The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

I

New York City

September 4, 2013

A boy is born with a broken heart.

The doctors go in, and piece it back together, make it whole, and the baby is sent home, lucky to be alive. They say he is better now, that he can live a normal life, and yet, as he grows up, he is convinced something is still wrong inside.

The blood pumps, the valves open and close, and on the scans and screens, everything functions as it should. But something isn’t right.

They’ve left his heart too open.

Forgotten to close back up the armor of his chest.

And now he feels … too much.

Other people would call him sensitive, but it is more than that. The dial is broken, the volume turned all the way up. Moments of joy register as brief, but ecstatic. Moments of pain stretch long and unbearably loud.

When his first dog dies, Henry cries for a week. When his parents argue, and he cannot bear the violence in their words, he runs away from home. It takes more than a day to bring him back. When David throws away his childhood bear, when his first girlfriend, Abigail, stands him up at the dance, when they have to dissect a pig in class, when he loses the card his grandfather gave him before he passed, when he finds Liz cheating on him during their senior trip, when Robbie dumps him before junior year, every time, no matter how small, or how big, it feels like his heart is breaking again inside his chest.

Henry is fourteen the first time he steals a swig of his father’s liquor, just to turn the volume down. He is sixteen when he swipes two pills from his mother’s cabinet, just to dull the ache. He is twenty when he gets so high that he thinks he can see the cracks along his skin, the places where he’s falling apart.

His heart has a draft.

It lets in light.

It lets in storms.

It lets in everything.

Time moves so fucking fast.

Blink, and you’re halfway through school, paralyzed by the idea that whatever you choose to do, it means choosing not to do a hundred other things, so you change your major half a dozen times before finally ending up in theology, and for a while it seems like the right path, but that’s really just a reflex to the pride on your parents’ faces, because they assume they’ve got a budding rabbi, but the truth is, you have no desire to practice, you see the holy texts as stories, sweeping epics, and the more you study, the less you believe in any of it.

Blink, and you’re twenty-four, and you travel through Europe, thinking—hoping—that the change will spark something in you, that a glimpse of the greater, grander world will bring your own into focus. And for a little while, it does. But there’s no job, no future, only an interlude, and when it’s over, your bank account is dry, and you’re not any closer to anything.

Blink, and you’re twenty-six, and you’re called into the dean’s office because he can tell that your heart’s not in it anymore, and he advises you to find another path, and he assures you that you’ll find your calling, but that’s the whole problem, you’ve never felt called to any one thing. There is no violent push in one direction, but a softer nudge a hundred different ways, and now all of them feel out of reach.

Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.

Blink, and you meet a girl.

The first time Henry saw Tabitha Masters, she was dancing.

There must have been ten of them onstage. Henry was there to see Robbie perform, but her limbs had a pull, her form a kind of gravity. His gaze kept falling back toward her. She was the kind of pretty that steals your breath, and the kind you can’t really capture in a photo, because the magic is in the movement. The way she moved, it was a story told with nothing but a melody and a bend of her spine, an outstretched hand, a slow descent to the darkened floor.

The first time they met was at an after-party.

Onstage, her features were a mask, a canvas for other people’s art. But there, in the crowded room, all Henry could see was her smile. It took up her entire face, from her pointed chin to the line of her hair, an all-consuming kind of joy he couldn’t look away from. She was laughing at something—he never found out what—and it was like someone went and turned on all the lights in the room.

And there and then, his heart began to ache.

It took Henry thirty minutes and three drinks to work up the nerve to say hello, but from that moment onward, it was easy. The rhythm and flow of frequencies in sync. And by the end of the night, he was falling in love.

He’d fallen before.

Sophia in high school.

Robbie in college.

Sarah, Ethan, Jenna—but it was always hard, messy. Full of starts and stops, wrong turns and dead ends. But with Tabitha, it was easy.

Two years.

That’s how long they were together.

Two years of dinner, and breakfast, and ice cream in the park, of dance rehearsals and rose bouquets, of sleeping over at each other’s place, of weekend brunch and bingeing TV shows, and trips upstate to meet his parents.

Two years of drinking less for her, and staying clean for her, dressing up for her, and buying things he couldn’t afford, because he wanted to make her smile, wanted to make her happy.

Two years, and not a single fight, and now he thinks that maybe that wasn’t such a good thing after all.

Two years—and somewhere between a question and an answer, it fell apart.

Down on one knee with a ring in the middle of the park, and Henry is such a fucking idiot, because she said no.

She said no, and that wasn’t even the worst word.

“You’re great,” she said. “You really are. But you’re not…”

And she doesn’t finish, and she doesn’t have to, because he knows what comes next.

You’re not right.

You’re not enough.

“I thought you wanted to get married.”

“I do. One day.”

The words, crystal clear, despite never being said.

But not to you.

And then she walked away, and now Henry is here at the bar and he’s drunk, but not nearly drunk enough.

He knows, because the world is still there, because the entire night still feels too real, because everything still hurts. He’s slumped forward, chin resting on his folded arms, staring through the collection of empty bottles on the table. He looks back from half a dozen warped reflections.

The Merchant is packed with bodies, a wall of white noise, so Robbie has to shout over the din.

“Fuck her.”

And for some reason, coming from his ex-boyfriend, it doesn’t make Henry feel much better. “I’m fine,” he says, in that automatic way people always answer when you ask them how they are, even though his heart is hanging open on its hinges.

“It’s for the best,” adds Bea, and if anyone else had said it, she would have banished them to the corner of the bar for being trite. Ten-minute time-out for platitudes. But it’s all anyone has for him tonight.

Henry finishes the glass in front of him and reaches for another.

“Slow down, kiddo,” says Bea, rubbing his neck.

“I’m fine,” he says again.

And they both know him well enough to know it is a lie. They know about his broken heart. They’ve both coaxed him through his storms. They are the best people in his life, the ones who hold him together, or at least, who keep him from falling apart. But right now, there are too many cracks. Right now, there is a chasm between their words and his ears, their hands and his skin.

They are right there, but they feel so far away.

He looks up, studying their expressions, all pity, no surprise, and a realization settles over him like a chill.

“You knew she’d say no.”

The silence lasts a beat too long. Bea and Robbie share a glance, as if trying to decide who will take the lead, and then Robbie reaches across for his hand. “Henry—”

He wrenches back. “You knew.”

He is on his feet now, nearly stumbling into the table behind him.

Bea’s face crumples. “Come on. Sit back down.”

“No. No. No.”

“Hey,” says Robbie, steadying him. “I’ll walk you home.”

But Henry hates the way Robbie is looking at him, so he shakes his head, even though it makes the room blur.

“No,” he says. “I just want to be alone.”

The biggest lie he’s ever told.

But Robbie’s hand falls away, and Bea shakes her head at him, and they both let Henry go.

Henry is not drunk enough.

He goes into a liquor store and buys a bottle of vodka from a guy who looks at him like he’s already had enough, but also like he clearly needs it. Twists the cap off with his teeth as it begins to rain.

His phone buzzes in his pocket.

Bea, probably. Or Robbie. Nobody else would call.

He lets it ring, holds his breath until it stops. He tells himself that if they call again, he’ll answer. If they call again, he’ll tell them he is not okay. But the phone doesn’t ring a second time.

He doesn’t blame them for that, not now, not after. He knows he’s not an easy friend, knows he should have seen it coming, should have—

The bottle slips through his fingers, shatters on the sidewalk, and he should leave it there, but he doesn’t. He reaches to pick it up, but he loses his balance. His hand comes down on broken glass as he pushes himself back up.

It hurts, of course it hurts, but the pain is dampened a little by the vodka, by the well of grief, by his ruined heart, by everything else.

Henry fumbles for the kerchief in his pocket, the white silk stitched with a silver T. He hadn’t wanted a box—that classic, impersonal casing that always gave away the question—but now, as he tugs the kerchief out, the ring tumbles free, goes bouncing down the damp sidewalk.

The words echo in his head.

You’re great, Henry. You really are. But you’re not—

He presses the kerchief to his injured hand. In seconds, the silk is stained red. Ruined.

You’re not enough.

Hands are like heads; they always bleed too much.

His brother, David, was the one who told him that. David, the doctor, who’s known what he wanted to be since he was ten years old.

Easy to stay on the path when the road is straight and the steps are numbered.

Henry watches the kerchief turn red, stares down at the diamond in the street and thinks of leaving it, but he can’t afford to, so he forces himself to bend over and pick it up.

Take a drink every time you hear you’re not enough.

Not the right fit.

Not the right look.

Not the right focus.

Not the right drive.

Not the right time.

Not the right job.

Not the right path.

Not the right future.

Not the right present.

Not the right you.

Not you.

(Not me?)

There’s just something missing.

(Missing…)

From us.

What could I have done?

Nothing. It’s just …

(Who you are.)

I didn’t think we were serious.

(You’re just too …

… sweet.

… soft.

… sensitive.)

I just don’t see us ending up together.

I met someone.

I’m sorry.

It’s not you.

Swallow it down.

We’re not on the same page.

We’re not in the same place.

It’s not you.

We can’t help who we fall in love with.

(And who we don’t.)

You’re such a good friend.

You’re going to make the right girl happy.

You deserve better.

Let’s stay friends.

I don’t want to lose you.

It’s not you.

I’m sorry.

II

And now he knows he’s had too much to drink.

He was trying to reach the place where he wouldn’t feel, but he thinks he might have passed it, wandered somewhere worse. His head spins, the sensation long past pleasant. He finds a couple pills in his back pocket, slipped there by his sister Muriel on her last visit. Little pink umbrellas, she told him. He swallows them dry as the drizzle turns to a downpour.

Water drips into his hair, streaking his glasses and soaking through his shirt.

He does not care.

Maybe the rain will rinse him clean.

Maybe it will wash him away.

Henry reaches his building, but can’t bring himself to climb the six steps to the door, the twenty-four more to his apartment, that belongs to a past where he had a future, so he sinks onto the stoop, leans back, and looks up at the place where the rooftop meets the sky, and wonders how many steps it takes to reach the edge. Forces himself to stop, press his palms against his eyes, and tell himself it is just a storm.

Batten down the hatches, and wait it out.

It is just a storm.

It is just a storm.

It’s just …

He is not sure when the man sits down beside him on the step.

One second, Henry is alone, and the next, he is not.

He hears the snap of a lighter, a small flame dancing at the edge of his sight. Then a voice. For just a second, it seems to come from everywhere, and then from right beside him.

“Bad night.” A question without the question mark.

Henry looks over and sees a man, dressed in a slick charcoal suit beneath an open black trench, and for a horrible second, he thinks it’s his brother, David. Here to remind Henry of all the ways he’s a disappointment.

They have the same black hair, the same sharp jaw, but David doesn’t smoke, wouldn’t be caught dead in this part of Brooklyn, isn’t half as handsome. The longer Henry stares at the stranger, the more resemblance fades—replaced by the awareness that the man isn’t getting wet.

Even though the rain is still falling hard, still soaking through Henry’s wool jacket, his cotton shirt, pressing cold hands against his skin. The stranger in the elegant suit makes no effort to shield the small flame of his lighter, or the cigarette itself. He takes a long drag and leans his elbows back against the soaking steps, and tips his chin up, as if welcoming the rain.

It never touches him.

It falls all around him, but he stays dry.

Henry thinks, then, that the man is a ghost. Or a wizard. Or, most likely, a hallucination.

“What do you want?” asks the stranger, still studying the sky, and Henry cringes, on instinct, but there’s no anger in the man’s voice. If anything, it’s curious, questing. His head drifts back down, and he looks at Henry with the greenest eyes he’s ever seen. So bright they glitter in the dark.

“Right now, in this moment,” says the stranger. “What do you want?”

“To be happy,” answers Henry.

“Ah,” says the stranger, smoke sliding between his lips, “no one can give you that.”

Not you.

Henry has no idea who this man is, or if he’s even real, and he knows, even through the fog of drink and drug, that he should get up, and go inside. But he can’t will his legs to move, the world is too heavy, and the words keep coming now, spilling out of him.

“I don’t know what they want from me,” he says. “I don’t know who they want me to be. They tell you to be yourself, but they don’t mean it, and I’m just tired…” His voice breaks. “I’m tired of falling short. Tired of being … it’s not that I’m alone. I don’t mind alone. But this—” His fingers knot in his shirtfront. “It hurts.”

A hand rises beneath his chin.

“Look at me, Henry,” says the stranger, who never asked his name.

Henry looks up, meets those luminous eyes. Sees something curl in them, like smoke. The stranger is beautiful, in a wolfish way. Hungry and sharp. That emerald gaze slides over him.

“You’re perfect,” the man murmurs, stroking a thumb along Henry’s cheek.

His voice is silk, and Henry leans into it, into the touch, nearly loses his balance when the man’s hand falls away.

“Pain can be beautiful,” he says, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “It can transform. It can create.”

“But I don’t want to be in pain,” says Henry hoarsely. “I want—”

“You want to be loved.”

A small, empty sound, half cough, half sob. “Yes.”

“Then be loved.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“It is,” says the stranger. “If you’re willing to pay.”

Henry chokes out a laugh. “I’m not looking for that kind of love.”

The dark flicker of a smile plays across the stranger’s face. “And I’m not talking about money.”

“What else is there?”

The stranger reaches out and rests his hand against Henry’s sternum.

“The one thing every human has to give.”

For an instant, Henry thinks the stranger wants his heart, as broken as it is—and then he understands. He works at a bookstore, has read enough epics, devoured the allegories and myths. Hell, Henry spent the first two-thirds of his life studying scripture, and he grew up on a steady diet of Blake, Milton, and Faust. But it has been a long time since any of them felt like more than stories.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I am the one who sees kindling and coaxes it to flame. The nurturer of all human potential.”

He stares at the stranger, still dry despite the storm, a devil’s beauty in a familiar face, and those eyes, suddenly more serpentine, and Henry knows this for what it is: a waking dream. He’s had them once or twice before, a consequence of aggressive self-medication.

“I don’t believe in devils,” he says, rising to his feet. “And I don’t believe in souls.”

The stranger cranes his head. “Then you have nothing to lose.”

The bone-deep sadness, kept at bay the last few minutes by the stranger’s easy company, now rushes back. Pressure against cracking glass. He sways a little, but the stranger steadies him.

Henry doesn’t remember seeing the other man stand, but now they’re eye to eye. And when the devil speaks again, there’s a new depth to his voice, a steady warmth, like a blanket drawn around his shoulders. Henry feels himself lean into it.

“You want to be loved,” says the stranger, “by all of them. You want to be enough for all of them. And I can give that to you, for the price of something you won’t even miss.” The stranger holds out his hand. “Well, Henry? What do you say?”

And he doesn’t think any of this is real.

So it doesn’t matter.

Or perhaps the man in the rain is right.

He just has nothing left to lose.

In the end, it’s easy.

As easy as stepping off the edge.

And falling.

Henry takes his hand, and the stranger squeezes, hard enough to reopen the cuts along his palm. But at last, he doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel anything, as the darkness smiles, and says a single word.

“Deal.”

III

New York City

March 17, 2014

There are a hundred kinds of silence.

There’s the thick silence of places long sealed shut, and the muffled silence of ears stoppered up. The empty silence of the dead, and the heavy silence of the dying.

There is the hollow silence of a man who has stopped praying, and the airy silence of an empty synagogue, and the held-breath silence of someone hiding from themselves.

There is the awkward silence that fills the space between people who don’t know what to say. And the taut silence that falls over those who do, but don’t know where or how to start.

Henry doesn’t know what kind of silence this is, but it is killing him.

He began to talk outside the corner shop, and kept talking as they walked, because it was easier for him to speak when he had somewhere to look besides her face. The words spilled out of him as they reached the blue door of his building, as they climbed the stairs, as they moved through the apartment, and now the truth fills the air between them, heavy as smoke, and Addie isn’t saying anything.

She sits on the sofa, her chin in her hand.

Outside the window, the day just carries on as if nothing’s changed, but it feels like everything has, because Addie LaRue is immortal, and Henry Strauss is damned.

“Addie,” he says, when he cannot stand it anymore. “Please say something.”

And she looks up at him, eyes shining, not with some spell, but tears, and he does not know at first if she is heartbroken or happy.

“I couldn’t understand,” she says. “No one has ever remembered. I thought it was an accident. I thought it was a trap. But you’re not an accident, Henry. You’re not a trap. You remember me because you made a deal.” She shakes her head. “Three hundred years spent trying to break this curse, and Luc did the one thing I never expected.” She wipes the tears away, and breaks into a smile.

“He made a mistake.”

There is such triumph in her eyes. But Henry doesn’t understand.

“So our deals cancel out? Is that why we’re immune to them?”

Addie shakes her head. “I’m not immune, Henry.”

He cringes back, as if struck. “But my deal doesn’t work on you.”

Addie softens, takes his hand. “Of course it does. Your deal and mine, they nest like Russian dolls together in a shell. I look at you, and I see exactly what I want. It’s just that what I want has nothing to do with looks, or charm, or success. It would sound awful, in another life, but what I want most—what I need—has nothing to do with you at all. What I want, what I’ve always truly wanted, is for someone to remember me. That’s why you can say my name. That’s why you can go away, and come back, and still know who I am. And that’s why I can look at you, and see you as you are. And it is enough. It will always be enough.”

Enough. The word unravels between them, opening at his throat. It lets in so much air.

Enough.

He sinks onto the couch beside her. Her hand slides through his, their fingers knotting.

“You said you were born in 1691,” he muses. “That makes you…”

“Three hundred and twenty-three,” she says.

Henry whistles. “I’ve never been with an older woman.” Addie laughs. “You do look very, very good for your age.”

“Why thank you.”

“Tell me about it,” he says.

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Everything. Three hundred years is such a long time. You were there for wars and revolutions. You saw trains and cars and planes and televisions. You witnessed history as it was happening.”

Addie frowns. “I guess so,” she says, “but I don’t know; history is something you look back on, not something you really feel at the time. In the moment, you’re just … living. I didn’t want to live forever. I just wanted to live.”

She curls into him, and they lie, heads together on the couch, intertwined like lovers in a fable, and a new silence settles over them, light as a summer sheet.

And then she says, “How long?”

His head rolls toward her. “What?”

“When you made your deal,” she says, voice careful and light, a foot testing icy ground. “How long did you make it for?”

Henry hesitates, and looks up at the ceiling instead of her.

“A lifetime,” he says, and it is not a lie, but a shadow crosses Addie’s face.

“And he agreed?”

Henry nods, and pulls her back against him, exhausted by everything he’s said, and everything he hasn’t.

“A lifetime,” she whispers.

The words hang between them in the dark.

IV

New York City

March 18, 2014

Addie is so many things, thinks Henry. But she is not forgettable.

How could anyone forget this girl, when she takes up so much space? She fills the room with stories, with laughter, with warmth and light.

He has put her to work, or rather, she has put herself to work, restocking and reshelving while he helps customers.

She has called herself a ghost, and she may be one to other people, but Henry cannot look anywhere but at her.

She moves among the books as if they’re friends. And perhaps, in a way, they are. They are, he supposes, a part of her story, another thing she’s touched. Here, she says, is a writer she once met, and here is an idea she had, here a book that she read when it first came out. Now and then, Henry glimpses sadness, glimpses longing, but they are only flashes, and then she redoubles, brightens, launching into another story.

“Did you know Hemingway?” he asks.

“We met, once or twice,” she says, with a smile, “but Colette was cleverer.”

Book trails Addie like a shadow. He has never seen the cat so invested in another human, and when he asks, she draws a handful of treats from her pocket with a sheepish grin.

Their eyes meet now across the store, and he knows she said she’s not immune, that their deals simply work together, but the fact remains that there is no shimmer in those brown eyes. Her gaze is clear. A lighthouse through the fog.

She smiles, and Henry’s world goes brighter. She turns away, and it is dark again.

A woman approaches the checkout desk, and Henry drags himself back.

“Find everything you need?” Her eyes are already milky with shine.

“Oh yes,” the woman says with a warm smile, and he wonders what she sees instead of Henry. Is he a son, or a lover, a brother, a friend?

Addie leans her elbows on the counter.

She taps the book he’s been turning through between customers. A collection of modern candids in New York.

“I noticed the cameras at your place,” she says. “And the photographs. They’re yours, aren’t they?”

Henry nods, resists the urge to say It’s just a hobby, or rather, It was a hobby, once.

“You’re very good,” she says, which is nice, especially coming from her. And he’s fine, he knows; maybe even a little better than fine, sometimes.

He took headshots for Robbie back in college, but that was because Robbie couldn’t afford a real photographer. Muriel called his photos cute. Subversive in their conventional way.

But Henry wasn’t trying to subvert anything. He just wanted to capture something.

He looks down at the book.

“There’s this family photo,” he says, “not the one in the hall, this other one, from back when I was six or seven. That day was awful. Muriel put gum in David’s book and I had a cold, and my parents were fighting right up until the flash went off. And in the photo, we all look so … happy. I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”

“Why did you stop?”

Because time doesn’t work like photos.

Click, and it stays still.

Blink, and it leaps forward.

He always thought of taking photos as a hobby, an art class credit, and by the time he figured out that it was something you could do, it was too late. Or at least, it felt that way.

He was too many miles behind.

So he gave up. Put the cameras on the shelf with the rest of the abandoned hobbies. But something about Addie makes him want to pick one up again.

He doesn’t have a camera with him, of course, only his cell phone, but these days, that is good enough. He lifts it up, framing Addie at rest, the bookshelves rising at her back.

“It won’t work,” she says, right as Henry takes the picture. Or tries. He taps the screen, but there’s no click, no capture. He tries again, and this time the phone takes the photo, but it is a blur.

“I told you,” she says softly.

“I don’t get it,” he says. “It was so long ago. How could he have predicted film, or phones?”

Addie manages a sad smile. “It’s not the technology he tampered with. It’s me.”

Henry pictures the stranger, smiling in the dark.

He sets the phone down.

V

New York City

September 5, 2013

Henry wakes to the blare of morning traffic.

He winces at the sound of car horns, the sunlight streaming through the window. He reaches for the memories of last night, and for a second, comes up with nothing, a flat black slate, a cottony silence. But when he squeezes his eyes shut, the darkness cracks, gives way to a wave of pain and sadness, a medley of broken bottles and heavy rain, and a stranger in a black suit, a conversation that must have been a dream.

Henry knows that Tabitha said no—that part was real, the memory too stinging to be anything but true. That is, after all, why he started drinking. The drinking is what led him home through the rain, to rest on the stoop before going inside, and that is where the stranger—but no, that part didn’t happen.

The stranger and their conversation, that was the stuff of stories, a clear subconscious commentary, his demons played out in mental desperation.

A headache thuds dully in Henry’s skull, and he scrubs at his eyes with the back of one hand. A metal weight knocks against his cheek. He squints up and sees a dark leather band around his wrist. An elegant analog watch, with gold numerals set against an onyx ground. On its face, a single golden hand rests the barest fraction off of midnight.

Henry has never worn a watch.

The sight of it, heavy and unfamiliar on his wrist, reminds Henry of a shackle. He sits up, clawing at the clasp, consumed by the sudden fear that it is bound to him, that it won’t come off—but at the slightest pressure, the clasp comes free, and the watch tumbles onto the twisted duvet.

It lands facedown, and there, on the reverse, Henry sees two words etched in hairline script.

Live well.

He scrambles out of the bed, away from the watch, stares at the timepiece as if expecting it to attack. But it just lies there, silent. His heart knocks inside his chest, so loud he can hear it, and he is back in the dark, rain dripping through his hair as the stranger smiles and holds out his hand.

Deal.

But that didn’t happen.

Henry looks at his palm and sees the shallow cuts, crusted over with blood. Notices the drops of brownish red dotting the sheets. The broken bottle. That was real, then, too. But the devil’s hand in his, that was a fever dream. Pain can do that, creep from waking hours into sleep. Once, when he was nine or ten, Henry had strep throat, the pain so bad that every time he drifted off to sleep, he dreamed of swallowing hot coals, of being trapped in burning buildings, the smoke clawing down his throat. The mind, trying to make sense of suffering.

But the watch—

Henry can hear a low, rhythmic knocking as he holds it to his ear. It doesn’t make any other sound (one night, soon, he will take the thing apart, and find the body empty of cogs, empty of anything to explain the creeping forward motion).

And yet, it is solid, heavy even, in his hand. It feels real.

The knocking gets louder, and then he realizes it’s not coming from the watch at all. It’s just the solid thud of knuckles on wood, someone at his door. Henry holds his breath, waits to see if it will stop, but it doesn’t. He backs away from the watch, the bed, grabs a clean shirt from the back of a chair.

“I’m coming,” he mutters, dragging it over his head. The collar snags on his glasses, and he catches his shoulder on the doorframe, swearing softly, hoping all the way from the bedroom to the front door that the person beyond will give up, go away. They don’t, so Henry opens the door, expecting to see Bea or Robbie or maybe Helen down the hall, looking again for her cat.

But it’s his sister, Muriel.

Muriel, who has been to Henry’s place exactly twice in the last five years. And once it was because she had too much herbal tea at a lunch meeting and couldn’t make it back to Chelsea.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, but she is already brushing past him, unwinding a scarf that’s more decorative than functional.

“Does family need a reason?”

The question is clearly rhetorical.

She turns, her eyes sweeping over him, the way he imagines they sweep over exhibits, and he waits for her usual assessment, some variation of you look like shit.

Instead his sister says, “You’re looking good,” which is strange, because Muriel has never been one to lie (she “doesn’t like to encourage fallacy in a world rife with empty speech”) and a passing glance in the hall mirror is enough to confirm that Henry does, in fact, look almost as rough as he feels.

“Beatrice texted me last night when you didn’t answer your phone,” she continues. “She told me about Tabitha, and the whole no-go. I’m sorry, Hen.” Muriel hugs him, and Henry doesn’t know where to put his hands. They end up hovering in the air around her shoulders until she lets go.

“What happened? Was she cheating?” And Henry wishes the answer were yes, because the truth is worse, the truth is that he simply wasn’t interesting enough. “It doesn’t matter,” continues Muriel. “Fuck her, you deserve better.”

He almost laughs, because he can’t count how many times Muriel pointed out that Tabitha was out of his league.

She glances around at the apartment.

“Did you redecorate? It’s really cozy in here.”

Henry surveys the living room, dotted with candles and art and other remnants of Tabitha. The clutter is his. The style was hers. “No.”

His sister is still standing. Muriel never sits, never settles, never even perches.

“Well, I can see you’re fine,” she says, “but next time, answer your phone. Oh,” she adds, taking her scarf back, already halfway to the door. “Happy New Year.”

It takes him a moment to remember.

Rosh Hashanah.

Muriel sees the confusion on his face and grins. “You would have made such a bad rabbi.”

He doesn’t disagree. Henry would normally go home—they both would—but David couldn’t get away from his hospital shift this year, so their parents had made other plans.

“Are you going to temple?” he asks now.

“No,” says Muriel. “But there’s a show uptown tonight, a kinky burlesque hybrid, and I’m pretty sure there’s going to be some fire play. I’ll light a candle on someone.”

“Mom and Dad would be so proud,” he says dryly, but in truth, he suspects they would. Muriel Strauss can do no wrong.

She shrugs. “We all celebrate in our own way.” She twists the scarf back into place with a flourish. “I’ll see you for Yom Kippur.”

Muriel reaches for the door, then turns back toward him, and stretches up to ruffle Henry’s hair. “My little storm cloud,” she says. “Don’t let it get too dark in there.”

And then she’s gone, and Henry sags back against the door, dazed, tired, and thoroughly confused.

Henry has heard that grief has stages.

He wonders if the same is true for love.

If it’s normal to feel lost, and angry, and sad, hollow and somehow, horribly, relieved. Maybe it’s the thud of the hangover muddling all the things he should be feeling, churning them into what he does.

He stops at Roast, the bustling coffee shop a block shy of the store. It has good muffins, halfway decent drinks, and terrible service, which is pretty much par for the course in this part of Brooklyn, and sees Vanessa working at the till.

New York is full of beautiful people, actors and models moonlighting as bartenders and baristas, making drinks to cover rent until their first big break. He’s always assumed Vanessa is one of those, a waifish blonde with a small infinity symbol tattooed inside one wrist. He also assumes her name is Vanessa—that’s the name on the tag pinned to her apron—but she’s never actually told him. Has never said anything to him, for that matter, besides, “What can I get you?”

Henry will stand at the counter, and she will ask his order and his name (even though he has been coming here six days a week for the last three years, and she’s been there for two of them), and from the time she punches in his flat white to the time she writes his name on the cup and calls out for the next order, she will never look at him. Her gaze will flit from his shirt to the computer to his chin, and Henry will feel like he isn’t even there.

That’s how it always goes.

Only, today, it doesn’t.

Today, when she takes his order, she looks up.

It’s such a small change, the difference of two inches, maybe three, but now he can see her eyes, which are a startling blue, and the barista looks at him, not his chin. She holds his gaze, and smiles.

“Hi there,” she says, “what can I get you?”

He orders a flat white, and says his name, and that is where it ends.

Then it doesn’t.

“Fun day planned?” she asks, making small talk as she writes his name on the cup.

Vanessa has never made small talk with him before.

“Just work,” he says, and her attention flicks back to his face. This time he catches a faint shimmer—a wrongness—in her eyes. It’s a trick of the light, it must be, but for a second, it looks like frost, or fog.

“What do you do?” she asks, sounding genuinely interested, and he tells her about The Last Word, and her eyes light up a little. She has always been a reader, and she cannot think of anywhere better than a bookstore. When he pays for the order, their fingers brush, and she cuts him another glance. “See you tomorrow, Henry.”

The barista says his name like she stole it, mischief tugging at her smile.

And he can’t tell if she’s flirting until he gets his drink, and sees the little black arrow she’s drawn, pointing to the bottom, and when he tips it up to see, his heart gives a little thud like an engine turning over.

She’s written her name and number on the bottom of the cup.

At The Last Word, Henry unlocks the grate, and the door, while finishing his coffee. He turns the sign and goes through the motions of feeding Book and opening the store and shelving new stock until the bell chimes, announcing his first customer.

Henry winds through the stacks to find an older woman, toddling between the aisles, from HISTORICAL to MYSTERY to ROMANCE and back again. He gives her a few minutes, but when she makes the loop a third time, he steps in.

“Can I help you?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she murmurs, half to herself, but then she turns to look at him, and something changes in her face. “I mean, yes, please, I hope so.” There’s the faintest shine to her eyes, a rheumy glow, as she explains that she’s looking for a book she’s already read.

“These days, I can’t remember what I’ve read, and what I haven’t,” she explains, shaking her head. “Everything sounds familiar. All the covers look the same. Why do they do that? Why do they make everything like everything else?”

Henry assumes it has to do with marketing and trends, but he knows that’s probably not helpful to say. Instead he asks if she remembers anything about it.

“Oh, let’s see. It was a big book. It was about life and death, and history.”

That doesn’t exactly narrow it down, but Henry is used to the lack of details. The number of people who’ve come in, looking for something they’ve seen, able to supply nothing beyond “The cover was red,” or “I think it had the word girl in the title.”

“It was sad, and lovely,” explains the old woman. “I’m sure it was set in England. Oh dear. My mind. I think it had a rose on the cover.”

She looks around at the shelves, wrings her papery hands together. And she’s clearly not going to decide, so he does. Desperately uncomfortable, he tugs a thick historical from the nearest fiction shelf.

“Was it this?” he asks, offering Wolf Hall. But he knows the moment it’s in his hand that it’s not the one. There’s a poppy on the cover, not a rose, and there’s nothing particularly sad or lovely about the life of Thomas Cromwell, even if the writing is beautiful, poignant. “Never mind,” he says, already reaching to put it back when the old woman’s face lights up with pleasure.

“That’s it!” She grabs his arm with bony fingers. “That’s exactly what I was looking for.” Henry has a hard time believing it, but the woman’s joy is so clear that he begins to doubt himself.

He is about to ring her up when he remembers. Atkinson. Life After Life. A book about life and death and history, sad and lovely, set in England, with a twinned rose on the cover.

“Wait,” he says, ducking around the corner and down the recent fiction aisle to retrieve the book.

“Is this it?”

The woman’s face brightens, exactly as it did before. “Yes! You clever thing, that’s just the one,” she says, with the same conviction.

“Happy I could help,” he says, unsure if he did.

She decides to take both books, says she’s sure that she will love them.

The rest of the morning is just as strange.

A middle-aged man comes in searching for a thriller, and leaves with all five titles that Henry recommends. A college student comes looking for a book on Japanese mythology, and when Henry apologizes for not having it, she practically trips over herself to say it’s not his fault, and insists on letting him order it in for her, even though she isn’t sure about the class. A guy with a model’s build and a jaw sharper than a penknife comes to peruse their fantasy section, and he writes his e-mail on the receipt beneath his signature when he pays.

Henry feels off-balance, the way he did when Muriel told him he looked good. It’s like déjà vu, and not like déjà vu at all, because the feeling is entirely new. It’s like April Fool’s, when the rules change, and everything’s a game, and everyone else is in on it, and he’s still marveling over the last encounter, face a little flushed, when Robbie bursts in through the door, chime ringing in his wake.

“Oh my god,” he says, throwing his arms around Henry, and for a moment, he thinks something awful must have happened, before realizing that it already happened to him.

“It’s okay,” says Henry, and of course it’s not, but today has been so weird that everything before it feels a little like a dream. Or maybe this is the dream? If it is, he’s not all that eager to wake up. “It’s okay,” he says again.

“It doesn’t have to be okay,” says Robbie. “I just want you to know I’m here, I would have been there last night, too—I wanted to come over when you didn’t answer your phone, but Bea said we should give you space, and I don’t know why I listened, I’m sorry.”

It comes out in a single stream of words.

Robbie’s grip tightens as he talks, and Henry savors the embrace. They fit together with the familiar comfort of a well-worn coat. The hug lingers a little too long. Henry clears his throat and pulls back, and Robbie gives an awkward laugh and turns away, his face catching the light, and Henry notices a fine streak of purple along Robbie’s temple, right where it meets his sandy hairline.

“You’re glittering.”

Robbie scrubs halfheartedly at the makeup. “Oh, rehearsal.”

There’s an odd shine in Robbie’s eyes, a glassiness Henry knows too well, and he wonders if Robbie’s on something, or if it’s simply been awhile since he slept. Back in college, Robbie would get so high on drugs or dreams or big ideas that he’d have to burn all the energy out of his system, and then he’d crash.

The door chimes.

“Son of a bitch,” announces Bea, slamming her satchel down on the counter. “Ostrich-minded motherfucker.”

“Customers,” warns Henry, even though the only one currently nearby is a deaf older man, a regular named Michael who frequents the horror section.

“To what do we owe this tantrum?” asks Robbie cheerfully. Drama always puts him in a good mood.

“My asshole adviser,” she says, storming past them toward the art and art history section. They share a look, and trail after her.

“He didn’t like the proposal?” asks Henry.

Bea has been trying to get a dissertation topic approved for the better part of a year.

“He turned it down!” She whips down an aisle, nearly toppling a pile of magazines. Henry follows behind her, doing his best to right the destruction in her wake.

“He said it was too esoteric. As if he’d know the meaning of the word if it blew him.”

“Use it in a sentence?” asks Robbie, but she ignores him, reaching up to pull down a book.

“That closed-minded—”

And another.

“—stale-brained—”

And another.

“—corpse.”

“This isn’t a library,” says Henry as she carries the pile to the low leather chair in the corner and slumps into it, startling the orange lump of fur from between a pair of worn pillows.

“Sorry, Book,” she mutters, lifting the cat gingerly onto the back of the old chair, where he does his best impression of an inconvenienced bread loaf. Bea continues to emit a low stream of curses as she turns the pages.

“I know just what we need,” says Robbie, turning toward the storeroom. “Doesn’t Meredith keep a stash of whisky in the back?”

And even though it’s only 3 P.M., Henry doesn’t protest. He sinks onto the floor, sits with his back to the nearest shelf, legs stretched long, feeling suddenly, unbearably tired.

Bea looks up at him, sighs. “I’m sorry,” she starts, but Henry waves her away.

“Please, continue trashing your advisor and my art history section. Someone has to behave normally.”

But she closes the book, adds it back to the pile, and joins Henry on the floor.

“Can I tell you something?” Her voice goes up at the end, but he knows it’s not a question. “I’m glad you broke it off with Tabitha.”

A lance of pain, like the cut across his palm. “She broke it off with me.”

Bea waves her hand as if that small detail doesn’t matter. “You deserve someone who loves you as you are. The good and the bad and the maddening.”

You want to be loved. You want to be enough.

Henry swallows. “Yeah, well, being me hasn’t worked out so well.”

Bea leans toward him. “But that’s the thing, Henry, you haven’t been you. You waste so much time on people who don’t deserve you. People who don’t know you, because you don’t let them know you.” Bea cups his face, that strange shimmer in her eyes. “Henry, you’re smart, and kind, and infuriating. You hate olives and people who talk during movies. You love milkshakes and people who can laugh until they cry. You think it’s a crime to turn ahead to the end of a book. When you’re angry you get quiet, and when you’re sad you get loud, and you hum when you’re happy.”

“And?”

“And I haven’t heard you hum in years.” Her hands fall away. “But I’ve seen you eat a shit ton of olives.”

Robbie comes back, holding the bottle and three mugs. The Last Word’s only customer toddles out, and then Robbie shuts the door behind him, turning the sign to CLOSED. He comes and sits between Henry and Bea on the floor and uncorks the bottle with his teeth.

“What are we drinking to?” asks Henry.

“To new beginnings,” says Robbie, eyes still shining as he fills the cups.

VI

New York City

March 18, 2014

The bell chimes and Bea strides in.

“Robbie wants to know if you’re avoiding him,” she says, in lieu of hello. Henry’s heart sinks. The answer is yes, of course, and no. He cannot shake the look of hurt in Robbie’s eyes, but it doesn’t excuse the way he acted, or maybe it does.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” says Bea. “And where have you been hiding?”

Henry wants to say, I saw you at the dinner party, but wonders if she has forgotten the entire night, or just the parts that Addie touched.

Speaking of. “Bea, this is Addie.”

Beatrice turns toward her, and for a second, and only a second, Henry thinks that she remembers. It’s the way she’s looking at Addie, as if she is a piece of art, but one that Bea has encountered before. Despite everything, Henry expects her to nod, to say, “Oh, good to see you again”—instead, Bea smiles. She says, “You know, there’s something timeless about your face,” and he’s rocked by the strangeness of the echo, the force of the déjà vu.

But Addie only smiles, and says, “I’ve heard that before.”

As Bea continues to study Addie, Henry studies her.

She has always been ruthlessly polished, but today there’s neon paint on her fingers, a kiss of gold at her temple, what looks like powdered sugar on her sleeve.

“What have you been doing?” he asks.

She looks down. “Oh, I was at the Artifact!” she says, as if that’s supposed to mean something. Seeing his confusion, she explains. The Artifact is, according to Beatrice, part carnival and part art exhibit, an interactive medley of installations on the High Line.

As Bea talks about mirrored chambers and glass domes full of stars, sugar clouds, the plume from pillow fights, and murals made of a thousand strangers’ notes, Addie brightens, and Henry thinks it must be hard to surprise a girl who’s lived three hundred years.

So when she turns to him, eyes bright, and says, “We have to go,” there’s nothing he’d rather do. There is, of course, the matter of the store, the fact he is the sole employee, and there are still four hours until closing. But he has an idea.

Henry grabs a bookmark, the store’s only piece of merchandise, and begins writing on the back side. “Hey Bea,” he says, pushing the makeshift card across the counter. “Can you close up?”

“I have a life,” she says, but then she looks down at Henry’s tight and slanting script.

The Library of The Last Word.

Bea smiles, and pockets the card.

“Have fun,” she says, waving them out.

VII

New York City

September 5, 2013

Sometimes Henry wishes he had a cat.

He supposes he could just adopt Book, but the tabby feels indivisible from The Last Word, and he can’t shake the superstitious belief that if he tried to extricate the ancient cat from the secondhand shop, it would turn to dust before he got it home.

Which is, he knows, a morbid way of thinking about people and places, or in this case pets and places, but it’s dusk, and he drank a little too much whisky, and Bea had to go teach a class and Robbie had a friend’s show, so he’s alone again, heading back to an empty apartment, wishing he had a cat or something waiting for him to come home.

He tests out the phrase as he walks in.

“Hi, kitty, I’m home,” he says, before realizing that it makes him a twenty-eight-year-old bachelor talking to an imaginary pet, and that feels infinitely worse.

He grabs a beer from the fridge, stares down at the bottle opener, and realizes it belongs to Tabitha. A pink and green thing in the shape of a lucha libre from a trip she took to Mexico City last month. He tosses it aside, opens a kitchen drawer looking for another, and finds a wooden spoon, a dance company magnet, a handful of ridiculous bendy straws, looks around, then, sees a dozen more things strewn around the apartment, all of them hers. He digs up a box of books and turns them out, begins filling it again with photographs, notecards, paperbacks, a pair of ballet flats, a mug, a bracelet, a hairbrush, a photograph.

He finishes the first beer, opens a second on the edge of the counter, and keeps going, moving from room to room, less a methodic procession than a lost wander. An hour later, the box is only half-full, but Henry’s losing steam. He doesn’t want to do this anymore, doesn’t even want to be there, in an apartment that somehow feels both empty and cluttered. There’s too much space to think. There’s not enough to breathe.

Henry sits between the empty beer bottles and the half-filled box for several minutes, knee bouncing, and then surges to his feet, and goes out.

The Merchant is busy.

It always is—one of those neighborhood bars whose success owes more to its sheer proximity than to the quality of its drinks. A local institution. Most of the people who frequent the Merchant refer to it simply as “the bar.”

Henry weaves through the crowd, grabs a stool at the edge of the counter, hoping the ambient noise of the place will make him feel a little less alone.

Mark’s on shift tonight, a fifty-something with gray sideburns and a catalog smile. It normally takes a good ten minutes to flag him down, but tonight, the bartender comes straight to him, ignoring the queue. Henry orders tequila, and Mark comes back with a bottle and a pair of shots.

“On the house,” he says, pouring himself a matching glass.

Henry manages a wan smile. “Do I look that rough?”

But there’s no pity in Mark’s gaze, only a strange and subtle light.

“You look great,” he says, just like Muriel, and it’s the first time he’s said more than a single line, his answers usually limited to drink orders and nods.

Their glasses knock together, and Henry orders a second, and a third. He knows he is drinking too much too fast, piling liquor on top of the beers from home, the whisky he’d poured at work.

A girl comes up to the bar, and glances at Henry.

She looks away, and then back again, as if seeing him for the first time. And there it is again, that shine, a film of light over her eyes as she leans in, and he can’t seem to catch her name, but it doesn’t matter.

They do their best to talk over the noise, her hand resting at first on his forearm, then his shoulder, before sliding through his hair.

“Come home with me,” she says, and he’s so caught by the longing in her voice, the open want. But then her friends come along and peel her away, their own eyes shining as they say Sorry, say You’re such a good guy, say Have a great night.

Henry slides off the stool and heads for the bathroom, and this time, he can feel the ripple, the heads turning toward him.

A guy catches his arm and says something about a photography project, how he’d be a perfect fit, before sliding him his card.

Two women try to draw him into the circle of their conversation.

“I wish I had a son like you,” says one.

“Son?” says the other with a raucous laugh as he twists free, escapes down the hall and into the toilets.

Braces himself against the counter.

He has no idea what’s happening.

He thinks back to the coffee shop that morning, Vanessa’s number on the bottom of the cup. To the customers in the store, all so eager for his help. To Muriel, who told him he looked well. To the pale fog, like candle smoke, in all of their eyes.

He looks down at the watch on his wrist, glinting in the bathroom light, and for the first time, he’s certain that it’s real.

That the man in the rain was real.

The deal was real.

“Hey.”

He looks up and sees a guy, glassy eyed and smiling at Henry like they are the best of friends.

“You look like you could use a bump.”

He holds out a little glass jar, and Henry stares at the tiny column of powder inside.

He was twelve the first time he got high.

Someone handed him a joint behind the bleachers, and the smoke burned his lungs, and he almost threw up, but then everything went a little … soft. Weed made space in his skull, eased the nervous terror in his heart. But he couldn’t control the places it took his head. Valium and Xanax were better, dulling everything at once, but he’s always stayed away from the harder stuff, out of fear—not the fear that something would go wrong. Just the opposite: the fear it would feel right. The fear of the slip, the slide, of knowing he wouldn’t be strong enough to stop.

It’s never been the high he craved, anyway, not exactly.

It’s just the quiet.

That happy side effect.

He tried to be better, for Tabitha.

But Tabitha’s gone, and it doesn’t matter, anyway.

Not anymore.

Now Henry just wants to feel good.

He taps the powder onto his thumb, has no idea if he’s doing it right, but he inhales, and it hits like a sudden, jolting cold, and then—the world opens. The details clear, the colors brighten, and somehow everything gets sharp and fuzzy at the same time.

Henry must have said something, because the guy laughs. And then he reaches out, and wipes a fleck from Henry’s cheek, and the contact is like static shock, a spark of energy where skin meets skin.

“You’re perfect,” says the stranger, fingers drifting down his jaw, and Henry flushes with a dizzy heat that makes him need to move.

“Sorry,” he says, backing out into the hall.

He slumps against the darkened wall, waits for the world to steady.

“Hey.”

He looks up and sees a guy with his arm slung around a girl’s shoulders, both of them long and lean and feline.

“What’s your name?” asks the guy.

“Henry.”

“Henry,” echoes the girl with a catlike smile.

She looks at him with such obvious desire, he actually rocks back on his heels. No one has ever looked at him that way. Not Tabitha. Not Robbie. No one—not on the first date, or in the middle of sex, or when he got down on one knee …

“I’m Lucia,” she says. “This is Benji. And we’ve been looking for you.”

“What did I do?” he asks.

Her smile tilts. “Nothing yet.”

She bites her lip, and the guy looks at Henry, his face slack with longing, and at first he doesn’t realize what they’re talking about.

And then he does.

Laughter rolls through him, a strange, unbridled thing.

He’s never been in a threesome, unless you count that one time in school when he and Robbie and one of their friends got incredibly drunk and he’s still not entirely sure how far things went.

“Come with us,” she says, holding out her hand.

And a dozen excuses spill through his mind and then out again as Henry follows them home.

VIII

New York City

September 7, 2013

God, it feels good to be wanted.

Everywhere he goes, he can feel the ripple, the attention shifting toward him. Henry leans into the attention, the smiles, the warmth, the light. For the first time he truly understands the concept of being drunk with power.

It’s like setting down a heavy weight long after your arms have gotten tired. There’s this sudden, sweeping lightness, like air in your chest, like sunlight after rain.

It feels good to be the user instead of the used.

To be the one who gets instead of the one who loses.

It feels good. It shouldn’t, he knows, but it does.

He stands in line at the Roast, desperately needing coffee.

The last few days have been a blur, late nights giving way to strange mornings, every moment fueled by the heady pleasure of being wanted, of knowing that whatever they see, it’s good, it’s great, it’s perfect.

He’s perfect.

And it’s not just the straightforward gravity of lust, not always. People drift toward him now, every one of them pulled into his orbit, but the why is always different. Sometimes it’s just simple desire, but other times it’s more nuanced. Sometimes it’s an obvious need, and other times, he can’t guess what they see when they look at him.

That’s the only unsettling part, really—their eyes. The fog that winds through them, thickening to frost, to ice. A constant reminder that this new life isn’t exactly normal, isn’t entirely real.

But it’s enough.

“Next!”

He steps forward, and looks up, and sees Vanessa.

“Oh, hi,” he says.

“You didn’t call.”

But she doesn’t sound angry, or annoyed. If anything, she sounds too bright, teasing, but it’s the kind of teasing used to cover up embarrassment. He should know—he’s used that tone a dozen times to hide his own hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he says, blushing. “I wasn’t sure if I should.”

Vanessa smiles slyly. “Was the whole name and number thing too subtle?”

Henry laughs, and hands his cell across the counter. “Call me,” he says, and she taps her number in, and hits Call. “There,” says Henry, taking back the phone, “now I have no excuse.”

He feels like an idiot, even as he says it, like a kid reciting movie lines, but Vanessa only blushes, and bites her bottom lip, and he wonders what would happen if he told her to go out with him, right then, if she would take off her apron and duck beneath the counter, but he doesn’t try it, just says, “I’ll call.”

And she says, “You better.”

Henry smiles, turns to go. He’s almost to the door when he hears his name.

“Mr. Strauss.”

Henry’s stomach drops. He knows the voice, can picture the older man’s tweed jacket, his salt-and-pepper hair, the look of disappointment on his face as he advised Henry to step away from the department, the school, and try to figure out where his passion was, because it clearly wasn’t there.

Henry tries to muster a smile, feels himself falling short.

“Dean Melrose,” he says, turning to face the man who pushed him off the road.

And there he is, flesh and bone and tweed. But instead of the contempt Henry got so used to seeing, the dean looks pleased. A smile splits his trim gray beard.

“What a lucky turn,” he says. “You’re just the man I wanted to see.”

Henry has a hard time believing that, until he notices the pale smoke twisting through the man’s eyes. And he knows he should be polite, but what he wants to do is tell the dean to go fuck himself, so he splits the difference and simply asks, “Why?”

“There’s a position opening in the theology school, and I think you’d be perfect for it.”

Henry almost laughs. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Not at all.”

“I never finished my PhD. You failed me.”

The dean holds up a finger. “I didn’t fail you.”

Henry bristles. “You threatened to, if I didn’t leave.”

“I know,” he says, looking genuinely sorry. “I was wrong.”

Three words he’s sure this man has never said. Henry wants to savor them, but he can’t.

“No,” he says, “you were right. It wasn’t a good fit. I wasn’t happy there. And I have no desire to go back.”

It’s a lie. He misses the structure, misses the path, misses the purpose. And maybe it wasn’t a perfect fit, but nothing is.

“Come in for an interview,” says Dean Melrose, holding out his card. “Let me change your mind.”

“You’re late.”

Bea’s waiting on the bookstore steps.

“Sorry,” he says, unlocking the door. “Still not a library,” he adds as she slaps a five-dollar bill on the counter and disappears into the art section. She makes a noncommittal uh-huh, and he can hear her pulling books from the shelves.

Bea is the only one who hasn’t changed, the only one who doesn’t seem to treat him differently.

“Hey,” he says, following her down the aisle. “Do I look strange to you?”

“No,” she says, scanning the shelves.

“Bea, look at me.”

She turns, gives him a long up-and-down appraisal.

“You mean besides the lipstick on your neck?”

Henry blushes, wiping at his skin. “Yeah,” he says, “besides that.”

She shrugs. “Not really.”

But it’s there, in her eyes, that unmistakable shimmer, a faint and iridescent film that seems to spread as she studies him. “Really? Nothing?”

She pulls a book from the shelf. “Henry, what do you want me to say?” she asks, searching for a second. “You look like you.”

“So you don’t…” He doesn’t know how to ask. “You don’t want me, then?”

Bea turns, and looks at him for a long moment, and then bursts out laughing.

“Sorry, hon,” she says when she catches her breath. “Don’t get me wrong. You’re cute. But I’m still a lesbian.”

And the moment she says it, he feels absurd, and absurdly relieved.

“What’s this about?” she asks.

I made a deal with the devil and now whenever anyone looks at me, they see only what they want. He shakes his head. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“Well,” she says, adding another book to her stack, “I think I found a new thesis.”

She carries the books back up to the counter, and spreads them out on top of the ledgers and receipts. Henry watches her turn through the pages until she finds what she’s looking for in each, then steps back, so he can see what she’s found.

Three portraits, all of them renditions of a young woman, though they clearly come from different times and different schools. “What am I looking at?” he asks.

“I call her the ghost in the frame.”

One is a pencil sketch, the edges rough, unfinished. In it, the woman lies on her stomach, tangled in sheets. Hair pools around her, and her face is little more than panes of shadow, a faint scattering of freckles across her cheeks. The title of the piece is written in Italian.

Ho Portado le Stelle a Letto

The English translation sits beneath.

I Took the Stars to Bed.

The second piece is French, a more abstract portrait, done in the vivid blues and greens of Impressionism. The woman sits on a beach, a book facedown on the sand beside her. She looks over her shoulder at the artist, only the edge of her face visible, her freckles little more than smudges of light, absences of color.

La Sirène, this one is called.

The Siren.

The last piece is a shallow carving, a silhouette sculpture shot through with light, pinpoint tunnels burrowed through a pane of cherry wood.

Constellation.

“Do you see it?” asks Bea.

“They’re portraits.”

“No,” she says, “they’re portraits of the same woman.”

Henry lifts a brow. “That’s a stretch.”

“Look at the angle of her jaw, the line of her nose, and the freckles. Count them.”

Henry does. In every image, there are exactly seven.

Bea touches the first and second. “The Italian one’s from the turn of the nineteenth century. The French one is fifty years later. And this one,” she says, tapping the photo of the sculpture, “this one’s from the sixties.”

“So maybe one was inspired by the other,” says Henry. “Wasn’t there a tradition of—I forget what it was called, but basically visual telephone? One artist favored something, and then another artist favored that artist, and so on? Like a template.”

But Bea is already waving him away. “Sure, in lexicons and bestiaries, but not in formal schools of art. This is like putting a girl with a pearl earring in a Warhol, and a Degas, without ever seeing the Rembrandt. And even if she became a template, the fact is, this ‘template’ influenced centuries of art. She’s a piece of connective tissue between eras. So…”

“So…” echoes Henry.

“So, who was she?” Bea’s eyes are bright, the way Robbie’s sometimes are when he’s just nailed a performance, or done a bump of coke, and Henry doesn’t want to bring her down, but she’s clearly waiting for him to say something.

“Okay,” he starts, gently. “But Bea, what if she was no one? Even if these are based on the same woman, what if the first artist simply made her up?” Bea frowns, already shaking her head. “Look,” he says, “no one wants you to find your thesis topic more than I do. For the sake of this store, as much as your sanity. And this all sounds cool. But didn’t your last proposal get nixed for being too whimsical?”

“Esoteric.”

“Right,” says Henry. “And if a topic like ‘Postmodernism and its Effects on New York Architecture’ was too esoteric, how do you think Dean Parrish will feel about this?”

He gestures to the open texts, the freckled faces staring up from every page.

Bea looks at him in silence for a long moment, and then at the books.

“Fuck!” she shouts, taking up one of the giant books and storming out of the shop.

Henry watches her go and sighs. “Not a library,” he calls after her, returning the rest to their shelves.

IX

New York City

March 18, 2014

Henry trails off, as the realization dawns.

He’d forgotten about Bea’s attempt at finding a new thesis, one quiet detail mixed into a very loud season, but now, it’s obvious.

The girl in the sketch, the painting, the sculpture, is leaning on the rail beside him, her face open in delight.

They are walking through Chelsea on the way to the High Line, and he stops, halfway through a crosswalk, realizing the obvious truth, the gleam of light, like a tear, in his story.

“It was you,” he says.

Addie flashes a dazzling smile. “It was.”

A car honks, the flashing sign gone solid in warning, and they run to the other side.

“It’s funny, though,” she says as they climb the iron steps. “I didn’t know about the second one. I remember sitting on that beach, remember the man with his easel, up on the pier, but I never found the finished piece.”

Henry shakes his head. “I thought you couldn’t leave a mark.”

“I can’t,” she says, looking up. “I can’t hold a pen. I can’t tell a story. I can’t wield a weapon, or make someone remember. But art,” she says with a quieter smile, “art is about ideas. And ideas are wilder than memories. They’re like weeds, always finding their way up.”

“But no photographs. No film.”

Her expression falters, just a fraction. “No,” she says, the word a shape on her lips. And he feels bad for asking, for drawing her back to the bars of her curse, instead of the gaps she’s found between them. But then Addie straightens, lifts her chin, smiles with an almost defiant kind of joy.

“But isn’t it wonderful,” she says, “to be an idea?”

They reach the High Line just as a gust of wind blows through, the air still edged with winter, but instead of folding in against him, sheltering from the breeze, Addie leans into the wild gust, cheeks blushing with the cold, hair whipping around her face, and in that moment, he can see what every artist saw, what drew them to their pencils and their paint, this impossible, uncatchable girl.

And even though he’s safe, both feet firmly on the ground, Henry feels himself begin to fall.

X

New York City

September 13, 2013

People talk a lot about home.

Home is where the heart is, they say. There’s no place like home. Too long away and you get homesick.

Homesick—Henry knows that one is supposed to mean sick for home, not from it, but it still feels right. He loves his family, he does. He just doesn’t always like them. Doesn’t like who he is around them.

And yet, here he is, driving ninety minutes north, the city sinking behind him as a rented car hums under his hands. Henry knows he could take the train, it’s certainly cheaper, but the truth is, he likes driving. Or rather, he likes the white noise that comes with driving, the steady concreteness of going from here to there, the directions, the control. Most of all, he likes the inability to do anything else but drive, hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, music blaring through the speakers.

He offered to give Muriel a ride, was secretly relieved when she said she was taking the train already, that David had gotten in that morning and would pick her up from the station, which means Henry will be the last one there.

Henry is always somehow the last one there.

The closer he gets to Newburgh, the more the weather changes in his head, a warning rumble on the horizon, a storm rolling in. He takes a deep breath, bracing himself for a Strauss family dinner.

He can picture it, the five of them sitting around the linen-covered table like an awkward Ashkenazi imitation of a Rockwell painting, a stiff tableau, his mother on one end, his father on the other, his siblings seated side by side across the table.

David, the pillar, with his stern eyes and stiff posture.

Muriel, the tornado, with her wild dark curls and constant energy.

And Henry, the ghost (even his name doesn’t fit—not Jewish at all, but a nod to one of his father’s oldest friends).

At least they look the part of a family—a quick survey of the table, and one can easily pick out the echo of a cheek, a jaw, a brow. David wears his glasses just like Dad, perched at the end of his nose so the top line of the frames cuts across his gaze. Muriel smiles like Mom, open and easy, laughs like her, too, head thrown back, the sound bright and full.

Henry has his father’s loose black curls, his mother’s gray-green eyes, but something has been lost in the arrangement. He lacks one’s steadiness, and the other’s joy. The set of his shoulders, the line of his mouth—these subtle things that always make him seem more like a guest in someone else’s house.

This is how the dinner will pass: his father and brother talking medicine, his mother and sister talking art, and Henry dreading the moment when the questions turn toward him. When his mother worries aloud about everything, and his father finds an excuse to use the word unmoored, and David reminds him he’s almost thirty, and Muriel advises him to commit, really commit—as if their parents aren’t still paying her cell phone bills.

Henry turns off the freeway and feels the wind pick up in his ears.

Passes through the center of town, and hears thunder in his skull.

The static energy of tension.

He knows he’s late.

He is always late.

It has been the start of many quarrels, and there was a time when he thought it was carelessness on his part, before he realized it was some strange attempt at self-preservation, an intentional, albeit subconscious dawdling, a delay of the inevitable, uncomfortable necessity of showing up. Being seated at that table, boxed in by his siblings, positioned across from his parents like a criminal before a firing squad.

So Henry is late, and when his father answers the door, he braces for the mention of timing, the chastising frown, the cutting remark on how his brother and sister always manage to arrive five minutes early—

But his father only smiles.

“There you are!” he says, eyes bright and warm.

And threaded with fog.

Maybe this won’t be like any other Strauss family dinner.

“Look who’s here!” calls his father, leading Henry into the study.

“Long time no see,” says David, shaking his hand, because even though they live in the same city—hell, on the same subway line—the last time Henry saw his brother was here, on the first night of Hanukkah.

“Henry!” A blur of dark curls, and then Muriel has thrown her arms around his neck. She kisses his cheek, leaving a smudge of coral lipstick he will later scrub off in the hall mirror.

And nowhere between the study and the dining room does anyone comment on the length of his hair, which is always somehow too long, or the state of the sweater he’s wearing, which is frayed, but also the most comfortable thing he owns.

Not once does anyone tell him that he’s too thin, or that he needs more sun, or that he looks tired, even though all of those usually precede the pointed remarks of how it can’t be that hard to run a bookshop in Brooklyn.

His mother comes out of the kitchen, tugging off a pair of oven mitts. She cups his face, and smiles, and tells him she’s so happy he’s there.

Henry believes her.

“To the family,” toasts his father when they sit down to eat. “Together again.”

He feels like he’s stepped into another version of his life—not ahead, or behind, but sideways. One where his sister looks up to him and his brother doesn’t look down, where his parents are proud, and all the judgment has been sucked out of the air like smoke vented from a fire. He didn’t realize how much connective tissue was made up of guilt. Without the weight of it, he feels dizzy and light.

Euphoric.

There is no mention of Tabitha, or the failed proposal, though of course the knowledge of their breakup has circulated, the outcome made obvious by the empty chair no one even tries to play off as a household tradition.

Last month on the phone, when Henry told David about the ring, his brother wondered, almost absently, if he thought she would actually agree. Muriel never liked her, but Muriel never liked any of Henry’s partners. Not because they were all too good for him, though she would have said that too—but simply because she found them boring, an extension of the way she felt about Henry himself.

Cable TV, that’s what she sometimes called them. Better than watching paint dry, sure, but little more than reruns. The only one she even vaguely approved of was Robbie, and even then, Henry was sure it was mostly for the scandal it would cause if he ever brought him home. Only Muriel knows about Robbie, that he was ever more than a friend. It’s the one secret that she’s managed to keep.

The whole dinner is so unnerving.

David is warm, curious.

Muriel is attentive and kind.

His father listens to everything he says, and seems genuinely interested.

His mother tells him she’s proud.

“Of what?” he asks, genuinely confused, and she laughs as if it’s a ridiculous question.

“Of you.”

The absence of judgment is jarring, a kind of existential vertigo.

He tells them about running into Dean Melrose, waits for David to point out the obvious, that he’s not qualified, waits for his father to ask him about the catch. His mother will go silent while his sister will go loud, exclaiming that he changed directions for a reason, and demanding to know the point of it all if he just crawls back.

But none of that happens.

“Good,” says his father.

“They’d be lucky to have you,” says his mother.

“You’d make a good teacher,” says David.

Only Muriel offers a shadow of dissent. “You were never happy there…”

But there’s no judgment in the words, only a fierce protectiveness.

After dinner, everyone retreats to their respective corners, his mother to the kitchen, his father and brother to the study, his sister out into the night to look at stars and feel grounded, which is usually code for getting stoned.

Henry goes into the kitchen to help his mother with the dishes.

“I’ll wash, you dry,” she says, handing him a towel. They find a pleasant rhythm, and then his mother clears her throat.

“I’m sorry about Tabitha,” she says, her voice low, as if she knows the subject is taboo. “I’m sorry you wasted so much time on her.”

“It wasn’t a waste,” he says, even though it does kind of feel that way.

She rinses a plate. “I just want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy.” Her eyes shine, and he’s not sure if it’s the strange frost, or simply maternal tears. “You’re strong, and smart, and successful.”

“I don’t know about that,” Henry says, drying a plate. “I still feel like a disappointment.”

“Don’t talk like that,” says his mother, looking genuinely hurt. She cups his cheek. “I love you, Henry, just as you are.” Her hand drops to the plate. “Let me finish up,” she says. “Go find your sister.”

Henry knows exactly where she is.

He steps out onto the back porch, sees Muriel sitting on the porch swing, smoking a joint and looking out at the trees, striking a pensive pose. She always sits like that, as if waiting for someone to snap a photo. He has, once or twice, but it always looked too stiff, too framed. Trust Muriel to make a candid look staged.

The boards creak a little under his feet now, and she smiles without looking up. “Hey, Hen.”

“How did you know it was me?” he asks, sinking down beside her.

“You have the lightest step,” she says, passing him the joint.

Henry takes a long drag, holds the smoke in his chest until he feels it in his head. A soft, buzzing blur. They pass the joint back and forth, studying their parents through the glass. Well, their parents and David, who trails behind their father, striking the exact same poses.

“So creepy,” mutters Muriel.

“Uncanny, really.”

She chuckles. “Why don’t we hang out more?”

“You’re busy,” he says, because it’s kinder than reminding her they aren’t really friends.

She leans her head against his shoulder. “I always have time for you.”

They smoke in silence until there’s nothing left to smoke, and their mother calls out that it’s time for dessert. Henry stands, his head swimming in a pleasant way.

“Mint?” she asks, holding out a tin, but when he opens it, he sees the pile of little pink pills. Umbrellas. He thinks of the rain pelting down, the stranger beside him, perfectly dry, and snaps the tin shut.

“No thanks.”

They go back inside for dessert, spend the next hour talking about everything and nothing, and all of it is so nice, so aggressively pleasant, so mercifully free of snide remarks, petty squabbles, passive disapproval, that Henry feels like he’s still holding his breath, still holding on to the high, his lungs aching but his heart happy.

He rises, setting his coffee aside. “I should get going.”

“You could stay,” offers his mom, and for the first time in ten years, he’s actually tempted, wonders what it would be like to wake up to this, the warmth, the ease, the feeling of family, but the truth is, the evening’s been too perfect. He feels like he’s walking that narrow line between a good buzz and a night on the bathroom floor, and he doesn’t want anything to tip the balance.

“I have to get back,” he says, “the shop opens at ten.”

“You work so hard” is a thing his mother has never said. A thing she apparently says now.

David grips his shoulder and looks at him with those mercifully clouded eyes and says, “I love you, Henry. I’m glad you’re doing so well.”

Muriel wraps her arms around his waist. “Don’t be such a stranger.”

His father follows him out to the car, and when Henry holds out his hand, his father pulls him in for a hug, and says, “I’m proud of you, son.”

And part of him wants to ask why, to bait, to test the limits of this spell, to press his father into faltering, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He knows it’s not real, not in the strictest sense, but he doesn’t care.

It still feels good.

XI

New York City

March 18, 2014

Laughter spills down from the High Line.

Built along a defunct rail, the raised park runs down the western edge of Manhattan from Thirtieth to Twelfth. It’s normally a pleasant place, with food carts and gardens, tunnels and benches, winding paths and city views.

Today, it is something else entirely.

The Artifact has consumed a stretch of the elevated rail, transformed it into a dreamlike jungle gym of color and light. A three-dimensional landscape of whimsy and wonder.

At the entrance, a volunteer gives them colored rubber bands to wear around their wrists. A rainbow against their skin, each one providing access to a different piece of the exhibit.

“This will get you into the Sky,” she says, as if the works of art are rides at an amusement park.

“This will get you into Voice.”

“This will get you into Memory.”

She smiles at Henry as she talks, her eyes a milky blue. But as they move through the carnival of free exhibits, the artists all turn to look at Addie. He may be a sun, but she is a shining comet, dragging their focus like burning meteors in her wake.

Nearby, a guy sculpts pieces of cotton candy as if they were balloons, then hands out the edible works of art. Some of them are recognizable shapes—here is a dog, here is a giraffe, here is a dragon—while others are abstract—here is a sunset, here is a dream, here is nostalgia.

To Henry, they all taste like sugar.

Addie kisses him, and she tastes like sugar too.

The green band gets them into Memory, which turns out to be a sort of three-dimensional kaleidoscope, made of colored glass—a sculpture that rises to every side, and turns with every step.

They hold on to each other as the world bends and rights and bends again around them, and neither says it, but both, he thinks, are happy to get out.

The art spills into the space between the exhibits. A field of metal sunflowers. A pool of melted crayons. A curtain of water, as thin as paper, that leaves nothing but mist on his glasses, an iridescent shine on Addie’s skin.

The Sky, it turns out, lives inside a tunnel.

Made by a light artist, it’s a series of interlocking rooms. From the outside, they don’t look like much, the wood frames shells of bare construction, little more than nail and stud, but inside—inside is everything.

They move hand in hand so they won’t lose each other. One space is glaringly bright, the next so dark the world seems to plunge away, and Addie shivers beside him, fingers tightening on Henry’s arm. The next is pale with fog, like the inside of a cloud, and in the next, filaments as thin as rain rise and fall to every side. Henry runs his fingers through the field of silver drops, and they ring like chimes.

The last room is filled with stars.

It is a black chamber, identical to the one before it, only this time, a thousand pinprick lights break through the obscurity, carving a Milky Way close enough to touch—a majesty of constellations. And even in the almost dark, Henry can see Addie’s upturned face, the edges of her smile.

“Three hundred years,” she whispers. “And you can still find something new.”

When they step out the other side, blinking in the afternoon light, she is already pulling him on, out of the Sky and on to the next archway, the next set of doors, eager to discover whatever waits beyond.

XII

New York City

September 19, 2013

For once, Henry is early.

Which, he figures, is better than being late, but he doesn’t want to be too early because that’s even worse, even weirder and—he needs to stop overthinking it.

He smooths his shirt, checks his hair in the side of a parked car, and goes inside.

The taqueria is bright and bustling, a concrete cavern of a place, with garage door windows and a food truck parked in the corner of the room, and it doesn’t matter if he’s early, because Vanessa is already inside.

She’s traded the barista apron for leggings and a print dress, and her blond hair, which he’s only seen pulled up, hangs in loose waves around her face, and when she sees him, she breaks into a smile.

“I’m glad you called,” she says.

And Henry smiles back. “So am I.”

They order using slips of paper and those little pencils Henry hasn’t seen since he played mini-golf one time when he was ten, fingers brushing as she points to tacos and he fills them in. Their hands touch again over the chips, legs skimming beneath the metal table, and each time it’s like a tiny burst of light inside his chest.

And for once, he isn’t talking himself in and out of every single line, isn’t chiding himself for each and every move, isn’t convincing himself that he has to say the right thing—there’s no need to find the right words when there are no wrong ones. He doesn’t have to lie, doesn’t have to try, doesn’t have to be anyone but himself, because he is enough.

The food is great, but the place is noisy, voices echoing off high ceilings, and Henry cringes when someone scrapes their chair back over the concrete floor. “Sorry,” he says. “I know it’s not fancy.”

He picked the place, knows they probably should have just gone for drinks, but it’s New York, and cocktails cost twice as much as food, and he can barely afford even this on a bookseller’s wages.

“Dude,” she says, stirring an agua fresca, “I work in a coffee shop.”

“At least you get tips.”

Vanessa feigns shock. “What, they don’t tip booksellers?”

“Nope.”

“Not even when you recommend a good book?”

He shakes his head.

“That’s a crime,” she says. “You should put a jar on the counter.”

“What would I say?” He raps his fingers on the table. “Books feed hungry minds. Tips feed the cat?”

Vanessa laughs, sudden and bright. “You’re so funny.”

“Am I?”

She sticks out her tongue. “Fishing for compliments, are we?”

“No,” he says. “Just curious. What do you see in me?”

Vanessa smiles, suddenly shy. “You’re … well, it sounds cheesy, but you’re exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

“And what’s that?” he asks.

If she said real, sensitive, thoughtful, he might have bought it.

But she doesn’t.

She uses words like outgoing, funny, ambitious, and the more she talks about him, the thicker the frost in her eyes, the more it spreads, until he can barely make out the color beneath. And Henry wonders how she can see, but of course, she can’t.

That’s the point.

They’re at the Merchant a week later, he and Bea and Robbie, three beers and a basket of fries between them.

“How’s Vanessa?” she asks, while Robbie looks pointedly into his drink.

“She’s fine,” says Henry.

And she is. He is. They are.

“Been seeing a lot of her.”

Henry frowns. “You’re the one who told me to get Tabitha out of my system.”

Bea holds up her hands. “I know, I know.”

“It’s new. You know how things are. She’s—”

“A carbon copy,” mumbles Robbie.

Henry turns on him. “What was that?” he asks, annoyed. “Speak up. I know they taught you how to project.”

Robbie takes a long swig of beer, looking miserable. “I’m just saying, she’s a carbon copy of Tabby. Waifish, blond—”

“Female?”

It’s a long-running sore point between them, the fact that Henry isn’t gay, that he’s attracted to a person first and their gender second. Robbie cringes, but doesn’t apologize.

“Besides,” says Henry. “I didn’t go after Vanessa. She picked me. She likes me.”

“Do you like her?” asks Bea.

“Of course,” he says, a little too fast. He likes her. And sure, he also likes that she likes him (the him that she sees) and there’s a Venn diagram between those two, a place where they overlap. He’s pretty sure he’s safely in the shaded zone. He’s not really using her, is he? At least, he’s not the only one being shallow—she’s using him, too, painting someone else onto the canvas of her life. And if it’s mutual, well then, it’s not his fault … is it?

“We just want you to be happy,” Bea’s saying. “After all that’s happened, just … don’t go too fast.”

But for once, he’s not the one who needs to slow down.

Henry woke up that morning to chocolate-chip pancakes and a glass of OJ, a little handwritten note on the counter beside the plate with a heart and a V. She’s slept over the last three nights, and each time, she left something behind. A blouse. A pair of shoes. A toothbrush in the holder by the sink.

His friends stare at him, pale fog still swirling through their eyes, and he knows that they care, knows they love him, knows they only want the best for him. They have to now, thanks to the deal.

“Don’t worry,” he says, sipping his beer. “I’ll take it slow.”

“Henry…”

He’s half-asleep when he feels her run a painted nail down his back.

Weak gray light spills through the windows.

“Hm?” he says, rolling over.

Vanessa’s got her head on one hand, blond hair spilling down over the pillow, and he wonders how long she was leaning like that, waiting for him to wake up, before she finally intervened.

“I need to tell you something.” She gazes at him, eyes frosted with that milky light. He is beginning to dread that shine, the pale smoke that follows him from face to face.

“What is it?” he asks, rising onto one elbow. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just…” She breaks into a smile. “I love you.”

And the scary thing is, she sounds like she means it.

“You don’t have to say it back. I know it’s soon. I just wanted you to know.”

She nuzzles against him.

“Are you sure?” he asks. “I mean, it’s only been a week.”

“So what?” she says. “When you know, you know. And I know.”

Henry swallows, kisses her temple. “I’m going to take a shower.”

He stands under the hot water as long as he can, wondering what he’s supposed to say to that, if and how he can convince Vanessa that it isn’t love, it’s just obsession, but of course, that isn’t really true, either. He made the deal. He made the terms. This is what he wanted.

Isn’t it?

He cuts the water off, wraps the towel around his waist, and smells smoke.

Not the scent of a match lighting a candle, or something boiling over on the stove, but the char-black smell of things that aren’t supposed to be on fire, and are now burning.

Henry surges out into the hall, and sees Vanessa in the kitchen, standing at the counter, a box of matches in one hand, and the cardboard box of Tabitha’s things burning in the sink.

“What are you doing?” he demands.

“You’re holding on to the past,” she says, striking another match and tossing it into the box. “Like, literally holding on. You’ve had this box as long as we’ve been together.”

“I’ve only known you a week!” he shouts, but she presses on.

“And you deserve better. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to live in the present. This is a good thing. This is closure. This is—”

He knocks the matches from her hand and pushes her aside, reaching for the tap.

The water hits the box in a sizzle, sending up a plume of smoke as it douses the flames.

“Vanessa,” he says, gritting his teeth, “I need you to go.”

“Like, home?”

“Like, go.”

“Henry,” she says, touching his arm. “What did I do wrong?”

And he could point to the smoldering remains in his kitchen sink, or the fact it’s all going way too fast, or the fact that when she looks at him, she sees someone else entirely. But instead, he just says, “It’s not you. It’s me.”

“No, it’s not,” she says, tears sliding down her face.

“I need some space, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” she sobs, clinging to him. “I’m sorry. I love you.”

Her limbs are wrapped around his waist, head buried in his side, and for a second, he thinks he might have to physically pry her off.

“Vanessa, let go.”

He guides her away, and she looks devastated, ruined. She looks the way he felt the night he made the deal, and it breaks his heart at the thought that she will walk out feeling that lost, that alone.

“I care about you,” he says, gripping her shoulders. “I care about you, I do.”

She brightens, just a little. A wilting plant fed water. “So you’re not mad?”

Of course he’s mad.

“No, I’m not mad.”

She buries her face in his front, and he strokes her hair.

“You care about me.”

“I do.” He untangles himself. “I’ll call you. I promise.”

“You promise,” she echoes as he helps her gather her things.

“I promise,” he says as he leads her down the hall, and out.

The door shuts between them, and Henry sags back against it as the smoke alarm finally begins to ring.

XIII

New York City

October 23, 2013

“Movie night!”

Robbie flings himself across Henry’s sofa like a starfish, long limbs hanging off the back and sides. Bea rolls her eyes and shoves him over. “Make room.”

Henry plucks the bag from the microwave, bouncing it from hand to hand to avoid the steam. He dumps the popcorn into the bowl.

“What’s the movie?” he asks, rounding the counter.

“The Shining.”

Henry groans. He’s never been a fan of scary movies, but Robbie loves a reason to scream, treats the whole thing like another kind of performance, and it’s his week to choose.

“It’s Halloween!” defends Robbie.

“It’s the twenty-third,” says Henry, but Robbie treats holidays the way he treats birthdays, stretching them from days into weeks, and sometimes into seasons.

“Costume roll call,” says Bea.

Dressing up, he thinks, is just like watching cartoons, something you enjoyed as a kid, before it passes through the no man’s land of teen angst, the ironic age of early twenties. And then somehow, miraculously, it crosses back into the realm of the genuine, the nostalgic. A place reserved for wonder.

Robbie strikes a pose from the sofa. “Ziggy Stardust,” he says, which makes sense. He’s spent the last several years working through Bowie’s various incarnations. Last year it was the Thin White Duke.

Bea announces she’s going as the Dread Pirate Roberts, pun intended, and Robbie reaches out and picks up a camera from Henry’s coffee table, a vintage Nikon currently playing the part of paperweight. He cranes his head back, and peers at Henry through the viewfinder upside down.

“What about you?”

Henry’s always loved Halloween—not the scary part, just the excuse to change, be someone else. Robbie says he should have just become an actor, that they get to play dress-up all year round, but the thought of living life onstage makes him queasy. He’s been Freddie Mercury, and the Mad Hatter, Tuxedo Mask, and the Joker.

But right now, he already feels like somebody else.

“I’m already in costume,” he says, gesturing at his usual black jeans, his narrow shirt. “Can’t you tell who I am?”

“Peter Parker?” ventures Bea.

“A bookseller?”

“Harry Potter having a quarter-life crisis?”

Henry laughs and shakes his head.

Bea narrows her eyes. “You haven’t picked anything yet, have you?”

“No,” he admits, “but I will.”

Robbie is still fiddling with the camera. He turns it around, purses his lips, and snaps a photo. The camera gives a hollow click. There’s no film. Bea plucks it from his hands.

“Why don’t you take more photos?” she asks. “You’re really good.”

Henry shrugs, unsure if she means it. “Maybe in another life,” he says, handing each of them a beer.

“You still could, you know,” she says. “It’s not too late.”

Maybe, but if he started now, would the photos stand on their own, judged good or bad on their own merits? Or would each and every picture carry his wish forward? Would every person see the picture they wanted to see, instead of the one he made? Would he ever trust them if they did?

The movie starts, and Robbie insists on turning out all the lights, the three of them crammed together on the couch. They force Robbie to leave the bowl of popcorn on the table so he can’t throw it at the first scary moment, so Henry doesn’t have to pick up kernels after they’re gone, and he spends the next hour averting his eyes every time the score whines in warning.

When the boy rolls his tricycle down the hall, Bea mutters, “Nope, nope, nope,” and Robbie sits forward, leaning into the scare, and Henry buries his face in his shoulder. The twin girls appear, hand in hand, and Robbie grabs Henry’s leg.

And when the moment passes, a lull in the fear, Robbie’s hand is still resting on his thigh. And it’s like a broken cup coming back together, the shattered edges lining up just right—which is, of course, wrong.

Henry gets up, taking the empty popcorn bowl and heading for the kitchen.

Robbie swings his leg up over the back of the sofa. “I’ll help.”

“It’s popcorn,” Henry says over his shoulder as he rounds the corner. He tears the plastic wrapper off, shakes the pouch. “I’m pretty sure I just put the bag in the microwave and press the button.”

“You always let it go too long,” says Robbie, right behind him.

Henry tosses the pouch into the microwave and swings the door shut. He presses Start, turns back toward the door. “So now you’re the popcorn poli—”

He doesn’t get a chance to finish before Robbie’s mouth is on his. Henry sucks in a breath, surprised by the sudden kiss, but Robbie doesn’t break away. He presses him back into the counter, hips into hips, fingers sliding along his jaw as the kiss deepens.

And this, this is better than all the other nights.

This is better than the attention of a hundred strangers.

This is the difference between a hotel bed and home.

Robbie is hard against him, and Henry’s chest aches with want, and it would be so easy, to fall back into this, to return to the familiar warmth of his kiss, his body, the simple comfort of something real.

But that’s the problem.

It was real. They were real. But like everything in Henry’s life, it ended. Failed.

He breaks the kiss as the first kernels begin to pop.

“I’ve been waiting weeks to do that,” whispers Robbie, his cheeks flushed, his eyes fever bright. But they’re not clear. Fog winds through them, clouding the vivid blue.

Henry lets out a shuddering breath, rubs his own eyes beneath his glasses.

The popcorn rattles and pops, and Henry pulls Robbie into the hall, away from Bea and the horror movie score, and Robbie starts toward him again, thinking it’s an invitation, but Henry puts his hand out, holding him back. “This is a mistake.”

“No, it’s not,” says Robbie. “I love you. I always have.”

And it sounds so honest, so real, Henry has to squeeze his eyes shut to focus. “Then why did you break up with me?”

“What? I don’t know. You were different, we weren’t a fit.”

“How?” presses Henry.

“You didn’t know what you wanted.”

“I wanted you. I wanted you to be happy.”

Robbie shakes his head. “It can’t just be about the other person. You have to be someone, too. You have to know who you are. Back then, you didn’t.” He smiles. “But now you do.”

But that’s just it.

He doesn’t.

Henry has no idea who he is, and now, neither does anyone else.

He just feels lost. But this is the one road he won’t take.

He and Robbie were friends before they were more, friends again for years after Robbie called it off, when Henry was still in love with him, and now it’s reversed, and Robbie’s going to have to find a way to move on, or at least, find a way to smooth in love into love, the way Henry had done when it was him.

“How long does it take to make popcorn?” shouts Bea.

A singed smell wafts from microwave, and Henry pushes past Robbie into the kitchen, hits the Stop button, pulls the bag out.

But he’s too late.

The popcorn is irretrievably burned.

XIV

New York City

November 14, 2013

Thank god Brooklyn has so many coffee shops.

Henry hasn’t been back into Roast, not since the Great Fire of 2013, as Robbie calls the whole Vanessa incident (with a little too much glee). He gets to the front of the line and orders a latte from a very nice guy named Patrick who is mercifully straight, who looks at him with cloudy eyes but only seems to see a perfect customer, someone friendly, and brief, and—

“Henry?”

His stomach drops. Because he knows that voice, high and sweet, knows the way it bends around his name, and it is that night again, and he is down on one knee like a fool as she says no.

You’re great. You really are. But you’re not …

He turns around, and there she is.

“Tabitha.”

Her hair has gotten a little longer, the bangs grown out into a sweep of blond across her forehead, a curl against her cheek, and she stands with the easy grace of a dancer between poses. Henry hasn’t seen her since that night, has managed, until now, to avoid her, to avoid this. And he wants to back away, to put as much distance between them as possible. But his legs refuse to move.

She smiles at him, bright and warm. He remembers being in love with that smile, back when it felt like a victory every time he earned a glimpse. Now she simply hands it to him, brown eyes shrouded in fog.

“I’ve missed you,” she says. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” he says, because it is the truth. Two years of a life together, replaced by a life apart, and there will always be an empty space in the shape of her. “I had a box of your things,” he says, “but there was a fire.”

“Oh god.” She touches his arm. “Are you okay? Was anyone hurt?”

“No, no.” He shakes his head, thinking of Vanessa standing over the sink. “It was … contained.”

Tabitha sways into him. “Oh, good.”

Up close, she smells like lilacs. It took a week for that scent to fade from his sheets, another for it to vanish from the sofa cushions, the shower towels. She leans into him, and it would be so easy to lean back, to give in to the same dangerous gravity that drew him to Robbie, the familiar pull of something loved, and lost, and then returned.

But it isn’t real.

It isn’t real.

“Tabitha,” he says, guiding her back. “You ended things.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I wasn’t ready to take the next step. But I never wanted it to end. I love you, Henry.”

And despite it all, he falters. Because he believes her. Or at least, he believes that she believes herself, and that is worse, because it still doesn’t make it real.

“Can’t we try again?” she asks.

Henry swallows, and shakes his head.

He wants to ask her what she sees, to understand the chasm between who he was and what she wanted. But he doesn’t ask.

Because in the end, it doesn’t matter.

The fog twists across her vision. And he knows that, whoever she sees, it isn’t him.

It never was.

It never will be.

So he lets her go.

XV

New York City

March 18, 2014

Henry and Addie offer up their rubber bands to the Artifact, sacrificing one color at a time.

For the purple band, they walk through puddles, inch-thick pools that ripple around their feet. Beneath the water, the ground is made of mirrors, shimmering, reflecting everyone and everything. Addie stares down at the ribbons of motion, the ripples fading, and if hers end a moment sooner than his, it is hard to say.

For the yellow, they are guided into soundproof cubes the size of closets, ones that amplify the noise, and others that seem to swallow every breath. It is a hall of mirrors, if the bending surfaces warped a voice instead of a reflection.

The first message tells them to WHISPER, the word stenciled on the wall in small, black type, and when Addie whispers “I have a secret,” the words bend and loop and wrap around them.

The next tells them to SHOUT, this stenciled word as large as the wall it’s written on. Henry can’t bring himself to go above a small, self-conscious holler, but Addie draws a breath and roars, the way you would beneath a bridge if a train was going by, and something in the fearless freedom of it gives him air, and suddenly he is emptying his lungs, the sound guttural and broken, as wild as a scream.

And Addie doesn’t shrink away. She simply raises her voice, and together they shout themselves breathless, they scream themselves hoarse, they leave the cubes feeling dizzy and light. His lungs will hurt tomorrow, and it will be worth it.

By the time they stumble out, sound rushing back into their ears, the sun is going down, and the clouds are on fire, one of those strange spring nights that casts an orange light on everything.

They walk over to the nearest rail and look out at the city, the light reflecting on the buildings, streaking sunset across steel, and Henry pulls her back against him, kisses the crook of her neck, smiling into her collar.

He is sugar-high and a little drunk, and happier than he has ever been.

Addie is better than any little pink umbrella.

She is better than strong whisky on a cold night.

Better than anything he’s felt in ages.

When Henry is with her, time speeds up, and it doesn’t scare him.

When he is with Addie, he feels alive, and it doesn’t hurt.

She leans back against him, as if he is the umbrella, and she the one in need of shelter. And Henry holds his breath, as if that will keep the sky aloft. As if that will keep the days from passing.

As if that will keep it all from falling down.

XVI

New York City

December 9, 2013

Bea always says returning to campus is like coming home.

But it doesn’t feel that way to Henry. Then again, he never felt at home at home, only a vague sense of dread, the eggshell-laden walk of someone constantly in danger of disappointing. And that’s pretty much what he feels now, so maybe she’s right, after all.

“Mr. Strauss,” says the dean, reaching across the desk. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

They shake hands, and Henry lowers himself into the office chair. The same chair he sat in three years ago when Dean Melrose threatened to fail him if he didn’t have the sense to leave. And now—

You want to be enough.

“Sorry it took me so long,” he says, but the dean waves away the apology.

“You’re a busy man, I’m sure.”

“Right,” says Henry, shifting in his seat. His suit chafes; too many months spent among mothballs in the back of the closet. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

“So,” he says awkwardly, “you said there was a position open, in the theology school, but you didn’t say if it was adjunct or an aide.”

“It’s tenure.”

Henry stares at the salt-and-pepper man across the table, and has to resist the urge to laugh in his face. A tenure track isn’t just coveted, it’s cutthroat. People spend years vying for those positions.

“And you thought of me.”

“The moment I saw you in that café,” says the dean with a fundraising smile.

You want to be whatever they want.

The dean sits forward in his chair. “The question, Mr. Strauss, is simple. What do you want for yourself?”

The words echo through his head, a terrible, reverberating symmetry.

It’s the same question Melrose asked that autumn day when he called Henry into his office, three years into his PhD, and told him it was over. On some level, Henry knew it was coming. He’d already transferred from the theological seminary into the broader religious studies program, focus sliding over and between themes that a hundred people had already explored, unable to find new ground, unable to believe.

“What do you want for yourself?” he’d asked, and Henry considered saying my parents’ pride, but that didn’t seem like a good answer, so he’d said the next truest thing—that he honestly wasn’t sure. That he’d blinked and somehow years had gone by, and everyone else had carved their trenches, paved their paths, and he was still standing in a field, uncertain where to dig.

The dean had listened, and leaned his elbows on the table and told him that he was good.

But good wasn’t enough.

Which meant, of course, he wasn’t enough.

“What do you want for yourself?” the dean asks now. And Henry still doesn’t have any other answer.

“I don’t know.”

And this is the part where the dean shakes his head, where he realizes that Henry Strauss is still as lost as ever. Only he doesn’t, of course. He smiles and says, “That’s okay. It’s good to be open. But you do want to come back, don’t you?”

Henry is silent. He sits with the question.

He always liked learning. Loved it, really. If he could have spent his whole life sitting in a lecture hall, taking notes, could have drifted from department to department, haunting different studies, soaking up language and history and art, maybe he would have felt full, happy.

That’s how he spent the first two years.

And those first two years, he was happy. He had Bea, and Robbie, and all he had to do was learn. Build a foundation. It was the house, the one that he was supposed to build on top of that smooth surface, that was the problem.

It was just so … permanent.

Choosing a class became choosing a discipline, and choosing a discipline became choosing a career, and choosing a career became choosing a life, and how was anyone supposed to do that, when you only had one?

But teaching, teaching might be a way to have what he wanted.

Teaching is an extension of learning, a way to be a perpetual student.

And yet. “I’m not qualified, sir.”

“You’re an unconventional choice,” the dean admits, “but that doesn’t mean you’re the wrong one.”

Except in this case, that’s exactly what it means.

“I don’t have my doctorate.”

The frost spreads into a sheen of ice across the dean’s vision. “You have a fresh perspective.”

“Aren’t there requirements?”

“There are, but there’s a measure of latitude, to account for different backgrounds.”

“I don’t believe in God.”

The words tumble out like stones, landing heavy on the desk between them.

And Henry realizes, now that they’re out, that they aren’t entirely true. He doesn’t know what he believes, hasn’t for a long time, but it’s hard to entirely discount the presence of a higher power when he recently sold his soul to a lower one.

Henry realizes the room is still quiet.

The dean looks at him for a long moment, and he thinks he’s done it, he’s broken through.

But then Melrose leans forward, and says, in a measured tone, “I don’t either.” He sits back. “Mr. Strauss, we are an academic institution, not a church. Dissent is at the heart of dissemination.”

But that’s the problem. No one will dissent. Henry looks at Dean Melrose, and imagines seeing that same blind acceptance on the face of every faculty member, every teacher, every student, and feels ill. They’ll look at him, and see exactly what they want. Who they want. And even if he comes across someone who wants to argue, who relishes conflict or debate, it won’t be real.

None of it will ever be real again.

Across the table, the dean’s eyes are a milky gray. “You can have anything you want, Mr. Strauss. Be anyone you want. And we’d like to have you here.” He stands, holds out his hand. “Think about it.”

Henry says, “I will.”

And he does.

He thinks about it on the way across campus, and on the subway, every station carrying him farther away from that life. The one that was, and the one that wasn’t. Thinks about it as he unlocks the store, shrugs out of the ill-fitting coat and flings it onto the nearest shelf, undoes the tie at his throat. Thinks about it as he feeds the cat, and unpacks the latest box of books, gripping them until his fingers ache, but at least they’re solid, they’re real, and he can feel the storm clouds forming in his head, so he goes into the back room, finds the bottle of Meredith’s whisky, a few fingers’ worth leftover from the day after his deal, and carries it back to the front of the store.

It’s not even noon, but Henry doesn’t care.

He pulls out the cork and fills a coffee cup as the customers filter in, waiting for someone to shoot him a dirty look, to shake their head in disapproval, or mutter something, or even leave. But they all just keep shopping, keep smiling, keep looking at Henry as if he can’t do anything wrong.

Finally, an off-duty cop comes in, and Henry doesn’t even try to hide the bottle by the till. Instead, he looks straight at the man and takes a long drink from his cup, certain that he’s breaking some law, either because of the open container, or the public intoxication.

But the cop only smiles, and raises an imaginary glass.

“Cheers,” he says, eyes frosting over as he speaks.

Take a drink every time you hear a lie.

You’re a great cook.

(They say as you burn toast.)

You’re so funny.

(You’ve never told a joke.)

You’re so …

… handsome.

… ambitious.

… successful.

… strong.

(Are you drinking yet?)

You’re so …

… charming.

… clever.

… sexy.

(Drink.)

So confident.

So shy.

So mysterious.

So open.

You are impossible, a paradox, a collection at odds.

You are everything to everyone.

The son they never had.

The friend they always wanted.

A generous stranger.

A successful son.

A perfect gentleman.

A perfect partner.

A perfect …

Perfect …

(Drink.)

They love your body.

Your abs.

Your laugh.

The way you smell.

The sound of your voice.

They want you.

(Not you.)

They need you.

(Not you.)

They love you.

(Not you.)

You are whoever they want you to be.

You are more than enough, because you are not real.

You are perfect, because you don’t exist.

(Not you.)

(Never you.)

They look at you and see whatever they want …

Because they don’t see you at all.

XVII

New York City

December 31, 2013

The clock is ticking down, the last minutes of the year dropping away. Everyone says to live in the now, to savor the moment, but it’s hard when the moment involves a hundred people crammed into a rent-controlled apartment in Bed-Stuy that Robbie is sharing with two other actors. Henry is trapped in a hall corner, where the coatrack meets a closet. He has a beer hanging from one hand and the other tangled in the shirt of the guy kissing him, a guy who’s definitely out of Henry’s league, or who would be, if Henry still had one.

He thinks the guy’s name is Mark, but it was hard to hear over all the noise. It could be Max, or Malcolm. Henry doesn’t know. And he wants to say this is the first person he’s kissed tonight, even the first guy, but the truth is, he isn’t sure about that either. Isn’t sure how many drinks he’s had, or if the taste melting on his tongue right now is sugar, or something else.

Henry has been drinking too much, too fast, trying to wash away, and there are too many people in the Castle.

The Castle, that’s what they call Robbie’s place, though Henry can’t remember exactly when they christened it that, or why. He searches for Bea, hasn’t seen her since he waded through the crowd into the kitchen an hour before, saw her perched on the counter, playing bartender and holding court for a group of women and—

Suddenly the guy is fumbling with Henry’s belt.

“Wait,” he says, but the music is loud enough he has to shout, has to pull Mark/Max/Malcolm’s ear against his mouth, which Mark/Max/Malcolm takes as a sign to keep kissing him.

“Wait,” he shouts, pushing back. “Do you even want this?”

Which is a stupid question. Or at least, the wrong one.

The pale smoke swirls in the stranger’s eyes. “Why wouldn’t I?” he asks, sinking to his knees. But Henry catches his elbow.

“Stop. Just stop.” He pulls him up. “What do you see in me?”

A question he has come to ask of everyone, hoping to hear something like the truth. But the guy looks at him, eyes clouded with frost, and rattles off the words, “You’re gorgeous. Sexy. Smart.”

“How do you know?” Henry shouts over the music.

“What?” the other guy shouts back.

“How do you know I’m smart? We barely spoke.”

But Mark/Max/Malcolm only smiles a sloppy, heavy-lidded grin, his mouth red from kissing, and says, “I just know,” and it’s not enough anymore, it’s not okay, and Henry’s in the process of untangling himself when Robbie rounds the corner, and sees Mark/Max/Malcolm practically mounting Henry in the hall. Robbie looks at him as if he’s flung a beer in his face.

He turns, and leaves, and Henry groans, and the guy grinding against him seems to think the sound is for him, and it’s too hot in here for Henry to think, to breathe.

The room is starting to spin, and Henry murmurs something about having to pee, but walks straight past the toilet and into Robbie’s room, shutting the door behind him. He goes to the window, shoves up the glass, and is hit full in the face with a blast of icy cold. It bites at his skin as he climbs out onto the fire escape.

He sucks in a breath of cold air, lets it burn his lungs, has to lean on the window to get it shut again, but the moment the glass comes down, the world hushes.

It’s not quiet—New York is never quiet—and New Year’s has sent a current rippling through the city, but at least he can breathe, can think, can wash away the night—the year—in relative peace.

He goes to take a swig of beer, but the bottle’s empty.

“Fuck,” he mutters to no one but himself.

He’s freezing, his coat buried somewhere in the pile on Robbie’s bed, but he can’t bring himself to go back inside for a jacket or a drink. Can’t bear the tide of turning heads, the smoke filling their eyes, doesn’t want the weight of their attention. And he can see the irony in that, he really can. Right now he’d give anything for one of Muriel’s little pink umbrellas, but he’s run out, so he sinks down onto the freezing metal steps, tells himself he’s happy, tells himself that this is what he wanted.

He sets the empty bottle beside a pot that used to be home to a plant. Right now it holds only a small mountain of cigarette stubs.

Sometimes Henry wishes he smoked, just for the excuse to get some air.

He tried once or twice, but he couldn’t get over the taste of tar, the stale smell it left on his clothes. He had this one aunt growing up who smoked until her nails went yellow and her skin cracked like old leather, until every cough sounded like she had loose change rattling in her chest. Every time he took a drag, he thought of her, and felt ill, and he didn’t know if it was the memory or the taste, only knew it wasn’t worth it.

There was pot, of course, but pot was something you were supposed to share with other people, not sneak away to smoke alone, and anyway, it always made him hungry and sad. Or really, sadder. It didn’t iron out any of the wrinkles in his brain, after too many hits just made them into spirals, thoughts turning in and in and in on themselves forever.

He has this vivid memory of getting stoned senior year, he and Bea and Robbie lying in a tangle of limbs on the Columbia quad at three in the morning, high as kites and staring up at the sky. And even though they had to squint to make out any stars, and it might have just been their eyes struggling for purchase on the black expanse, Bea and Robbie went on and on about how big it all was, how wonderful, how calm it made them feel to be so small, and Henry didn’t say anything because he was too busy holding his breath to keep from screaming.

“What the hell are you doing out here?”

Bea is leaning out the window. She swings her leg over the sill, and joins him out on the step, hissing when her leggings meet the cold metal. They sit in silence for a few moments. Henry stares out over the buildings. The clouds are low, the lights of Times Square shining up against them.

“Robbie’s in love with me,” he says.

“Robbie’s always been in love with you,” says Bea.

“But that’s the thing,” he says, shaking his head. “He wasn’t in love with who I was, not really. He was in love with who I could have been. He wanted me to change, and I didn’t, and—”

“Why should you change?” She turns to look at him, the frost swirling across her vision. “You’re perfect, just the way you are.”

Henry swallows.

“And what is that?” he asks. “What am I?”

He’s been afraid to ask, afraid to know the meaning of the shine in her eyes, what she sees when she looks at him. Even now, he wishes he could take it back. But Bea just smiles and says, “You’re my best friend, Henry.”

His chest loosens, just a little. Because that’s real.

It’s true.

But then she keeps going.

“You’re sweet, and sensitive, and an amazing listener.”

And that last part makes his stomach drop, because Henry’s never been a good listener. He’s lost count of the number of fights they’ve gotten in because he wasn’t paying attention.

“You’re always there when I need you,” she goes on, and his chest aches, because he knows he hasn’t been, and this isn’t like all the other lies, this isn’t washboard abs, or a chiseled jaw or a deep voice, this isn’t witty charm, or the son you’ve always wanted, or the brother you miss, this isn’t any of the thousand things other people see when they look at him, things out of his control.

“I wish you saw yourself the way I see you.”

What Bea sees is a good friend.

And Henry has no excuse for not already being one.

He puts his head in his hands, presses his palms against his eyes until he sees stars, and wonders if he can fix this, just this, if he can become the version of Henry that Bea sees, if it will make the frost in her eyes go away again, if she, at least, will see him clearly.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the space between his knees and chest.

He feels her run her fingers through his hair. “For what?”

And what is he supposed to say?

Henry lets out a shuddering breath, and looks up. “If you could have anything,” he says, “what would you ask for?”

“That depends,” she says. “What’s the cost?”

“How do you know there’s a cost?”

“There’s always give and take.”

“Okay,” says Henry, “if you sold your soul for one thing, what would it be?”

Bea chews her lip. “Happiness.”

“What is that?” he asks. “I mean, is it just feeling happy for no reason? Or is it making other people happy? Is it being happy with your job, or your life, or—”

Bea laughs. “You always overthink things, Henry.” She looks out over the fire escape. “I don’t know, I guess I just mean I’d want to be happy with myself. Satisfied. What about you?”

He thinks of lying, doesn’t. “I think I’d want to be loved.”

Bea looks at him, then, eyes swirling with frost, and even through the mist, she looks suddenly, immeasurably sad. “You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”

Henry’s mouth goes dry.

She’s right. Of course she’s right.

And he’s an idiot, trapped in a world where nothing’s real.

Bea knocks her shoulder against his. “Come back in,” she says. “Find someone to kiss before midnight. It’s good luck.”

She rises, waiting, but Henry can’t bring himself to stand.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You go.”

And he knows it’s the deal he’s made, knows it’s what she sees and not what he is—but he’s still relieved when Bea sits back down, and leans against him, a best friend staying with him in the dark. And soon the music dims, and the voices rise, and Henry can hear the countdown at their back.

Ten, nine, eight.

Oh god.

Seven, six, five.

What has he done?

Four, three, two.

It’s going too fast.

One.

The air fills with whistles and cheers and wishes and Bea presses her lips against his, a moment of warmth against the cold. Just like that, the year is gone, the clocks reset, a three replaced by a four, and Henry knows that he has made a terrible mistake.

He has asked the wrong god for the wrong thing, and now he is enough because he is nothing. He is perfect, because he isn’t there.

“It’s going to be a good year,” says Bea. “I can feel it.” She sighs a plume of fog into the air between them. “Fuck, it’s freezing.” She stands, rubbing her hands. “Let’s go in.”

“You go ahead,” he says, “I’ll be there soon.”

And she believes him, her steps clanking as she crosses the fire escape and slips back through the window, leaving it open for him to follow.

Henry sits there, alone in the dark, until he cannot stand the cold.

XVIII

New York City

Winter 2014

Henry gives up.

Resigns himself to the prism of his deal, which he has come to think of as a curse. He tries—to be a better friend, a better brother, a better son, tries to forget the meaning of the fog in people’s eyes, tries to pretend that it is real, that he is real.

And then, one day, he meets a girl.

She walks into the store and steals a book, and when he catches her in the street, and she turns to look at him, there is no frost, no film, no wall of ice. Just clear brown eyes in a heart-shaped face, seven freckles scattered across her cheeks like stars.

And Henry thinks it must be a trick of the light, but she comes back the next day, and there it is again. The absence. Not just an absence, either, but something in its place.

A presence, a solid weight, the first steady pull he’s felt in months. The strength of someone else’s gravity.

Another orbit.

And when the girl looks at him, she doesn’t see perfect. She sees someone who cares too much, who feels too much, who is lost, and hungry, and wasting inside his curse.

She sees the truth, and he doesn’t know how, or why, only knows that he doesn’t want it to end.

Because for the first time in months, in years, in his whole life, perhaps, Henry doesn’t feel cursed at all.

For the first time, he feels seen.

XIX

New York City

March 18, 2014

There is only one exhibit left.

As the light thins, Henry and Addie hand over their blue rubber bands and step into a space composed only of plexiglass. The clear walls rise in rows. They remind him of the stacks in a library, or at the store, but there are no books, only a sign mounted in the air overhead that reads:

Bowls of neon paint sit out in every aisle, and sure enough the walls are covered in markings. Signatures and scribbles, handprints and patterns.

Some run the length of the wall, and others are nested, like secrets, inside the larger marks. Addie dips a finger in green paint, and brings it to the wall. She draws a spiral, a single expanding mark. But by the time she reaches the fourth loop, the first has already faded, dropping away like a pebble in deep water.

Impossible, erased.

Her face doesn’t falter, doesn’t fall, but he can see the sadness before it drops as well, sinking out of sight.

How do you hold on? he wants to ask. Instead, he dips his hand into the green paint, reaches past her, but he doesn’t draw anything. Instead, he waits, hovering above the glass.

“Put your hand over mine,” he says, and she hesitates only a moment before pressing her palm to the back of his hand, ghosting her fingers over his own. “There,” he says, “now we can draw.”

She folds her hand over his, guides his index finger to the glass, and leaves a single mark, a line of green. He can feel the air lodge in her chest, can feel the sudden stiffness in her limbs, as she waits for it to disappear.

But it doesn’t.

It stays, staring back at them in that fearless shade.

Something breaks inside her, then.

She makes a second mark, and a third, lets out a breathless laugh, and then, her hand on his, and his on the glass, Addie begins to draw. For the first time in three hundred years, she draws birds, and trees, draws a garden, draws a workshop, draws a city, draws a pair of eyes. The images spill out of her, and through him, and onto the wall with a clumsy, frenzied need. And she is laughing, tears streaming down her cheeks, and he wants to wipe them away, but his hands are her hands, and she is drawing.

And then she dips his finger in the paint, and brings it to the pane of glass, and this time, she writes in halting cursive, one letter at a time.

Her name.

It sits, nested among the many drawings.

Addie LaRue

Ten letters, two words. It is no different, he thinks, from the hundred other marks they’ve made—but it is. He knows it is.

Her hand drops away from his, and she reaches out, runs her fingers through the letters, and for a moment, the name is ruined, streaks of green against the glass. But by the time her fingers fall away, it is back, unmarred, unchanged.

Something changes in her, then. It rolls over her, the way storms roll over him, but this is different, this is not dark, but dazzling, a sudden, piercing sharpness.

And then she is pulling him away. Away from the maze, away from the people stretched beneath the starless night, away from the carnival of art, and the island, and he realizes she is not pulling him away at all, but toward something.

Toward the ferry.

Toward the subway.

Toward Brooklyn.

Toward home.

The whole way, she holds tightly to Henry, their fingers intertwined, the green paint staining both their hands, as they climb the stairs, as he opens the door, and then, she lets go, surging past him, through the apartment. He finds her in the bedroom, pulling a blue notebook from the shelf, scrounging a pen from the table. She presses them both into his hands, and Henry sinks onto the edge of the bed, folds back the cover of the notebook, one of a dozen he’s never used, and she kneels, breathless, beside him.

“Do it again,” she says.

And he brings the ballpoint to the blank page and writes her name, in tight but careful script.

Addie LaRue.

It doesn’t dissolve, it doesn’t fade, it sits there, alone in the center of the page. And Henry looks up at her, waiting for her to go on, to dictate what comes next, and she looks down past him, at the words.

Addie clears her throat.

“This is how it starts,” she says.

And he begins to write.