Ghosting

by Tash Skilton

  MILES

  “What’s the matter?” I ask, concerned. I’ve seen that look of panic in Zoey’s eyes a few times now and I have to admit I like it less and less every time.

  She swallows. “I have to get to Brooklyn.”

  “Your emergency is . . . Brooklyn?”

  She thrusts an envelope at me. “I have to get here. ASAP.”

  I read the return address. It just says:

  Hotel the

  Gowanus

  Brooklyn

  “I don’t know where that is and it’s unGoogleable!” She taps at the name of the hotel and . . . I can see where she might have a problem. “Why would anyone do that with a business name?!”

  Based on the non-address address and the minimalist but also graphic-designed-within-an-inch-of-its-life aesthetic of the gift certificates inside, I have an idea why. “Ah. A hotel so hip, even the Internet can’t find it,” I explain. There, of course, isn’t a phone number or e-mail address either, just a social media handle. “Have you tried the social channels?”

  “No address there either. And, um . . . it’s actually time sensitive I get there. Like, right now?”

  “Emergency massage?” I ask her, peeking at the gift certificates inside the envelope.

  “More like emergency Mary Clarkson sent a bag of weed to my name there and I really don’t need an arrest record right now on top of everything else,” she says.

  I feel a little lightheaded at the mention of Mary’s name again but I know that’s not why I say what I say next. A friend needs my help; it’s that simple. “Okay, let’s go then.”

  Except it’s not that simple because as soon as we exit the apartment building, we are greeted by a mob scene. It feels like at least half of New York City has descended upon Avenue A, a lot of them dressed in either yellow or orange. My first thoughts are some sort of flash mob stunt or maybe they’re filming an episode of Black Mirror. But then I see one of the girls in a yellow shirt up close. She’s holding a tray and her T-shirt reads “Feeling Gouda?” above a logo for the restaurant Cheese.

  “Excuse me.” I grab her attention. “But what’s going on here?”

  “It’s National Cheese Day!” she yells at me over the noise of the crowd and the DJ who’s spinning what I’m pretty sure is a song by the String Cheese Incident.

  “Er, okay,” I say. Next to me, I can feel Zoey tense up and I remember her aversion to crowds.

  “Brie?” the girl in the T-shirt says to me as she holds out her tray.

  “No, thanks,” I respond immediately and then reach out to take Zoey’s hand. I look for a way around the million people who seem to have descended onto our street to score free cheese (I mean, I can’t exactly blame them), until I think I’ve found a way to tunnel us out of here.

  We duck under platters of Camembert and Havarti, limbo in between plastic cups of prosecco, and practically have to army crawl our way out from under a group of college guys who have apparently invented a new game that looks a lot like cheese rind Frisbee.

  By the time we make it to the subway station, the DJ has switched over to playing the Beatles’ “Getting Better,” only he’s getting on the mic and screaming “cheddar” instead of “better” at every juncture. We’re blocks away from the fair at this point, but can still hear every word.

  Zoey is looking over at me accusingly and I can almost hear the anti–New York tirade forming in her head.

  “It’s . . . not our best look. I’ll give you that,” I say.

  She gives a small laugh, before she turns forlornly to look down the subway stairs.

  “Do you want to take a Lyft or something?” I ask, looking back at the throngs behind us, and the farmer’s market ahead. We’d have to walk at least a few blocks to get to someplace a car could actually drive through.

  She looks down at our joined hands. “No,” she finally says. “I think I want to try to do this.”

  She takes her hand back to walk down the stairs in front of me. We’re on the platform before she speaks again. “I wasn’t always like this, you know. Scared of all the noise, and crowds, and being underground.” She’s staring across the tracks at an advertisement but her voice seems more intimate than I’ve ever heard it.

  “What happened?” I ask softly.

  “I was ten. In Indonesia with my parents. It was post Peace Corps, but before the travel blog. I think somewhere in their foodie period. This particular afternoon, they were trying to find the best oxtail soup in Sumatra, and I was tired and sunburned and just wanted to stay behind and finish reading one of the Baby-Sitters Club books I’d brought with me. I had just settled in under a cozy blanket fort when there was an earthquake.” She takes in a shaky breath.

  “No,” I whisper.

  “I just remember my book almost jumping out of my hand and I couldn’t figure out what was happening. I went to grab it and then . . . part of the ceiling collapsed, and I was trapped between some fallen plaster and the bed. It felt like I was there for hours, screaming for nobody because I knew my mom and dad were too far away to hear me. It was probably twenty minutes, half an hour at most before the hotel staff found me and got me out. But it just . . . stayed with me. The dark, the rumbling, the feeling of everything closing in on me, pressing in on my skin, and, worst of all, that dread that no one was ever, ever going to find me. . . .” She goes quiet as we hear the rumble of the F train in the distance. And for the first time, I hear it a little differently. The screech, the vibrations, an unseen something hurtling through space toward us. It is terrifying.

  The train stops in front of us and the doors open. I don’t move. I let her decide whether she wants to get on. She hesitates only a second before she steps in and gratefully sighs at the smattering of empty orange and yellow seats surrounding us. Compared to the madness we just left outside, it’s practically meditative down here. Except now I know that’s not true for her.

  She sits down and I sit down next to her. She catches our reflection in the window across from us and then gives a little laugh. “Don’t look so worried,” she says at my expression, turning to face me, and reaching over to physically smooth my eyebrows up. “I was okay. And then my nana came to the rescue for real and took me back to sunny, wide-open Los Angeles and I honestly never thought much of it again until I moved here. I really wasn’t expecting New York to trigger all of that, especially since the threat of actual earthquakes in LA never did. But I guess something about the combination of sensations here just . . . has.”

  I nod. “I mean, looking at it from that perspective, it makes sense. And I’m sorry if I was ever a jerk about it.”

  “What are you talking about? You fit in perfectly with my instantaneous decision to hate New York. I couldn’t have asked for a better archetype.” She smirks at me. “Anyway, I have to admit that my chill attitude in Cali might have also had something to do with the readily accessible weed that blessed my life.”

  “Ah,” I say. “So now it’s Mary to the rescue?”

  “She may be well-intentioned but it’s more like interference than rescue. That’s sort of her MO.” She looks down at the envelope in her hand. “By the way, do you have any idea how to get here?”

  “I have a general idea of where to go,” I say. “And I know someone in the neighborhood who should be able to help us figure it out. Good news is, no transfers. We just have to take this train for a while.”

  “Great,” she says as she leans back and closes her eyes. “Just wake me up when it’s all over, but only if we’ve managed to elude jail. Otherwise, I’d rather be unconscious.”

  She keeps her eyes closed for the rest of the ride and I can’t help but sneak glances over at her from time to time. If I was living in my own handbook, I’d consider her confession to me a Future Honesty. How many people does she ever tell about that earthquake? I’d bet it isn’t many.

  I nudge her gently when we get to Smith and Ninth, and we exit the subway into the bustling street filled with shoppers and brunchers.
I walk a few storefronts down before entering Gus’s Leather Emporium and Pub. Half the store is manned by an ancient cobbler who looks like he was transplanted straight from 1900s Italy to grumpily sit in front of his rack of high-end and extremely shiny shoes, wallets, and purses. The other is manned by a guy with a pointed, chest-length goatee and a beanie. They are both named Gus (Sr. and the III), but it’s the younger one who’s my friend.

  “Miles! Long time no see, bud. How’s it going? Who’s this?” He turns eagerly to Zoey.

  “Hey, Gus. This is Zoey.” I like Gus, but his proclivity for shooting the shit is not going to work to my advantage at this moment. “I wish we could stay for a drink, but we have a sort of emergency. Do you have any idea where this place is?” I show him the envelope.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says, nodding. “It’s on Third Av and Third Street. Where that artisanal mayo shop used to be.”

  “Artisanal . . . mayo?” Zoey asks.

  “Yeah, real shame they had to close that down,” Gus says with a shake of his head. “It was practically an institution.”

  “Right . . .” Zoey says.

  “Thanks, Gus,” I say.

  “You sure you can’t stay for a drink?” Gus asks. “We have six new IPAs on tap this week.”

  “Some other time,” I say, and I immediately make a mental note that I should tell Jude about this bar.

  “How far away is that?” Zoey asks as we leave and start making our way down Smith.

  “About six blocks this way and three avenues that way.” I point.

  “Well, aren’t you a runner?” she asks. “Let’s go!” And she takes off sprinting down the street, surprising me as she expertly avoids shoppers, scooters, and strollers. It takes me a moment before I take off after her.

  She’s faster than I expected. “Are you secretly a runner or are you just extra motivated by weed?”

  She laughs. “The latter. Also, I seem to be extra, extra motivated by beating you, so . . .” She puts on a burst of speed just as the light changes, leaving me in the dust.

  I laugh. It wouldn’t be too hard to catch up to her, if I really wanted, but it’s somehow more fun this way. Chasing her.

  She’s followed my directions until she’s ended up on Third and Third. I see her jogging in place in front of a large, slate gray building that appears to have no door, and no signs, but does have seven different hot pink spotlights that illuminate seemingly random parts of the slate.

  I’d bet my last pair of boat shoes that this is Hotel The. And judging by the way Zoey is staring incredulously at it, I think she’s figured it out too.

  “The unGoogleable hotel also has no door. This must be it,” she says when I reach her.

  “Yup,” I say as I look up at the pink spotlights. Are they some kind of Morse code that points to an entrance? I try to see if I can decipher it, and then try to remember if I ever actually knew Morse code.

  “Ah! A lead!” Zoey, on the other hand, has spotted a black-clad gentleman who has just put out a cigarette and seems to be disappearing around the eastern corner of the building. We follow him quietly, like we’re spies tailing our mark, but by the time we get to the corner ourselves, he seems to have disappeared into the ether.

  “Now what?” I say.

  “There!” Zoey points, and I see that a cellar door is closing, blending into the alleyway again as soon as it’s shut. She walks over to it and stares down at it. “But this has to be a service door . . . right?”

  I look down, and see one more neon pink dot of light shining right at the center of the almost invisible door. “Er . . . no. I bet this is the entrance.” I reach down and pull the metal handle open and we are greeted by a set of slate-gray stairs that go down into a pink-lit hallway. “Normally, I would say ‘after you,’ but I’m actually not sure whether it’s chivalrous to send you down to your hipster death first.”

  Zoey laughs. “You know what? I’m feeling extra brave today. I’ve got this.” She goes down the stairs and I follow her. We come to another black door and open it, relieved that we are, undoubtedly, in a hotel lobby. As long as we accept the fact that the interior designer of said hotel must have created it after an acid trip and an Escheresque fever dream.

  Almost all of the furniture and décor is in shades of black, white, or gray, including the enormous chess set that apparently also serves as seating for the lobby bar. (I don’t know how comfortable it can possibly be to perch oneself atop a rook, but the girl wearing a Mister Rogers cardigan as a dress is making it look shockingly easy.) The neon pink lighting theme continues inside, where it is joined by bursts of blue and green that sporadically appear on the tiled gray wall behind the concierge desk. I’m sure it’s meant to look mysterious and cool, but it honestly reminds me of nothing so much as a sweaty rock climbing wall.

  “Welcome,” murmurs a tall twenty-something dude in all black, including his tiny round sunglasses. “How may I serve you today?”

  “Hotel The, right?” Zoey says, and I can tell she’s considering telling him about how ridiculously hard it was to find the place.

  “It’s actually Hotel the, not The. Lowercase t.” He smiles politely.

  She stares at him. “I’m speaking it. How can you tell what case I’m speaking?”

  “I can tell,” he says, the smile still in place.

  “Right, okay,” I take over, thinking maybe Zoey has forgotten the urgency of our mission now that she’s faced with the overwhelming, totally understandable urge to punch out the concierge of Hotel the, lowercase t. Although, come to think of it, I feel like no one in this place would bat an eye if Mary had sent over a Trojan horse packed with weed. “So, this is Zoey Abot. I believe she has a reservation here. And a package waiting for her.”

  “Let me check,” the concierge says and he starts tapping at his desk, which has a built-in black laminated keyboard. There are no letters on the keys.

  “Ah, yes. Wonderful. One of our canal-view rooms.”

  I nearly choke on the air I was breathing. “As in . . . the Gowanus Canal?” Aka Brooklyn’s wretched hive of scum and body bags? Do people pay extra to overlook that?

  “Of course. I see you have two massages booked for tomorrow morning. Wonderful. And here . . .” He presses a button and a slot opens somewhere near his feet. He extracts a small white box tied with red bakery thread. “This must be the package.”

  “Yes! Thank you!” Zoey snatches the box so fast, I half expect it to burst open and comically spill dime bags everywhere. But it stays intact.

  “May I have your ID and your phone?” the concierge asks. Zoey hands them both over. He taps her phone on a device and hands it back. “You’re in room 922. Just tap your phone to the door to unlock it.” He says this smugly, as if he’s expecting us to ooh and aah at the hotel’s fancy tech.

  “Like when I pay in Walgreen’s?” I ask innocently, and am gratified when I see the flash of irritation in his eyes.

  “The elevator is that way,” he says brusquely. “Enjoy your stay.”

  Zoey hugs the box to her and we step away from the concierge and go around a corner to where a shockingly normal elevator is. I was half expecting to be sent up in a wicker dumbwaiter.

  “Wow, this place is . . . something.” I’m actually feeling sorry I won’t get to go up to Zoey’s room and experience the rest of this bizarro world with her.

  “That’s one word for it,” Zoey says, as she takes out one of the massage gift certificates from the envelope. “Here. This is for you. For all your help.”

  “It was nothing. You don’t have to do that,” I say.

  She laughs. “Am I supposed to get two massages at once? I think it was always meant for you, actually. She wanted you to have it.”

  “She . . . Mary she?” I can hear my own voice squeak at her name.

  “Yes, Mary.” Zoey rolls her eyes. “Maybe when you’re getting your massage you can pretend it’s from her, from her.”

  “No, it’s not that . . . just, why w
ould she want me to have it?”

  I can see Zoey blush a little, but she waves it away. “Who can ever really know why Mary does what she does? But anyway . . . thanks. For bringing me all the way here.” She holds the box up. “Looks like I’ll live to be on the outside for another day.”

  I point to the box. “Does it reek?”

  She sniffs it. “Hmmm . . . not really. Actually it smells like . . .” She peeks inside. “Sugar. Damn it, Mary! It’s brownies.”

  “Brownies?”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure they’re pot brownies.” She sniffs inside the box. “They definitely are. But I wouldn’t have thought it was that urgent if I didn’t think there was an enormous lump of marijuana just sitting here!”

  I laugh. “You know what, I’m glad you did. This was fun.”

  She smiles at me. “Yeah. It was.” She opens the box up and holds it out to me. “And one of these for your troubles?”

  I look at the tempting little squares. “Why not?” I take one and bite into it. “Wow, these are good,” I say in surprise. “A little herbal but almost . . . I don’t know. Like it could be a fancy mint flavor or something. Nothing like the atrocities my roommate used to make for parties back in college.”

  “Well, we are refined potheads, Mary and I.” Zoey takes one too.

  I can’t help but realize that she hasn’t called down the elevator yet so we’re both just standing there, chewing, the scent of chocolate hanging between us.

  I’m hit with this overwhelming urge to kiss her, to see if she tastes different from me even though we’re eating the same thing. Something tells me she does. And the way she’s looking at me, I wonder if she would want me to.

  Then she reaches out and touches my bare arm and keeps her hand there as she says to me, softly, “Thanks for making this fun for me today.”

  I look down at her arm. It doesn’t move. And then I look up at her face, at the tiny bit of chocolate stuck in the corner of her lips. Our kiss at the café was sugar-tinged, too, as though our kisses make up for the way we scrape and fume at each other. If I kiss her right now, it could be a continuation of that sweetness, of being good to each other. I want to show her we can be good to each other—that I can be good to her.