One last stop, p.18
One Last Stop, page 18
New Orleans was the first place she felt at home since the Bay, but the specifics are hard, and the reason she left is gone.
Something happened there, something that sent her running again. The first time someone asked her name afterward—a bus driver in Biloxi—she swallowed and gave her nickname, because it was the one thing from that part of her life she chose to keep: Jane. It stuck.
After New Orleans, a year of hitchhiking from city to city on the East Coast, falling halfway in love with a girl in every one and then cutting and running. She says she loved every girl like summer: bright and warm and fleeting, never too deep because she’d be gone soon.
“There were people in the punk scene and the anti-war crowd who hated gays, and people in the lesbian crowd who hated Asians,” Jane explains. “Some of the girls wanted me to wear a dress like it’d make straight people take us seriously. Everywhere I went, someone loved me. But everywhere I went, someone hated me. And then there were other girls who were like me, who … I don’t know, they were stronger than me, or more patient. They’d stay and build bridges. Or at least try. I wasn’t a builder. I wasn’t a leader. I was a fighter. I cooked people dinner. I took them to the hospital. I stitched them up. But I only stayed long enough to take the good, and I always left when the bad got bad.”
(Jane says she’s not a hero. August disagrees, but she doesn’t want to interrupt, so she puts a pin in it for later.)
She read about San Francisco, about the movements happening there, about Asian lesbians riding on the backs of cable cars just to show the city they existed, about leather bars on Fulton Street and basement meetings in Castro, but she couldn’t go back.
She didn’t stop until New York.
Back in New Orleans, her friends would talk about a butch they used to know named Stormé, who’d moved to New York and patrolled outside lesbian bars with a bat, who threw a punch at cops outside the Stonewall Inn and instigated a riot back in ’69. That sounded like the kind of person she wanted to know and the kind of fight she wanted to be in. So she went to New York.
She remembers finding friends in a different Chinatown, in Greenwich Village, in Prospect Heights, in Flatbush. She remembers curling up on twin mattresses with girls who were working nights to save up for the big operation, pushing their curls behind their ears and cooking them congee for breakfast. She remembers fights in the streets, raids on bars, the police dragging her out in cuffs for wearing men’s jeans, spitting blood on the floor of a packed cell. It was early—too early for anyone to have any idea what was happening—but she remembers friends getting sick, taking a guy from the floor above to the hospital in the back of a cab and being told she wasn’t allowed to see him, and later, watching his boyfriend get told the same thing. Sterile whites, skinny ankles, hunched in waiting room chairs with bruises from cops still mottling her skin.
(August goes home and does her own research later: nobody was calling it AIDS until ’81, but it was there, creeping silently through New York.)
But she also remembers bright lights on her face at clubs full of feathers and thrift store evening gowns and glittering turbans perched atop ginger wigs, bare shoulders smudged with lipstick, bottom shelf gin. She lists off the names of guys with heavy eyeliner who threw punches at CBGB and recites the summer ’75 concert calendar, which she’d pinned to her bedroom wall. She remembers getting in a fight with her upstairs neighbor, before he got sick, and settling it over a pack of cigarettes and a game of bridge, laughing until they cried. She remembers steaming dumplings in a kitchen the size of a closet and inviting a small crowd of girls from Chinatown to eat around her coffee table and talk about things they were just beginning to suspect about themselves. She remembers Billy’s, jabbing an elbow into Jerry’s ribs at the grill, hot sauce and syrup dribbling down her wrists as she bit into her sandwich and declared it the best idea she ever had, the exact look on Jerry’s face when he tasted it and agreed.
She remembers the phone, always the phone looking back at her, always the same nine digits repeating in her head. Her parents. She knew she should call. She wanted to. She never did.
August can see it pull at her—around her eyes, her mouth. Sometimes she laughs, remembering making herself sick on too much fried chicken from the shop down the block and her mom mumbling “yeet hay” at her disapprovingly even as she patted her forehead and brought her chrysanthemum tea. Sometimes she stares at the ceiling when she talks about her sisters and the way they used to whisper to one another in their room at night, giggling into the darkness. She’s found and lost everything, all in the span of a few hours.
It all makes sense, though. It fills in most of the gaps in August’s research—the lack of official documents using her name, the confusing timelines, the impossibility of pinning down exactly where Jane was for most of the ’70s. And it makes sense of Jane too. She ran away because she didn’t think she could make her family happy, and she never went back because she thought she did them a favor. She kept running, because she never quite learned what home was supposed to feel like. That, especially, August can understand.
It’s hard, to picture Jane’s life forty-five years ago and understand how close it feels for her—a matter of months, she said once. It’s always soaked in sepia for August, grainy and worn at the edges. But Jane tells it in full color, and August sees it in her eyes, in the shake of her hands. She wants to go back. To her, it’s only a short summer away.
But how New York ended for Jane is still missing. She took the Q to and from her apartment often, but she can’t remember how she ended up stuck there.
“That’s okay,” August says. She leans her shoulder into Jane’s. Jane leans back, and August pushes away the knowledge that she kissed her a few hours ago, lets it be buried under everything else. Jane watches another station slide away with a soft expression on her face, freedom unreachable on the other side of a sliding door. “That’s what I’m here for.”
* * *
When August clocks in at Billy’s on Thursday afternoon, Lucie is on the phone, staring blankly at a Mets clipping on the wall.
“We can only sell three,” she says in a monotone, sounding absolutely bored. “$100 each, $250 for the set. It’s a historic New York landmark. No, not on the registry.” A pause. “I see.” A much longer pause. “Yes, thank you. I invite you to eat a dick. Goodbye.”
She slams down the phone hard enough that the coffee in the pot behind the counter trembles.
“Who was that?” August asks.
“Billy wants to raise money to buy the building by selling things we can spare,” Lucie explains tersely. “Put some of the barstools on Craigslist. People are cheap. And idiots. Cheap idiots.”
She storms off into the kitchen, and August can hear her swearing up a storm in Czech. She thinks of the jar of onion and honey and the way Lucie concealed a smile under the streetlights, and she turns to Winfield, who’s puttering around the counter.
“There’s more to it than she lets on,” August says, “isn’t there?”
Winfield sighs, throwing a towel over his shoulder.
“You know, I’m from Brooklyn,” he says after a pause. “Seems like nobody who lives here is from here, but I am—grew up in East Flatbush, big-ass Jamaican family. But Lucie—she emigrated when she was seventeen, was on her own longer. Came here hungry one night and couldn’t pay the bill, and Billy came out the back and offered her a job instead.”
He hops up onto the bar, narrowly avoiding putting his ass in a pecan pie.
“I’d just started working here the year before. I was only a kid. She was only a kid. She was so skinny, mean as shit, dishwater blond, learning English on the job, and she started telling people what to do, and then one day she showed up with red hair and black nails like she had some kinda Wonder Woman level up. This place made her who she is. It’s the first home she ever had. Shit, I had a home, and even I feel that sometimes.”
“There’s gotta be a way we can save Billy’s,” August says.
Winfield shrugs. “That’s Brooklyn, man. Places get bought up and shut down all the time.”
She glances over her shoulder through the kitchen window, to where Jerry is busy with an omelette. She asked him a week ago if he remembers the person who came up with the Su Special. He doesn’t.
August passes her shift thinking about Jane and ghosts, things that disappear from the city but can’t ever really be erased. That afternoon, August finds her on the Q, sitting cross-legged across three seats.
“Mmm,” Jane hums when August sits down next to her. “You smell good.”
August pulls a face. “I smell like the inside of a deep fryer.”
“Yeah, like I said.” She buries her nose in August’s shoulder, inhaling the greasy ghost of Billy’s. August’s face flashes warm. “You smell good.”
“You’re weird.”
“Maybe,” Jane says, drawing back. “Maybe I just miss Billy’s. It smells exactly the same. It’s nice to know some things’ll never change.”
God, it sucks. Places like Billy’s, they’re never just places. They’re homes, central points of memories, first loves. To Jane, it’s as much of an anchor as the one on her bicep.
“Jane, I, uh,” August starts. “I have to tell you something.”
And she breaks the news.
Jane leans forward, elbows on her knees, tonguing her bottom lip. “God, I—I never imagined it’d ever not be there, not even now.”
“I know.”
“Maybe…” she says, turning to August, “maybe if you get me back to where I’m supposed to be, I could do something. Maybe I could fix this.”
“I mean, maybe. I don’t really know how any of this works. Myla’s pretty sure whatever’s happening now is happening because whatever happened in the past is already done.”
Jane frowns, deflating slightly. “I think I understood some of those words. So, you’re saying … if there’s anything I could do about it, it’d already be done.”
“Maybe,” August says. “But we don’t know.”
There’s long beat of quiet, and Jane says, “Have you … have you ever found anything about me now? Like, if I make it back, and I stay there … there should be another me out there, right? Back on the right track? All old and wise and shit?”
August folds her hands in her lap, looking down at Jane’s red sneakers. She’s been wondering when Jane would ask this; it’s something that’s bugged August since the beginning.
“No,” she admits. “I’m sure she’s out there, but I haven’t found her yet.”
Jane sighs. “Damn.”
“Hey.” She looks up, attempting a small smile. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. We don’t know that things can’t change. Maybe they can. Or maybe you’ll change your name again, and that’s why I can’t find you.”
“Yeah,” Jane says, quiet and heavy. “Maybe.”
August feels it hanging around Jane, the same thing that pulled at her the other morning as she told her stories.
“Anything you want to talk about?” August asks.
Jane releases a long breath and closes her eyes. “I just … miss it.”
“Billy’s?”
“Yeah, but also … life,” she says. She folds her arms and shifts, sliding down until she’s lying across the bench, her head on August’s lap. “My dim sum place. The cat in my bodega. Banging on the ceiling because the neighbor was practicing his trombone too loud, you know? Dumb shit. I miss figuring out scams with my friends. Having a beer. Going to the movies. Dumb, small life things.”
“Yeah,” August says, because she doesn’t know what else to say. “I know what you mean.”
“It just—it sucks.” Jane’s eyes are closed, her face turned up toward August, mouth soft, jaw clenched. August wants to smooth her thumb across her strong, straight brows and pull the tension out of her, but she settles for pushing a hand into her hair. Jane leans into the touch. “I can remember it now, how I felt my whole life—I wanted to go places, see the world. Always hated staying in one place for too long. Fuckin’ ironic, huh?”
She falls silent, tracing her fingertips over her side, where a tattoo is peeking around the hem of her T-shirt.
August wishes she were better at this. She’s great at taking notes and picking apart facts, but she’s never been good at navigating the rivers of feelings that run beneath. Jane’s cheekbone is pressed into the knob of her knee through her jeans, and August wants to touch it, hold her closer, make it better, but she doesn’t know how.
“If it helps…” August says finally. Jane’s hair is sleek and thick between her fingers, and she shivers when August scratches her scalp. “I’ve never found anywhere I wanted to stay either, until now. And I still feel trapped sometimes, in my head. Like, even when I’m with my friends, and I’m having fun, and I’m doing all the dumb, small life things, sometimes it still feels like something’s wrong. Like something’s wrong with me. Even people who aren’t stuck on a train feel that way. Which I realize sounds … bleak. But what I’ve figured out is, I’m never as alone as I think I am.”
Jane’s quiet, considering. “That does help,” she says.
“Cool,” August says. She bumps her knee gently, nudging Jane’s head. “You said you missed going to the movies, right?”
Jane opens her eyes finally, looking up into August’s. “Yeah.”
“Okay, so, my favorite movie of all time,” August says, fishing her phone out. “It’s from the ’80s. It’s called Say Anything. How ’bout this—we listen to the soundtrack, and I’ll tell you about it, and it’ll be almost as good.”
August extends an earbud to her. She eyes it.
“Myla did say you should be teaching me this stuff.”
“She’s a smart woman,” August says. “Come on.”
Jane takes it, and August cues up the music. August tells her about Lloyd and Diane and the party and the keys, the dinner, the diatribes about capitalism and the back seat of the car. She talks about the boom box and the pen and the payphone. She talks about the plane at the end, about how Diane says nobody believes it’ll work out, how Lloyd says that every success story starts out that way too.
Jane hums and taps the toe of her sneaker, and August keeps touching her hair, and she tries to make her feelings small and quiet enough to focus on getting it right, the quote about not knowing what you’re supposed to be doing or who you’re supposed to be when everyone else around you seems so sure: I don’t know, but I know that I don’t know. That one feels important.
It’s embarrassing to the August who likes to play tough, for this stupid movie to mean so much to her, but “In Your Eyes” comes on, and Jane breathes out like she’s been punched in the gut. She gets it.
August doesn’t want to think about kissing Jane when the music fades out or when the doors slide open at Parkside Ave. or when she tucks her apron under her arm and waves good night. But she does, and she does, and she does.
When she gets home, Myla’s sprawled out on the couch and Niko is puttering around the kitchen, finishing up the last few days’ worth of dishes.
“We decided to finish a season of Lost,” Niko says as he towels off a cereal bowl. “I can’t believe they moved the island. I am, as Isaiah would say, gooped.”
“Yeah, wait until you get to the part with Claire’s creepy Blair Witch baby.”
“Don’t spoil him!” Myla says. She’s cradling an enormous bag of jelly beans like it’s a baby. August thinks she might be stoned.
“He’s literally a psychic.”
“Still.”
August holds up her hands in surrender.
“How’s our girl tonight?” Niko asks.
“She’s all right,” August tells him. “Kinda sad. It’s hard on her, being stuck down there.”
“I didn’t mean Jane,” he says. “I meant you.”
“Oh,” August says. “I’m … I’m okay.”
Niko narrows his eyes. “You’re not. But you don’t have to talk about it.”
“I just…” August paces over to one of the Eames chairs and drops into it bonelessly. “Ugh.”
“What’s wrong, little swamp frog?” Myla says, shoving a handful of jelly beans into her mouth.
August buries her face in her hands. “How do you know if a girl likes you?”
“Oh, this again,” Myla says. “I already told you.”
August groans. “It’s just … it’s all gotten so complicated, and I never know what’s real and what’s not and what’s because she needs somebody and what’s because I need somebody, and it’s—ugh. It’s just ugh.”
“You have to actually say something to her, August.”
“But what if she doesn’t feel the same? We’re stuck with each other. I’m the only one who can help her. I’ll make the whole thing weird, and she’ll end up hating me because it’s always awkward, and I can’t do that to either of us.”
“Okay, but—”
“But what if she does like me, and she goes back to the ’70s and I never see her again and I could have told her and I didn’t? And she never knows? If someone felt this way about me, I’d want to know. So does she deserve to know? Or—”
Myla starts laughing.
August pulls her face out of her hands. “What are you laughing about?”
Myla burrows the side of her face into the armrest, still giggling. A few jelly beans spill onto the floor. “It’s just that, you’re in love with a ghost from the 1970s who lives on the subway, and it’s still the exact same as always.”
