Chapter Five
Kit
Leaving the site of the nightclub fire, I look around at the other businesses in the area. It’s clearly a popular spot—T-shirt and sandwich shops interspersed with restaurants and hotel entrances. Maybe Josie has been to one of them. Maybe somebody will remember her.
I cross the street and peer into each window I pass, but nothing particularly leaps out. She could have been anywhere, doing anything.
A little aimlessly, I walk up one block and down the next, looking for something, anything, that suggests my sister. But there is pretty much everything—a high-end jewelry store, a boutique selling tiny couture dresses, a two-story bookstore packed to the brim. It makes me feel slightly breathless to imagine asking about Josie in any of them, and I can’t make my feet stop.
Until the window of a stationery shop halts me, lures me inside with a display of ink in jeweled-looking bottles. At this point, I have more pens and ink than I could possibly use in three lifetimes, but that’s not the point. The store has a display of Krishna inks, small-batch inks in swirling, shimmering colors. I have a weakness for shimmery ink, though I have stopped using it for prescriptions and stick with a Very Serious, fast-drying black for those.
The rest of the time, I lean toward the flashy two-tone inks. I’ve never seen this brand before, and I stand there playing with the colors for quite some time. A Goldfish Gold is amazing, but I never seem to use orange or yellow inks. One called Sea and Storm attracts me, and the nonshimmery but still gorgeous turquoise called Monsoon Sky. It reminds me of another turquoise ink I had at ten or eleven, during the first crazy wave of passion when Dylan, Josie, and I discovered the art of calligraphy. Which of us started? It’s hard to remember now, where and how it began, only that we all fell in love with it, writing mannerly notes, leaving them in elegant handwriting for our parents or each other. Dylan loved Chinese calligraphy, practicing the characters for crisis and love and ocean that he found in a library book.
I carry the ink to the counter, intending to then go look at pens, but my stomach growls, reminding me that all I’ve had to eat are two bananas and two apples.
I force myself to ask the girl behind the counter, “Have you worked here long?”
“A year or so.” She smiles, wrapping my ink in tissue paper.
I’m about to ask if she might remember someone, my sister, that is, with her distinctive scar, but my face goes hot as I consider it. Instead, I simply pay and carry my package out with me, cursing myself as I go.
How will I find her if I never look for her?
My feet carry me back up the hill, and I shop in a grocery store tucked into the basement of another building, picking up a bottle of wine and fresh bread, more fruit and a half dozen eggs, and a chunk of cheese, which all fit into my pack. I don’t intend to cook for myself much, since all these restaurants deserve sampling, but it’s good to have a few things on hand.
Wandering into a little alleyway, I find a row of eateries with tables and chairs set out in the gathering twilight. An Italian spot catches my eye. “One, please,” I say to the host. “May I sit outside?”
“Of course, of course. Right this way.”
He settles me between a chubby young couple and a sharply dressed businessman who gets up the minute I sit down, chattering irritably into his phone as he hurries away. The Italian host tsks, shaking his head as he clears the table and wipes it down.
“Everyone is so busy,” he says, and his voice reminds me, suddenly and acutely, of my father, whose deep voice was laced with his Italian accent until the day he died. “You want wine?” he asks. “I think you like red wine. Am I right?”
“Yes, as it happens. Bring me something you love.”
“My pleasure.”
I realize I don’t have my phone to keep me company. Weird. It’s hard to remember the last time that even happened. Years, probably. Instead, I read every word of the small menu, even though I decided on the gnocchi almost the moment I saw it. Leaning back, I think how much my father would have loved this place, the tidy white tablecloths and flowers in tiny blue vases. I finger the carnation. Real, not fake, and I lift the bottle to inhale the bright, peppery scent.
The man returns with my wine, presenting it with a flourish. He has a thick mustache and twinkling eyes. “See if you like this one.”
Dutifully, I swirl and inhale and taste. He’s served it properly, in a glass with a wide bowl, and the notes are rich on the nose. On my tongue, it’s deep and fruity but without heavy tannins. “Mm,” I say. “Yes. Thank you.”
He gives me a little bow. A lock of his hair tumbles free and falls in his eyes. “And for dinner?”
“Antipasti,” I say, realizing now that I’ve stopped moving that I’m gut-empty. “And the gnocchi.”
“Good, good.”
The wine gives me something to occupy my hands, and I lean back, watching the parade of humanity passing before me. A lot of businesspeople who have stopped for a post-work drink, the women in heels, the men in stylish suits. An open-fronted bar is crowded with young professionals eyeing each other. No one seems to smoke.
Tourists too are wandering up and down the alleyway. I can spot them by their comfortable shoes and sunburns and the exhaustion with which they peruse the menus. Again, a tumble of languages and accents and cultures.
The host seats a man next to me at the vacated table. To preserve our privacy, I keep my eyes forward, but I hear him order wine in a Spanish accent.
The waiter brings me my antipasti. It’s a generous serving of fresh mozzarella, wet and gleaming; curls of salami and prosciutto; a tumble of olives and fresh tiny tomatoes and flatbread. “Beautiful,” I breathe.
I tuck in and am transported to childhood, when one of my afternoon chores was to portion out mozzarella and poke toothpicks into the various charcuterie that was served for happy hour, along with Harvey Wallbangers and White Russians and the endless, endless Long Island Iced Teas, my mother’s favorite.
“I don’t mean to bother you,” the man next to me says. “Are you also a tourist?”
Engaged with a particularly stunning slice of prosciutto, I take a moment to savor it, then wash it down with a tiny sip of wine. I look at him. He’s a tall man with thick dark hair and the shadow of an unshaven beard on his jaw. A well-thumbed paperback sits on the table next to him, and I think, When did I stop carrying books around with me? “Yes. You too?”
He gives a nod. “Visiting a friend, but he had work to do tonight, so he abandoned me.” He lifts his glass. Next to the book is a bottle of wine. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” I lift my glass but use my body to tell him I don’t really want to engage.
Not that he listens. “I would have gone across the way there, to sample their tapas, but I saw you again and had to stop here instead.”
“Again?”
“This morning. You arrived from the airport, I think.”
His voice is sonorous, vibrant, a musical instrument. I let myself take another long look at his face. Strong features—Roman nose, almost too aggressive to be attractive, large dark eyes. “Yes,” I admit. “But I still don’t remember.”
He touches his chest, hand over his heart. “You have forgotten me already.” He tsks, then tilts his head with a smile. “At the elevator.”