The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  Now that was a plan she liked. Lily signed the papers, filled out the forms, got new check cards, new checkbooks. By the time she got out of there, having left all of her money behind with Katie, Lily thought she would have paid double not to have been in one stuffy office for the whole afternoon. Is this what working is like, she thought? Is this what I’m going to have to do after I take my college course and finally get a degree and look through The New York Times employment section, finally finding a job just like this one?

  That thought was enough to send Lily into a tizzy for the next three days, spending practically her entire annual allowance on art supplies. She asked Spencer to help her clear Amy’s room of all of Amy’s things, putting them into a small storage facility for a few bucks a month. Spencer was glad to help. Lily bought three rolls of canvas, wood planks, a staple gun, turpentine, gesso canvas primer, four easels, paintbrushes, and paints! She bought oil paints, and oil pastel crayons, watercolors and acrylics, and color pencils and color markers, and charcoal and black pencils that were so beautiful, she immediately sat down on her bed and from memory on a 12-by-16 sheet drew Katie the stockbroker in black pencil sitting behind her desk with books all around her, and her window open, and spring trees far down below and the Hudson river far down below, too, and Katie in her sharp suit behind her desk, looking out at her next client while at her fingertips lay The World According to Garp and the 67-Pound Marriage and Hotel New Hampshire. Two days later, when Lily went back to see Katie, she brought the picture, in full color. Katie looked at it for a long time, and then asked how much Lily wanted for it.

  Lily was surprised. “Nothing. Why would I want your money? I give you money, not vice versa. How much have I made, by the way, in two days?”

  “Twenty-one cents,” said Katie, but before Lily left, she added, looking at the portrait of herself, “I wouldn’t worry about that floor-through on Fifth, Lilianne. I have a feeling it will come sooner than you think.”

  Lily wasn’t quite sure what Katie had meant by that, but the next day Katie called, asking her if she would, “for money only”, paint The Children. Lily agreed, and painted in acrylic the two small Katies, one male, one female, sitting together, close and wistful, in a park in Brooklyn, with an orange ball between them that looked like a pumpkin.

  Katie gave her a $500 check that Lily took and had framed on her wall, as the first ever money she made from her art.

  She spent the week sketching new things in her book—refrigerators, lamps, trees outside, cats across the way on windowsills, sleeping women on beds through windows. Then she rendered them in her new art studio—Amy’s bedroom—with the great southern exposure and plank wood floors on which paint splattered. Lily watercolored some, she colored-penciled others. She used acrylic paints, which dried in hours, and she even did two small oils on canvas that took all of Thursday and Friday, one of a cat sitting watching the trees while his mistress napped on a bed behind him, and one of Spencer draped over a couch watching TV with a sulky look on his face.

  “I don’t look like that,” Spencer said sulkily.

  Lily laughed. “No?”

  “What is that smell?”

  “Turpentine!” she said. “I need it for the oils. Is it terrible?”

  “It’s not an alluring smell, no.”

  “Well, I’m not in the alluring business,” she declared to him happily. “I’m in the painting business.” Besides, her sense of smell had not fully returned. She painted with the windows open. “I’m selling it on 8th Street on Saturday morning.”

  Spencer walked around the studio, inspecting her work. “Well, what do you think?” she asked expectantly.

  “I don’t think you’ll be able to give me away for free,” he replied.

  On Saturday morning, Lily took a cab with her twenty pieces of artwork, a folding table and a folding chair, to 8th Street, the art thoroughfare in Greenwich Village, and with three tiered standing easels and the table, set up her twenty pieces of artwork by nine.

  By noon Lily had come back home. At one on Saturday Spencer came to her door. She was very surprised to see him. “What happened?” he said. “I went to 8th to find you and you’d disappeared. That’s not much staying power.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Why did you leave? You have to have patience. It’s like fishing. They’ll bite eventually. The weather has to be right.”

  “Hmm. The weather must have been real good, because I sold everything.”

  “You what?”

  Lily jumped up. “Yup! I sold everything. Every last painting. Including you, Mr. Grumpy. For the last two, there was nearly a dust-up. I had four customers in an auction type situation. It was pretty heated. Eventually the two paintings went for a hundred bucks each.”

  “A hundred bucks? Whew!”

  Lily looked at him askance. “Are you being ironic?”

  “Frames cost more than that! Why don’t you just give your art away? How much did you make altogether?”

  “Enough to buy you lunch. Let’s go.”

  “I can buy my own sandwich. How much?”

  “A thousand bucks.”

  Spencer whistled. “Well, that’s nearly a living.”

  “Yes. I’m trying to save up eleven million dollars.”

  And Spencer laughed with all his white teeth and blue eyes, and Lily laughed, and on a cold February Saturday, they sat for three hours in Odessa. And then he said, “Scream 3 is playing at Union Square. My treat.”

  Lily spent half the movie buried in her knees. She hated horror movies, and she didn’t know what Spencer found more enjoyable, the movie, which was so-so, or her being scrunched up, eyes closed, too scared to look at the screen. They got separate popcorns and separate drinks.

  But when Lily painted next week, she painted one medium bag of yellow popcorn and one of his hands and one of hers in it together.

  She painted popcorn hands, and smiles, and tufts of hair; she painted black-rimmed eyes, and tears, and cats. She painted empty beds, and wet showers, and Tompkins Square Park, all its bare trees and benches, its stone fountains and iron fences. She painted Spencer’s hands in the shape of a teepee. Lily couldn’t wait for spring when she could spend more time outside. She spent all day every day in Amy’s room where she was not just outside, but everywhere at once—in stores and parks and galleries and on the water. All in one room. And on Saturday mornings she set up her table and easels on 8th Street, and no matter how much or what she drew, Lily went home with nothing but a wad of cash.

  Her appetite came back—slowly. Eighty pounds, then eighty-two, then a big jump—eighty-six. Must have been all those Double Chocolate Milanos. When she told Grandma this, the next day a case of Milanos came from the supermarket. In two weeks the case was gone and Lily was ninety pounds. Jelly donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts. Vanilla shakes. Protein shakes, morning, noon and night. Then solid food other than cookies and heavenly eclairs from Veniero’s—the best bakery on the planet. She spent breakfast and dinner at the Odessa and at Veselka, the Ukrainian restaurant on Second Avenue near Spencer’s precinct. Omelettes, corned-beef hash, bacon, sausage, home fries, stuffed cabbage, pierogi. On Thursdays when she visited her grandmother, Lily baked brownies in Grandma’s kitchen.

  “That man is not coming around anymore, is he, Lily? Because you’re all better now, and your brother is moving on.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Grandma.”

  “Lily.”

  “Grandma.”

  If my brother is moving on, Lily wanted to say, then how come he hasn’t called me? And how come I can’t call him? And where is Amy?

  A hundred and two pounds. Lily looked almost just frightfully underweight, not Dachau-outbound. The blood work was still clean. The hair, little by little, was growing back. Painfully slow and blotchy. It grew in ugly clumpy tufts, making her so self-conscious that she kept asking Spencer to cut it, to even it out. She continued to ask him, and didn’t let Paul do it, because Spencer held her head with hi
s left hand to steady her, as he sheared her with his right. It was the only time he ever touched her.

  Rachel told Lily that as soon as Lily grew out her hair Rachel had a guy for her that would knock her panties off. That’s what Rachel said. “Would knock your panties off.”

  “And this is something I want?” Lily felt that the chemo didn’t just remove the cancer from her, it removed the sex organs from her also.

  “Just grow out your hair, will you?”

  43

  A Little Thing about Spencer

  Sometimes Spencer was completely withdrawn into himself. When Lily was sick, she had barely noticed. She just wanted a human being to sit by her side. But since she had finished treatment, she noticed it more.

  He was better during the week. She couldn’t figure it out. He was much less moody during the week than he was on Sundays. Lily decided to press PAUSE on Roxanne.

  “Why are you so quiet? It’s funny, no?”

  “It is.”

  Lily raised her eyebrows.

  “What? It’s funny. I’m laughing on the inside.”

  She pressed. “Yes, but why on the inside?”

  “Just am, that’s all.”

  “But you’re not just quiet, you’re…morose.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “So there is something to talk about then?”

  Slowly Spencer turned his head in her direction. Lily became acutely flustered under his detective stare. “Lily-ANNE,” he said, “don’t use my methods of interrogation on me. They won’t work.”

  She faltered for a moment, then regained her speech. “Spencer, I can’t help noticing that sometimes you’re just not yourself.”

  “Wrong, Lily. This is myself. It’s the other me that’s not me. This is the actual me. Sullen, quiet. Morose.”

  “When I was sick, I didn’t see it.”

  “You were sick. You hardly saw anything.” Spencer wasn’t looking at Lily; he was looking at his stemmed and knuckled hands.

  “I don’t believe this is really you.”

  “Believe it.”

  “I don’t. I think this is you being upset about something.”

  “I’m not in the least upset.”

  “Is it trouble at work?”

  Spencer smiled. “No, it’s not trouble at work.” He turned to her. “Look, I appreciate it, you taking an interest. But please—don’t worry about me. Let’s just watch our movie.”

  But Lily wasn’t going to give up. He wasn’t angry yet, she had a little rope. Light cajoling wasn’t working. She was going to try self-pity. “You don’t have to be here, Spencer, you know, if you don’t want to. I’m fine now. It’s not like before. I’m okay to be alone, I can take care of things, take care of myself. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  Spencer rubbed his face. “What’s this about? Did I just mention your brother and not realize it?”

  “No, no, really. You don’t have to pretend. If you want to be somewhere else, you don’t have to sit here with me. I mean, what’s the point, really?”

  “We like our comedies.”

  “When we laugh, yes!”

  “Lily, you spent four months watching comedies and not laughing. You’ll understand, I know you will, if I don’t laugh for just one Sunday.”

  “It’s not that. It’s…” But Lily didn’t know what it was.

  “Spencer, what’s bothering you? Come on, tell me. You helped me so much, please tell me.”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “Do you want to be alone?”

  “That’s the last thing I want.”

  When in the world did it happen? Lily told herself that it was inevitable that after days and weeks and months of Spencer calling her, sitting alone with her, shopping with her and for her, eating with her, it was inevitable; there would be something seriously wrong with her, in fact, if she didn’t start to feel a slight anticipation ahead of hearing his voice or seeing his face. He was like a habit now, a good friend, like Paul. And she cared so much for Paul, how could she not care at least as much for Spencer, who spent all that time with her when she was sick? It was gratitude, that’s what it was.

  Except…Lily didn’t feel a quickening somewhere in her cancer-addled capillaries when Paul called or didn’t call, and she didn’t slightly hold her breath so she could hear Paul better, and she didn’t study Paul’s face for new feelings, and she never tried to make Paul laugh and feel dissipated when he didn’t.

  Oh my God, Lily thought. What’s happening to me? I’m barely a survivor yet. My Hickman chest scar hasn’t healed yet. I barely have tufts of hair on my head. It’s the chemicals. VePesid has affected my brain. I’ve gone partially deaf in one ear, fuzzy in one eye, and I can’t smell anything. The shapes of the mystery that form in my head are the product of drugs, the shapes that form these completely inappropriate unrequited idiotic sensations of Spencer are just a product of the kindness that he has shown me, of the care that he has given me, and of the fear that when I’m truly better, he will leave and not come back.

  I’m sick in the head. Maybe I need that cancer survivor group after all. Where is Joy? Where is Marcie? Where is Dr. D?

  She wanted to call Spencer, so he could set her straight. What’s happening to me, Lily wanted to ask him, and have him look at her calmly like always and say, “Lily-Anne, I have no earthly idea what you’re going on about.”

  But she knew for certain there was something terribly wrong with her when she could no longer bring herself to call his beeper just to say hello, or to ask if he was going to be in the neighborhood to have lunch, or what movie he wanted her to rent. Lily realized there was something terribly wrong when she wanted to go see The Whole Nine Yards at Union Square, and could not call and casually ask Spencer to go with her.

  She called Rachel instead. Rachel Ortiz, the advisor to the habit-forming.

  When Paul and Rachel came over, they got drunk on margaritas in Lily’s apartment, and listened to Tori Amos, or Enya, or something else equally lugubrious and bleak, and kept crying to her, instead of the other way around. Paul just broke up with Ray, and Rachel was having a hard time with TO-nee. Oh, they kept saying, licking the words around their salt-rimmed lime-filled glasses, we want love, we want love, we want Love!

  “Not me,” Lily said. “I don’t need Love. I have Spencer.”

  And Rachel laughed, and Paul laughed, and they punched her on the arm and made more margaritas and told her she was so funny, and that her apartment smelled awfully of turpentine and gesso, and Lily didn’t want to talk about it with them anymore, but Lily didn’t see what was so funny, what was so worthy of laughter.

  Spencer was impenetrable. There was not a single thing he did or said that could be interpreted in any way other than the proper, courteous, appropriate Spencer way, which was—I am here. To talk, to watch a movie, to eat. If you want to walk, let’s go. If you want soup, I’ll get it for you. Central Park? Sure. Palm Court, absolutely. You want me to move beds out of rooms, or help you stretch your canvas, I’ll do that, too. You want me to call you after your blood work? Sit on the couch with you on Sundays? Here I am. Lily studied him with her artist’s eye so intensely, trying to decipher other meanings, other expressions, other thoughts, that one time, she must not have been paying attention to what he was saying, because he put his finger under her chin.

  “What in the world are you thinking?” he asked.

  She came out of it. “What?”

  “You’re not even answering my question.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “You’re stalling for time.”

  “No, no. Oh, nothing, nothing at all.”

  “Ah, now you’re evasive.” Spencer grinned. “Must have been something pretty bad, Lil. Was it about Keanu?”

  This is what Lily meant—in his G-rated world, she was a can
cer patient. Somebody’s sibling. A witness in an investigation. She could be a man calling him about a horse.

  Not one-hundred-percent impenetrable. One Sunday evening, they had just finished watching A Fish Called Wanda, and Spencer got up to get a drink while Lily stretched and remained on her stomach on the couch. He stood in the archway between the kitchen and the living room, a Coke in his hand. Lily caught his face in the reflection in the fifty-inch plasma TV, when he didn’t think she was looking at him. Spencer was looking at her, and not just at her, but particularly at her hips as she lay on her stomach, in her black leggings, legs slightly apart, splayed head-down on the couch. Lily’s heart hammered in her chest, and she lay there longer than necessary, trying to see the contours of his expression. Then he said, “Did you want something before I go?”

  She sat up. “No, no. I’m fine.”

  Was she mistaken? Was it too vague for the dark reflection of the intention of his gaze at midnight on Sunday?

  The following Sunday he came to watch It Happened One Night.

  Lily was in her studio. He knocked on Amy’s door.

  “Hey,” she said. “Come on in. I’m just finishing up.” She was painting the ice rain on the windowsill. She was wearing her low-rise black leggings, and a cropped yellow tank top. Her stomach was exposed. She had on no bra.

  Spencer came in. “What’s going on here? It’s freezing.”

  “I have to keep the windows open. It’s that turpentine,” Lily said innocently, taking a drink from a can of Coke. “Would you like a sip?”

  “Of turpentine?”

  Ha. Lily was very cold indeed in her little tank top. She might not have had big breasts, but she knew her nipples were plenty big.

  Spencer noticed.

  Lily knew he noticed because as he took the can of Coke from her hands that were near her breasts, he didn’t say anything, he just raised his eyes to her, and that’s when she knew, and her breath stopped in her chest when she saw his eyes. A beat went by. Then another. Carefully Spencer said, “You might want to close the windows. It’s chilly in here.”