We were almost out of Union Square when I felt a hand on my shoulder. “You left these,” he said. I turned, but I already knew who it was. Of course it was Win. “My mother insisted I find you…”
What was wrong with Win’s mother?
“Hello, Natty,” Win continued.
“Hello, Win,” she said coolly. “You don’t wear hats anymore. I liked you better with hats.”
I took the sack of oranges and said nothing.
“I almost didn’t catch up with you two. I’m not as fast as I used to be, I guess,” Win said.
“How is your leg?” I asked.
Win smiled. “Still hurts like heck. How was the rest of your summer?”
I smiled, too. “Awful.” I shook my head to steel myself against him. “I heard you’re seeing Alison Wheeler.”
“Yes, Anya, I am,” Win replied after a pause. “Word moves quickly.”
And hearts even more so. “I once told you that you’d get over me faster than you thought, and I was right.”
“Anya…” he said.
I knew I sounded bitter, and what was the point of that? The truth was, any wrong he might be doing me now, I probably deserved. It was an accomplishment really—to have turned someone as devoted as Win so quickly.
I told him I was happy for him. I didn’t mean it, but I was trying to pretend like I was a grownup. (Didn’t grownups tell lies like that?) He looked as if he might have wanted to explain about Alison, but I didn’t really want to know. Usually, I wanted to know everything about everything, but in this case, I was fine being left in a forgiving patch of darkness. Win had made things easy for me, hadn’t he? Instead, I leaned in to hug him for what I imagined would be the last time. “Take care of yourself,” I said. “I probably won’t be seeing you around.”
“No,” he agreed. “Probably not.”
I guess I was sentimental back then. I had one bar of Balanchine Special Dark left and I gave it to him. I made him promise that he wouldn’t show his dad. He took the bar without a word or a wisecrack about it being poisoned. I was grateful for that. He just slipped the bar into his pocket and then he disappeared into the crowd. He did have a limp, and it occurred to me that I was glad to have left him with something other than that limp. He probably counted himself luckier than Gable Arsley.
Natty and I got on the bus with our parcels. “Why Alison Wheeler?” Natty asked after we’d been on the bus a couple of minutes. “He loves you.”
“I broke up with him, Natty.”
“Yes but—”
“And I got him shot.”
“But—”
“And maybe he’s tired of me. Of our family. Of how difficult it all is. Sometimes I get tired of me, too.”
“Not Win. No,” Natty said in a soft but resolute voice. “It doesn’t make sense.”
I sighed. Natty might have looked twenty-five, but her heart was still so very twelve (thirteen!) and this was comforting to me. “I can’t think about him anymore. I have to find a school to go to. I have to see Cousin Mickey. I have to call Yuji Ono. But from now on, we’re going to the market at Columbus Circle,” I said. “I don’t care if we do have to cross the park!”
As we entered the apartment, the phone was ringing. I heard Imogen answer it. “Yes, I think Anya’s just come in. Hold on a moment.”
I went into the kitchen to unpack my bags, and Imogen held out the phone to me. “It’s Win,” Imogen said with a dopey grin on her face.
“See,” Natty said with an annoyingly knowing look in her eyes.
Imogen put her arm around Natty. “Come, dear one,” she whispered. “Let’s give your sister some privacy.”
I took a deep breath. As I crossed the kitchen to the telephone, it felt like the blood in my veins had begun to warm. I took the phone. “Win,” I said.
“Welcome back, Anya.” The voice was familiar, but it definitely wasn’t Win’s.
My hands turned to ice. “Who is this?”
“It’s your cousin,” he said after a pause. “It’s Jacks. Jakov Pirozhki.”
As if I knew another Jacks. “Why are you pretending to be Win?” I demanded.
“Because you wouldn’t talk to me otherwise. And we do need to talk,” Jacks said.
I told him we had nothing to talk about. “I’m hanging up now.”
“If you were going to hang up, you would have just done it.”
He was right, but I said nothing. My silence must have made him nervous because when he next spoke, his manner was more contrite. “Listen, Annie, listen. I don’t have much time. I only get one phone call a week, and they ain’t free, you know.”
“How is prison life, Cousin?”
“It’s unspeakable in here,” Jacks replied after a pause.
“I hope it’s Hell.”
“Please, Annie. Come see me at Rikers. I have things I want to tell you that I can’t say over the phone. You never know who’s listening.”
“Why would I ever do that? You poisoned one of my boyfriends and shot the other when you were trying to shoot my brother. I was expelled from school and sent to Liberty because of you.”
“Don’t be naïve,” he said. “Those things were in motion long before me. I don’t have the syvasi. Please. In your heart, you can’t honestly believe that I … Things are not what they appear … I’ve already said too much. You must come see me.” He lowered his voice. “I believe that you and your sister are in terrible danger.”
For a second, I felt fear in my heart, but then it passed. Who cared what Jacks said? He would have said or done anything to get what he wanted. Wasn’t this the exact technique he had used to manipulate Leo? Telling him that Natty and I were in danger as a way of controlling him? “It seems to me, Jacks, that the person who has put my family in the greatest danger has been you. And you, dear cousin, are in prison for the next twenty-five years. Personally, I’ve never felt safer in my entire life. Please don’t call here again,” I said. As I hung up the phone, I thought I might have heard him say something about my father, but I couldn’t make it out. He really would have said anything.
In the living room, Imogen and Natty waited for me. “What did Win say?” Natty asked with happy, dancing eyes.
I looked at Natty. I couldn’t protect her from this. “It wasn’t Win. It was Jacks.”
Imogen stood up from the couch. “Anya, I apologize. He did say he was Win, and I guess I don’t know Win’s voice well enough to tell the difference.”
I assured her that it wasn’t her fault.
Natty shook her head. “That was incredibly mean of him. What did he want anyway?”
I couldn’t exactly repeat what Jacks had said about the two of us being in terrible danger. I sat down next to Natty and put my arms around her. I would do anything to keep her safe and I wondered how I could even have allowed myself the indulgence of lamenting Win. Natty was the love of my life, not him. At that moment, the love of my life extricated herself from my embrace—was she getting too old for such things?—then she asked me a second time what our ne’er-do-well cousin had wanted.
Here, I told a pretty lie: “To welcome me home.”
II
I COUNT MY BLESSINGS
SUNDAY MORNING, Natty and I went to church. The new priest was an incredibly boring speaker, but the homily was not without interest to me: it was about how we focus too much on the things we don’t have instead of the things we do. I was certainly guilty of such behavior. To pass the time, I decided to count my blessings:
1. I was out of Liberty.
2. Natty and Leo, as far as I knew, were safe.
3. Win had made it easy for me to keep my bargain with his father.