Change Places with Me (6 page)

Rose had never been to Stella Dallas or to the old movie house, You Must Remember This, which showed twentieth-century films and didn’t even have a holo-screen. She figured she’d look up the route on her phone but then forgot her phone; still, she found her way easily, even while walking along unfamiliar streets that had names instead of numbers—Belle Circle, Forest Glen, Fragrant Meadows—bordered by tall trees filled with chattering sparrows. Why couldn’t these birds nest on Mrs. Moore’s windowsill instead of ones that sounded so sad all the time? Rose had slept deeply and felt great—well, good. The red light had been there when she woke up and hadn’t faded until she started brushing her teeth, which was definitely something new. And she couldn’t help saying to Evelyn on her way out the door, “I’m sorry we hired that psychic. I said I’d pay for her, but what a waste.”

“She wouldn’t accept payment,” Evelyn had said.

“What—why not?”

“Something about an incomplete reading.”

Rose shrugged this off. “I’ll be home right after brunch.” As if brunch was something Rose did every Sunday and this wasn’t her first time.

Stella Dallas was a coffee shop plastered with movie posters from years gone by. Rose knew some of the famous names, Marilyn Monroe and Jack Nicholson, and didn’t recognize others, Joel McCrea, Molly Ringwald. She took off her coat, one of Evelyn’s—wool, tweedy, with fake fur around the collar—and became the seventh person to squeeze into a booth meant for six, leaving her half on, half off the padded bench next to Dylan Beck, who wasn’t giving an inch, and a couple of guys she didn’t know. Across from her were Selena, Astrid, and a girl she didn’t
know either.
There’s no room for me here,
she thought.
I could’ve just
been someone passing by,
and then had to remind herself that of course that wasn’t true; Selena had specially invited her only hours before.

And Selena immediately focused on her, leaning across the table. “Such a cool party! Everyone’s asking, how about another one next weekend? You can get a DJ then. It’s a lot more fun than a stream.”

“I know something a lot more fun than a stream,” Dylan said.

“Shut up,” Astrid said. She had deep shadows beneath her eyes.

Dylan reached for her, which knocked open a bottle of ketchup on the Formica tabletop. No one moved to clean up
the spill, so Rose used her napkin to wipe it up. “I heard a really strange story yesterday, at Belle Heights Animal Hospital.”

“I know that place,” Dylan said. “They put my cat under for an operation and she never woke up.”

Rose thought that sounded awful. Never getting a chance to say good-bye. “It’s not that kind of story. There were these dogs that hated each other. One day, one of them died—”

“Don’t talk about that!” Selena cried. “I had a schnorgi. I loved her so much. She died last year.”

“What’s a schnorgi?” asked the girl Rose didn’t know.

“Half schnauzer, half corgi, and all a-dog-able.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard from you,” Astrid said.

Selena looked like she might cry.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Astrid said.

“You’re calling
me
stupid! Meanwhile
she’s
telling us some horrible story about dead dogs!”

“That’s just it,” Rose said. “The dog wasn’t dead—it was alive the whole time, and somehow the other dog knew it and dug him up. But even after that, they still hated each other. Actually, I don’t like the ending to this story; this experience should’ve changed them on the deepest level, brought them closer together—”

“Stop! I miss my schnorgi.” Selena held her hands over her ears.

Rose remembered doing that as a kid. Holding her hands over her ears, pressing hard, shutting her eyes tight—anything
to blot out the world, make it go away.

Across the room, near a poster for a movie called
Ball of Fire
, Rose saw a girl with a long, ropy braid down her back, sitting at the crowded counter. Kim was here! Rose could bring Kim over to the table and squeeze her in, too. But there were older people on either side of Kim, maybe an aunt and uncle.

“I was meaning to tell you,” one of the guys next to Rose said. “Your mom is
hot
.”

A waiter came to their table. Rose looked up to see a short kid in a black T-shirt and black jeans, with frizzy, curly hair and bushy eyebrows that were almost a unibrow—the kid from the cafeteria scanner. Kim had mentioned his name—what was it? “It’s . . . you,” she said.

“It’s me, all right.”

“You work here, too?”

“My parents own the place. Weekends are busy, so I help out.”

“I guess they like movies, huh?”

“That’s an understatement. My mom’s from Korea and my dad’s from the Dominican Republic. Their families thought they couldn’t possibly have anything in common, but they did.”

Everyone else at the table was ignoring them, talking to one another. Rose gestured to the poster across the room. “What’s
Ball of Fire
?”

“A screwball comedy from 1941, with Gary Cooper and the lovely Barbara Stanwyck.”

Rose remembered that he’d told her she looked like Barbara
Stanwyck. “What’s it about?”

“There’s this nightclub singer who has to hide out because her mobster boyfriend is in trouble with the law. She ends up in a house with eight professors writing an encyclopedia—”

“Can we order, already?” Astrid asked.

“In a second,” Rose said. “I want to hear this. Go on.”

“These professors never really leave the house, so she helps them write part of their encyclopedia about the slang of the day. It’s actually based on ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.’”

“No kidding! My dad used to read that to me all the time. I practically had it memorized. But you said there were eight professors, not seven?”

“Gary Cooper is the prince.”

“Oh.” He had amazing eyes, she noticed, brown with flecks of green.

“I’m named after Gary Cooper. Though I think he was a lot taller.”

“Your name is Gary?” But that sounded wrong.

“Cooper,” he said.

“I’ll have cranberry pancakes,” Astrid broke in. “Double-shot latte. No, triple.”

Cooper took the rest of their orders; Rose got the steel-cut oatmeal. As Cooper left, he told Rose, “Sometimes they show that movie next door. Keep an eye out.”

“I will,” she said.

“I would
never
,” Selena said. “I only see holo-films. I like how
you feel in the middle of everything. Though they make my cousin throw up.”

“Where’s Nick?” Rose said.

They all looked at one another.

“He had a late night,” Dylan said. “He’s sleeping it off.”

Selena’s fist came down on the table, knocking over the ketchup bottle again. “Can’t keep a secret, can you?”

“What’re you talking about?” Dylan said. “I didn’t say anything!”

Rose agreed. It was Selena who was giving things away. “He went out with someone after the party, didn’t he,” Rose said, stating it as a fact.

“Darcy Franzen,” Selena said.

Rose looked at the splotch of ketchup and didn’t clean it up.

“Are you seriously upset?” Selena said. “I mean, it’s Nick, so . . .”

Rose glanced over at Kim. The people on either side of her had left—they hadn’t been an aunt and uncle, after all. Kim was alone. “I have to talk to someone.”

“If you call Nick—” Selena said, alarmed.

“You always called him,” Astrid said, “and he always denied everything.”

“Nick never cheated on me!” Selena said. “Keep telling yourself that,” Astrid said.

“I’m not calling Nick,” Rose said. “I don’t even have my phone.” She headed over to Kim.

Kim was just finishing a stack of blueberry pancakes. She had on a paisley sweatshirt dress with metal clasps in the front. “Hey,” she said, offering Rose half an orange juice stick. “Want a bite?”

“I’m sitting with them.” Rose pointed to her table.

Kim glanced and made a face. She said, “You see who works here?”

“Cooper,” Rose said. “As in Gary Cooper.”

“Ha, I didn’t know that! Makes sense, though.” Kim waved an arm at the movie posters.

“I wanted you at my party. I know you only got a last-minute invite.”

“I couldn’t have gone anyway. Had to babysit. This family had a crazy basset hound. I was told it was in a locked room, but it got out somehow and chased me into the kids’ room. I was in there until midnight, with the dog outside, howling. The kids thought it was hilarious. How was the party?”

“Really great but—Nick Winter? He hung out with me, and I just heard he got together after with Darcy Franzen.”

“No big loss. Maybe for Darcy Franzen, but not for you.” Kim pointed her thumb at the poster for
Ball of Fire
. “You do look like Barbara Stanwyck.”

“There was a psychic at the party. Everybody said she was amazing, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. She kept asking me questions about when I was little. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

Kim shrugged.

“I was spoiled,” Rose said, “wasn’t I? My dad spoiled me.”

A sort of sad smile spread across Kim’s face. “Your dad was
a single parent practically since you were born. He did the best he could. He kinda had a hard time saying no to you.”

“I was a brat,” Rose said with conviction. Which meant that everything that had happened had been just what you’d expect, right? Her dad had been the way he was because she didn’t have a mom, and later she’d gotten sort of moody for a time because her dad was gone, too. It wasn’t that complicated, certainly nothing to dwell on.

“Yeah, you were the brat of Belle Heights,” Kim said. “I loved you anyway.” She hesitated. “I still love you.”

“Oh, I love you, too!” Rose beamed at her.

“So why are you with them?”

Rose kept smiling. “We could all be friends, though. Don’t you think? We could do so many fun things together.”

Kim said that wasn’t going to happen—and called her by her old name.

“It’s
Rose
. Don’t I look like a Rose? The lipstick, the hair?” She tucked some hair behind one ear. “I know I don’t have the exact right jean jacket—but I’ll find it soon.”

Kim got up. “Come over later. Doesn’t matter when. Just—drop by.”

Rose went back to her table, having to push to reclaim even her tiny portion of the bench. She half listened to a story about some girl who got her lips puffed and they looked
horrible
. She glanced out the window at stark branches against a swirling gray sky, clouds all smeared as if someone had tried to rub them out.

That was when she saw it—Forget-Me-Not.

There was a three-story brick building across the street, not the kind of building you’d ever look twice at. On the second floor, right above a cell phone store, were the words, not very big, in plain black on one of the windows—in the same lettering as on that receipt she’d found last weekend, for sixteen hundred dollars. Evelyn had said it was a flower shop. It didn’t look anything like a flower shop. There weren’t any flowers.

She clasped her hand to her jaw. What had been a dull ache had turned to searing pain.

“What’s the matter?” Selena said. “It’s Nick and Darcy, isn’t it?”

Rose stood. Her half-eaten oatmeal looked thick and soggy as wet cement. She placed some money on the table.

“Thanks. I may need that if I can’t find any cash,” Selena said.

“It’s the tip.”

“For that stupid waiter who wouldn’t shut up?” Astrid said. “I ought to tell the owners to fire him.”

Rose picked up the tip. “I’ll give it to him myself.”

“The party?” Selena said. “Next week? I’ll tell everybody.”

At the door, Cooper came to Rose’s side. “Are you all right?”

“My jaw really hurts,” she said, practically hunched over.

“How’d you hurt it?”

“I don’t know.”

He just looked at her. “Hey, if you need to lie down, there’s a
room in the back with a couch. Do you want me to call someone to pick you up?”

He was really nice. “Cooper,” she said, and insisted he take the tip, and by mistake told him her old name, maybe because Kim had just said it, and realized she felt better. “It’s nice to actually meet you.”

“Nice to actually meet you, too.”

He stuck out his hand. Such an old-fashioned gesture. She took it. And didn’t let go. They just held hands.

“Would you want to hang out sometime?”

“I don’t know—there’s this guy . . .” She shook her head. “Well, I guess not, really. I might’ve set a world record for the shortest relationship ever.”

“I bet I beat it. One time I took a girl to the movies. Her old boyfriend was on line behind us, and by the time I bought the tickets, they were back together.”

She smiled.

“Now that’s a real smile,” he said.

She pointed across the street. “You see that place, Forget-Me-Not? What is it?”

“No idea. I never noticed it before.”

Exactly. It was meant not to be noticed.

“Are you heading up there?” he asked her.

“Yes. No. I’m going . . . somewhere else. To the Bronx Global Conservation Center.”

“You mean the zoo?”

“I mean the zoo.”

“Mm-hmm.” Cooper looked deep in thought. “The rush here is winding down, and I haven’t been to the zoo in . . . ever.”

“Really? You’ve got to see the gorillas!” She gave his hand a tug.

“Let me get my jacket. I’d love to see the gorillas.”

An old express bus left Belle Heights every hour on the hour in the direction of the zoo and returned to Belle Heights every hour on the half hour. Rose and Cooper found seats together; Rose settled into the cushy fabric lining, so unlike the plastic seats on hydro-buses. Cooper had on a bulky shearling jacket, which, since it was slightly too big for him, made Rose feel like she was sitting next to an overstuffed pillow.

Neither one said anything down several hilly, curving streets of Belle Heights.

Rose spoke first. “Wish I had my phone with me. I’ve got a great song on it. ‘Changes,’ by David Bowie.”

“Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes,” Cooper sang, very badly. “Here, try this one.”

He took out his phone, found the song he wanted, and held it to her ear. It was a short song with a simple, quiet, lilting tune, and the words—well, they took her breath away.

        
It seems we stood and talked like this before

        
We looked at each other in the same way then,

        
But I can’t remember where or when.

        
Some things that happen for the first time,

        
Seem to be happening again.

        
And so it seems that we have met before,

        
And laughed before, and loved before,

        
But who knows where or when.

“You like it?” Cooper asked her.

“More than that. I’m crazy about it.”

“It’s called ‘Where or When,’ from a Broadway show almost a hundred years old.”

But it could have been written that day and sung for the first time by the person sitting behind them on the bus. It felt that immediate and timeless.

Cooper started talking, mostly about his family. He had two older sisters, Ava and Ginger; one was a geneticist, and the other was an engineer who built suspension bridges. “That takes all the pressure off me. I can do—whatever.” Which turned out to be writing and filming his own science-fiction movie. “Everything will be exactly the way it is now, except for one specific thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“Haven’t gotten quite that far yet.”

Rose laughed. She liked Cooper’s voice, easy and gentle.
Back in the diner, she’d liked his eyes, and how he’d held her hand.

Things were starting to add up here.

When they got off the bus, the wind was sharply colder. Rose huddled inside her coat and pressed her face into the collar.

“Cold?” Cooper said. “I can give you my jacket.”

“No, I’m okay.” She remembered something from long ago. “That’s what Kim used to do for me, when we were kids.”

“That sounds like Kim, all right. Giving you the coat off her back.”

“She was always too warm—she thinks her body temperature is naturally about two degrees hotter than everybody else’s. When she got a fever, it went up to something scary crazy, like a hundred and four.”

They made their way to the Congo Gorilla Forest. But instead of letting them go right into the building, a man at the gate said they had to pay extra for it.

“This isn’t included in the price of admission?” Rose said.

“Only if you have the Total Experience Package.”

“That sounds like one of those you-gotta-have-it ads,” Cooper said, and deepened his voice like an announcer: “With the Total Experience Package, you’ll have it all, perfect marriage, perfect job, perfect life!”

Rose ignored Cooper. This thing about the Total Experience Package was bothering her. “Is this something new?” she asked the man.

“Nope, been going on for years and years.” He continued to scan ticket stubs and let people in as he spoke.

“I was here last week. Nobody asked for money for the Congo Gorilla Forest.”

“Then somebody was asleep on the job. You must’ve seen signs for it. They’re everywhere.”

Well, sure they were.
Now.

“It’s only three dollars,” Cooper said. “I’ll treat you. I just got a nice tip.”

The entrance consisted of a long, skinny, zigzag hall that felt like a maze with no choice of paths that kept pushing you forward. Rose had no memory of this, either. It was very crowded, shoulder to shoulder. Last week, it hadn’t been nearly so busy, and the other visitors were chatty and friendly, the kids smiling and laughing. Now a lady taking a photo shoved Rose aside and didn’t even apologize, and a kid wailed for his mom, who said, irritably, “Stop it, I’m right here!”

Rose and Cooper finally managed to reach the floor-to-ceiling windows looking onto the gorilla habitat outside. Rose couldn’t believe it. Several gorillas sat calmly gazing at the crowd, but there was one—a huge one—glaring at people as if wanting to tear them apart, if not for this thick glass.

“You were right about the gorillas,” Cooper said. “They’re amazing.”

But what happened to the tender gorilla cradling her baby?

Rose broke away from Cooper, pushing past people, looking for someone who worked here. She spotted a woman all
in khaki, holding a clipboard. “What’s wrong with her?” Rose asked.

“What’s wrong with who?”

Wasn’t it obvious? “The gorilla.”

The woman grinned. “That’s one of the famous Pattycake’s many descendants. Her name is Candy.”

“You’re wrong. Candy’s a cocker spaniel.”

“Well, this girl’s nearly twenty and her name has always been Candy.”

The air in the room was starting to feel close and stifling. Rose felt sweat gather on the back of her neck. “I was here last week. There was a mother gorilla and a baby.”

“No babies at the moment. Just Candy and her almost fully grown children.”

“She looked loving and kind.”

The woman glanced down at her clipboard and scribbled something. “Candy’s only got two expressions—mean and meaner.”

“She was keeping the baby safe and sound.”

The woman looked up; clearly she had work to do, but she wasn’t hurrying Rose along. “Maybe you saw a photograph of a gorilla. Ever hear of Koko? She had a kitten she adored.”

“I’m not confusing anything with anything.” Rose pointed at the gorilla. “I know what I saw.”

“No need to raise your voice, sweetheart,” the woman said softly.

Rose turned away.

Now she noticed plants in large tubs at the edge of the exhibit, and her eyes widened. Last week they’d been lush and green. Now the long, heart-shaped leaves were scarred and brown, the stalks all tangled. How was this possible? These plants had been neglected for far longer than a week. Something had to be done—right away. She plunged both hands into the dirt.

“Hey, you can’t do that!” a guard yelled.

“These plants need to be moved.” Rose scratched at the soil. “There’s a rooftop garden on Belle Heights Tower. It’ll be the perfect place—they can heal and grow.”

“Girlie, knock it off! Do I need to call security?” Her hands were smeared, the fingernails black.

“You have to leave,” the guard said, “now.”

“Will you make sure someone takes care of the plants?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

She didn’t believe him.

Cooper rushed to her side. “I couldn’t find you. Where’d you go?” He looked at her hands. “What happened to you?”

“The people who work here don’t know anything about anything.”

“Come on—let’s get those hands washed.” He led her to a fountain. He turned on the water and held her hands under the stream.

She watched as rivers of dirt ran down the drain. “I could go to the ladies’ room, use the sink.”

“I think I’d better keep an eye on you.” Cooper dried her
hands on the sleeve of his jacket, which got dirty.

“Oh, your jacket,” she said.

“Not a problem.”

She looked down. “My hands look younger now.”

“You mean cleaner.” Cooper was starting to sound worried. Outside, the icy winds were even more chilling because Rose had gotten kind of sweaty inside. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Last week it wasn’t this cold.” She thought hard, frowning. “There was no weather at all.”

Cooper actually took her arm. “Enough zoo for today,” he said, leading her to the bus stop. “And, um, by the way, one thing you can count on is there’s always weather—it’s breezy, or raining, or the clouds are hazy, or there are no clouds at all and the sky’s a brilliant blue. You know, even if the air feels like ‘room temperature,’ that’s still weather, right?”

“I’m telling you how it was” was all Rose would say.

She was quiet on the bus home. She leaned her head against the window and stared out at rows of houses with patches of lawns surrounded by chain-link fences. Some lawns were well manicured; some were scruffy; some had wildflowers at the edges, bursting at the seams. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Cooper kept glancing over at her. His coat was taking up half her seat.

After a while, Cooper cleared his throat. “Hey, don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . were you really at the zoo last week?”

“Of course!”

“I’m not so sure. All signs point to no on the Magic Eight
Ball, if you know what I mean.” He hesitated. “My timing might be really bad here—I kinda hate to bring this up, but maybe your memory got tampered with. I mean, that happens these days. Do you ever think that?”

Rose shook her head.

“Hey, it might explain a few things.”

She kept shaking her head. There wasn’t a big enough
no
when it came to something like this.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I would never do such a thing, never. If you knew me at all, you’d know that.”

“Well, I’m getting to know you, right?” Cooper looked at her intently. “You’ve changed a lot, your hair, your clothes, your personality—”

She smiled brightly. The explanation for all that came to her easily. “I’m growing up.”

“Hey, I’m just saying, maybe it wasn’t your idea at all, maybe somebody arranged it for you. It wouldn’t be the first time, from what I’ve read.”

That stopped her cold. The receipt, seeing Forget-Me-Not—the flower place that couldn’t possibly be a flower place. Had something been done to her memory there? She couldn’t
help thinking,
If anyone did that to me—well, I don’t hate people, but I’d be very unhappy with that person forever.

Back in Belle Heights, Rose told Cooper what she was about to do. Cooper, looking even smaller in his big coat, suggested
it might be a good idea to go home instead. She shook her head again. Then he offered to accompany her, but Rose said she had to do this alone. She knew, without once looking behind her, that he was watching until she disappeared from sight.

Outside Forget-Me-Not, sparrows chattered loudly in what sounded like a ferocious argument. What were they so upset about? Rose pressed the buzzer next to a camera lens.

“May I help you?” said a woman’s voice that was flat and generic.

Rose just stood there, frozen.

“Yes?” said the voice. “I can see that you’re still there.”

She managed to get the words out: “Is this a flower shop?”

There was a pause. “No.”

“What is it, then?”

“A stationery store.”

“Can I see some stationery?”

“You’re not trade. We only sell to trade.”

“I’m trade.” Rose didn’t know what it meant.

There was another pause. A hydro-bus sped by and hit a bump with a loud clunk. “Appointment only,” the lady said finally, and: “We’re about to close.”

“I know your voice,” Rose said. “The kinds of things you say.”

There was a sigh. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” The voice was suddenly impatient. “This is Rose Hartel, isn’t it? The hair’s different—it threw me. Listen, go home, Rose. You never came here.”

“I’m not leaving,”
Rose said, with a flash of what felt like a long-familiar streak of stubbornness.

Another sigh.

The door buzzed. Rose opened it and stepped inside.