The sidewalks were empty.
The streets were empty.
It felt strange to be out here alone, no sound but her footsteps on the pavement. Impossible that her father’s funeral had happened today. She wondered if there were people still at her house comforting her mother and brother, or if they had all gone home.
The glow of a payphone caught her attention on the other side of the street.
She ran across to it and dug some change out of her wallet, dialed the number.
Her mother answered on the fifth ring in a tired voice gone hoarse from crying.
“Hello?”
Lucy said nothing, just listening, her eyes filling up.
“Hello? Lucy, is that you?”
“Hey, Mom.”
“Oh my God, where are you? Are you okay?”
“I just wanted to tell you something.” She was beginning to tremble.
“What, honey? What?”
Lucy shouted into the phone, “He loved me, you stupid bitch! He loved me! I wish you had died! He’s the only thing I ever fucking loved!”
She slammed the phone down on the hook and screamed inside the booth until her throat burned.
She’d left her mother’s car in the only parking space she could find—a three-hour meter four blocks from the hotel that had long since expired. There were five orange envelopes under the windshield wipers, and the right front tire had been booted.
She unlocked the car and dragged the guitar case out of the backseat, started back to the hotel.
The keycard worked on the second try, and she slipped into her room and locked the door after her. Stowed Mark’s suitcase, his shoes, his wallet, and his sports jacket in the closet.
She’d left home in a hurry, jamming her favorite books, clothes, and a few toiletries into the first thing to cross her path—her brother’s guitar case. Now she flipped open the clasps, opened it on the bed, and dumped everything out. Set to work choosing outfits for the convention and smoothing out the wrinkles.
Before bed, she went back into the bathroom, sat on the toilet seat just watching Mark lying motionless in the shower. She got down on her knees and stroked his hair, caressed her finger through the gash in his throat.
By four a.m., she was in bed in her nightgown, and already dreaming of what tomorrow might bring.
The hotel was crawling with people in the morning and Lucy had to wait five minutes to catch an elevator down to the lobby. She picked up her name badge and book bag from registration, bought a latte, and headed off to the first panel of the morning.
“Walking on the Dark Side: What Makes a Bad Guy Bad?” featured five mystery writers, only one of whom she’d heard of. But they were all entertaining. After the panel and with Mark’s money, she bought each of their books from a cranky Milwaukee bookseller named Katz.
Walking through the book room, where vendors had many of the participating writers’ books for sale, she couldn’t get over the thrill of being around so many people who loved to read. She never saw anyone reading in school. At least not for fun. And the few times she’d sat in the common area by herself with a book, she’d been bullied and mocked. The downside was that most of the people here were as old as her grandfather and many of them looked just as mean.
She took a table in a cafe downstairs and studied the schedule of events once more, looking for two panels to attend in the afternoon, though nothing caught her interest. Things didn’t really get interesting until the star of the whole show arrived: the thriller/horror writer, Andrew Z. Thomas, was going to be interviewed in the main ballroom tomorrow at 11:00 a.m., with a signing to follow. She’d brought every one of his books with her to be autographed.
She sat in the lobby all afternoon, her attention divided between Mark’s book, which she was really enjoying, and wanting to be with Mark in the shower again, and watching for Andrew Thomas, figuring if he was here, he’d have to walk past her at some point.
After the last panel of the day let out, the hotel emptied for an hour, and then slowly refilled again, everyone dressed to the nines now, lots of sports jackets and evening dresses, the book bags exchanged for stylish handbags.
She’d been sitting in the same chair for almost four hours, and her legs felt wobbly and faint when she finally stood.
The hotel bar was packed. All the writers seemed to be there.
She strolled over and wandered through the bar which was becoming more crowded by the minute, searching the faces for Andrew Thomas, but he wasn’t there.
Back upstairs, she ordered room service. Stayed in watching television and eating a lavish meal on Darling’s tab. A few minutes past midnight, she climbed out of bed and dressed and wandered down to the lobby.
The bar was even more crowded than before, and she scanned the faces in the smoky lowlight, eyes passing over countless groups that constantly shifted and changed, the occasional loner who spoke to no one, the softer, restrained groups huddled on the perimeter.
At the furthest corner of the bar, she finally spotted the man she’d come to meet, and her stomach fluttered.
He sat on a stool, surrounded by a dozen attentive, smiling faces, all listening as he told some story whose words she couldn’t begin to pick out from the impressive noise of all those conversations.
She stumbled forward into the outskirts of the crowd, then elbowed and squeezed her way through the heart of it, until she stood just outside the group of people orbiting Andrew Thomas.
His face was fuller than the author photograph on his latest book jacket, and he had a few days’ stubble shadowing his face, but he was undeniably…Andrew.
She’d never heard his voice, and it didn’t sound anything like she imagined. He was more soft-spoken, and he
