The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen (19 page)

“I can't,” she mutters.

“It's okay,” I say, zooming out ever so slightly. “You're sure you had it on?”

“Yes,” she says. “At least, I think I did.” She's staring down at her fingers like she can't believe they're really there.

“So. Tell me about this party,” I urge her. “Where was it?”

She looks at me again, and something is messed up with my focus, so I keep having to fiddle with it. All the zooming in and out makes my hangover pound even worse.

“Downtown,” she says.

She's too cool to be all specific. Hipsters never just come right out and tell you where a party was, or who threw it, or what all went down at it. You're supposed to
already know
.

“Like, where downtown?”

Annie picks up a spoon with some hesitation, and stirs the chili. “I asked for beans,” she whispers. “But this isn't what I meant.”

I've never seen someone look so sad about a stupid bowl of chili. And I've never wanted to protect someone from how sad they're made by a stupid bowl of chili. “Want to send it back? We can send it back,” I reassure her. I bet this place gets stuff sent back all the time. Who cares? It's a diner.

“No,” she says, laying the spoon aside. “There's no point.”

She hides behind her hands for another long minute, and then drops them to stare at me. The camera whirs, and she hazes in and out of focus in a way that makes my eye ache.

“Maybe tell me what you were doing right before you went to the party,” I suggest. “Then we can figure out when you last had it on. Were you at home? Getting dressed? What?”

Annie looks up to the ceiling, lost in thought.

“Ummm.” She frowns. “I wasn't at home. We had to go to my aunt's house, very suddenly. We all left in a hurry.”

“Okay,” I say. “So if you left in a hurry, are you sure you remembered to take it with you? Could it just be at your house?”

“My house,” Annie repeats. Then her eyes widen as if she's just remembered something. She looks intently at me, and clutches my arm across the table. “My house! Oh my God. Wes,” she says, voice low and fierce. “Do you know what a Luddite is?”

“Huh?”

I wonder if Maddie messed with the focus while we were filming her scene for
Most
. I can't get it to stay in place. As soon as I focus on one part of Annie, the rest of her softens out of clarity. I have to keep the camera moving, to even see her. It's super-annoying. I wonder if Tyler would have any suggestions.

“Luddites. Do you know what they are?” She's looking at me so intently that it's making me nervous.

“Um. Sort of? Isn't that, like, someone who hates using computers?” I ask, my fingers on the focus button. Zoom in, zoom out. In, and out. Annie's curls go soft, and then sharpen.

“I don't know,” she says, frowning. “I thought maybe you would know.” A fleeting look of disappointment crosses her face, and I have a sinking feeling that it's me she's disappointed in. I can't stand the thought of disappointing her.

“Why'd you want to know what a Luddite is?” I ask, framing the
shot tightly on Annie's mouth. I'm getting better at getting people to talk, on camera. Sometimes if you just run it long enough, they say what they really mean without even realizing it.

“I . . .” Annie's lips part in my viewfinder, on the point of answering me.

Just then, the pocket of my cargo shorts vibrates. I fish my phone out of my pocket and look down at the screen in my lap. It's from Eastlin.

Not Abraham Mas.

I frown, not sure what he means.

What?
I text back.

Something weird going on,
he texts back.

What do U mean?
I return quickly, eyes still in my lap.

Her dress is handmade
, he returns.
All of it. Lace, too.

So?
I answer.

Checked design textbook. It's prolly antique. Not vintage. Antique.

That doesn't make any sense. Why would Eastlin be telling me this? The phone vibrates again.

STOLEN antique.

I glance up with alarm to where Annie's sitting across from me. She's not there. Her bacon sits uneaten, the spoon lying on the table in a smear of chili as if suddenly dropped.

“Hey!” I say.

I look around, but she's nowhere in the diner.

The waitress passes our booth, flipping pages in her order book, and I reach over and take her arm without thinking. “Excuse me,” I say. “The girl who was with me. Do you know where she went?”

The waitress gives me a cold look and shakes my hand loose. “The hell you talking about?”

“What?” I say, uncertain. I get to my feet, looking at every face
in the diner, faces upon faces upon faces, smiling, talking, chewing, despondent, closed. But none of them are her.

An idea is poking me in the back of my head, but it's too insane for me to face it. I push it away. I push it away really, really hard.

“How the hell did you get into my room, Annie?” I whisper to the empty table.

W
hen I take my hands away from my eyes to look at Wes, I'm met with the figure of a snoring girl, her arms draped down on either side of a scarred wooden table. One of her shoulders peeks out from her dress, which has been loosened in the back. A tankard of beer has been knocked over, making a puddle that runs along the table, along her arm, and drips down her fingers to the floor.

I leap to my feet with a rumption, turning over the bench where I'm sitting. “But,” I say, looking to both sides of me in shock.

Wes is gone. The victualing house where we were sitting has vanished.

I'm in a small ground-floor room that's been set up as a beer hall. Half a dozen tables and benches, lamplit, a few posters tacked up on the wall. Men and women hunched over tables, drinking beer, and some of them eating.

I stagger back from the table in confusion.

“Watch it!” cries a woman carrying mugs of beer. I've staggered into her, knocking her sideways, and she only just saved herself from pouring beer down the back of my day dress.

My day dress.

I look down at myself, at my tidy clothes and clean fingernails. No soot. The only smoke that I smell comes from oil lamps on the tables.

What's just happened? I was in the victualing house, I was thinking about eating bacon, I was talking to Wes. Wes was looking at me through his funny looking-box. He asked me something. Something that made me struggle to remember. And I covered my face. And then . . .

“What day is it?” I demand of the room at large.

“Day?” the ruddy beer-hall mistress asks me, her head cocked sideways. “Why, Tuesday, I should think.”

“Tuesday,” I say. “What Tuesday?”

“What d'you mean, what Tuesday? This one, with her questions.” She jerks her chin at me as she sets the beer mugs down in front of four men at the table next to the one where I awoke.

“I mean, when's the Aquatic Display?” I ask. “Has it happened yet?”

When I ask this, two young men in shabby work pants sitting together at the rear of the hall prick up their ears. They're both young, not much older than I am. One of them has curls over his ears, and a skullcap. The other is dark as a Senegalese. They exchange a look.

“Naw,” the beer-hall mistress says, giving me a Croaker-eye. “Not 'til day after tomorrow. And the ward boss making me pay for bunting out of my tribute, too.”

She eyes the unconscious girl who'd been sharing my table with me, then eyes me, and then folds her arms.

“That beer paid for?”

“Um,” I demur.

The girl's obviously not going to pay. I have no idea who she is. I rummage in my pockets, wondering if this strange memory I've stumbled into will supply me with any money. Sure enough, I find a few pennies in my pocket and count them out in my palm.

The woman snatches them out of my hand with a sour look and turns her back on me.

I recognize this beer hall. It's in a basement on Bayard Street, a couple of blocks from Herschel's uncle's store. We used to come here often, though he was always afraid someone would see us. Once, he recognized some young men from his synagogue loafing together in the back, and we turned back at the door.

Tuesday. Two days until the canal opening. Which means my family has absconded to Hudson Square already. What happens today? What am I supposed to do?

I look down at my hands, and find my cameo is still missing.

“Why am I back here?” I whisper to myself, flexing my fingers.

“Why indeed,” the beer-hall mistress hollers at me from across the room, and the men she's serving chuckle.

There's a woolen cloak with a beer stain on the sleeve draped over the bench next to the sleeping girl at my table. I feel a twinge of guilt as I reach for it, and then remind myself that this is all dream-stuff, anyway. I tie the cloak under my chin and hurry outside.

It's late afternoon, with a few dead leaves skittering up the center of the street, riding a puff of autumn wind. The light slants low between the buildings, and though life is stirring in doorways and behind windows, for the moment the street is deserted. I pull my stolen cloak around my shoulders against the chill and trot down the block.

At the corner, I hear footsteps behind me, and I stop, ears straining. The sound of horse hooves reaches me from one street over, and a wagon creaking on its struts.

I whip around to look behind me—no one is there.

Just shadows.

“Stop it, Annie,” I castigate myself.

I turn the corner and walk faster. Pearl Street falls into shadow as
the sun slips behind the buildings, and the darkness chills me deeper. My knuckles are growing numb.

I arrive outside the dry goods store and peer in through the window, shading my eyes with my hands, looking to see if Herschel is behind the counter. If he's not working, I usually walk past. But today, I can't. Today, I have to find him. It's too dark for me to see inside, but the door is propped open. I gird myself and step inside.

“Go away,” someone says from a doorway behind the counter. “We're closed.”

I can't see who's talking, but I recognize the gravelly, accented voice of Herschel's uncle.

“The door was open,” I falter.

“My mistake,” the uncle says.

He steps forward out of the darkness, scowling down at me. He's a big man, bigger than Herschel, with curls over his ears and a full beard. Long fringes hang from the waist of his trousers. His shirtsleeves are rolled up, and he's wiping his hands on a cloth. They're stained with something, but I'm not sure what.

“I'll just be a minute,” I say, surprising myself with my insistence. He can't frighten me. He's just dream-stuff, too.

The uncle fixes me in a long, steady stare and slowly puts aside the rag in his hands. “Time for more thread already, eh?” he says lightly.

I inhale sharply.

He turns his back to me, browsing through shelves of cloth bolts and rolls of lace.

“Yes,” I say. “I do a lot of . . . sewing.”

Not exactly true. But I have found myself in desperate need of thread lately.

He grunts, his fingers roaming the shelves behind him.

“That corporation man, the banker, he's your father, yes?” he says without looking around.

I'm taken aback by this question. How would this man, whose name I've never learned, possibly know who my father is?

“Yes,” I say, wary.

“They have a big celebration soon,” the man continues. “For a big canal. Everything going to change.”

I'm not sure what Herschel's uncle is getting at. His tone is strangely hostile.

“Very big,” I say, drawing myself up taller in a way that Mother calls imperious. “It's going to transform the city. Papa's been working very hard.”

The man snorts. “Hard work, she says. She doesn't know from hard work.”

I frown, resenting this man who seems to be enjoying making me feel uncomfortable.

“Is Herschel here?” I ask, my voice cool.

“Not here.” The uncle shakes his head.

He sorts through several rolls of thread, finally selecting one particular roll of bright crimson. He holds it up to the light, squinting at it and turning it this way and that.

“But it's Tuesday,” I press. “He's usually here, Tuesdays.”

“Not here,” the uncle reiterates. He plunks the thread onto the counter, then leans forward on his elbow and glares at me. “You know who will benefit, from this canal? Who, besides your father, I mean,” he asks, brows lowered over piercing eyes.

I pick up the thread quickly and stuff it in my pocket. Herschel's uncle's gaze is unnerving in its directness.

“Can you tell me where he is? It's very important that I speak to him,” I say.

I fish around in my skirt pocket for the necessary pennies to pay for my contraband, and slap them onto the counter between us. Herschel's uncle pays no attention.

“You don't know, do you? Your father and the upstanding corporation
machers
will line their pockets, and for what?” he says, a new fierceness in his eyes. “To give rich men even softer cushions for sitting?”

“I have to find Herschel,” I insist. “I have to talk to him. It's very important.”

“Herschel's. Not. Here,” the uncle says.

I'm so angry, I could spit. But I realize that I have nothing to gain by acting like a child. Of course he won't tell me where his nephew is. He's a hateful man.

“Fine,” I say in my coldest voice. “I'll be going then. But when you see Herschel, please tell him I was here.”

I turn on my heel, and as I storm out of the dry goods shop, the uncle calls out, “Be careful, Dutch girl who sews so much. I don't think you know what's going to happen.”

• • •

I'm blinded by anger as I stalk up Pearl Street. What did he mean, talking about my father like that? What did he mean, I don't know what's going to happen? I finger the thread in my pocket, rolling it in my palm. It makes me feel better, having it there.

Lamps are flaming to life as night advances in the ward. I have to get home. If I can. How long will I stay here, in this moment? Can I stay here until I find Herschel, or will I close my eyes and open them and find myself somewhere else completely? Does the advancing night conceal another fog bank that will gather me up into itself and deposit me wherever it likes?

What if it takes me nowhere?

I'm not ready to think about that.

I draw the cloak tighter. I still can't believe how real the cloak feels. How scratchy and oily the felt is where it meets my skin.

I'm mid-muse on the quality of felt when hands clutch my upper arms and I'm hurled against the side of a building. My chin glances across the brick wall, ripping off a strip of skin. I try to scream, but I can't get my breath. Someone's hands are on my shoulders, pushing me against the wall, and I'm instantly afraid that all Mother's warnings about walking alone at night are about to come terribly true.

“There's money in my pocket,” I gasp. “You can have it.”

“We don't want your money,” a young male voice hisses in my ear.

I close my eyes. Oh my God. Please. Please don't.

But instead of fumbling at my skirts, the hands spin me around, pressing my back against the wall. My eyes are shut tight, my fists balled at my sides, ready to fight and kick if I can.

“Why were you asking about the Aquatic Display?” another voice barks.

This is not what I was expecting would happen. I open one eye.

In the darkness, I recognize the contours of the faces of the two young men who were sitting together in the back of the beer hall.

“You followed me,” I say.

“Shut up. Why'd you ask about the display, and then go into that shop?” the one in the skullcap demands. He has a metal pin on his lapel, in the shape of a broken spindle.

“What?” I'm confused.

“What do you know about it?” the dark one shouts, flecks of spittle hitting my cheeks.

I cringe away from him, holding my breath.

The other one draws so near to me that I can feel hot air from his nostrils along my cheek.

“What did Herschel tell you?” he whispers.

Herschel!

“Nothing!” I cry. “I haven't seen him!”

“She's lying,” the Senegalese boy says. He's missing a tooth, and his nose has been broken at least twice. It zigzags painfully down his face.

“I'm not lying,” I say, drawing myself up taller. I lift my bruised chin and stare down my nose at him. “I've been looking for him. I went to the store thinking he'd be there, but he wasn't.”

The boys exchange a glower. The one holding me by my cloak tightens his grip, knotting his fists together and pressing me harder against the brick wall.

“You tell us what he told you,” the one in the skullcap mutters, his lips almost touching my ear. “You tell us right now. And you'll tell us what your father knows, too.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, and scream, “No! You can't hurt me! You can't!”

I raise my fists and flail at the boys, but instead of hitting flesh, my hands hit nothing.