Paullina Simons: The Girl in Times Square

PAULLINA SIMONS

THE GIRL IN TIMES SQUARE

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2005

Copyright © Paullina Simons 2004

“Lost in the Flood” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1972

Bruce Springsteen. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

“Fire” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1978

Bruce Springsteen. All rights reserved.

“Across the Border” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1995

Bruce Springsteen. All rights reserved.

Paullina Simons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007118939

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780007383979

Version: 2018-05-24

For my sister, Elizabeth, as ever searching And for Melanie Cain, who has been to the crying room

In the Vatican after they have chosen a new pope, they lead him to a room off the Sistine Chapel where he is given the clothing of a pope. It is called the Crying Room. It is called that because it is there that the burdens and responsibilities of the papacy tend to come crashing down on the new pontiff. Many of them have wept. The best have wept.

PEGGY NOONAN

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

The Past as Prologue

Just Before the Beginning

Lily Quinn

Allison Quinn

A Man and a Woman

Part I. In the Beginning

1. Appearing To Be One Thing When it is in Fact Another

2. Hawaii

3. An Hour at the 9th Precinct

4. Wallets on Dressers

5. Spencer Patrick O’Malley

6. Conversations with Mothers

7. Birds of Paradise

8. The Disadvantages of Walking to Work

9. Ignorance in Amy’s Bed

10. Things in the Closet

11. Spencer Patrick O’Malley and Lilianne Quinn

12. A Little Rented Honda

13. Lily and the City of Dreams

14. Riding Shotgun

15. Spencer’s Twelve Tickets

16. Reality: The Actual Thing that it Appears to Be

Part II. The Middle of the Road

17. The Biggest River in Egypt

18. Fertility Options

19. Fibers of Suspicion

20. Just Another Saturday Night for Lily

21. Just Another Saturday Night for Spencer

22. In the Garden of the Barber Cop

23. Chemotherapy 101

24. Meet the Parents

25. Chemo 202

26. The Church on 51st Street

27. Liz Monroe and 57/57

28. The Soup Kitchen

29. Spencer Stuck Twice

30. Advanced Chemotherapy

31. Advanced Interrogation

32. Andrew’s Alibi

33. The Laugh Track

34. Lily’s Stations

35. Lily’s Mother is Here

36. Lily’s Stations, Continued

37. Beautiful People

38. Cancer Shmancer

39. Larry DiAngelo as Imhotep

Part III. The End Game

40. Lily as an Ancient Egyptian

41. Shopping as Healing

42. The Financial and Eating Woes of a Lottery Winner and a Cancer Survivor

43. A Little Thing about Spencer

44. The Muse

45. A Masters Course in Chemo

46. The Mighty Quinn

47. Harkman

48. The Yellow Ribbons

49. Baseball as a Metaphor for Everything

50. April Fools

51. At Internal Affairs Once More

52. Failing Test Number One

53. A Cop First

54. Infernal Affairs

55. Failing Test Number Two

56. Unraveling at Home and Overseas

57. An Encounter at Tompkins Square

58. Eight Days in Maui

59. And Now—About Spencer

60. John Doe

61. Olenka Pevny

62. Lindsey

63. A Terminal Degree in Cancer Treatment

64. Amy and Andrew

65. Nathan Sinclair

66. A Boat in Key Biscayne

67. Cabo San Lucas

68. A Day at the Abbey

69. An Anarchist in Action

70. Massacre Grounds

71. The Cancer Chick and the Revolutionary

72. The Peyote Dance

73. The Lessons of the Russian Tsar

74. Acting Without Measure

75. The Postman

76. The Only One

77. Wollman’s Rink

78. DNR

79. And Now—About Amy

80. The Other Side

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

“Spencer, do you see this?”

“Katie, I do.”

“Her investments are shooting out of the sky. I’ve never seen anything like it. Her fund is growing at rate of thirty-four percent a year.”

“Joy, should we have some lunch?”

“Stop smiling at me like that, Larry, I know what your lunch entails. I can’t. I’m knitting.”

Giggling.

“Did you read the paper this morning? In Ethiopia, a grenade exploded at a wedding, killing the bride and three other people.”

“Mother, please!”

“What? Apparently it’s custom for guests to fire their guns at weddings in wild jubilation, though grenades are apparently more rare.”

“You’ll have to excuse my mother, Detective O’Malley.”

“Thank you, but I’m quite entertained by her, Mrs. Quinn.”

“Mrs. Quinn, how are you feeling?”

“I could be better, Dr. DiAngelo. I’m tired all the time. And I wanted to show you this.” There is a pause, the sound of shoes walking across the floor. “What do you think this is? Some kind of a weird rash, right?”

“Allie, do you think you can stop showing the doctor your ailments with the police in the room?”

“Oh, Detective O’Malley has seen worse than this, Mother. Haven’t you, detective?”

“Much worse, and please—call me Spencer.”

“No, Allie, I just don’t understand you at all. Why do this now? It’s just a rash!”

“Oh, you can talk about your Ethiopian exploding brides, but I can’t show the doctor a real problem? The doctor is here, I might as well take advantage, right, Dr. DiAngelo?”

“Absolutely Mrs. Quinn. Let’s see what you’ve got here.”

There is sighing, clothes rustling, a silence, an ahem, a “Well, what is it?”

“Well, Mrs. Quinn, it’s very serious, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, no, what is it, doctor?”

“I’m afraid—I think—I can’t be sure, but I think it’s the Baghdad boil.”

There is silence, a slight familiar snicker from a man’s throat.