Don't I Know You? Page 3

  He was right.

  “They might not tell us anything right away,” he said. “Maybe they want to talk to a friend before they say anything. Maybe they just need a little prodding, a little encouragement.” He said it took patience. He rubbed his hands like he was putting lotion on them.

  “We’ll find out the restaurants she liked, the grocery stores she used. We’ll figure out what her day was like today. We’ll talk to your father.”

  Steven was looking at his sneakers.

  “You can help with things like that,” McGuire said. “You can make a big difference.”

  The gay guys across the street were coming home arm in arm. They waved like they saw him sitting on the stoop every night at this hour. He waved back. “When you find out what her day was like will you tell me?” he asked.

  “Sure,” McGuire said. “Absolutely.”

  Steven scanned the street from West End to Riverside. There were still puddles in the gutter. Two days ago kids had cooled off in the hydrant Ramon had opened up.

  Christine got out of a cab on the corner.

  They stood, and McGuire held out his hand like Steven was a grown-up he’d met at a party. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  “She liked that bar up by Columbia,” Steven said. “I can’t remember the name. She liked the college kids,” he said.

  McGuire looked at him and nodded. “Okay,” he said. He gave Steven his card. “You call if you need anything. Or just want to talk.”

  “I don’t miss her yet,” Steven said.

  McGuire held the back of Steven’s neck with his big hand. “You will,” he said.

  Christine came up and held Steven’s face. He felt like he’d spent the whole night being passed from hand to hand.

  McGuire introduced himself and gave her another card.

  “Her name was Regina,” Steven told him. “Regina Teresa Fis-chetti Engel. But everyone called her Gina.” McGuire knew all of this already, but Steven told him anyway.

  One fall two years ago, between nursing jobs, she’d worked a temp job at Natural History magazine at the Museum of Natural History. Her office was behind two black doors at the end of the Mayan Gold exhibit. Something in the room made Steven’s ears ring. They’d been invited to the employee Christmas party. Every year the museum decorated a giant tree with origami animals made by employees and their children. He and his mother sat at a folding table following the instructions of a college-age Japanese girl. He made two swans and a crane. His mother made a frog and a big cat.

  Afterward, the children took turns finding spots for the animals on the tree. They let the bigger kids climb the ladders and ride the Genies. He’d gotten to ride the Genie, a workman’s hand on his shoulder as they went up. He’d put his mother’s big cat on a high branch sticking out at an odd angle, eye level with the brontosaurus. He’d rested it so that it looked like it was rearing up on its hind legs. His mother had stood below him, waving. They’d both been so happy, they’d walked the mile home in the rain.

  Phil met them at the corner where Christine was getting a cab. He had Kitty in their Channel Thirteen tote bag. Steven couldn’t believe he’d forgotten her.

  “How’re you doing?” Phil said. “Hanging in there?”

  Steven didn’t really feel like he needed to answer.

  Phil held the bag.

  “Oh,” Christine said, looking worried. “I’ve got the dog,” she said. “And I’m allergic.” They all stood there for a minute, looking at Kitty in the bag. She looked back. Christine sneezed.

  Phil looked surprised. “I didn’t know you had a dog,” he said. “Or that you were allergic.”

  Christine nodded. “Yeah. I am. I do. I am.”

  A cab slowed and then sped up again.

  “Well, listen,” Phil said. “He can come to my place. Sam’s there.” He smiled at Steven. “It’ll be good for both of us.”

  Christine seemed willing to leave it up to Steven. His mom hadn’t liked Christine all that much. He said Phil’s was good. He took the tote bag from Phil and waited.

  He didn’t think Sam would be all that psyched about having him in her house. Sam was fifteen and a girl. She wasn’t all that psyched about him period.

  “I don’t have any overnight stuff,” he said.

  Phil said, “You can borrow from Sam.”

  “Great,” Steven said.

  Christine put her arm around him. “Sorry,” she said. She cried at everything. Once she cried at a commercial. “I’m so, so sorry,” she said. She had her eye on a cab coming down Broadway.

  Steven nodded.

  “Okay then,” she said, hailing the cab and wiping her eyes. “You call me if you need anything.”

  Phil took her place by Steven’s side. Kitty squirmed around. The bag swayed and twisted. The cab pulled away.

  Another one came. Phil held the door open.

  “The address book,” Steven said. “We gotta call people.”

  “I got it,” Phil said.

  “They let you take it?” Steven said.

  “Get in,” Phil said.

  Steven took a step into the cab, then stepped back out. “I should get my toothbrush,” he said.

  Phil looked at him. “We’ve got to go,” he said, not unkindly.

  The driver peered at them over his shoulder.

  “Sorry,” Steven said.

  “It’s okay,” Phil said, still holding the door open. Kitty meowed.

  They got in. “A Hundred and eighth and Riverside,” Phil told the driver. They were taking a cab six blocks. The driver pulled the meter on. Steven couldn’t see his building anymore.

  “We were supposed to watch nature shows,” Steven said. “I should’ve been home earlier.”

  Phil was still looking at him.

  “It’s all my fault,” Steven said.

  “No,” Phil said, so forcefully that he startled Steven. “No,” he said again. “It’s not.”

  Sam let him sleep in the top bunk. “It’s just a bunk bed,” she’d said. “I don’t like them anymore. They’re so elementary school.”

  Kitty sat on the pillow next to his head. She acted like she’d been sleeping there her whole life. There were little star- and moon-shaped pieces of paint missing from the ceiling. There was a small window next to him. Outside, he could hear the Riverside Drive traffic. He turned on his side and watched car lights. His first job had been walking the Rifkins’ standard poodle. They’d given him a key; he’d gone over after school, letting himself into the empty house, waiting for the slow click of the old dog’s nails on the hardwood floors. They’d walked to the park and back, only a block, but he’d felt important, a heavy leather leash in his hand, a real dog at the end of it.

  Kitty stretched out and took over more of the pillow. The traffic light on 108th changed from red to green to yellow to red again. Phil’s dad owned this building. Steven had never been able to understand why their apartment wasn’t nicer or bigger.

  Sam had The Carpetbaggers and a boxed set of Laura Ingalls Wilder books on the wide windowsill. The box looked like it hadn’t been touched. There were posters and pictures of Baryshnikov and Mick Jagger on her walls. When she’d seen him noticing, she’d said, “I am so over the James Taylor thing.” He hadn’t known there was a James Taylor thing.

  What would happen tomorrow? And the day after that? He wondered where the guy was right that second.

  Sam turned over in the bunk below him. “Are you awake?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Can’t sleep?” she said.

  “Guess not,” he said.

  Phil had given him half a sleeping pill, but he wasn’t feeling anything. He never had trouble sleeping. Maybe the pill had had some kind of reverse effect.

  “What’re you thinking about?” she asked. Then she said, “Sorry. Stupid question.”

  He squeezed his mother’s keys hard enough to hurt. He wanted to answer. An image from last summer appeared: the tree swing his mother an
d he had come across in Riverside Park. The ropes looked too long to be swing ropes. His mother said she would push him. He sat, and she stood behind him and pulled him back as far as she could. He was worried he’d slip off. He was about to tell her he wanted to get off when she let go and he flew forward, his butt coming up off the seat a little. He made a small, surprised sound and she laughed.

  Sam said, “Alcoholics say that it’s a big deal when they’ve been sober longer than they were drunks,” she said. “They, like, celebrate that day.”

  He tried to figure out what had made her say that.

  “How do you know that?” he asked. The fan in the room was loudest when it rotated toward them. He had to time what he was saying.

  “Phil’s an alcoholic,” she said. “I know a lot about them.”

  “I didn’t know that,” he said. “I mean about Phil,” he said.

  He could hear her moving around under her sheet. He was on top of his covers. Tweety and Sylvester. Kitty was lying across I tawt I thaw a puddy tat. I did! I did!

  He was thinking about what Juan would say about him spending the night in Sam’s room. Juan could go on about Sam. Steven told him he just liked her ’cause she was blond. “And,” Juan had asked, “your point is?”

  He had a hard-on. He got under the sheet. Kitty seemed annoyed.

  “What’re you doing?” Sam asked.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  He was still hard. He put his mother’s keys around himself.

  “What are you doing?” Sam asked again.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “It better not be gross,” she said.

  “I took my mom’s keys,” he said.

  She was quiet.

  The door opened, and light from the hallway sliced into the room. Phil stood there, looking at them. Sam sighed loudly and made little sleepy noises. Steven kept his eyes open a crack. Against the light, Phil looked black. Steven wished he would quit looking at them. He felt like he might laugh. Sam murmured something. She was good, he thought. Maybe she was really asleep.

  Phil came over to the bunks. He put his hand on Steven’s belly. Steven tried to breathe evenly. Phil didn’t seem upset. Steven’s stomach rumbled.

  “Phil?” Sam said.

  “Hey, honey,” he said. “Didn’t mean to wake you.” His voice didn’t sound like his.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, too loudly for the room. “Go to sleep.”

  His fingers massaged Steven’s belly lightly.

  “You too,” Sam said.

  He took his hand away and pulled the sheet up over Steven a little more. “You’re right,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. “You’re always right.”

  He left, closing the door behind him. The room went back to dark.

  His hard-on had gone away and come back. “That was weird,” he said.

  “Sorry about him,” Sam said. “Parents are mostly embarrassing, don’t you think?”

  Steven was quiet. He rubbed his flat hands up and down across the tops of his thighs. His skin was like he hadn’t showered in weeks. His mother would’ve called him a Scoad Monster. He could hear her voice.

  “God,” Sam said. “I’m a major idiot.”

  What had the guy wanted? Why hadn’t she given it to him?

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Steven said. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

  Outside, a car alarm started and wouldn’t stop. A dog barked. Someone told the dog to shut up.

  “Of course it wasn’t,” Sam said. She sounded older than she was.

  He imagined doing to the guy what he’d done to Steven’s mother. Once, a friend of his mother’s had been killed in a plane crash. “Imagine what those last few minutes were like?” his mother had said.

  “What’s your mom like?” he asked.

  Sam started to talk and her words were like hands and he listened.

  two

  There are things to do when someone dies. He was surprised at breakfast when Phil had a list. He looked like he’d been up all night putting it together, but when Steven glanced at it, it was just a list of numbers, one through eight, with nothing next to them.

  Getting woken up by Sam had been nice. He’d heard the sounds of her getting ready for her day. She hadn’t been trying to wake him up. That had been the best part.

  “You grind your teeth,” she’d said.

  He’d rolled his tongue around his gums, the insides of his cheeks. Sometimes he ground so hard his gums bled.

  It was ten after nine. His mother would’ve said, sitting at the kitchen table, “What’s the plan, little man?” She would’ve smiled at her own rhyme.

  He couldn’t stop thinking like this.

  He threw up the Frosted Flakes and milk on the kitchen floor. He didn’t know where their garbage can was. He kept his hand over his mouth even though he could feel nothing else was coming up. He couldn’t look at them.

  “Oh, man,” Sam said.

  She was being nice. But he hated her anyway.

  Phil said her name like a warning. He told Steven it didn’t matter, and led him to the bathroom off the kitchen. The bathroom was about four steps from where he’d puked.

  In the small space, Phil’s smell got to him. He told him he could handle it from there. He tried to sound normal while holding his breath. He tried not to swallow. Phil left. Steven ran both taps full blast and flushed the toilet and rinsed his mouth with the cold water and closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see bits of anything making their way down the drain.

  His mother would’ve held his bangs away from his head. He threw up a lot. Sensitive was the word people who liked him used.

  He could hear Phil moving around in the kitchen. Sam said something. Phil didn’t answer.

  Steven sat under the tiny sink, his shoulder wedged under one of the pipes. From now on, when he thought of his mother, he would think of the hallway rug bunched up under her hip. Somewhere, the guy was eating breakfast. Or maybe not even up yet.

  He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror. “Pussy,” he said.

  Steam from the hot water was filling the little room. The mirror got cloudy. He made a fist and put it under the hot water. It got red. He counted fifty and turned the water off, putting his hand in his pocket before going back out.

  The autopsy was going to take a little time. Phil was talking to Detective McGuire. Steven was listening on the extension in Sam’s room. She was digging around in her closet, pretending not to notice. She had a dark red phone. She had to pay her own phone bill out of her allowance. She’d had a checking account since she was twelve. She cooked dinner one night a week. Phil said he wanted her to be able to take care of herself.

  He’d argued about it with Steven’s mother. He said she coddled Steven. “You’re not helping him in the long run,” Steven had heard him say to her more than once. “What’s he gonna do when you’re not around?”

  Phil hadn’t meant anything by it. Still, it was freaky.

  Detective McGuire told Phil that they should just make their arrangements, do what needed to be done. The cops would need to keep the apartment stationary for another forty-eight hours, but after that, it was all theirs.

  Sam backed out of the closet on all fours, dragging a cardboard box. She looked pleased with herself until she saw him. Then she looked something else.

  Phil was asking about the guy. Were there leads? Theories? Anything?

  Detective McGuire said the case was a priority. They were on it. They’d know more after the autopsy. They were working on phone records. It looked like she might have made a phone call.

  “A phone call?” Phil repeated. “While the guy was in the apartment? Isn’t that a little weird?”

  “Yes,” Detective McGuire said. “A little.”

  “Who did she call?” Phil asked.

  “We’re working on it,” McGuire said. “On all of this. Listen,” he said, “in New York these things take longer than the
y should. I’ll let you know when the body becomes available.”

  Phil asked if any determination had been made about—he interrupted himself to clear his throat, and then finished his sentence—sexual assault. He wanted to know about sexual assault.

  It was like last spring when Juan had found a note about Steven that a girl he liked had written to a friend, and had offered it to him to read.

  The detective said they wouldn’t know about that until after the autopsy. It was a good bet, though, he said.

  Steven wondered how cops knew what they knew.

  “How’s the kid?” Detective McGuire asked, like it had taken him this long to get the courage up.

  Sam looked at him and then left the room. Phil took a breath like he’d hoped he’d get through this conversation without that. Steven pressed the disconnect button. That was the way you did it if you didn’t want to get caught. The fan turned back and forth, back and forth. Hot air moved around him. Kitty wove around his ankles, meowing. He held the receiver down to her and she rubbed her cheek against it like it was what she’d been looking for.

  When Phil came to the doorway, Steven still had the receiver in his hand. Phil took in the scene.

  “You heard?” he asked.

  Steven nodded.

  Phil gestured at the cardboard box. “Sam says those will fit you,” he said.

  “Where is she?” Steven asked.

  “Music,” he said.

  She played piano. One time when they’d all been over here, his mother had played her guitar, Sam played the piano, and he’d played drums with chopsticks on an overturned box. Beatles songs.

  He dragged the box over. In Sam’s handwriting on the top flap it said 12–13 YEARS in black marker. He opened the box and peered inside. “There’s a lot of purple,” he said.

  Phil smiled. “Boys wear purple,” he said.

  Steven didn’t say anything.

  Phil considered him. “Well, see what else you can find. We can always go over to Morris Brothers.”

  “That’s okay,” Steven said. “This is good.”

  He chose a pair of navy blue gym shorts and a homemade T-shirt that said DERVISH POWER. They seemed like the least girlie things in the box.