing, unfocused images. Katie squinted at them from a few feet back, trying to make out her own face, but she could not; the mirrors seemed to be coated in some non-reflective surface.

Alexandra threw herself down on a plushy couch, and Sharon settled herself in a high-backed chair that might have come from a Busby Berkeley set. After a moment Katie sat down beside Alexandra, who popped back up again as Sharon said her name.

“Alexandra, there’s Scotch in the cupboard.” 

Alexandra opened a cupboard concealed behind a painting like a safe. When she closed it again Katie craned her neck a little to see the picture, of a woman on a dance-hall stage who looked suspiciously like Sharon, in 19th century dress.

“That looks sort of like Toulouse-Lautrec,” Katie said. “I don’t recognize the painting, though.” 

“Good old Henri,” Sharon said, “Too-Loose-Lautrec. He painted that just for me. Of course, that was back in Paris. He did it so I’d write off his bar tab.”

Silent for a moment, Katie finally said, “Did you?”

Sharon smiled wide and swiveled away to the mirror and began to wipe away her make-up with pads and cold cream, referring to the glass, though Katie still couldn’t see any kind of reflection. 

“I never write off a tab,” Sharon said, “But I don’t think I’m likely to collect now. Died with nothing in his pockets but a hankie and half a prayer.”

“Katie wanted to ask you a question,” Alexandra said again. Sharon didn’t stop wiping her face. 

“I’ve told Katie all she’s going to get out of me tonight,” Sharon said. “Tell me how you are.”

Alexandra drained her drink all at once and stood up.

“We should go, then,” she said, and Sharon shrugged expansively.

“If you must.”

They ascended the stairs in silence and came out into an empty bar. The bartenders were still counting money and cleaning glasses, and Katie felt like an intruder into the stillness. Alexandra pulled her across the hallway and through a closed door. It was a dressing room, tiny and cramped with three half-naked women struggling into their street clothes in the narrow space. Skye was there, still dressed in her bikini as she rooted through her bag for something.

“Hey, Skye,” Alexandra said. Skye turned briefly and smiled at them, then yanked off her blonde hair. She folded up the wig and shoved it into her bag, and ran a comb through her own hair, short and pale blue and standing up in all directions.

“Give me five minutes,” she said, and Alexandra nodded and sat down on the bench. Katie stayed awkwardly by the door, half averting her eyes as Skye stripped naked and dressed again in cargo pants and a heavy sweater. 

The other two women put on their coats and left, and a few minutes later Skye was ready too. Alexandra held out a hand, and Skye grinned and took it, and Katie followed them through the bad and out into the street.

“I need a drink,” Skye declared, and Alexandra laughed and slung an arm around her waist.

“Unless you’ve changed drastically, you’ve been drinking all night,” she said.

“True,” Skye said, “But it doesn’t count at work.”

“Right,” Alexandra said. They walked on and on, taking turns through the streets and alleys. The area felt strange, everything around them seemed to be shut. Alexandra saw her looking. “Everything closes with the stock exchange around here,” she explained. 

Finally they came out into lights and open businesses, and taxis filling the streets, and they stopped at a brightly-lit 24-hour diner. Alexandra and Skye squeezed into the booth side of the table together, and Katie took a chair across from them. In spite of Skye’s declared need for a drink, they all ordered coffee and poured in soy milk and brown sugar. Katie tuned out as the two of them talked about people they didn’t know, and places she’d never been. The place was almost empty– there was a couple sitting on the same side of a booth near the door, barely trying to hide their touches beneath the table. As she watched, the man slid his hand from the woman’s knee up under her short purple skirt. Katie suppressed a smile and looked away, not really wanting to see what happened next. At the table in the far back corner, dark except for a single dim light, a tall black girl with a shaven head was bent over a notebook, scribbling furiously. 

Someone said her name. 

“Huh?”

“What did you think of the place?” Alexandra repeated. 

Katie shrugged. “It was okay,” she said.

“It’s all gone to shit since the stock market crashed,” Skye said.

“Me too,” Alexandra said. “Minimum wage sex work– it’s the new McDonalds!” 

“No free happy meals, though,” Skye said. She laughed, and Katie smiled uncomfortably. 

“It seemed pretty busy,” she offered.

 

“Yeah,” Skye said, “Sharon has a special kind of magic, the place never really runs dry, but it’s still not like it used to be.” They drank coffee in silence like liquor, and stared down at the cups. Alexandra glanced around the cafe, and grinned when she saw the girl in the corner. 

“Lo!” She called, and Lo looked up.

“Hey, Alexandra,” she waved a little from her seat, and Alexandra tried to motion her over, but Lo shook her head.

“I’m almost done, I want to finish.”

“Ooh, when’s it out?” Skye said, and Lo set down the pencil for a minute.

“Depends on when I can afford to print more,” she said.

“We can pay in advance,” Alexandra said. She pulled two dollars out of her pocket and Syke did the same, but Lo didn’t move to take them.

“I can give you copies,” she said.

“And business practices like those are why you can’t afford to print the next one!” Alexandra said, and slapped the money down on the table. Lo rolled her eyes, but left it there.

“Right,” she said, “okay, then.”

“Always get the money up front,” Alexandra said, and laughed.

Skye turned to Katie and said, “This is Dolores Knapp. She writes the best comic book in Brooklyn.”

“Oh. Hi, I’m Katie,” she said, and made a small wave.

“Lo.”

“What’s it about?” she asked, and Lo looked at her for a moment before answering, like she was making a decision. 

“It’s called Lez-Bionic,” she said finally. “Sort of… Hot Headed Paisan meets the Terminator. Meets a lot of other stuff.”

Katie laughed suddenly, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry– I just, it sounds wonderful. Can I buy one too?”

Lo shook her head. “Read the back issues first and see if you like it,” she said

“I have them all,” Skye said, “you can read mine.” She was almost bouncing in her seat, but Lo was unphased by her apparent celebrity.

“Thanks,” Katie said.

“Have a drink with us?” Alexandra asked again.

“I really want to finish this,” Lo said. “And Soledad’s almost off shift.”

 

“Next time,” Skye said.

“Sure.” Lo smiled briefly and went back to her work.

Skye leaned in and pointed semi-discreetly at a waitress on the other side of the diner, a beautiful, femme woman reading a book as she kept an eye on the few customers. “Soledad is like the ultimate performance artist, spoken word and dance, she’s amazing. They’re like the top lesbian power couple in Brooklyn.”

“In a dumpster diving kind of way,” Alexandra murmured.

“Yeah!” 

“Okay, snap out of it, Skye,” Alexandra said aloud, and Skye turned to Katie again.

“How do you like New York?”

“Um, not bad so far. I’m having a hard time finding a job, though. I’ll be able to pay the rent, though,” she added quickly.

“I don’t care, you’re Cobra’s problem!” Alexandra said, and suddenly winced. “Um, sorry. I didn’t mean that. People tell me my sense of humor is–”

“Rude?” Said Skye. “Uncalled for?”

“Mean?” Lo said from the next table.

“Insulting?” 

“Bewildering yet bitchy?” Lo said.

“Fine!” Alexandra said. “All I meant was, it’s between you and Cobra and I trust you both. Sorry, Katie. Hope I haven’t made you uncomfortable.”

Katie shook her head. “No. Maybe a little.” Skye and Lo laughed, and Alexandra took it without expression. 

“Right. You all ready?” She stood up and strode out of the diner. Katie followed her, feeling like the situation had suddenly spun out of her control and Alexandra was mad at her for something she couldn’t alter. Skye stayed behind to say goodbye to Lo, and try to sneak a look at her pages.

“Did you see anything?” Alexandra said when she rejoined them, and Skye shook her head.

“She was ready for me,” she said. They lit cigarettes without offering one to Katie, and she trailed along to the train.

Skye came home with them. The whole way back she and Alexandra leaned into each other, not quite kissing but not quite not kissing, and as soon as they were in the front door they were on top of each other, half undressed before the door to Alexandra’s room slammed shut behind them.

Katie closed her own bedroom door behind her. Cobra was on the bed staring up at the ceiling, an unopened book in hand.

“Hi,” Katie said.

Cobra nodded at the wall. “Who’s she got in there?”

“Skye,” Katie said, “we met her at the club.”

“I remember Skye. They’re gonna be in there all night.” There was an illustrative crash as something hit the wall between the rooms, and Cobra sat up. “Well, I’m not gonna stick around for the whole symphony. Let’s go somewhere.”

“I just got home,” Katie said.

“Okay,” Cobra said, and started to leave. A burst of laughter came clearly through the wall, and Katie changed her mind. 

“I’ll go,” she said, and together they hurried out the door. 

“I want to go over the bridge, is that cool?” Cobra said, and they turned West, toward the water. It took a while to get there, and they walked in silence. A stiff breeze hit them before Katie could see the river, and she shoved her hands in to the pockets of her sweatshirt, bitten by the sudden change in temperature. It was a strange wind, the kind that blew out matches and then flicked them back on again with some alchemical electricity, and she lifted her nose into it as if there were something there to sniff out. Almost as soon as they were on the walkway, the air turned vaguely nautical, and she felt somehow lighter, like she was being half swept up by the currents. The walls of the walkway rose up twenty feet into the air, and suddenly Katie grabbed the bars and scrambled up the structure until she could see clear over to the water. In a second Cobra was up next to her.

“Nice view, huh.”

“Yeah,” Katie said. They stared out over the river for a while, then finally Katie lowered herself to the ground. Cobra jumped from close to the top and landed with a thud, and they kept walking. 

“So what happened, anyway?” Cobra said, “besides Alexandra picking up pink-haired strippers, that is.”

“Blue, actually,” Katie said, and Cobra nodded.

“Mixing it up, good for her.” 

“It was weird,” Katie said. “But cool. I talked to Sharon.”

“Do you want to talk about her?”

“Sharon?”

“No, your girlfriend. I mean, you don’t have to. Just if you want to.” 

Katie thought a little. “Mostly cliches right now. Wondering how well I really knew her and stuff.” She told Cobra about the nightmares, holding back what Sophia had said about the locks on her own door. “I think there was a lot I didn’t know about her.” Cobra didn’t say anything, so she tried to explain. Birch didn’t talk about herself, or when she did it was in factual, emotionless terms. She evaded direct questions, and claimed she couldn’t remember how she liked elementary school, or whether she had aunts and uncles. And all the time, Birch lied.

She lied easily, about unimportant things. She told a bartender that her name was Caroline, told their boss she had grown up in Ohio instead of Connecticut. A man stopped her on the street to tell her she had pretty eyes, and she told him she wore colored contact lenses. Katie was taken aback the first time it happened, back in Ithaca when she introduced her new girlfriend to her French-major roommate, and Birch said she only spoke English, even though she’d read to Katie from Baudelaire all night a day before, and told her what the poems meant.

Katie listened with a sudden, sick sense of distance, confronted by something alien, something she suspected she would never come to understand. But slowly it had become a shared world– she alone knew the real answers to all the questions, there was a bubble of the universe where Birch knew everything of her, and she knew everything of Birch. A few times, when she was out alone, she tried it. A woman on the bus introduced herself, and Katie said her name was Norah. Another time she told a boy at a party that she worked at a 7-11, the overnight shift. But each time the unnecessary lies left an unpleasant taste in her mouth, and she shied away to other subjects, and ducked her head if she thought she recognized these people on the street. And quickly she gave up the lying game.

But Birch needed secrets, she gathered them up in little bits, constructing the fragments of a thousand aliases that she would never use. And every once in a while, Katie found herself wondering, who is this person, and what is she lying about to me?

Katie stopped talking. Cobra was listening, watching her talk with a little too much intensity, and she felt suddenly like she had given too much away, shared too much of something that should have belonged only to her and Birch.  

But something was shaking the bridge.

They weren’t quite halfway across, to the point where the walkway split in two, and the whole structure was bouncing heavily with an overwhelming noise.

Katie looked down nervously.

“It’s just the train,” Cobra said, but it wasn’t the train, it wasn’t coming from far away, it was coming from directly beneath them, and the rumbling sounded like a deep, deep voice. Katie looked around. There was no one else on the bridge that she could see, no bikes coming up behind them and no one walking up the other way, just the metal railways and a block of concrete shaped like a small building, though it didn’t seem to Katie to have any entrances. They were alone, the air was still but the bridge was swaying like a ship caught up in a storm. Katie grabbed Cobra’s arm and they clung together against the ballast, holding to the metal. Then suddenly it all fell still, and great shape rose up before them, blocking the path.

“Who goes there?” it bellowed, and brought its face forward into the light.

It was a creature made of stone, hominoid, or at least bipedal with unclear features, like it had been eroding for centuries. It stood heads above them, and it seemed to be stooping below its full height, and Katie saw as she stared up at it that it was made not stone but concrete, and covered in graffiti letters, bright, worn bubble letters incomprehensible to anyone but their original authors, covered over time and again by new artists. It looked like it really might have sprung out from the square hut, and Katie glanced past it to see a huge, indistinct chunk missing from the structure.

“What the fuck?” Cobra said.

“Who disturbs this bridge?” the creature snarled, and they shrank back together, until Katie recovered her breath and stepped forward.

“I’m Katie and this is Cobra, who are you?”

“I am the Guardian of this path. Why do you seek to cross?”

“Why not?” Katie said, and the Guardian frowned.

“That’s not a very good answer.”

“So can we cross?” Cobra had stepped up beside her again, staring up at the thing, and it shifted back and forth on its massive feet, considering.

“I don’t think so. I don’t like the look of you.”

“Wait a second, what’s that supposed to mean?” Katie demanded, and the Guardian opened its mouth once, baring wide, flat teeth, and paused a second.

“Nothing. I just don’t like you.”

“Well, why not?” Katie said, glancing at Cobra, who was standing with crossed arms and planted feet, unflinching.

“Well, you come here like you own the place, trying to cross without even asking.”

“It’s a public bridge,” Cobra said, “if anything, you’re squatting. We could call 311.”

“Shut up,” the Guardian said at last. “If you want to cross you have to answer three questions, that’s how it works. If you are truthful, you may pass.”

“And if not?” Katie said, and this time the Guardian smiled widely.

“Then I get to eat you up, and crack your bones for soup.”

“Fair enough,” Katie said, and Cobra nudged her.

“No, it’s not!”

 

“Shh, it’s how these things work,” Katie whispered, and they squared up to face the questions. The Guardian unbent to its full height, and its head rose up against the clean dark sky.

“What are your true names?”

“Katherine Ann Jackson,” Katie said, and with a panicked flinch wondered if she had some other, secret name she didn’t know about. But the Guardian merely frowned and nodded, and turned its attention to Cobra. 

“Cobra Sage Blackthorn,” Cobra said, and glanced sideways at Katie. “My mom was a hippie, okay?” But the Guardian was on to the next question.

“Are you male or female?”

“Female,” Katie said, and waited. Cobra considered for a long moment before meeting the Guardian’s eyes.

“No,” Cobra said, and Katie thought she heard the Guardian chuckle.

“Do you prefer cats or dogs?”

“Cats,” Cobra answered immediately, and glanced at Katie with a look of relief. She smiled back.

And inexplicably, she lied.

“Cats,” she echoed, the word out of her mouth before she realized what it was. Cobra stood calm next to her, not aware of what had just happened, and the Guardian was staring down at them with a look of puzzlement, and, she thought, mild interest.

Katie grabbed Cobra’s arm. “Run,” she said. 

“What?” 

“RUN!”

They ran. Back down the walkway to Brooklyn as the structure swayed and bounced beneath them; the ground beneath their feet began to loosen and crack, Katie felt herself tripping and scrambling as if she might be already falling through to the water below but she ran on, not looking back to see if the Guardian was following behind. They reached the end and kept running until they were onto solid ground and across two streets. Then Katie stopped and turned around. 

The bridge was solid, unmoving. She could vaguely see the shape of the little building near the top, undamaged as if nothing had happened.

“What the fuck just happened?” Cobra came up beside her, squinting to see the unchanged structure. 

“I lied,” Katie said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It just sort of came out. I’m sorry.” She looked up anxiously, but Cobra was stoic.

“It’s okay, I didn’t really want to cross. I don’t know how we would have gotten back over if we did.”

“Oh yeah,” Katie said. “So, uh, what do you want to do now?”

Cobra shrugged. “Head home, I guess, or at least back that way. I think there’s a show in Bed Stuy that’s still going on.”

“I think I’m gonna take the train,” Katie said.

“Cool.” Cobra paused a moment. “Um, does stuff like that happen to you a lot?”

Katie nodded. “Lately it does. Since I started looking for Birch.”

“Huh,” Cobra said. “Let me know if I can help. I mean, I thought we were gonna die, but that was kind of interesting.”

They parted ways, and when she was sure she was out of sight, Katie fell back against a wall and crouched down on the ground, her heart still pounding. She wasn’t scared– they were well off the bridge, and she hadn’t really been fully convinced the troll would actually have eaten them; it had the teeth of an herbivore, and it hadn’t really chased them when they ran. But there had been no witnesses to the strange encounters with the dead, no one watching when the Jester tried to choke her, or when Sharon had spoken to her inside her head. She might still be crazy, but Cobra had seen the troll, Cobra had answered its questions, and Cobra had joined her as they ran for their lives. It was real.

After a while she nodded to herself, got to her feet, and jogged to the train.

It was already on the platform when she got there. She hopped over the turnstile, and caught the train just as the doors were sliding shut, with the station agent yelling at her from his booth. She pried her way in and collapsed on an empty seat, and closed her eyes to everything around her until at length she heard the announcer’s voice.

“This is the last stop on this train. Everyone please leave the train. Thank you for riding MTA’s New York City Transit.” She sat up. Wrong way, she’d got on going the wrong way and now she had to ride all the way back. She went out onto the platform. It was the 8th Avenue station, with tiny round brass statues that wielded hammers and saws bigger than they were, pushed giant subway tokens along the floor, and tried to sneak under the turnstile. It was her favorite station, and the first time she’d been there she spent almost an hour walking around and taking pictures of them.

“Ladies and Gentlemen. The next Brooklyn-bound L train will depart in approximately thirty-five minutes…” 

The place was almost empty; a homeless woman asleep on the only bench, a couple of boys kissing under the stairs, a young man with a guitar playing a Beatles medley with the lyrics slightly wrong. She sat down on the ground and leaned against a pillar, and was beginning to drift off to the strains of “Paperback Writer” when a sudden, shrill scream reached her ears. She glanced around quickly, but the few people in sight were unruffled– no one seemed even to have heard.

“Help! Somebody, HELP!!!” 

Down.

Katie looked to the sound and saw one of the small brass statues struggling on the floor by the sewer opening, caught in the jaws of a large brass alligator.

“Miss! Miss! HELP!” The statue cried out again, and Katie rushed forward, jumped over the bars, grabbed its arms and pulled. The alligator yanked back, and she let go of the small person, hauled back and stomped on the alligator’s head. It dropped its prey with a strange metallic yelp, and slunk back underground, the manhole cover slamming loudly behind it.

“Are you okay?” Katie cried, rushing to help the little creature up.

It nodded. “I’m okay.” Its face was smooth and blank like the figures had been when Katie first saw them inanimate, but when it spoke features molded themselves out of the pliant metal, rising and falling with uncanny expressions that were, nonetheless, absurdly cute. It held out a tiny hand and Katie shook it. 

“Cedric,” it said-he said– “Welder.” 

“Katie,” she said, “um, Painter,” and he made a little bow.

As he straightened, she saw that his midsection had been pierced and dented out of shape by the alligator’s teeth, though he didn’t seem to be in pain. He saw her looking, and smiled.

“Don’t worry, Katie-Painter, Rosie-Striker can put me back in shape.”

“Oh,” Katie said, “if you’re sure.”

Cedric-Welder nodded, and gestured out around them. Katie looked up for the first time and saw that a multitude of the small brass creatures had crowded around them, watching with an air of concern. A number were hanging off the stairway railing, their feet dangling in the air, and still more were clambering up from the tracks carrying tools. 

“It’s okay!” Cedric-Welder called out. “This is Katie-Painter!’ 

Katie waved at them with the familiar, awkward feeling of being gigantic and ungainly, though here and now it seemed rather more justified. Two tiny women wearing heavy workers’ aprons and carrying a large hammer between them came forward. 

“Hello, Katie-Painter,” one said, “I am Rosie-Striker.”

“Susan-Striker,” said her partner in striking.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Katie said. 

“We owe you thanks, you saved one of our own,” Rosie-Striker said, “You are always welcome among the Wee Yeomen of 8th Avenue.”

“Wee Yeomen?” Katie-Painter repeated with a smile, and Rosie-Striker nodded gravely. 

“Yes. I hope someday we may be able to repay the favor.”

There was a shaking and a screeching from the tunnel– the train had arrived. 

“Goodbye,” Katie said, and they replied in a chorus of tiny brass voices, and when she looked back through the window as the train door closed behind her, they were back in their original places, frozen in time.

 

Birch gazes out the window, staring at the stars between the spaces in the railroad. He is late, and with every moment that passes, she hopes a little more that this time, this night, he might be gone.

The night he came for her, she had been ready. She was sitting in bed, reading, drinking tea and waiting for Katie to come home, and from outside the window, music drifted up. It was the tinkling sound of an ice cream truck, tinny bells cranking out a melody that was almost familiar. She went to the window and looked down, saw the truck parked there in front of her house, and went down as if compelled. 

The truck window was too high for her to see in, and she raised her face up and stood on tiptoe as he came, his face shadowed by a dark baseball cap.

“What would you like?” He said, and she knew his voice at once, it hit her like a  physical pain deep down inside her chest, but it couldn’t be him, he’d been dead for years, and so she opened her mouth and whispered:

“Vanilla, please. With rainbow sprinkles.” She heard a machine creak to life, and in a moment he held it out to her, bright with color. 

She lifted it to her lips, and before she could swallow the street fell away around them– he was still there, but the truck was gone, the pavement had turned to loose dirt, and between them was a deep, open hole in the ground. She fell backward, dropping the ice cream cone in the dirt and spitting until her mouth ran dry.

“Too late,” he said, “it’s too late.”

“I didn’t eat it,” she cried out, and his laugh was warm and bright.

“You ate enough,” he said, “sin eater, you ate enough.” And then his voice dropped below a whisper, so low it might just have been the wind and the rumble of cars on the highway, but he said to her “you knew,” and she nodded. 

He held out a hand and she took it, and stepped over the open grave.

Footsteps on the stairs. He is here. Birch feels her eyes well up, and she slaps her face as hard as she can; her stomach is hot and empty, and her limbs are shaking. He is in the hallway; Birch hears the door to the bathroom open and close, the water running in fits and starts. Suddenly, unthinking, she takes up the book beside her and hurls it at the window as hard as she can, beating at the glass till it shatters. She knocks out the shards of glass, knowing he is almost here, would be here in a second. She grasps the windowsill and climbs out, somehow finding footholds in the bricks, adrenaline filling her up, taking her over, guiding her down. Too many feet above the ground she loses her grip and tumbles down to the sidewalk, scraped and bruised and bleeding, but intact.

Not looking back, Birch scrambled to her feet, and took off running into the night.