these heavy silences.
“Meet me at that diner on West Fourth,” he said finally, as if his better judgment had been pinned to the mat, after a lengthy internal wrestling match.
“How long?” I said, glancing at my clock. It was 1:30 A.M.
“Just come now.”
“Okay.”
I was dressed and out the door in less than ten minutes. I hailed a cab on First and the driver took a left on Twelfth. We glided south on Second; it was quiet and nearly empty, reminding me that Truman Capote had described Second Avenue as having an air of desertion and I had always agreed. We raced by St. Mark’s Church, Telephone Bar. People who don’t know what they’re talking about call New York the city that never sleeps. But it does sleep. Well, it dozes. Windows grow dark; gates come down.
At a light, I watched a middle-aged man in a tweed jacket walk up the avenue. He pulled his jacket tight around him and seemed to huddle against an imaginary wind. He moved quickly, leaning slightly forward, his face blank, eyes straight ahead. Solitary people on the street after a certain hour always seem lost or tired or drunk, rushing toward their destination with an aura of worry. Except for the college students and the people out partying in groups, I always thought of them as people slipping through the cracks, existing on the outer fringes, past concern with early-morning alarms and schedules, deadlines and responsibilities. I always wondered, What leads people to walk the streets alone at night? And here I was, as lost as any of them, albeit in a cab, nursing a bit of a headache. I attributed the dull pain behind my eyes to the bottle of wine I’d nearly finished all by myself.
I hadn’t told anyone except my parents and Jake about the notes and photograph, but after Zelda’s warning I could no longer carry the burden alone. My mind had been racing as I took the stairs back to my apartment. The man in the stairwell last night…was it the same person looking for me this afternoon? I thought of the note I’d found this morning.
Lost in thought, I’m not sure how long the driver had been stopped in front of the diner. A knock on the window brought me back to myself. I saw Ace’s face hovering behind the glass. He opened the door for me as I paid the driver and slid out onto the street.
He looked okay, almost healthy if a bit gaunt and gray. His faded denims sagged from his thin frame, but they were clean. He wore a distressed motorcycle jacket over a black turtleneck. He kissed me and I felt sharp stubble on his face; his breath smelled of peppermint. I took this minimum of personal hygiene as a good sign, because, trust me, he didn’t always smell of peppermint.
Inside the diner, which was busy with people stopping off after clubs or bars for late-night cheeseburgers or pancakes, we slid into a red vinyl booth. A pie case turned, flirting with me, offering key lime pie, cheesecake, tiramisu. Cigarette smoke, burned coffee, fry grease, maple syrup mingled in the air. Conversations hummed and silverware clattered against ceramic plates.
Ace didn’t like it when I looked at him directly for too long. He’d told me he felt like I was inspecting him, and maybe he was right. Looking for signs of an improved or deteriorated condition. Searching for clues of his return to the world, my world, or that he was drifting farther down. I always thought of Ace as existing beneath my life in some secret underworld, as if I had to descend stone stairs to a dungeon and find him by walking through dark corridors and calling his name. So I stole glances at him, looking for new track marks, bruises, lesions, whatever, thinking, How long can he survive? I mean, what is the actual life expectancy of a drug addict? I didn’t know.
“So what’s going on, Ridley? You look tired.”
I told him the whole story, interrupted a couple times by the waitress taking our order and then delivering our cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate milkshakes. Ace didn’t say a word the whole time, just kept his eyes down, first on the gold-flecked gray tabletop and then on the food in front of him, which he nibbled at and pushed around his plate.
“What did Mom and Dad say to you exactly?” he asked me carefully when I got to the part about seeing our parents.
I repeated the conversation for him pretty much verbatim as I remembered it.
“I left there believing them. Feeling pretty foolish, a little unstable.”
He snorted a little and nodded. “They have a way of making people feel like that,” he said, his bitterness sharp in his tone. “What’s changed?”
I told him about the second note and the newspaper clipping. He was shaking his head when I looked up at him again.
“What?”
“Ridley…” He looked off out the window to his side and watched as the tide of traffic ebbed and flowed up Sixth Avenue. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because…I don’t know. I’m scared.”
He sighed heavily and looked down at his fingers. I tried not to notice the track marks on the back of his hands. I could only imagine what the rest of his body looked like if he’d decided to start using veins there.
“You don’t want the answers to these questions. Trust me.”
There had been, even in my despair of the last two days, a part of me that believed this all might be some kind of mistake. Like those moments after you crash your car, and the impact has jolted you, those few seconds where you still can’t believe it actually happened. I was still in that gap. I had felt such an urgent desire to find my brother, in the hopes that he wouldn’t have any idea what I was talking about. I had wanted him to tell me that I was nuts and ask me for money. This had been my last-ditch effort to hold on to the illusions of my life, and it had failed.
“Ace—” I said. But he stopped me by raising his hand.
“Ask Dad about
“But—”
“I have to go, kid,” he said getting up. My heart fluttered when he stood. My life felt so chaotic right then, I was seized with dread that when he left my sight I might never see him again. And there was anger, too. Anger that he would leave me to face this, whatever it was, alone.
“Ace,” I said, my voice sounding desperate, childlike even to my own ears. “You can’t just leave me.”
He looked down at me and shook his head. His eyes were flat, tired, edged with—dare I even admit it— apathy.
“Ridley, I’m a ghost. I’m not even here right now.”
The two girls in the booth behind us had stopped their conversation, and I could sense them listening to ours. I was glad I couldn’t see them, because I couldn’t stop the tide of tears. That familiar alchemy of adoration and hatred simmered, transforming the flawed man before me into the mythic hero of my imagination. Superman, who had the power to reverse the revolution of the earth to save Lois Lane but refused; Prometheus, afraid of fire; Atlas, who dropped the heavens.
“If you’re smart, you’ll forget this thing. Just go on with your life. Move, so the person who’s doing this to you can’t find you.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. I reached into my pocket and handed him the cash I’d brought for him. He took it from me, embarrassed, and looked longingly at the door. He stood there for a second wrestling with something, but then I saw him move away.
“I love you,” I said, not looking at him.
“I know you do,” he answered. “I just don’t know why.”
I sat in the booth and watched him walk down Fourth to the corner and make a left. I watched him until I couldn’t see him anymore and then I kept looking into the night, thinking he might come back. But he didn’t. I put my head down in my arms and let my tears get soaked up in the fabric of my jacket.
“Hey.”
