Alexis waited for Linda, who had texted her as soon as Alexis had switched on her phone after the final bell. HEY U CUTIE. MEET ME SOUTH DOOR, the text had read.
Linda appeared. “What’s with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, smiling.
“Naw,” said Alexis. “But I’ve got to get back home. Want to walk?”
“I was thinking something else,” Linda said, toying with her phone, from which dangled at least three tiny bright charms on chains. She dropped the thing, which was frankly, Alexis thought, overadorned, and then scooped it up, looking embarrassed. “Don’t go home right away. Let’s go over to Moonlight Phở on Jackson.”
“Sounds great, but, um, I’ve got an English test tomorrow, for one thing.” Alexis couldn’t bring herself to mention the whole clotted rest of it, although the “conversation” with her mother the night before had brought some relief.
“When have you ever cared about English tests before?” Linda quipped. “Besides, you can get Bs without even studying. What’s all this, girl? Distance? Excuses? At arm’s length?” Linda drew close and closed her eyes a moment. “You know you want . . . phở.”
“Well, when you put it like that. I mean, just for a little while, OK?”
She was bearing and covering so much. Was life always full of so many complications, details, spells of worry, fear, and even remorse? Alexis suddenly wondered if she would ever live past the age of nineteen. It didn’t seem possible. What will I be, if I’m really an adult someday? It was not quite imaginable. If she grew older—old—that would mean, for one thing, her hair would turn gray, for sure. Her mother’s left eyebrow (as well as the rest of her hair) had turned fully gray. The eyebrow was pretty peculiar, for sure, although Alexis had gotten used to it. Her mother’s self-consciousness about her appearance had of course dictated the ongoing and meticulous use of hair color.
Alexis sat down on the stone steps. “Ah, fuck it,” she said.
“Fuck what?” said Linda.
“Gray hair,” said Alexis.
“Sure thing. Hey, you are quite the mystery chick. But that’s why I love ya! Why, I friended you first of anyone. Gray hair—what the hell? Now, come on. Quit brooding about imaginary stuff and let’s get to Moonlight Phở.”
“Well . . . yeah, sure. Sorry.”
The two walked slowly down the stairs, winding their way along the path to Twenty-third. The wind was strong. Two boys, probably seniors, were teasing a freshman kid about his books and folders, which had dropped to the ground, and papers were swirling everywhere in the afternoon wind.
“No, no. I can’t go,” said Alexis. “I gotta know what’s going on back at home.”
“You’re going. You promised,” said Linda, a hand lightly on Alexis’s shoulder. “You’re in high school—you’re not supposed to want to go home. I know you have responsibilities, but, jeez. Relax.”
“Linda,” said Alexis as they walked, “do you believe in ghosts?”
“Absolutely,” said Linda without a trace of hesitation, which surprised Alexis. “I’ve seen one, once. No, twice. And I’ve heard voices—me, my uncle, and my sister did one night on a road near home. I’m sure it was our grandmother.”
“Really? Amazing. I’m glad you’re not a skeptic—I didn’t think you were. It’s kind of a cliché, but there’s so many things we don’t know about. I mean, like Mr. Smilely said in bio, ants don’t know it when we stand over them, look down at them. That’s us—the human race.”
“Totally,” said Linda. “I don’t know what ghosts are made of—maybe a little bit of matter, a little bit of soul, but they exist. Did you see one? Someone who died at the hotel?”
“Yeah, it was that,” said Alexis.
“Well, who? What did they say?”
“Oh, not too much.”
“What, Alexis? Spill it.”
“Just that they were happy where they were.”
“Was it a man or woman?”
“A woman.”
Once at the restaurant, they were seated at a quiet table, facing each other. After ordering, the girls watched the wind blow plastic bags in the parking lot outside. It was the kind of dark, blustery day that demanded dreamy contemplation. Linda picked up a lime wedge from the condiment plate. Breaking the moody silence, she held the lime up in front of Alexis and squeezed it. Droplets sprayed Alexis’s face.
“You bitch!” Alexis laughed and threw a bean sprout at Linda. She picked up another bean sprout and, instead of throwing it, she crushed it between her fingers in front of Linda’s face.
“That’s a beautiful sight,” said Linda. “A flattened bean sprout. Its life is over, Alexis. You murderer.”
The teens fell into laughter so loud that the man at the next table glared at them.
Alexis did not care. It was amazing—the afternoon had suddenly become a lovely break, an oasis. Linda was great for that.
“So what about your grandmother’s ghost?” she asked Linda.
“Yeah, right. This was my stepdad’s mother. They were really a rich family. My stepdad inherited a boatload—well, enough to go to law school anyway. My grandma was happy about that. But she was pissed as hell about my dad’s brother. We called him Al. My uncle was in charge of my grandma’s estate and he basically cheated my other uncles and aunts out of beaucoup bucks. So that night her ghost appeared, and she was hella mad. I swear to God this ghost was chasing us down the front road of my grandma’s house. I heard something like music. It sounded like wind, but more whistly than wind could ever be. So my uncle fell down with this pain in his stomach! That was grandma’s ghost, too. God, she was mad.
“Anyway, the week after that, my stepdad landed a huge case. It totally made his career. He’s one of the most well-known probate attorneys in Seattle now. Don’t mess with him. He just bought our family a second house—in the Bahamas.”
“Jeez, why didn’t I know that, Linda? What other things are up your sleeve?”
“What other things are up yours, Alexis?” Linda’s eyes were shining.
CHAPTER 7
INDU SUNDARESAN
BACK AT HOME, ALEXIS STOOD at the very top of the stairs that led to the attic at the Hotel Angeline, on a small, sunlit landing. She looked up at the skylight in the roof. A few years earlier, LJ had been walking her back from school and he’d seen a glint of silver on the Angeline’s roof.
“What’s that?” he said. “A skylight? There’s no light on my landing.”
Alexis shaded her eyes and peered upward. “I don’t know,” she said. “Could be, but . . . it’s odd.”
“Come on,” he said, pulling her by the hand as they ran back to the hotel. He raced downstairs to the basement, grabbed a hammer, and sped past her up to the top floor, where he had his apartment. At the landing—this landing where she now stood—LJ set up a ladder and began pounding away. Drywall flaked down, bits of insulation swirled through the air, and Alexis watched in horror as LJ wrecked the ceiling. “What is Mom going to say?” she whispered.
Just then, Edith appeared at the top of the stairs, holding a hand over her heart to ease her breathing. “High time,” she said breathlessly. “The roofers threw in a skylight for free, but I’ve never had the time or the energy to open it up from inside.”
In time, because Edith insisted, LJ framed out the opening with pieces of plywood (to keep the rats from falling into the house, he said) and also patched up the other spots he had thrown his hammer into in an effort to locate the skylight from below.
Alexis stood now in the light of a fitful Seattle sun, which bathed her like a benediction and gave her a moment of peace from the riot of the past few days. She had her hand on LJ’s doorknob, and the metal had grown warm under her palm.
She knocked softly. “LJ? You there? Can I come in?”
No answer. She waited and knocked again. She hadn’t seen him all day and desperately wanted to talk . . . about everything.
“LJ?” Alexis took her passkey and let herself i
nto LJ’s apartment, shutting the door softly behind her. This apartment, on the top floor of the Hotel Angeline—the same floor she and her mother lived on—was L-shaped, with the shorter arm leading to the doorway and the far side of the longer a bank of warehouse windows, floor to ceiling.
Alexis tiptoed into the main room. At some point during his stay at the Angeline, LJ had convinced Edith to allow him to install a small kitchenette in his room. It ran lengthwise, on Alexis’s left—cabinets below and on the wall; a tiny sink barely big enough (or so it seemed to her) to hold a teacup and a saucer; a camping stove on the countertop with two burners, attached to a gas cylinder; a glass-fronted wine fridge under the counter.
The kitchen was scrupulously clean, the countertops wiped down, the sink gleaming steel, flowers (flowers!) in a glass bowl on one of the burners. Habib roosted on the countertop, head drooping in sleep. He opened one black eye, gave her a good stare, and then closed it again. Where was LJ?
Alexis turned right and saw the bed against the far wall and for a moment her heart stopped. LJ lay on the floor at the side of the bed, his arms splayed out, his toes pointing outward. Like a corpse.
“LJ!” she shouted and ran to him. She put her hand over his heart; surely, there was a tiny beat? But his chest barely seemed to rise and fall. Was he dead? Had he died also? Was she going to be alone in the world?
Just then he blinked, his pale blue gaze capturing the anxiety on her face. “What’s up, kiddo? Thought I was dead, too?”
She pushed his shoulder feebly. “Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that. Not now, after all that’s happened in the past few days. Not ever! What were you doing on the floor?”
“Yoga,” he said, stretching his arms overhead, wriggling his toes and then curling up on his side to bring feeling into his arms and legs. “It’s called the Shavasana. ‘Corpse pose.’ Looked real, didn’t it?”
“Yoga? Since when?”
“Since a long time, pet. Lots of people around here practice yoga. It’s been in the papers lately, did ya see?”
She pulled her shoulders up to her ears. “I don’t read the papers, LJ.”
“You should, kiddo, it’s the duty of every good citizen to keep themselves informed. Yoga’s un-Christian now, so the article says. But—duh —it originated many years before the advent of Christianity, in India. And saying a few Oms during Yoga class ain’t going to make anyone a Hindu.”
Alexis rose from the floor and put a hand out to haul LJ up. He stood towering above her. “Why the disconsolate face?”
“Have you been ingesting a dictionary?”
He raised a withered eyebrow. “Ingesting? Who’s been now?”
“I have nothing to wear for tonight, LJ,” Alexis moaned, going to sit on the deep old windowsill. LJ had colored glass bottles along the length of the sill, and the fragile sunlight glowing behind her sparkled their many colors onto the floor, onto the ceiling, in a kaleidoscope of light. Most of the bottles were empty; only one—tiny, purple—was corked. She moved the bottles aside to sit down. “You know, the dinner tonight with Uncle Burr.”
“Ah,” LJ said, coming up to her and putting a hand under her chin. “The eternal lament of all womankind. You really have nothing?”
“This stuff,” she said, indicating her black tights, her black T-shirt, the bangles on her wrists, the blue nail polish on her fingernails.
His hand touched her hair lightly. “When did you color this red? Is this from one of Edith’s many bottles?”
“A mix of two colors,” Alexis said, pulling her crimson hair over her eyes. The world before her was suddenly red, diluted by the sunlight from behind. “You like it?” she asked.
“Very much,” LJ said gravely. “Now”—he turned to his kitchen—“can I make you some tea, coffee? My turn now, after all the teas your mother and you have fed me downstairs in the parlor. Look around if you want; I know you’re thrumming with inquisitiveness.”
Alexis did, going to the far wall behind LJ’s bed. It was decorated with a mammoth collage of photos—all in black and white—of all sizes. There was a ten-foot two-by-four nailed on the wall, just below the ceiling, studded with nails. Thin cords hung from the nails and were threaded through paper clips that were pinned onto the unframed photos.
“Did you take these, LJ?” Alexis asked, stopping in front of a picture of Mount Rainier from Kerry Park, downtown Seattle in the foreground, the Olympics to the west, the massive cranes on the docks leaning over the waters of Puget Sound as though searching for a fishy meal.
“Yeah, pretty good, aren’t they?” Coffee bubbled in the percolator, filling the little apartment with its aroma. He poured some out. “Some are old”—he came up to her with a cup and put it in her hand—“and some new. I’ve been taking photos in Seattle since I moved here, with this.” He pulled out a tiny camera. “Never needed anything more.”
Alexis took a sip of the coffee and watched through her red hair as the strands became damp and shredded in the steam from the cup. LJ had a sense of humor, she realized—a wry one. Here was a photo of a dog with his leg lifted over a fire hydrant (on Broadway, perhaps?), marking his territory, and in the distance, at the traffic light, a policeman looking at the dog in disgust. Everyone else around was laughing, but the dog and the policeman were perfectly framed.
“Who’s this?” Alexis asked, pausing in front of a collage of eight or nine photos of the warehouse in Fremont where LJ housed his perfume business. He sold his wares from a stall at Pike Place Market; the colored bottles on his windowsill had been originally used for his early efforts at making perfumes.
“Just photos of the factory, kiddo.” LJ put a hand under her elbow and tried to guide her away.
“No, I mean this one,” she pointed at a photo in the middle right of the collage. It showed a close-up of the sandwich board for the warehouse—rain shower aromas—and a man stopped in front, his head bent, his hands cupped around his mouth. His collar was drawn up near his ears. Though Alexis could see neither the cigarette nor the lighter held in his hands, a plume of smoke weaved its way upward through the man’s fingers.
“Nothing,” LJ said, pulling her away with real force now. “Nobody. Just some man who had stopped outside the shop; someone on the street. I’ve no idea who he is. Is it important anyway? We have other things to do.”
Just as Alexis was beginning to wonder at this plethora of negations (why explain so much; she’d asked a casual question), a bell chimed and LJ’s laptop screen lit up. It was lying on the bed and had been hissing and humming in hibernation mode, but now the background came to life and a bubble appeared on the screen. A calendar reminder, it seemed. Alexis had the perfect vision of a fourteen-year-old and could see the words “D-Day! Tonight’s the night to go to the warehouse” before LJ pounced at the laptop, turning it firmly away from her interested gaze.
“You going somewhere tonight, LJ?”
LJ frowned. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to read other people’s stuff?”
Alexis smiled in an impish way. “Only mail. But I thought you might walk me to the Sorrento to see Uncle Burr. I know I said I’d meet him alone, but I need some coaching. What will I say to him?”
“I can’t come, pet. Have to be at the factory tonight; something big. Maybe it’ll make all our fortunes and you won’t have to worry about your uncle or anything else. You’ll be fine.” He grinned. “Just talk like his fancy secretary, all pebbles in her mouth, words escaping around them, and he’ll understand you perfectly.”
“I still have nothing to wear!” Alexis wailed.
“OK,” LJ said, “let’s go to Buxby’s on Broadway and get you something for the dinner.”
She pulled back. “I could never afford anything at Buxby’s.”
“It’s on me, kiddo. I have enough for whatever you want tonight.” He slapped at the pockets of his jeans, checking for money and his camera. Just as he was shutting the door, he said, “Wait a minute,” and ran back inside.
&
nbsp; “OK,” he said again when he was back. All the way down the stairs, out into the watery sunshine, down Broadway, a thought strummed through Alexis’s head. She’d seen the man in the photo before. Nothing much of him was visible, but his eyebrows—thick, unruly—and his slicked-back hair were distinctive. Who was he? And why did LJ not want to talk about him?
They pushed open the door to the vintage clothing store and a jangle of brass bells, hung on a jute cord, clanged violently, announcing their arrival.
Alexis and LJ stood just within, the last of the light escaping from the room as the door shut behind them. In a few minutes, their eyes became accustomed to the gloom inside. The store was small, and most of the floor space was crammed with clothes racks. It smelled a little dusty, a little musty, although a sign under the cash register proclaimed that all of their clothes—genuine antique/vintage—were dry cleaned before being displayed.
An inner door opened and a woman put her head into the shop. She had a round head, a round face, fleshy cheeks red and blooming with happiness. “Let me know if you like anything; I’ll ring it up for you,” she said before disappearing into the back room again.
“She’s very trusting,” Alexis said. “Mrs. Buxby?
“No,” LJ said, his eyes very bright in the darkness of the shop. “His mistress.” He moved unerringly through the racks, his fingers brushing over the clothing lightly. The spotlights on the ceiling were all directed toward the walls, but there was enough reflected light in the store to make the sparkles and spangles on the dresses gleam as his hands moved through the fabric. He pulled out a silver lamé top and a long skirt that seemed to be made entirely of blue feathers. “This,” he said triumphantly, “will wow your staid uncle.”