One Last Stop, page 8
No, it was simply the word she heard most while her mother taped episodes of Dateline and read crime novels out loud to her squishy baby form and worked the one great missing persons case of their lives.
Case.
She took developmental psych her sophomore year, so she knows crucial developmental phases. Age three, learning how to read, so she could hand her mom the file that starts with M instead of N. Age five, able to carry on a conversation independently, like explaining tearfully to the man at the front desk of a French Quarter apartment building how she’d gotten lost, so her mom could scavenge his files while he was distracted. It’s hardwired.
It’s too easy, now, to dig it all back out.
She’s sitting on her bedroom floor, photo on one side, notebook on the other filled with five front-and-back pages of notes and questions and half-formed theories like hot zombie? and marty mcfly??? Her bedspread is burritoed around her like a foil shock blanket on a plane crash survivor. She’s gone full True Detective. It’s been four hours.
She’s unearthed her mother’s LexisNexis password, filed three public records requests online, put holds on five different books at the library. She’s shaking down double-digit pages of Google search results, trying to find some kind of answer that isn’t completely batshit fucking insane. “Immortal hottie” has no relevant returns, only people in goth bands who look like Kylo Ren.
She’s taken the photo out of the frame, looked at it under natural light, LED light, yellow light, held it inches from her face, walked down to the pawn shop next to Niko’s work and bought a fucking magnifying glass to examine it. No evidence that it’s been doctored. Only the faded shape of Jane, tattoos and dimple and cocky set of her hips, the continuing, impossible fact that she’s there. Forty-five years ago, she’s there.
She said it, that day she told August her name. She worked at Billy’s.
She never mentioned when.
August paces her room, trying to make sense of what she knows. Jane worked at Pancake Billy’s when it opened in 1976, long enough for an off-menu item to be named after her. She’s intimately familiar with the workings of the Q, and presumably lives in either Brooklyn or Manhattan.
The scraps of Craigslist posts and articles and police reports and one 2015 People of the City Instagram post with Jane blurry in the background are all August has to go on. She’s searched every possible permutation of Jane Su she can think of, alternate spellings and romanizations—Sou, Soo, So, Soh. No luck.
But there’s something else, a pattern she’s starting to piece together, one she probably would have figured out if she weren’t always so determined to reason things away.
How Jane never had a heavier coat than her leather jacket, even when it was punishingly cold back in January. How she didn’t know who Joy Division was, the mess of her cassette collection, that she has a cassette player in the first place. It shouldn’t have been easy to always catch her train. They should have missed each other, just once. But they never have, not since the first week.
She … God. What if …
August pulls her laptop into her lap. Her hands hover indecisively over the keys.
Jane doesn’t age. She’s magnetic and charming and gorgeous. She … kind of lives underground.
The cursor on the Google search bar blinks expectantly. August blinks back.
Through a slight fog of hysteria, she remembers those weird dudes from Billy’s talking about the vampire community. She was pretty sure that was some kind of BDSM role-play thing. But what if—
August snaps her laptop shut.
Jesus Christ. What is she thinking? That Jane is some thousand-year-old succubus who’s really into punk music but can’t keep her references straight? That she spends her nights haunting the tunnels, eating rats and getting horned up over O-positive and using her supernatural charm to maneuver SPF 75 out of strangers’ Duane Reade bags? She’s Jane. She’s just Jane.
Really, sincerely, from the very bottom of August’s heart: What the fuck?
Somewhere beneath it all, a voice that sounds like August’s mom says she needs a primary source. An interview. Someone who can tell her exactly what she’s dealing with.
She thinks about Jerry, or even Billy, the owner of the restaurant. They must have known Jane. Jerry could tell her how long he’s been cooking the Su Special. If she shows them the picture, they might remember whether they ever caught her hissing at the jugs of minced garlic in the walk-in. But August’s job is hanging by a thin enough thread without barging into the kitchen demanding to know if any former employees displayed signs of bloodlust.
No, there’s someone else to talk to first.
5
Classifieds
* * *
PERSONALS
BUTCH ON THE Q TRAIN—Are you the short-haired Asian woman, 20-30, who takes the Q from Manhattan to Brooklyn on Thursday afternoons? Do you wear a black leather jacket? Do you like to be spoiled? This wealthy older businesswoman can provide you with a life of sensuality and luxury. PO Box 2348, Queens, NY 11101. 10/18/1983
Niko’s described the bar where he works enough times for August to have it filed away under Pertinent Brooklyn Locations: beneath a bookstore and down a flight of creaky metal stairs that threaten to drop her into the murky bowels of the city. She’s got a coffee in hand for a bribe, and thankfully the girl checking IDs doesn’t say anything about it.
She can’t believe she’s working a case. And she really can’t believe she’s about to do the thing her mom swore she’d die before doing again: consulting a psychic.
Slinky’s is exactly the type of place where she would expect Niko to work. The whole room is washed in a bloody red glow, multicolored string lights strung up over a bar that looks sticky even from here. Most of the floor is taken up with round tea tables surrounded by curved and overstuffed booths, battered purple leather patched in every fabric pattern from starry galaxy to picnic gingham. The finishing touch is the ceiling, lined with hundreds of pairs of underoos and boxers and frilly panties, the odd bra or piece of lingerie dangling from a rafter.
Niko’s behind the bar in a denim vest, both arms of tattoos on full display. He grins around a chicken wing when he sees August.
“August!” He finishes his chicken wing and casually slides the bones into the pocket of his vest. August decides not to ask. “This is awesome! Hi!”
She sidles up to a sparkly bar stool, wavering between a dozen openings—It was a two-for-one special. The barista accidentally gave me a double order. Are vampires real?—before giving up and plunking the coffee down.
“I got you a coffee,” August says. “I know how night shifts are.”
He blinks owlishly through glasses, round and tinted yellow. “A gift from August? What god have I pleased?”
“I’m not that withholding.”
He smiles enigmatically. “Of course not.”
“You like lavender, right?” August says. “They have a lavender honey latte at Bean & Burn and—I don’t know, I thought of you. I can, um, toss it if you hate it.”
“No, no!” Niko says. He picks up the cup and sniffs it. “Although we are going to discuss your bougie choice of coffee shop later. There is a perfectly good combination jerk chicken and donut joint across the street that does cups for fifty cents.”
“Okay,” August pushes on. “Can I ask you a question?”
“If it’s about the underwear on the ceiling,” Niko says, turning away and reaching for a couple of bottles, “it started when one guy left his underwear in the bathroom and now people just keep bringing them and the owner thinks it’s hilarious.”
August looks up at a pair of briefs—cartoon teeth on the crotch and UNLEASH THE BEAST across the back—and back to Niko. He’s lined up three bottles on his workstation and is muddling a handful of herbs and berries.
“Not what I was going to ask, but good to know.”
“Ah,” Niko says with a wink, and August realizes he already knew. Stupid psychics. She’s still not even sure she believes he knows anything, but she doesn’t have any other option but to trust him.
“So, um…” she goes on. “Your line of work … you know about, like, uh. Supernatural stuff?”
The enigmatic smile is back. “Yes?”
“Like…” August resolves not to do anything with her facial expression. “Creatures?”
“Oh, I’m loving this already,” Niko says readily. “What kind of creatures?”
“You know what?” she says, hopping down from her stool. “This is insane. Forget it.”
“August,” he says, and it’s not teasing or apologetic or even like he’s trying to get her to stay. It’s the way he always says August’s name, soft and sympathetic, like he knows something about her that she doesn’t. She settles back down and buries her face in the sleeves of her sweater.
“Okay, fine,” she says. “So, like. You know the girl I told y’all about? The one I asked out?”
Niko doesn’t say anything. When she looks up, he keeps measuring out liquors.
“Her name’s Jane. She takes the same train as me. The Q, every single morning and afternoon. At first I thought, like, wow, okay, crazy coincidence, but tons of people probably have the same commutes, and … I definitely went out of my way to catch the same train as her, which I realize sounds a lot like stalking, but I promise I wasn’t weird about it—anyway, today at work, I found this.”
She slides the photo across the bar, and Niko nudges his sunglasses up onto his forehead to examine it.
“That’s her,” August says, pointing. “I’m a thousand percent sure it’s her. She has the same tattoos.” She looks up at him. “Niko, this photo is from opening day at Billy’s. Summer ’76. She hasn’t aged in forty-five years. I think she’s—”
The rattle of Niko’s cocktail shaker cuts through her sentence, drowning her out, and he wiggles his eyebrows until his glasses fall back down to his nose.
August is going to kick his ass one day.
She has to wait thirty whole seconds for him to pop the top off the shaker and pour the drink into a glass so she can finish. “I think she’s not … human.”
Niko slides the drink over. “Blackberry mint mule. On the house. What do you think she is?”
She’s going to have to say this out loud, isn’t she? Bella Swan, eat your horny little Mormon heart out.
“I think she might be … a vampire?” Niko raises an eyebrow, and she buries her face in her arms again. “I told you it was insane!”
“It’s not insane!” he says, a laugh in his voice, but not a mean one. It never is with Niko. “Once you’re tapped into the other side, it’s really easy to start seeing stuff beyond this one. Like, when I was eight I spent the summer with my cousins in Bayamón, and they totally had me convinced their neighbor’s dog was a werewolf. But, as far as I know, werewolves aren’t real, and neither are vampires.”
August picks her head up. “Right. Of course. I’m an idiot.”
“Well,” Niko says. “She’s not a vampire. But she might be dead.”
August freezes. “What do you mean?”
“It sounds like she might be an apparition,” he explains. “A particularly … strong one. She might not even know she’s—”
“A ghost?” August offers helplessly. Niko pulls a sympathetic grimace. “Oh my God, so she’s dead? And she doesn’t know she’s dead? I can’t even ask her on a date; how am I supposed to tell her she’s dead?”
“Okay, hold on. You can’t just tell somebody they’re dead. We have to make sure she’s dead first.”
“Right. Okay. How do we do that?” She’s got her phone out, already googling how to tell if someone is a ghost. Apparently, there’s a Groupon for this. “Wait. Holy shit. She is always wearing the exact same thing.”
“You only just noticed she has one outfit?”
“I don’t know! It’s ripped jeans and a leather jacket! Every lesbian I’ve ever met has that outfit!”
“Huh. Good point,” Niko says thoughtfully. “Have you ever touched her?”
“Um. Yes?”
“And how did it feel? Cold?”
“No, the opposite. Like … really warm. Sometimes staticky. Like a shock.”
“Hmm. Interesting. Are you the only one who can see her?”
“No, she talks to people on the train all the time.”
“Okay, have you ever seen her touch anything or anyone?”
“Yeah, she has this, like, backpack full of stuff, and she’s given me things from it, gum, a scarf. One time she put a Band-Aid on this kid who skinned his knee on the stairs.”
He rests his chin on his hand. “Cute. Maybe a poltergeist. A cute poltergeist. Can I meet her?”
August snaps her eyes up from her phone. “What?”
“Well, if I met her, I could get a better sense of what exactly she is, if she’s on this side or not, or somewhere in between. It’d only take a few questions. Maybe some light physical contact.”
She tries to picture it, Niko in all his Niko-ness, putting his hand on Jane’s shoulder: Hello, how are you, I think you may be an unmoored spirit trapped in some kind of MTA purgatory.
“You said you didn’t want to freak her out.”
“I never said that. I said you shouldn’t tell somebody they’re dead unless you’re sure they’re dead. Very bad energy.”
“What would you even ask her?”
“I don’t know. It would depend on how things feel. Sounds like a fun experiment.”
August grinds her teeth. “Isn’t there something else we could do first? Like—can I pour a ring of salt around her or splash her with holy water or something? But like, in a subtle way?”
“You and I come at subtlety from very different directions,” Niko observes. “But we could do a séance.”
August can practically hear her mother scoffing into her Lean Cuisine from the next time zone.
“A … séance?”
“Yeah,” he says casually. “To talk to her. If she’s a ghost, she should be able to visit, and boom, we’d know.”
“And if nothing happens, we can rule out ghost?”
“Yep.”
And so, August Landry, world’s leading skeptic, opens her mouth and says, “Okay, let’s do a séance.”
“Love it,” Niko says. He’s produced a toothpick from his pocket and starts chewing on it as he wipes down the bar. “Yeah, we’ll need numbers, so we should ask Myla and Wes. We can do it at the shop after close. I don’t like where the moon is right now, though, so let’s do it night after tomorrow. Do you have anything that belongs to her?”
“I, um,” August says, “I do, actually. She gave me her scarf.”
“That’ll do.”
She leans down to take a sip of her drink and promptly chokes on it.
“Good lord, that is disgusting. You’re terrible at this.”
Niko laughs. “Myla tried to tell you.”
* * *
“So,” Wes says. He’s watching August douse her fries in Cholula with an extremely New England expression on his face. “You’ve gathered us here today to tell us you’re boned up for a ghost.”
“Jesus, can you keep your voice down?” August hisses, eyeing Winfield as he passes their table. She should have known better than to slide into the booth with this information after her shift and think this particular group of delinquents would be discreet. “I work here.”
“Wait, so—” Myla cuts in. “She really used to work here? When it first opened? And now she’s on the subway looking exactly the same?”
“Yes.”
She leans back in the booth, eyes alight. “I can’t believe you’ve been in New York for, like, a month and already found the coolest person in the entire city. Back to the Future ass.”
“We’re more at the intersection of Ghost and Quantum Leap,” August points out. “But that’s not the point.”
“The point is,” Niko says, “we’re doing a séance to get a feel for the situation. And considering this whole thing is low-key a psychic’s wet dream, we’d love if you would help.”
And so, on Sunday night, the four of them are huddled together on Church Street, trying to look small and inconspicuous outside the locked door of Miss Ivy’s.
“Do you want me to pick it?” August asks, glancing nervously down the street.
“What? Pick the lock?” Wes says. “What kind of feral child are you? Are you Jessica Jones?”
“We’re not breaking and entering,” Niko says. “I have a key. Somewhere.”
August turns to sniff in Myla’s direction. “You smell like a McRib.”
“What?”
“You know, like, smoky.”
Myla jabs an elbow into Wes’s ribs. “Someone forgot their lunch in the toaster oven today and I had to put out a kitchen fire,” she says. “We’re, like, one fire away from losing our security deposit.”
“We lost our security deposit when you took it upon yourself to rewire the entire apartment,” Wes replies.
Niko chuckles under his breath. He’s fingering through a ring of keys in the dim glow of the streetlights. August wonders what all the keys are for—knowing Niko, he’s probably talked his way into having a key to half the plant supply stores and dive bars in Brooklyn.
“How our apartment ever had a security deposit to begin with is a joke,” August says. “The oven doesn’t even go over three-fifty.”
“And it didn’t go over one-fifty before I rewired it,” Myla says.
“Wes?”
The four of them jolt like Scooby Doo and the gang, caught in the act. Niko is not technically allowed to use his key for after-hours communications with the dead. No personal calls, basically—they can’t get caught.
But it’s only Isaiah, fresh from a gig going by the duffel bag thrown over his shoulder and the smudged eyeliner. It’s the first time August has properly seen him out of drag. In his T-shirt and jeans, it’s all very superhero secret identity.
