We Are Here

by Michael Marshall

  Then she slipped inside.

  The interior was lined on three sides by display units filled with tray cases, turned into a U shape by a central island, within which a fat-faced man in an expensive suit prowled. The walls were mirrored to help ricochet light around the space and make the diamonds and other precious stones sparkle, but that was all to the good. Lots of reflections made it harder for people to see, confusing their sense of space.

  At the back of the store the two men in homburgs were involved in a voluble price negotiation with another employee, who was listening with the stoic expression of someone who’d been down this road many times and generally ended up receiving a price very close to what he’d originally had in mind. Lizzie drifted past and saw the two men were buying rings in quantity—plain, functional things that would not suit her purpose.

  She paused by a pair of German tourists (gawking at thick gold bracelets, also wholly inappropriate), before glancing over the shoulders of a group at the central island: three whip-thin English women giving serious consideration to a tray that Lizzie could immediately tell was far more interesting. It held five pieces of silver jewelry in arts-and-crafts style, each given plenty of space on a cushion to showcase their individuality—and to broadcast the message that they weren’t going to be cheap. They looked good. They looked right.

  One of them in particular, the brooch in the middle, would be perfect.

  The fat-faced man was being attentive, having judged the ladies weren’t just killing time but could have their interest parleyed up into acquisition. He unlocked the unit and brought the tray up onto the counter.

  The women bent at the waist to inspect the treasures a little closer. Lizzie felt her insides start to churn.

  It felt like being a teenager again, and not in a good way. It felt dirty. She kept moving around the U shape. She knew that when she got to the other side she should keep walking, go back out into the world and forget the idea. But she knew also that you go to your god or goddess with offerings, and that she’d been locked on this course from the moment she’d seen Billy’s Bloom, and probably before. He wasn’t the first she’d seen burn out, but for some reason it had hit her much, much harder.

  If she walked out now, what came next? Would her heart heal for the hundredth time, or would it be forever suspended in a moment of blackness?

  She ground to a halt, feeling out of practice and drained of hope, fully lost.

  One of the men in homburgs turned around.

  His colleague was still haggling vigorously, but this man had become distracted, as if he’d smelled something unexpected. He peered peevishly around the store, face creasing into a frown.

  Lizzie realized she had to be quick. Sometimes people felt something. You could never predict who, and once they’d done so the atmosphere would change and it would be harder.

  The need for speed made the decision for her. She waited until the man had turned back to reengage with the negotiations, and then she coughed.

  Two of the English women glanced up—distractedly, minds still on the goodies on the counter. Their eyes skated across the apparently empty space behind them, unable to see Lizzie, and then returned to the matter at hand—the display cushion.

  Lizzie moved decisively toward the window. This was constructed of a pair of sliding panels of glass on runners, locked in the middle, protecting the goods in the window from people inside the store.

  She placed her hands on the left pane of glass, widely spread apart. The head is the hardest part of your body. It’s where all the thinking is. That makes it tough. Fragile, too, of course, the place where all the real and lasting pain is born, and stays—but hard enough for her purposes in the physical world.

  Lizzie summoned all her concentration, and smashed her forehead into the glass.

  It wasn’t anything like the impact Maj or another Fingerman could have achieved, but it was enough. The glass cracked loudly, splintering diagonally across the large pane.

  Everyone in the store heard it. The Germans took a defensive step backward. Two of the English ladies did the same, pulling the third—who was still obliviously inspecting jewelry—with them.

  The store owner started bellowing in a foreign language, gesturing at the underling in back to come and do something about the situation. He came hurrying, leaving the men in homburgs wide-eyed.

  The top half of the window slowly tilted forward, then fell to the ground with a tremendous splintering crash. There was screaming and running.

  Lizzie swept past the velvet cushion with her hand out, weaved through the chaos, and ran from the store.

  When she got back onto Fifth Avenue she slowed, however, knowing she had to go back. This was a betrayal of everything she’d come to believe, turning the clock back too far and too hard and in a way that could only lead to bad things.

  But without it …

  As she hesitated, she saw a couple coming up the street. Mid-twenties, hand in hand, the man wearing a baby papoose. The child inside it could only be weeks old. The couple looked exhausted but so happy, adrift on the bleary seas of early parenthood, adapting to the changes inaugurated by this new phase in their lives.

  Lizzie felt her heart stiffen. She’d been born—as they all had—before their friends had any conception of the process of conception. They were a sterile race. Just one more thing that none of them would ever have.

  Unaware that she’d come to a standstill—and that a man in his early thirties and a girl of six had caught split-second glimpses of her, this tall woman wearing a red velvet dress under a black coat, and that trying to discuss the Ghost Lady of Fifth Avenue would earn the child a telling off for making up stories and bring the man a step closer to finally being diagnosed schizophrenic—Lizzie decided the time for sinning had come. It’s how we broke out of the cozy prison of the Garden of Eden, after all. Father Jeffers wouldn’t approve, but then he didn’t really understand anything except dead composers, and death is too safe a haven for those who want to live.

  Lizzie clasped the brooch tightly in her hand, where passersby would hopefully not see it, and started to walk quickly down the street. She felt bad. She felt scared. She felt excited.

  It was time to go home.

  Chapter 54

  When Kristina finally answered her phone I told her to meet me at the apartment but didn’t go into detail. It took her a long time to get home and I decided in the meantime to get out of the place and wait on the street. With Reinhart at large, I realized it wouldn’t be smart to hang around right outside and so I went forty yards up the sidewalk and sat in a shadowed doorway for nearly three hours and smoked and drank a series of coffees from the deli and watched leaves wandering along the street and didn’t try too hard to get everything to line up in my mind. My body and head still hurt, but it was settling into a set of sturdy aches now, rather than urgent yelps. My brain felt clear. I wanted it to stay that way because it was evident my life was changing for good today. You seldom get warnings so obvious, and I figured I’d better be ready for what came next with an open mind.

  Kristina eventually came wandering down the street. I whistled and she spotted me in the doorway and came over.

  She looked down at me in silence, then held out her hand. I passed her a cigarette. Kristina smokes only about once a month, and it’s always a portent of storm clouds.

  “So what happened with you and Lizzie?”

  She sat on the step next to me and took a light. “How do you know something happened?”

  “The way you look, plus the fact that you’ve been gone a very long time and wouldn’t answer the phone. This isn’t a time for holding back, Kris.”

  “I know.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She showed me some things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  She shrugged. “What her life is like. What all their lives are like.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “Lizzie’s adamant she’s not dead. I
believe her. I don’t get why ghosts would attach to other people the way she is with Catherine. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Make sense? You realize we’re sitting discussing whether someone we’ve both spoken to is dead? So, what—are we back to them being imaginary friends?”

  “I don’t know, John. That’s what Lizzie told me. I don’t see why she’d lie.”

  “Did you ever have one? When you were a kid?”

  “An imaginary friend? No. At least not that I remember.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “But … I guess that’s their whole point.”

  “What happened back at the church, with Billy?”

  Now it was my turn to shrug. “I have no idea.”

  “Didn’t you see?”

  “I saw. I just don’t know what I saw, in that I have no way of explaining or understanding it.”

  I described what had happened, up to the point where coffee and bits of Danish started falling through Billy’s body and splatting on the floor. After I’d left the church I’d stood on the street for a few moments. The guy/ghost/friend/whatever called Maj walked away without saying another word. His head was down. He looked like a person who had a mission in mind.

  Kris listened and was silent for a while. “There’s only two options here, John. Either we’re screwed up in the head or this stuff is real—whatever the explanation is. Sitting with cold sun shining down on us, the first option seems more credible, maybe, but it’s not. You know that. If it were just me, or just you, that’d be one thing. But we’ve both seen these people, spoken to them.”

  “How did the conversation with Lizzie end?”

  Kris looked uncomfortable. “She’s unhappy.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything. She has a friend. Had one, anyway. That relationship is more important to her than anything else in the world—even more than the one with Maj. Maj managed to make contact with his friend. They’ve spoken, even hung out for a few hours. Lizzie’s glad for him, but it’s brought home how unhappy she is about her own life.”

  “So?”

  “What?”

  “So what did you tell her?”

  “That maybe she needed to do something about it.”

  “Kristina, I don’t think we want to start interfering in these people’s lives.”

  “I wasn’t interfering.”

  “Okay, bad word. I meant, we understand nowhere near enough about their world to offer advice.”

  “She’s my friend, John.”

  “Friend? How many times have you even met her?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Friend’s a big word, Kris.”

  “It’s big because it’s a tiny step and the tiny steps are the hardest to understand. The first time you came into the bar in Black Ridge I knew we could be friends—whatever else might happen. Didn’t you?”

  I thought about it. “Yes.”

  “That’s not shared time. That’s not interests in common or dating agency profiling. That’s something that passes through the air in an instant, that comes out of people’s minds and is real and you have to say yes to.”

  “I see where you’re going, but I don’t think it’s enough to explain Lizzie, or Maj.”

  “I’m not trying to explain them,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “I don’t have to. We’ve had conversations with these people. They exist. We’re out the other side of having to explain how or why. The question is what we do. That’s what I’ve been trying to work out. I left Lizzie hours ago and I still don’t have an answer. I’ve been alternating between thinking I’m crazy and knowing I’m not. It doesn’t make much difference. I still don’t know what to do.”

  She was right. The problem of how something works is of little importance outside laboratories. The question is what happens next.

  “I still think it’s a mistake to get between Lizzie and Catherine,” I said. “Other people’s relationships are written in a different language, especially when they’re broken.”

  “You’re right,” she said reluctantly. “Next time I see her I’ll back off on the idea.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, the next thing—”

  I was interrupted by someone cheerfully shouting my name, and started—suddenly realizing how wrapped up I’d been and that Reinhart could have come strolling up and shot me in the head before I’d known what was happening. Thankfully, it was only Lydia heading down the road.

  “Hey, Lyds,” I said, standing painfully and trying not to sound tense. “How are you?”

  “Well, you know,” she said thoughtfully, “I’ve been better. But, matter of fact, I’ve been worse.”

  She looked okay. Certainly better than she had when I’d seen her the night before. “That’s good.”

  “You look like shit, though.”

  “Thanks,” I said, as she leaned forward to peer at my face. “I had a disagreement with someone.”

  “They kicked your ass, by the look of it.”

  “It may not be over yet.”

  “Wasn’t Krissie here, was it?”

  “No.”

  She cackled merrily for a moment. “I talked to him,” she said, for a moment making me think she’d somehow run in to Reinhart. “Thanks for that.”

  “Frankie? He’s back?”

  “No. Don’t know where that asshole’s got to, and today I don’t care. Fuck him. I mean, I went and talked to the other guy. This morning. That priest.”

  Kristina was looking question marks at me. “I gave Lyds his address last night,” I muttered. “This was before I knew Jeffers believed in ghosts.”

  Lydia laughed, completely normally, a sound I’d never heard from her before. “He really does, doesn’t he? Good listener, though. I went around thinking I didn’t know why I was wasting my time, but I’d been feeling so shitty in my soul lately maybe it was time to try anything. Next thing I know I’m telling him about Frankie and all manner of crap, and he’s kind of like you are about it. He listens. He heard me out and went with it, and I only had to explain to him about three times that Frankie ain’t dead. Didn’t ask me to pray with him or nothing either. Gave me a pastry, too.”

  “That’s great,” Kristina said thoughtfully. I could see her trying to make something of this, to work out whether Lyds maybe wasn’t crazy after all, and if for all these years she’d been trying to make contact with something that actually existed; if perhaps this was a case of a real person trying to reconnect with a friend, one who’d decided he didn’t want to play ball.

  “Jeffers seems like a good guy,” I said, to forestall this. I felt Lydia’s world was complicated enough and that if an hour of being taken seriously had made a difference then there was no need to get it tangled up with other stuff.

  Lyds sniffed, losing interest, and wandered off down the street. “You put that ugly mug of yours indoors,” she yelled back as a parting shot. “You’re going to scare people looking like that.”

  “You need to come upstairs now,” I told Kristina, when Lydia had finally turned the corner. Kris was about to crack wise, but then she saw the expression on my face.

  She stood in the middle of the room, not saying anything. I think she’d started to guess what was up from the way I double-locked the street door, but there’s no substitute for seeing something in the flesh.

  The apartment had been destroyed. Not just turned over, not merely vandalized. They—or he—had been extremely thorough. Every drawer had been turned out and its contents broken or torn. Every plate, bowl, and piece of glassware had been smashed. The fridge had been opened and pulled over onto its front, turning the floor into a sea of liquids. Everything from the cupboards had been broken, thrown around. Every lightbulb in the apartment was smashed, along with the mirror in the bathroom and the two wooden chairs we’d bought for good money at a nice store in SoHo in the first flush of living in the city. Cards we’d written to each other, along with a few pieces of cheap art we’d picked up in local th
rift stores, had been set fire to. The ashes from these had been thrown onto a pile of Kristina’s clothes and the sheets from our bed in the middle of the living room.

  It had been meticulous. I’d had plenty of time to go through it in the hours while Kristina wasn’t answering her phone, and yet coming back into the apartment after a couple of hours was a shock. The apartment as it had been yesterday was still alive in my mind. It takes a while for your mind to understand something’s gone.

  Eventually Kris looked at me. Her eyes were dry, but she was blinking rapidly. “Other rooms the same?”

  “Yes.”

  “Guess we did right not coming home last night, huh?”

  “Guess so,” I said. “And I don’t think we should stay here now. He’s going to come back. He only did this because he couldn’t do it to me.”

  “Jesus.”

  “FYI, he didn’t tear or burn everything, unfortunately. I can’t find your diary or that notebook you insist on keeping stuff in. Like your passwords and ATM numbers. And your credit card.”

  “He’s a psycho, isn’t he.” This was a statement, not a question. “I mean, a real one.”

  “Yes. An angry man just trashes the place. This is dismantlement. He went back and forth, breaking everything that could be broken, and then he went back through it and broke it some more. I don’t want to think what the equivalent would be when committed upon a person. I especially do not want it to happen to us. So let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Not back to Jeffers. He’s in deep enough already, and I don’t think him being a priest will stay Reinhart’s hand.”

  “Well then, where?” Kristina said, her voice rising. The reality of what surrounded her was beginning to sink in. There were spots of high color on her cheeks. “Where else can we go, John? Are we going to be fucking street people now? Should we chase after Lydia and see if she knows some good parks to sleep in?”

  “The first thing we should do is leave, Kris. Seriously. Let’s talk about this outside.”