بخش 3 فصل 7

New York City

March 16, 2014

VII

Addie wakes to the smell of toast browning, the sizzle of butter hitting a hot skillet. The bed is empty beside her, the door almost closed, but she can hear Henry moving in the kitchen beneath the soft burble of talk radio. The room is cool, and the bed is warm, and she holds her breath and tries to hold the moment with it, the way she has a thousand times, clutching the past to the present, and warding off the future, the fall.

But today is different.

Because someone remembers.

She throws off the blankets, scavenges the bedroom floor, looking for her clothes, but there’s no sign of the rain-soaked jeans or shirt, just the familiar leather jacket draped over a chair. Addie finds a robe beneath and wraps it around her, buries her nose in the collar. It is worn and soft, smells like clean cotton and fabric softener and the faint hint of coconut shampoo, a smell she will come to know as his.

She pads barefoot into the kitchen as Henry pours coffee from a French press.

He looks up, and smiles. “Good morning.”

Two small words that move the world.

Not I’m sorry. Not I don’t remember. Not I must have been drunk.

Just good morning.

“I put your clothes in the dryer,” he says. “They should be done soon. Grab yourself a mug.” Most people have a shelf of cups. Henry has a wall. They hang from hooks on a mounted rack, five across and seven down. Some of them are patterned and some of them are plain and no two are the same.

“I’m not sure you have enough mugs.”

Henry casts her a sidelong look. He has a way of almost smiling. It’s like light behind a curtain, the edge of the sun behind clouds, more a promise than an actual thing, but the warmth shines through.

“It was a thing, in my family,” he says. “No matter who came over for coffee, they could choose the one that spoke to them that day.” His own cup sits on the counter, charcoal gray, the inside coated in something that looks like liquid silver. A storm cloud and its lining. Addie studies the wall, trying to make her choice. She reaches for a large porcelain cup with small blue leaves, weighs it in her palm before she notices another. She’s about to put it back when Henry stops her.

“I’m afraid all selections are final,” he says, scraping butter over toast. “You’ll have to try again tomorrow.” Tomorrow. The word swells a little in her chest.

Henry pours, and Addie leans her elbows on the counter, wraps her hands around the steaming cup, inhales the bittersweet scent. For a second, only a second, she is in Paris, hat pulled down in the corner of the café as Remy pushed the cup toward her and said, Drink. That is how memories are for her, past rising into present, a palimpsest held up to the light.

“Oh, hey,” says Henry, calling her back. “I found this on the floor. Is it yours?” She looks up and sees the wooden ring.

“Don’t touch that.” Addie snatches it out of his hand, too fast. The inside of the ring brushes the tip of her finger, rolls around the nail like a coin about to settle, all the ease of a compass finding north.

“Shit.” Addie shudders and drops the band. It clatters to the floor, rolling several feet before fetching up against the edge of a rug. She grips her fingers as if burned, heart pounding.

She didn’t put it on.

And even if she did—her gaze cuts to the window, but it is morning, sunlight streaming through the curtains. The darkness cannot find her here.

“What happened?” asks Henry, clearly confused.

“Nothing,” she says, shaking out her hand. “Just a splinter. Stupid thing.” She kneels slowly to retrieve it, careful to touch only the outside of the band.

“Sorry,” she says, straightening. She sets the ring on the counter between them, splaying her hands on either side. In the artificial light, the pale wood looks almost gray. Addie glares down at the band.

“Have you ever had something you love, and hate, but can’t bear to get rid of? Something you almost wish you’d lose, because then it wouldn’t be there, and it wouldn’t be your fault…” She tries to make the words light, almost casual.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I do.” He opens a kitchen drawer and pulls out something small, and gold. A Star of David. A pendant, missing its chain.

“You’re Jewish?”

“I was.” Two words, and all he means to say. His attention drifts back to her ring. “It looks old.” “It is.” Exactly as old as she is.

They both should have worn to nothing long ago.

She presses her hand down over the ring, feels the smooth wooden rim dig into her palm. “It belonged to my father,” she says, and it isn’t a lie, though it’s only the beginning of the truth. She closes her hand around the ring, and pockets it. The ring is weightless, but she can feel it. She can always feel it.

“Anyway,” she says, with a too-bright smile. “What’s for breakfast?”

How many times has Addie dreamed of this?

Of hot coffee and buttered toast, of sunlight streaming through the windows, of new days that aren’t fresh starts, none of the awkward silence of strangers, of a boy or a girl, elbows on the counter across from her, the simple comfort of a night remembered.

“You must really love breakfast,” says Henry, and she realizes she is beaming down at her food.

“It’s my favorite meal,” she answers, spearing a bite of eggs.

But as she eats, the hope begins to thin.

Addie is not a fool. Whatever this is, she knows it will not last. She has lived too long to think it chance, been cursed too long to think it fate.

She has begun to wonder if it is a trap.

Some new way to torment her. To break the stalemate, force her hand back into play. But even after all these years, Luc’s voice wraps around her, soft and low and gloating.

I am all you have. All you will ever have. The only one who will remember.

It was the one card he always held, the weapon of his own attention, and she does not think he’d give it away. But if it is not a trap, then what? An accident? A stroke of luck? Perhaps she has gone mad. It would not be the first time. Perhaps she has frozen up on Sam’s roof, and is trapped in a dream.

Perhaps none of it is real.

And yet, there is his hand on hers, there is the soft scent of him on the robe, there is the sound of her name, drawing her back.

“Where did you go?” he asks, and she spears another bite of food and holds it up between them.

“If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life,” she says, “what would it be?” “Chocolate,” Henry answers without missing a beat. “The kind so dark it’s almost bitter. You?” Addie ponders. A life is a very long time. “Cheese,” she answers soberly, and Henry nods, and silence settles over them, less awkward than shy. Nervous laughter in between stolen glances, two strangers who are no longer strangers but know so little of each other.

“If you could live somewhere with only one season,” asks Henry, “what would it be?” “Spring,” she says, “when everything is new.”

“Fall,” he says, “when everything is fading.”

They have both chosen seams, those ragged lines where things are neither here nor there, but balanced on the brink. And Addie wonders, half to herself, “Would you rather feel nothing or everything?” A shadow crosses Henry’s face, and he falters, looks down at his unfinished food and then to the clock on the wall.

“Shit. I’ve got to get to the store.” He straightens, dropping his plate in the sink. The last question goes unanswered.

“I should go home,” says Addie, rising too. “Get changed. Do some work.” There is no home, of course, no clothes, no job. But she is playing the part of a normal girl, a girl who gets to have a normal life, sleep with a boy and wake up to good mornings instead of who are yous.

Henry finishes his coffee in a single gulp. “How do you go about finding talent?” he asks, and Addie remembers she told him that she was a scout.

“You keep your eyes open,” she says, rounding the counter.

But he catches her hand.

“I want to see you again.”

“I want you to see me again,” she echoes.

“Still no phone?”

She shakes her head, and he raps his fingers for a moment, thinking. “There’s a food truck rally in Prospect Park. Meet you there at six?” Addie smiles. “It’s a date.” She pulls the robe close. “Mind if I take a shower before I go?” Henry kisses her. “Of course. Just let yourself out.”

She smiles. “I will.”

Henry leaves, the front door swinging shut behind him, but for once, the sound doesn’t make her stomach drop. It’s just a door. Not a period. An ellipsis. A to-be-continued.

She takes a long, hot shower, wraps her hair in a towel, and wanders through the apartment, noticing all the things she didn’t see last night.

Henry’s apartment is just this side of messy, cluttered in the way so many New York places are, too little space to live and breathe. It’s also littered with the remains of abandoned hobbies. A cabinet of oil paints, the brushes gone stale and stiff in a stained cup. Notebooks and journals, most of them empty. A few blocks of wood and a whittling knife—somewhere, in the faded space before her flawless memory, she hears her father humming, and moves on, moves away, slowing only when she reaches the cameras.

A row of them stare down at her from a shelf, their lenses large and wide and black.

Vintage, she thinks, though the word has never held much weight.

She was there when cameras were hulking tripod beasts, the photographer hidden beneath a heavy drape. She was there for the invention of black-and-white film, and then color, there when still frames became videos, when analog became digital, and whole stories could be stored in the palm of a hand.

She runs her fingers across the camera bodies, like carapace shells, feels dust beneath her touch. But there are photographs everywhere.

On the walls, propped on side tables, and sitting in the corner, waiting to be hung. There is one of Beatrice in an art gallery, a silhouette against the brightly lit space. One of Beatrice and Henry, tangled together, her gaze up, and his head down, each caught in the beginning of a laugh. One of a boy that Addie guesses must be Robbie. Bea was right; he looks like he walked out of a party in Andy Warhol’s loft. The crowd behind him is a blur of bodies, but Robbie is in focus, mid-laugh, purple glitter tracing his cheekbones, plumes of green along his nose, gold at his temples.

Another photo, in the hall. Here, the three of them sit on a sofa, Bea in the middle, Robbie’s legs stretched across her lap, and Henry on the other side, chin resting lazily on his hand.

And across the hall, its opposite. A posed family portrait, stiff against the candids. Again Henry sits on the edge of the sofa, but more upright, and this time placed beside two people who are clearly his brother and sister. The girl, a whirlwind of curls, eyes dancing behind a pair of cat-eye frames, the model of the mother resting a hand on her shoulder. The boy, older, sterner, an echo of the father behind the sofa. And the younger son, lean, wary, smiling the kind of smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Henry stares back at Addie, from the photos he’s in, and the ones he clearly took. She can feel him, the artist in the frame. She could stay there, studying these pictures, trying to find the truth of him in them, the secret, the answer to the question going around and around in her head.

But all she sees is someone sad, lost, searching.

She turns her attention to the books.

Henry’s own collection is eclectic, spilling across surfaces in every room. A shelf in the living room, a narrower one in the hall, a stack beside his bed, another on the coffee table. Comics stacked over a pile of textbooks with titles like Reviewing the Covenant and Jewish Theology for the Postmodern Age. There are novels, biographies, paperbacks and hardcovers mixed together, some old and fraying, others brand new. Bookmarks jut up from the pages, marking a dozen unfinished reads.

Her fingers drift down the spines, hover on a squat gold book. A History of the World in 100 Objects. She wonders if you can distill a person’s life, let alone human civilization, to a list of things, wonders if that’s a valid way to measure worth at all, not by the lives touched, but the things left behind. She tries to build her own list. A History of Addie LaRue.

Her father’s bird, lost among the bodies in Paris.

The Place Royale, stolen from Remy’s room.

The wooden ring.

But those things have their mark on her. What of Addie’s legacy? Her face, ghosted in a hundred works of art. Her melodies at the heart of a hundred songs. Ideas taking root, growing wild, the seeds unseen.

Addie continues through the apartment, idle curiosity giving way to a more purposeful search. She is looking for clues, searching for something, anything, to explain Henry Strauss.

A laptop sits on the coffee table. It boots without a password prompt, but when Addie brushes her thumb across the trackpad, the cursor doesn’t move. She taps the keys absently, but nothing happens.

The technology changes.

The curse stays the same.

Except it doesn’t.

It hasn’t—not entirely.

So she goes from room to room, searching for clues to the question she cannot seem to answer.

Who are you, Henry Strauss?

In the medicine cabinet, a handful of prescriptions line the shelf, their names clogged with consonants. Beside them, a vial of pink pills marked with only a Post-it—a tiny, hand-drawn umbrella.

In the bedroom, another bookshelf, a stack of notebooks in various shapes and sizes.

She turns through, but all of them are blank.

On the windowsill, another, older photo—of Henry and Robbie. In this one, they are tangled, Robbie’s face pressed against Henry’s, his forehead resting on Henry’s temple. There’s something intimate about the pose, the way Robbie’s eyes are almost closed, the way Henry’s hand cradles the back of his head, as if holding him up, or holding him close. The serene curve on Robbie’s mouth. Happy. Home.

By the bed, an old-fashioned watch sits on the side table. It has no minute hand, and the hour points just past six, even though the clock on the wall reads 9:32. She holds it to her ear, but the battery must be dead.

And then, in the top drawer, a handkerchief, dotted with blood. When she picks it up, a ring tumbles out. A small diamond set in a platinum band. Addie stares down at the engagement ring, and wonders who it was for, wonders who Henry was before he met her, what happened to put him in her path.

“Who are you?” she whispers to the empty room.

She wraps the ring in the stained kerchief and returns it to its spot, sliding the drawer shut.