“The owner is Raymond, this really sweet older guy who remembered some flyers I did for a gay club he used to work at about a million years ago. And there are a lot of great young designers. I could learn a lot working at a place like that.”
Zoe couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her mother sound so excited. She wished she could feel happier for her.
“That sounds really great, Mom. I’m really happy for you.”
Zoe’s mother looked at her. “Are you all right? You mad at me for picking you up and making you study?”
“No. I just don’t feel so good right now.”
Her mother reached across the car and put a hand on Zoe’s forehead. “You do feel a little warm.”
“I’m fine,” said Zoe, wanting her mother to lose control of the car and plow into a gas station or cross the center line and drive head-on into a bus.
“When we get home, you can study in bed,” said her mother. “I’ll bring you some lemon tea.”
“Thanks,” said Zoe, wanting to tell her mother everything, to confess it all and beg for her help, yet knowing she couldn’t say a word.
The elevator wasn’t working again, so they walked up the four flights to the apartment. Her mother took off her office shoes and went up in her stockings. Neither of them talked on the way. They were both out of breath when they reached the top. Zoe was sweating again and felt cold.
Her mother went straight to her bedroom to change and Zoe went to hers. She set her books at the end of the bed, took off her sneakers, and crawled under the cool covers. Her mother came in with a cup of microwaved tea a couple of minutes later. Zoe sipped it politely, but all she wanted to do was lie down and ease herself into the dark for a while.
“I’ll come in and check on you later,” said her mother.
“Okay. Thanks.”
When her mother was gone, she pulled the covers up to her chin and closed her eyes. She wanted desperately to see Valentine. He was older, and although he didn’t always understand exactly how her nondreamworld worked, he was smart and clever. He’d largely planned and built the tree fort on his own. He was always full of plans. He’d know what to do.
But sleep wouldn’t come. She tried breathing exercises she’d learned at the hospital-counting backward from a hundred and relaxing all her muscles one at a time. Nothing worked. She got up and looked in her dresser for the Xanax she’d taken from her mother’s purse months ago, but she couldn’t find them. She lay back down, closed her eyes, and just let her mind drift.
Would it really be so terrible if I can’t get Dad’s record back? she wondered. She’d seen him and spent a wonderful afternoon with him. He was all right and Iphigene was kind of a cool-looking place.
But Emmett had figured out the tooth she’d given him wasn’t hers. And someone was watching Zoe and Valentine from the mountain. Valentine didn’t trust Emmett. And Emmett had gone out of his way to tell her that he sold things only to people who could pay.
Would Emmett do something with Dad’s record? Something that could hurt him? There were so many LPs in that back room. Who were they for? Who would make them or buy them? Even Emmett didn’t know, or that’s what he claimed. Zoe’s father said that some people got stuck in Iphigene forever. Had Zoe done something that would trap her father there forever?
Her stomach churned like she was going to throw up, so she went into the bathroom and opened the toilet lid. She sat down with her back against the bathtub and waited. But nothing happened. And then she remembered something.
Emmett didn’t say anything about the record. It could still be in the shop somewhere. She had to know if it was there, and if it was, she had to get it, whatever it might cost.
Later, her mother came in and put a hand on Zoe’s forehead. Zoe kept her eyes shut and her breathing shallow and regular, pretending to be asleep. After a couple of minutes, her mother left. Zoe heard her in the kitchen. Then she was in the bathroom, where Zoe heard running water and her mother brushing her teeth. Finally, her mother went to her bedroom and the apartment became quiet. Zoe looked at the alarm clock by her bed. It was just after eleven. Another hour, she thought. Just to make sure Mom is asleep.
When midnight finally came, she slipped out of bed, trying to keep her mattress springs from squeaking. Padding around her room in bare feet, she gathered up the things she’d need. She opened the window and set an old pair of surplus-store boots on the fire escape. Then she changed into the Runaways T-shirt Joan Jett had given her father back in the day. She pulled on her lucky black hoodie, the one with cat ears on the hood. She slipped out the window and closed it behind her thinking, I know this is crazy, but what else is there left to do?
She started up the fire escape when she realized she’d forgotten something. She opened the window just enough to squeeze through and grabbed her father’s straight razor from where she’d kicked it under the bed to keep her mother from seeing it. She closed the window and ran up to the roof.
There, she sat on the gravel and pulled on her boots under the moon’s wasted, colorless light. Something moved in her peripheral vision. Turning, she saw her vodka-soaked T-shirt hanging where she’d left it. She made a mental note to bring it down when she got back.
As Zoe climbed down the ladder she was hit with a sense of fear and sadness so deep that it made her stomach cramp. Doing what she was doing, going where she was going secretly in the middle of the night, it felt like she was crossing a border that she’d never be able to uncross and that she might not ever find her way home again.
She shook her head to clear it. At the bottom of the fire escape, she pushed the final collapsible section all the way down just like she’d seen in a hundred TV shows, climbed to the bottom, and jumped the last few feet. The night air was cool, and because it might disguise her, she pulled her hood up.
The walk to Emmett’s was long and dreary. She wondered at herself now, at how she could have found previous walks to the shop so pleasant and magical. The path wound through grubby streets full of ugly people and buildings and stores that all looked like they were about to collapse.
A few men spoke to her as she walked. They stepped out from the doorways and alleys of dim, unreal buildings. Some of the silhouettes grabbed their crotches and made kissing sounds as she went past.
A shadow man, tall and wide, stepped out from behind a tree just as Zoe was passing. One of his big hands gripped her shoulder, then slid down her shirt and over her breast. She didn’t even think about it. The straight razor was out. Her arm moved and the blade sliced deeply into the shadow man’s wrist.
He staggered back. “You bitch! You little bitch. I’ll kill you,” he yelled, but he stayed where he was. Zoe kept walking, trying to look brave. She kept the razor tucked in her hand for another block.
The light was still on in the record store. She ran across the street and hid in the shadows next to an old Dumpster. Did Emmett always work this late?
Zoe trembled a little in the cool San Francisco dark. She looked down at her hands. She was still holding the razor, and it was open. There was a thin streak like India ink across the edge of the blade that she knew was the shadow man’s blood. An old newspaper lay nearby. She took a couple of pages and wiped off the blade, refusing to think about how the blood had gotten on the razor. Still, it felt like one more step away from a safe life she’d never have again.
For a moment Zoe wondered if this might all be some awful fever dream. Maybe she was really at home in her bed in the old house. Her father and mother would have breakfast with her before she went to her old, familiar school, where she’d tell Julie and Laura about this crazy nightmare where she went to a carnival with her father’s ghost, gave trinkets to an old pervert, and slashed a mugger like
After she’d spent an hour standing in the cold, the lights went off in Emmett’s shop. He came out the front door with a stack of records under one arm. Zoe squinted, but couldn’t tell if they were regular records or the special ones.
Emmett walked to the corner and stood under the traffic light. It turned from red to green. The pedestrian
