Smoke

I’ve always kind of felt that if Lily doesn’t like someone, then there’s usually a reason.”

Lydia nodded. “So why did Mickey move up there in the first place?”

“He was burned out. He’d made a killing, put a lot of money away. He had always had this dream of owning a coffee shop that was like a performance space at night, you know, small bands, poetry readings. He wanted to hang a different artist’s work on the walls every month. Something really artsy and cool, totally different from the insanity of his Wall Street job. So he went for it.”

“But it didn’t go well?”

“It seemed to, at first. We went up there after he opened. The space was beautiful, there seemed to be a good crowd. He was talking about applying for a liquor license.” She moved away a wisp of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “He seemed like the same old Mickey but happier. Less than six months later, he was dead.”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Lydia, leaning forward.

“You know,” said Jasmine, looking down. “Since my residency started I have been so busy, so exhausted all the time, that I really didn’t pay the kind of attention that I should have, I guess. I knew Lily was upset about the way Mickey was acting. She kept saying, ‘There’s something really weird going on with him.’ We talked about it but I guess I was only half-listening. Now when I think about those months, trying to figure things out, I feel like I only have small pieces.”

“What are some of the things you remember her mentioning?”

“She was talking about how he was hanging around with a weird group of people, friends of this girl he was seeing.”

“Do you remember her name?”

She closed her eyes for a second, as if trying to recall. Lydia noticed for the first time how pretty Jasmine was. With her hair back and her baggy scrubs, her beauty hadn’t been obvious at first. But in the bright sun coming in from the window, Lydia admired her fair golden skin and inky black hair, the delicate lashes on her wide eyes. When Jasmine opened her eyes again, Lydia saw that they were light hazel, with the slightest tease of green.

“I met her when we went up to visit over the summer,” she said slowly. “I think it was Mariah. I don’t think I ever got her last name. She was beautiful, with this really long blonde hair, bombshell body. There was something cold about her, something sneaky. But Mickey was smitten. Big-time.”

Lydia flashed on Lily’s message. “I’m out of my league. Big-time,” she’d said.

“He was always looking to throw himself into something. When he was a trader on Wall Street, it was his religion. He lived and breathed the Journal. When he got into the martial arts, it was his obsession. Then it was Buddhism. Lily always called him a ‘seeker.’ She said he was always looking to belong somewhere but that he always felt like he was on the outside looking in. Lily always thought that it was the death of their father that made him like that. Lily was only two when their dad died, but Mickey was seven. Old enough to feel the loss. Mr. Samuels, their stepdad, loves them both; he was always good to them. But Lily never remembered her biological father; Mickey did. I think there were some challenges for Mr. Samuels in taking on the role of father for Mickey.” She shook her head, chewed on the cuticle of her thumb. “I hate myself for not being more present. I should have listened better.”

Lydia saw the tears start again before Jasmine put her head in her hands. She felt a familiar, helpless sadness opening within her. It was a terrible empathy she’d always had for the people who’d lost loved ones. She saw their pain, their fear, that slick-walled abyss of grief within them, and it connected with the space inside her that still grieved the murder of her own mother.

“Go easy on yourself, Jasmine,” she said softly. “It’s too easy to blame ourselves. And it doesn’t help anyone.”

She nodded but didn’t look up from her hands. Lydia gave her a minute. She got up to find a tissue for Jasmine and looked around the apartment. It was the apartment of a person who worked a lot, didn’t have much money and spent most of her time in the space sleeping. It was neat, tasteful, but didn’t have the charisma and energy of a more home-centered person. The fixtures were generic; even the simply framed posters on the wall- Van Gogh’s Starry Night, some erotic bloom by Georgia O’Keeffe, the inevitable Robert Doisneau print of The Kiss where a couple are lip locked in a crowded Paris train station-were on the walls of a thousand other apartments all over the city.

She found some tissues in the bathroom and brought them to Jasmine, who thanked her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, blowing her nose. “I still can’t believe this is happening. When I’m working I can almost forget about it; I’m on my ER rotation and there are so many people hurt and in pain. It’s so frenetic. I can forget about Lily, about what has happened. Isn’t that awful?”

“No. I think it’s normal,” said Lydia, sitting back down. After all, she’d been doing it all her adult life, using her work to avoid her pain and problems. Better than heroin, she thought. “The brain can only handle so much worry and grief at a time. It needs a way to shift off for a while.”

Jasmine nodded doubtfully.

“When the news came about Mickey,” she said with a sniffle, “Lily was just destroyed. I’ll never forget her face or the way she screamed. I was here when her stepfather called. The next few days were kind of this miserable blur. The viewing, the service, the burial.”

“Was Mariah at the funeral?”

Jasmine shook her head. “No. I never saw her again after meeting her. I think she left him; that was supposedly one of the reasons he was in so much despair.”

Lydia nodded.

“The police said that Lily was sure he hadn’t killed himself.”

Jasmine nodded, stretched out her legs. “Absolutely positive. In spite of the physical evidence, she refused to believe it.”

“Was your impression that she was in denial?”

“I didn’t know what to think,” she said, looking down at her sneakers. “It was all just so stunning. She stayed a couple of days with her parents. She took family leave from the paper and then asked for her vacation to extend her time off. She left for Riverdale about a week after he died.”

“Did you talk to her while she was up there?”

“We traded a couple of messages. But we never actually had a conversation.”

Lydia looked at the young woman in front of her. Her eyes were rimmed red from crying and smudged beneath with blue fatigue from what Lydia was sure was at least a fifteen-hour shift. Something within Lydia wanted to comfort her, to give her a hug and tuck her in someplace. It wasn’t a new feeling, but it was new that she didn’t press it down and become colder to defend herself against the vulnerability it opened inside her. But she didn’t really know how to be like that-even after so many years of interviews like this one, so many weeping, broken people. It cost so much to comfort someone; you had to take on a little of their sadness. Lydia stood up from the couch.

“Do you mind if I take a look around?” Lydia asked.

Jasmine shook her head. “Please,” she said, wiping her eyes.

The hallway from the living area to the bedroom was a gallery of family photos. Lydia flipped on the light and observed a collection of faces captured in the joyous moments of their lives. Lily and Mickey rode on the back of an elephant in a jungle. Lily wrapped her arms around an older woman who had to be her mother; the resemblance was striking as they stood before a birthday cake with many candles. Lily and Jasmine danced in a crowded bar or club with a couple of other sexy young girls decked out for the evening. Mickey’s graduation. Mickey at Machu Picchu. Lily playing soccer, a gangly adolescent with a foalish prettiness to her.

Lydia walked the brief length of the hall, her boot heels clicking on the hard wood, and gazed at the faces. Near the end of the wall, there was a picture of Mickey holding a professionally painted sign that read NO DOZE. The O’s were little coffee cups and the steam coming from them was comprised of wispy musical notes. Beside him was a strikingly beautiful blonde; her arms snaked around his neck possessively. Mickey’s smile was broad, his eyes crinkled warmly. He was, unmistakably, a happy man. The woman with him had a look to her that Lydia immediately disliked; there was something coquettish, something falsely sweet to her smile. Her eyes were as flat and as dull as a cat’s. Just from the photograph, it was easy to see why Lily had disliked her. Lydia wondered if they’d fought about Mariah, if that had been the rift that had grown between them at the end. Try to convince a young man in love that the gorgeous girl throwing herself at him isn’t the sweet thing he imagines her to be. See how well it goes. He’d have been angry with Lily for it, especially since on some level he would have known she