Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

William took a deep breath and, keeping his eyes on the action figure, found the courage to ask, “What was the rest of the order? You said you sent Irene the rest already.”

“Yeah,” he said, “seventy-seven identical, unboxed Barbie dolls. Don’t know what the hell she wanted to do with them.”

William’s heart pounded. He knew exactly what she had done with them. Slowly he thought he was beginning to understand. He turned to the man’s desk and saw a framed photo. There was the enormous, smiling Bernard with an arm around a tiny woman with dark short hair. They were in the stands at the racetrack, pointing excitedly to a picture of a chestnut-colored horse under a blanket of white carnations. They appeared to be celebrating a happy moment with a bottle of champagne.

“That’s my wife, Maggie,” Bernard said proudly, “just after I won five grand at the 2009 Belmont Stakes.”

William tried to look impressed. Beneath this were two school photographs, each taken against a familiar blue Sears background.

Mr. Wyckoff tapped the edge of the photo of a heavyset girl, maybe ten years old, with braces, hair back in a ponytail. “That’s Lorraine, my youngest. And here’s Greg. He’s three-A most outstanding wrestler, 2010 eighth-grade individual champion.”

William looked for any resemblance in Greg, whose buzzed hair did seem to be blond, but whose heavy jaw and high forehead looked nothing like Irene’s.

“Nice. Just the two kids?” William asked.

Did he detect a slight hesitation as Mr. Wyckoff turned to lock the display again?

“Well, Greg eats enough for three. And Lorraine’s sweet as a dozen daughters.”

“They must have had a good time, growing up with all these great toys.”

Now William saw clear displeasure in the man’s eyes. “These are not toys ,” he said. “These are not to be played with. These are collectible figurines, for serious hobbyists only.”

William looked back up at the man. If he was Irene’s father, then in her final weeks of life, she’d conned him out of seventy-seven Barbie dolls, which she’d then melted onto a two-foot-section of an I-beam from the World Trade Center site. William thought, with all respect due to Skeevo, he would rather not punch him in the neck.

“So look. Let’s not have any trouble. You can pay me the full amount now, and we’ll be done with it. Like I said, the check she wrote bounced. I am this close to calling my lawyer.”

Maybe Irene had, in fact, been taunting Wyckoff. Hoping even that he or some lawyer would someday stumble upon the truth: that Irene was his daughter, and that she’d had the last laugh. William almost laughed himself. Talk about unfinished business. No wonder her soul wasn’t moving on! Then he remembered that this, of course, was totally insane.

And yet somehow he felt compelled to say what he said next: “Actually, she died.”

Bernard’s eyes widened, and then he groaned. “Just perfect.”

William took another deep breath, terrified but suddenly sure that this was why Irene had asked him to find her father. Just one second, and it would all be over.

“I think — sir, I’m sorry. But I think — I think she might have been your daughter.”

Bernard glanced at the photograph of Lorraine, then back at William, confused. “The hell are you talking about?”

“Did you — sorry, but did you ever have another daughter?”

The man’s red-veined face went white, and his lips seemed to move without orders. “Carrie Ann?”

“Carrie Ann?” William echoed.

And that was when he saw every red line on Bernard’s face tighten. William’s eyes shut in fear, and he tried to lurch toward the door. Then he felt a stone fist crushing into his temple, and his whole body twisted around. One foot lost contact with the floor, then the other. His uninjured eye opened to see the dolls in their glass prisons lurch and spin around until they were below him and the ground was above. His legs still kicked toward the door. There was a flash of white, blinding light, and then darkness everywhere, like deep, deep water.

6

William’s head ached, just above his eye, and his jaw was in agony. Had he actually been punched in the face? He had never been in a fight before, but he realized, slowly, that this was what had happened. And that now he was lying in the damp sand of a very cold beach. There was dried blood on his lip and all down his shirt. He vaguely recalled staggering out of the store, trying to get away from Mr. Wyckoff and then blacking out. Carrie Ann Wyckoff? He couldn’t seem to reconcile this. It couldn’t be her name. Faintly he could hear the voice of the Cobalt 7 inside his pocket, and he pulled it out to find its screen badly cracked.

Hello. Where can I guide you today? it asked, over and over in a woman’s pleasant voice.

For a while William cried without getting up or moving. Everything hurt, and worse, he couldn’t feel her anywhere anymore. What was there left to do now but go home? Allow this defeat to mark the beginning of the rest of the long defeat of his life. Alone and in ten kinds of pain.

Then he noticed he wasn’t exactly alone. He had, apparently, escaped the store still clutching the Aqualad package, which now lay a few feet away in the damp sand. He studied bright blocky colors of another age, the vaguely homoerotic outfitting, and the cheesy fists-on-hips posture of a teenage superhero. In one violent motion, he reached out, grabbed it, and tore the plastic housing from the cardboard — feeling some pleasure at the separation of the long-sealed glue. He took the little boy out and studied him closely.

Hello. Where can I guide you today? his phone asked again.

William stared at the caped figure and had no answer.

Hello. Where can I guide you today?

Something in him snapped.

“WHERE IS SHE?” he howled. “WHERE’S IRENE?”

He saw a burst of purple behind his eyelids. He thought he might throw up. And then—

Then the phone replied, in the same stiff but agreeable tone, Finding Irene.

William set the doll down and studied the spider-webbed screen of his phone. He watched a map forming behind the cracked glass. For a moment he almost believed that it might actually locate her. Eventually a picture of her old East Fourth Street apartment emerged, the address still stored in his contacts list somewhere.

He lay there cradling Aqualad in one hand, the phone in the other, thinking about the day he’d broken into that apartment. How he had felt an odd peace there among her things — pasta strainer on a hook near the kitchen, overgrown spider plant on the windowsill, a stack of magazines stolen out of the downstairs recycling bin, a blanket from the Met with a Monet print on it. Her things, without her. At first he’d thought it was just the adrenaline of being where he wasn’t supposed to be, but soon he’d realized it was something else. He was with her, without her. What did it say, that he’d always felt closest to her when she wasn’t there? In her apartment, by himself. By her side as she slept. In the hospital while the morphine carried her off in a Stygian stream. Looking at a picture of her, taken by somebody else—

Of course. He slowly got up and brushed himself off. As head-aching blots of pink stopped moving in front of his eyes, he turned to the phone and asked for the person that he knew he should have started with.

“Cobalt. Find Alisanne Des Rochers.”

It turned out that Alisanne Des Rochers, owner of a Web design company based in Paris, was prompt on e-mail. Before William had even fully pulled himself together, thrown the action figure into his pocket with the weed and the address book, she’d responded to his query, saying she was still in town and could meet him at her hotel, The Quaker, in Long Island City.