Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

William cleared his throat. “How well would you say you knew her?”

Skeevo shrugged. “Better than most customers. Which isn’t to say very well. But you learn a lot about people when you smoke with them enough.”

“Like what?”

This earned him a suspicious look, and William stared at his bread, flushed.

“I’m — I’m just trying to find her father. She asked me to — I think she asked me to make sure he knew what happened.”

Skeevo toyed with the neck of his T-shirt and laughed. “Wow. I guess dying really changes people. She told me she never wanted to see or hear from that piece of flyshit again.”

William frowned. “What about her mother?”

“Left when Reeny was little. Ran off with some other woman and left her with the dad and the soon-to-be wicked stepmother. Guess they were pretty much a treat in and of themselves, but it wasn’t until Daddy Dearest pissed away her college fund at the track that she actually took off.”

With that, they sipped in silence again. William checked his phone and saw there was a voicemail from his mother, which he deleted unheard, and a text from Sara, inviting him to brunch at the Harbor Grand Hotel. William saw Skeevo was staring up at the snow-capped statue of Christopher Columbus in the center of the circle.

Remembering a random fact he’d learned about it at school, he said, “Did you know that every official distance in New York City is measured from that statue? It’s the center of the center of the universe.”

Skeevo laughed. “I’ve learned in my travels, William, that the universe has no center. No center, no limits. We live in the midst of infinity.”

Just as William was about to agree and thank Skeevo for his time, he caught sight of something — someone — familiar out of the corner of his eye. A streak of blond hair and a red coat passing the Sunglass Hut.

“Irene?” William shouted, and jumped up so quickly that he slammed his knee into the flimsy table. Whirling as he tried to stop it from tipping, he wound up instead sending espresso and pan de horno everywhere, landing on his back on the marble, his eyes fixed on a crown of lights high above.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Skeevo moved to help. “You okay, man?”

Blood rushed back into William’s cheeks as he felt clear air fill his lungs. When he looked up again, the woman in red was gone.

“Sorry.” William breathed deep. “I — it’s like I keep forgetting.”

Skeevo grabbed some napkins and helped mop up the mess. “Hey, no sweat. Happens to me too. Last week I saw her standing on the F platform heading uptown when I was heading down. A week before that it was twice in the same day.”

“It’s crazy,” William apologized. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. Listen. This is love . It’s far more powerful than death. It’s like I was saying. In an infinite universe, in an infinite number of infinite universes, all things exist simultaneously. Anything that can be, is.”

William got up and stood by the glass. “Are you saying you believe in ghosts?”

Skeevo folded his fingers. “I once saw three ghosts in a single afternoon.”

Stifling a groan, William pressed his hot forehead against the cool glass of the window. He felt faint vibrations from a bus downshifting in the circle. It eased around the southern curve and curled around to head north along the park. An endless river of traffic wound counterclockwise around Columbus Circle, all roads leading away from this point, like the cross of two axes on a piece of graph paper. This is love. He drew two zeroes in the condensation, with a comma between. 0, 0. Then he traced a cartoon ghost around it.

“I didn’t even know her,” William sighed. “It’s so stupid.”

Two one-night stands. An awkward Christmas dinner at his parents’. A few months of silence. And then what? A couple of awful summer months when she’d been either ducking out to the studio, stuck in the hospital, or forcibly convalescing in his apartment. A year later and William still didn’t have the faintest idea what Irene had been doing with him.

3

Before leaving the mall, William showed Skeevo the address book, but he didn’t recognize any of the names or places in it. He seemed only moderately surprised when, afterward, William awkwardly asked if he could buy an eighth ounce of the same stuff Irene used to get, which he’d been increasingly nostalgic for, especially after the awful weed he’d been buying off a neighbor’s teenaged son. Skeevo met him in the men’s room ten minutes later with a small, pillowy paper bag that smelled like what he remembered. He told William to call anytime and to punch Irene’s dad in the throat if he ever did track him down. Then he went off to resume kneading.

William tied his scarf back on and caught an E train to the Harbor Grand Hotel, which was down near Wall Street, but on the opposite end from where he used to work and not anywhere he knew well. He had to plug the address into his phone, the new Cobalt 7 with TrueVoice technology; his brother had bought it for him for Christmas, and thankfully it had a supercharged battery. As soon as he sat down on the train, he took the address book out again and flipped through it one more time. Each name, street, state, and zip code brought him an ounce of peace. They were like elements in an epic equation, in which X equaled Irene. Who she’d been, before anyone had known her.

There was no entry for “Mom and Dad,” but that didn’t mean they weren’t in there. One hundred and twelve names in fifteen states. All night he had been ruling out the ones he recognized. This had narrowed the list down to just a dozen people. They could be clients or friends or weirdos she’d met on the subway. But maybe one of them was her family.

William got off the train at Church Street, where he noticed a new voicemail from his own mother and decided to ignore it until after he’d gotten a chance to smoke, which he’d found considerably helpful in dealing with her general lack of sanity. He walked past the eternal construction around the World Trade Center site to the Harbor Grand: a gorgeous hotel built above an old colonial inn that supposedly had been there since shortly after the natives had sold Manhattan to Peter Minuit for sixty guilders and some loose beads. Inside, he found less of a restaurant, more of a tavern, furnished with antique chairs and silver gaslights.

He didn’t see Sara anywhere but did spot George, sitting at the head of a long table, regaling people from the opening the night before.

“Mr. Cho!” George said, standing up with a mimosa in each hand. William could see that he hadn’t slept either, and after a congenial hug, George sat back down somewhat absentmindedly, still with both drinks. “Sara had to duck out. Thanks for coming by last night. You really should have stayed! You missed all the drama.”

“There was drama?”

George practically licked his lips. “One of Irene’s exes showed up right after the toasts.”

William considered he might remind George that he was one of Irene’s exes as well, but there was no chance for a word in edgewise.

“Yeah. You probably never met her. She used to come visit sometimes up in Ithaca. She’s the worst . When Sara saw her come into the gallery, she nearly lost her mind, I swear to God. The last time she came around, she ran off with Irene in what turned out to be a stolen pickup truck. One minute the two of them were doing it on Sara’s roommate’s chaise longue, and the next minute the cops were calling from Pittsburgh, and the two of them were gone, along with all the Percocet I had left over from getting my wisdom teeth out.”

William tried to look both impressed and concerned. “What was her name?”