Zelda
November 29th
Rupert—one of my Vegas roommates—told me the East Village was the place to get an artsy feel for the city. The last thing I felt was artsy but having a general direction was better than feeling completely fucking clueless and lost. I went back to the subway and jumped on a train heading in a south-easterly direction. I got out at the Astor Place Station, and walked along St. Marks to 2nd Avenue.
I was trying to keep note of my surroundings—bohemian-looking bars and shops—while I searched for a place to eat that wasn’t total crap without breaking my puny bank either.
I stopped in front of a small Italian bistro. A red and white-striped awning read Giovanni’s. How cliché, I thought while letting myself be enveloped by the warm scent seeping into the street. Tomato sauce and garlic, basil and rosemary…
Rosemary.
A wave of homesickness swamped me so hard, I was dizzy. My mom’s kitchen had smelled like this, once upon a time.
I clutched my portfolio to my chest like a shield and pushed open Giovanni’s front door. The bistro was tiny—fifteen tables, each with a glass cup burning a lone candle. Plastic red and white-checkered tablecloths, plastic bunches of grapes on the wall, and poorly painted Italian landscapes.
Cliché central, and yet the food smelled just as good as my mom’s. The scent wrapped around me and carried me to memories of her kitchen, to a time when I had a sister. When the two of us bickered and pulled each other’s hair, then dodged the light swat of Mom’s wooden spoon for rough housing like animals near the hot stove.
Go home, a voice whispered in my mind. Get on a train and go home.
But home wasn’t what it had been. Rosemary’s abduction had dropped my family from a great height of warmth and love, to shatter like glass at the bottom of a cold black pit. We were all broken—my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles… My big, loud, Italian family muted by the unthinkable.
Was my mother cooking again? I didn’t know the household routines anymore; I’d been away for six years. A self-imposed outcast. The guilt of my unimaginable failure to Rosemary had made me an exile. My mother’s gentle urging lured me back, and once or twice a year I gave in and visited, hoping this time I could believe them when they said it hadn’t been my fault. And every time I was left panic-stricken and shattered by memories that screamed otherwise. Those memories had driven me from the urban sprawl of Philadelphia to the deserts of Nevada, where nothing looked familiar.
Giovanni’s was familiar.
The grief and homesickness was a tidal wave now, and I nearly bolted back outside. The bartender called at me from behind the long curl of mahogany running the length of the restaurant.
“How many, miss?”
I knew being this close to Philly was a risk when I came out east, but the onslaught of memories was almost too much. I wasn’t a coward. I was tough. A tough cookie, my dad used to tell me. A tough cookie who didn’t back down from anything. I wasn’t about to let memories bully me back into the cold New York night.
“Table for one,” I told the rotund man who wore shirtsleeves, a vest, and a tie that also had grapes on it.
He jerked his head at a tiny two-top near the back. I took the seat, the shakiness wearing off as I realized how hungry I was.
I can do this. Be normal. Eat something.
I set my portfolio at my feet. The candle flickered in its cup on the table. A busboy wordlessly dropped off a hard plastic cup with water and two slivers of ice floating in it while I perused the menu.
A waitress—a friendly young woman with dark hair piled on her head and gold hoop earrings—took my order: ziti and a glass of house red wine. I was doing a pretty good job of managing the utter shittiness of the situation until she came back and plunked the steaming food in front of me. It was just like Mom’s, I thought, except that my mother would’ve added too much basil to hers, and my grandmother would’ve complained and they’d spend the rest of the night bickering…
My vision blurred. My chest felt tight and I couldn’t get the air past my throat. I pushed from the table toward the tiny hallway that led to the bathrooms. The women’s restroom door was locked.
“Shit.”
Without thinking, I hurried through the too-bright kitchen, past the steam and cleanser-smelling dishwasher, and out the back door to a tiny alley lined with a rickety wooden fence. A dumpster faced the restaurant, its lids bulging with plastic bags. My breath plumed in shaky little bursts, and I hugged myself in the bracing cold.
Get a grip, I thought. Jesus, it’s just food. It’s just… this city. You failed, so what? You’re not the first naïve twit New York chewed up and spit out, and you definitely won’t be the last.
Tough talk but meaningless. It wasn’t my graphic novel being rejected that hurt; I could take it if the art wasn’t up to par. But being told it had no heart…
No heart. It wasn’t my heart; it was my lungs gasping for air as I’d chased after the van. It was my voice screaming for help, someone please fucking help because I couldn’t run fast enough. I hadn’t screamed loud enough. I’d failed Rosie then, and I’d failed her now. Failed to tell the story. The book was an apology spread out over a hundred black and white pages, colored with tears and inked with regret; everything I didn’t do that day was embedded in the drawings, and my heroine’s rage—her merciless thirst for vengeance—was my only relief.
And it was rejected.
“Now what the fuck do I do?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” a low, gravelly male voice said from behind. “Maybe not freeze to death in this stinking alley?”
I nearly jumped out of my damn skin and spun around. A tall, lean guy around my twenty-four years was at the backdoor of the restaurant, garbage bag in hand. Blond hair and a scruff of beard, wearing a white dress shirt, black pants, and white apron. The busboy.
“You okay?” he asked.
“You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry.” He chucked the garbage into the dumpster, then fished in his back pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes. “Why are you hanging around back here?”
I shrugged and stood as tall as my five-foot, three-inch height would allow. “Seems as good a place as any,” I said.
The guy lit a smoke. “Are you lost?”
Yes, in every way possible.
“No, I just needed some air.”
He gave me a dry look. “Some fresh, garbage-smelling air?”
A smartass. One of my people. But not what I needed at the moment. I started for the back door. “Whatever. Sorry to bother you.”
“You’re not bothering me.” He exhaled twin plumes of smoke from his nose. The smoke mixed with the vapor of his breath in the chill air. He didn’t say anything more but watched me with dark blue eyes under furrowed brows, nonchalant but observant.
“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” I asked.
“Smoke break.” He held up his cigarette. “I thought that was fairly self-evident.”
“Touché.”
“Want one?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Probably for the best. Your food’s going to get cold.”
“And then I won’t get any dessert?”
The corner of his lip turned up, and he settled himself on one of three stairs leading to the back door of the restaurant. “What’s the matter?”
“I just needed a moment alone,” I said. “But I guess that’s not going to happen.”
“Guess not.”
My eyes widened. “God, you’re annoying.” I shivered in my coat, my stomach still growling. Cigarettes, I remembered, were great appetite suppressants. “Okay, yes, I’ll take a smoke.”
He produced the pack again and scooted over to make room for me on the stairs. I sat beside him, and pulled my long hair out of the way. I took the cigarette and watched him as he lit it for me. His eyes in the lighter flame were a dark crystalline blue, like a sapphire with a hundred facets…
My chest constricted and my body bent in half as I coughed out a cloud of smoke.
“You okay?”
I nodded vigorously. “It’s been a while,” I said between coughs, my eyes watering. I remembered why I didn’t smoke in the first place. “This tastes like ass.”
The guy smirked. “Put it out carefully and I’ll take it back.”
“No, I’m good. I think I need it.” I inhaled again, let out a long exhale that took some of my anxiety out with it. My rumbling stomach settled down.
For a minute the busboy and I sat on the stoop and smoked in silence. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. Beneath his long-sleeved shirt, muscles were nicely defined. His jaw was cut at a fine angle and the straight line of his nose was interrupted by a small break. His blond hair was longish on top but short around the sides and his face. God, his face…
He’s ridiculously good-looking. Too perfect. Like a hero in a comic.
“You got a name?” he asked, his eyes still on the alley.
“Zelda,” I said.
His glanced flickered to me. “Zelda? Like—?”
“Like the game, The Legend of Zelda?” I snorted smoke out my nose. “I haven’t heard that a hundred million times.”
The guy shrugged. “I was going to say like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife.”
“Oh,” I said. “Actually…yeah. My mother had a thing for Fitzgerald. I’m named after his wife. My sister—” I coughed, pretended it was the cigarette smoke. “Rosemary. She’s named for a character in one of his books.”
“Tender is the Night,” he said. He took in my widened eyes and looked away. “I had a lot of time to read the last couple of years.”
I nodded. I didn’t ask why and he didn’t ask me about my sister. A good trade.
“And your name is?” I asked.
“Link,” he said, and then leaned away from my death glare with a small laugh. “Beckett. It’s Beckett.”
It suits him perfectly, I thought, and then scolded myself. How would you know? Don’t get stupid over a pretty face.
“So what’s your story, Zelda?” Beckett asked
“Not much to tell,” I said. “I came, I saw, I got my ass kicked. New York City is an unforgiving place.”
“You’re an actress?”
“Artist.”
Beckett nodded, exhaling smoke.
“Are you an actor?” I asked. He was good-looking enough, that was for damn sure.
He shook his head. “Bike messenger.”
“Oh. Cool. Bike messenger and busboy.” Beckett shot me a look and I held up my hands. “Nothing wrong with either one. It’s an honest living.”
He snorted. “Yeah. Honest,” he said, spitting the word, and then was silent for a minute. “Anyway, I only bus tables twice a week. For extra cash.”
“I heard rent’s a bitch here.”
“You heard right.”
A short silence fell that wasn’t altogether uncomfortable. I glanced at Beckett sideways again, at the cut of his jaw and the dark blue of his eyes. Even under the shabby lone light over the door, his eyes were brilliant. He was taller than my short frame, and his body exuded safety. It was like being in the lee of a stone sheltering me from the cold wind of the city. For the length of a cigarette anyway.
“Do you live in Manhattan?” I asked.
“Nope. Brooklyn.” He gave me another look. “There’s actually more to New York City than Times Square and the Empire State Building.”
I rolled my eyes. “No kidding? I was going to ask if they were renting apartments in the Statue of Liberty.”
He almost smiled. “You’re looking for a place?”
“Nope, I’m done,” I said. “I’m in over my head already.”
Beckett nodded. “I hear you. I work two jobs and I’m short this month by eighty bucks. I’m going to have to give blood.”
My eyes widened. “You give blood to make rent?”
“Once or twice. It’s no big deal. Clinic on 17th gives $35.”
“You’d still be short $45.”
“I’ll go to another clinic.” Beckett sniffed a laugh at my dismayed expression. “I’m kidding. I’ll sell something. One of my albums, maybe, which would suck.”
“Albums? Like, vinyl?”
He nodded. “I have a few classics, mostly from my grandfather. I inherited his collection when he died. Others are from sidewalk sales. People don’t know what they have and sell cheap.”
I took a shallow drag off my cigarette. It was making me nauseous. Or maybe it was the idea of this guy selling prized possessions—not to mention his blood—to make rent.
He must’ve seen my horrified expression, and he waved his hand, dispersing both the smoke and my worry. “It’s no big deal.”
“Why don’t you get a roommate?” I asked.
“I live in a four hundred square-foot studio. I have yet to meet anyone I’d share that amount of space with without wanting to kill them inside of a week.”
I nodded. “Back in Vegas I have my own room in a house with about ten roommates. I can tolerate only two of them and then only half the time.” I turned my gaze upward, to the night sky that was hazy with the city lights, and felt impossibly deep and empty. “Why do you stay if it’s so hard to live here?”
Beckett took a drag from his cigarette, as if he were buying time before answering.
“Brooklyn, born and raised,” he said finally, still not looking at me. “Where else would I go anyway? Different city, same struggle.” He finally brought his gaze to mine. “So you’re getting out?”
“On the bus, tomorrow,” I said. “I can’t stay. I was here for a job interview—sort of—and it fell through.”
“What was the job?”
“You’ll think it’s stupid.”
“Yeah, I probably will.” His smile was dry.
I laughed a little. “Smartass. I draw graphic novels.”
He stared at me blankly.
“Long-form comic books that tell one continuous story,” I said.
“Like The Walking Dead?”
“Exactly. I have one mocked up and I came here to pitch it to a few publishers. They all rejected me. Well, one half-rejected me, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t stay in the city long enough to make any changes, and I wouldn’t know what changes to make if I could.”
Beckett studied the cigarette between his fingers. “Why can’t you stay?”
“Where do I start?” I ground out my cigarette under my boot heel. “My poor planning? My dwindling funds? The fact I was robbed today? Or that I was naively hopeful the publishers would adore my work and sign me on the spot? Take your pick.”
Beckett shook his head, his mouth turned down in his grimace. “Wait, go back. You were robbed?”
I nodded and waved away the last of the smoke, wishing my failure could be as easily dissipated. “I came here like a wide-eyed twit with a dream, and I crashed and burned.”
“You tried. That’s more than most people do.”
“Tried and failed.”
“So try again.”
“I wish,” I said, letting my gaze roam over the dingy back alley. “I feel like I’m so close to breaking through. That last publisher gave me some hope. If I could pull a few weeks out of my ass, I’d have a chance. But it’s impossible. I have to go back to Nevada.”
“You don’t have friends or family nearby?”
Yes, and only two hours by train.
“No,” I said, and decided I’d said enough to a total stranger. The last thing I needed was the terrible homesickness to well up again. I stood and brushed off the ass of my pants. “Anyway, it is what it is. Thanks for the smoke.”
“Were you hurt?”
I turned, glanced down at Beckett. “What?”
“You said you were robbed,” he said, his voice low, his eyes holding mine as if he were forcing himself to hear this. “Did they hurt you?”
“No, I… No. I wasn’t there. It was a break-in.”
He leaned against the wall and his sigh plumed out in front of him in the cold air. It sounded relieved. “I’m sorry, Zelda.”
I frowned. “Not your fault. Like I said, the city kicked my ass. The sooner I get the hell out of here, the better for all involved.”
Beckett ground out his smoke and got to his feet. He was at least six-two, yet it didn’t feel imposing to stand in his shadow. It felt…
Safe. I feel safe with him.
“Do you know how to get back to wherever you’re staying?” he asked.
“The same way I got here, only in reverse,” I said, covering my unsettling thoughts with sarcasm. Because that was safe for me.
Beckett stared at me a moment more, studying me, and finally seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. “Okay.” He walked with me through the kitchen and held the swinging door that led back to the bistro floor open for me. For a moment, I was cloaked in his masculine scent: cold air, cigarette smoke, and cologne.
“Good luck, Zelda.”
“Thanks…” I said, inhaling deeply. I came to my senses a second later, called, “You too,” just as the swinging kitchen doors closed between us.
The restaurant was cozy-warm compared to outdoors, and nearly empty. The manager was tallying up receipts at the register, while the bartender emptied his dishwasher on the other side. Someone had bagged up my food, and my portfolio—thank God—was still where I had carelessly left it under the table.
I’m on a goddamn roll.
I paid my bill and stepped out into the winter chill. My breath was as thick as the smoke I’d had with Beckett, and I hunched deeper into my pea coat.
Now what?
Back to that shitty hostel for my complimentary free night. I envisioned myself at the bus station the next day, heading back to Las Vegas with my stuff in a trash bag and my tail between my legs. The hostel room wasn’t really free. I’d paid for it with my brand new suitcase, my art supplies, and my dignity.
Shame burning my cheeks, I turned right and started walking. I’d told Beckett I was going to take the same subway back, but I had a shit sense of direction. Nothing looked familiar and the buildings rose all around me, making me feel small. And lost.
At the corner, I pulled out my phone to find one of those city transit apps my friends told me about. While I waited for it to load, I heard voices in front of Giovanni’s. Beckett was saying goodnight to the bartender and the waitress with a bicycle hauled up on his shoulder. He set it down on the sidewalk as I watched, then took up the helmet slung on the handlebars. He turned my way as he fastened the strap under his chin.
I quickly looked back to my phone.
Out of the corner of my eye, Beckett walked his bike down the twenty feet or so to my corner. He’d changed out of his busboy attire, and now wore black weather-proof pants and a deep blue, well-worn Gor-Tex jacket. His small backpack had a wide strap that ran diagonal across his chest instead of over his shoulders. What looked liked a small CB radio was clipped to it.
“You good?” he asked.
“Peachy.”
I tapped an icon of a small bus in white against a lime green backdrop. The app loaded a bunch of buses, subway lines, stations and stops, and a bunch of times next to each.
“Calling a cab?” Beckett asked.
“No, I’m…” I bit off a curse. I didn’t know how to make heads or fucking tails of the app. “I just need to get to the Astor metro station.”
“That’s my station,” he said. “I’ll walk you.”
I looked up. “You’ll walk me?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Thanks, no. I can manage.”
Beckett shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
But instead of climbing on his bike, he began to walk—slowly—and in the opposite direction I’d intended to take. With a huff, I followed behind.
“You don’t have to do that,” I called, keeping a good ten yards between us.
“Do what?” He shot a glance over his shoulder. “Why are you following me, Zelda? Is it because my station happens to be your station?”
I rolled my eyes, and clutched my portfolio tighter. A red light unhelpfully allowed me to catch up to him.
“Just to the station,” I said.
Beckett nodded, a small grin flitting over his lips. “Just to the station.”
We walked the next block in silence. My leftovers bag banged against my thigh one too many times and I went to chuck it into the next trashcan. I couldn’t stand to eat it fresh off the stove, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to eat it cold in my shitty hostel room.
“Wait,” Beckett said. “You don’t want it?”
“No.”
He held out his hand. “I’ll take it.”
I handed it over, feeling like an ass for wasting food.
“It’s not for me,” Beckett said, not looking at me as he zipped up his backpack and slung it back over his shoulder. We resumed our trek.
Three blocks later, we came to the station entrance that looked vaguely familiar to me as the one I’d taken earlier. Beckett lifted his bike onto his shoulder to take the stairs down. The bike’s yellow paint was chipped and the rear reflector cracked. Light but sturdy, it looked like a cross between a racing bike and a mountain bike, with straight handlebars instead of curved. Though the frame looked a little dinged-up, the chain and gears were free of rust. Beckett obviously took good care of the important things.
“You always take your bike on the train?” I asked as he set it down inside the station.
“Have to. It’s a bitch in the morning, but until they make a better way from here to Brooklyn….” He shrugged.
“You live in Brooklyn but work in Manhattan?”
“Six days a week.” He jerked his head at a transit map on one cement wall of the station next to a token dispenser. “Where are you staying?”
I pursed my lips. “At the Hotel None of Your Business.”
“Are you always this difficult with people who offer to help?” Beckett asked, his blue eyes glinting in the station’s yellow light.
“I’m not difficult,” I said. “I’m cautious. Big difference.”
“That’s smart,” he said. “But you obviously don’t know the city. At least give me a neighborhood and I’ll point you to the right train.”
“8th Ave, near the Port Authority,” I said, refusing to be touched by his offer.
Beckett frowned. “Lots of people coming and going from there. Maybe not the safest at night. At this hour.”
He walked his bike toward a cement bench and sat, keeping his bike balanced against his knees. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “What’s the name of the hotel?”
“It’s not a hotel, it’s a hostel. The Parkside. But you don’t have to—”
“Cool. I’ll go with you.”
I blinked. “You’ll go with me?”
“My bad. I meant, I happen to be walking to the Parkside Hostel tonight.” He studied his phone, scrolling with his thumb. “You’re free to walk with me, if you want.”
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “I don’t know New York that well, but I do know where I’m going is the exact opposite direction of Brooklyn.”
“Different borough, even,” he said, not looking up.
I frowned, at a loss. Finally, I sat beside him on the cold cement bench. “I can’t tell if you’re being chivalrous or stalkerish.”
“Neither,” he said. “If I wake up tomorrow and read on the blotter that you were mugged on the way back to the hostel, I’ll feel like shit. I’m doing this for me. Not you.”
“Okaaay… Thanks?”
“Don’t mention it.”
A hundred different smart-ass retorts came to mind but I found myself tongue-tied into silence. This guy—Beckett—wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before.
“Are all New Yorkers like you?” I asked.
“How am I?” Beckett replied, still not looking up.
“If I were drawing you, you’d be Enigma Man. Taking damsels in distress to their shitty hostels in crappy neighborhoods, miles out of your way, and asking for nothing in return.”
“Should I demand a reward?” Before I could answer Beckett turned to me, his dark blue eyes boring into mine. “And it’s not for nothing. I told you, I’m doing this for me.”
I pursed my lips. There’s a story here.
A train screeched into the station.
“Do I get on?” I asked.
Beckett’s gaze flickered up then back to his phone. “Next one.”
Another silence fell. He didn’t look at me, and only our elbows brushed now and then. But for all his aloofness, I still felt that sense of being sheltered in his presence.
Another train screeched in on a current of warm, aluminum-smelling wind.
“That’s yours,” Beckett said, and tucked his phone in an inside pocket of his jacket.
He walked his bike onto the train, forcing the few commuters who stood near the door to move over. No one gave Beckett a hard time for it, and he didn’t look like he’d give a shit anyway.
I stepped in after him and he jerked his head to a free seat a couple rows down. I took it, again perplexed by his strange brand of chivalry. The train lurched off and I held my portfolio tight to my chest. Beckett held onto a rail, his bike easily resting against his thighs. He hardly moved with the train’s turns, like a sailor on a ship. He didn’t obsessively study the transit map near the door like I did, either, but when the train slowed for the third time, he turned to me.
“Your stop.”
Our stop, I amended. But I followed him off, and followed him through the station and up the stairs to the street. Back into the cold of the night.
“Address?” he asked.
“If I don’t tell, you’ll just Google it from the name I stupidly gave you, right?”
“Much faster if you tell me,” he said, a glint of humor in his eyes.
I huffed a sigh and told him the address. Beckett immediately started off, as if he’d been to the Parkside Hostel a hundred times before. It was so uncanny, I had to ask.
“Have you stayed there before?”
“No.”
“How do you—?”
“I don’t know the hostel, I know intersections.” He tapped the handle of his bicycle. “It’s my job.”
“Oh. Right. That makes sense.”
I decided to keep my mouth shut before something even dumber popped out. Truth was, I was grateful Beckett was with me. The streets were dark and full of shadows. I clutched my portfolio and walked as close to him as I dared without looking like I was sticking close to him.
Beckett walked easily but his eyes looked ahead and side to side, alert and aware. It was as if his body was on auto-pilot with familiarity for the city, but his mind stayed sharp. Ahead, a homeless man was keeping warm on a subway grate. As we approached, he suddenly barked at us for some spare change. I jumped back. Beckett stopped too, but only to pull a few dollars out of his pants pocket.
“Have a good one, man,” he said, pressing the bills into the man’s hand and continuing on.
The homeless man muttered something in return, and shuffled off in the opposite direction.
My mouth opened and then shut. He’s short on rent and giving his tips away? Maybe he hadn’t been telling the truth about his rent situation, but I didn’t think so. He’d given the man money the same way he was taking me to my hostel—like he didn’t have a choice.
We arrived at the Parkside Hostel. No one sat behind the glass enclosure of the lobby, but I had a twenty-four hour key.
“Okay, so this is it,” I said. “Thanks for getting me here, especially since it’s so far out of your way.”
“No problem,” Beckett said, his gaze roving up the street, to the door behind me, down to his shoes, and finally back to me. The silence grew thick between us. It was dim under the wan yellow light of the hostel’s entry, turning Beckett’s dark blue eyes almost purple. His mouth opened, as if he would break that silence, then snapped shut again.
He climbed onto his bike. “Good night, Zelda.”
“’Night.”
He pedaled away with a speed that seemed unsafe on the dark city streets. He rode with perfect competence, like a Tour de France athlete: leaning into a turn, smooth as silk and lightning fast. Within seconds, he was gone.
I stared a long time at the dark space where I’d seen him last. I wasn’t going to see him ever again, and I couldn’t decide how I felt about it. It wasn’t regret sighing in my chest. More like a strange sort of…nostalgia? As if I missed him.
The feeling of safety was gone. I missed that too.
I trudged up to my room and flopped onto the bed’s thin mattress; the springs squeaked and groaned under my weight. I called up Rupert’s number on my phone. He was my most trustworthy roommate (which wasn’t saying much) and I needed him to pick me up from the North Vegas bus depot in a few days.
“Oh, hey, Zel,” Rupert said. In the background, I could hear music and loud voices. “What’s up? How’s the Big Apple treatin’ ya?”
I frowned. He sounded like a guy whose girlfriend just came home and he’s got another girl hiding in the closet.
“Not as well as I hoped,” I said. “I’m coming back in a few days and wanted to lock in a ride back.”
“You’re coming back?” The noise behind Rupert became muffled and I knew that meant he’d closed himself into the tiny pantry off the kitchen. “Shit, Zel, that’s rough.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered, then sat up. “Wait. Rough for me or you?”
“Um, well…”
“Rupert, what’s going on?”
“I sort of rented your room.”
I nearly dropped the phone. “You did what?”
“You told me staying in New York was a sure thing.”
“I said it was probably a sure thing.” I stopped, realizing how that didn’t make any sense and shook my head in impatience. “Anyway, I also said to wait until you got the call from me before you did anything with my room. This is that call.”
“Calm down. You can find another place. You can—”
“Not without a deposit and first month’s rent,” I said. “Goddammit, this is not what I needed to hear right now.”
“It’s my bad, Zel. The couch is yours,” Rupert said. “For as long as you want. Or you can bunk up with Cheryl until something better comes up.”
“How magnanimous of you,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“You know how it is around here, Zel. People coming and going…” I could hear the shrug in Rupert’s voice. “We thought you were going.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t.” I bit the inside of my cheek until the tears in my throat subsided. “Get your ass to the bus station in three days. I’ll call you with the time.”
Rupert’s relief was a gust over the phone. “You got it. Tell me when. I’ll be there.” A short silence. “And hey, Zel? Sorry it didn’t pan out for you over there. Those publishers don’t know what they’re missing.”
I tried to say thanks but it came out a croaky whisper. I hung up and let the phone drop to the dingy bedspread.
I moved to the window and stared at the brick wall of the adjacent building. I had to crane my neck up to see the night sky, and there were no stars. Nothing but a dull, dark blue swath, cold and indifferent.