“Yeah,” said Jasmine. “I’m still living with my parents up in Queens. I used to spend the night here with her a lot.”
“You haven’t been staying here recently?”
“Since she’s been missing? No. I-I just can’t.” She shook her head and Lydia saw tears gather in her eyes. “I can’t be here without her. It doesn’t seem right.”
Lydia nodded her understanding as the elevator reached the sixth floor and they stepped out into the hallway. There was tasteful burgundy carpeting and cream walls lined with sconce lighting.
“Did she have trouble affording this place?” asked Lydia as they walked into a spacious, sunlit one-bedroom apartment.
Jasmine shrugged. “I think her parents helped her out a little. Her mom was worried about her living in the city after college; they wanted her to be someplace safe. She was living in a railroad apartment on Avenue B after she moved out of the NYU dorms-until her parents came to visit. A month later she moved in here.”
Lydia sat on the futon while Jasmine sank onto an enormous blue velvet pillow lying on the varnished hardwood floor. A counter separated the living space from a state-of-the-art kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances not unlike Lydia’s own. From where she sat, Lydia could see into a bedroom. There was a large king bed and a dresser that looked like the kind of stuff you buy at Ikea when you’re young and have no money. It comes in a box: a pile of wood, a bag of bolts and a set of indecipherable instructions.
“Detective Stenopolis said that Mickey and Lily weren’t getting along before he died,” said Lydia.
Jasmine pulled her legs into a full lotus position and nodded. “No, they weren’t. And it was weird because she worshipped him. But after he quit his job and moved up to Riverdale, things started to change. He became hard to reach, started being really short and distant with her. I don’t think she was mad as much as she was hurt. She thought it was the new girlfriend. Lily didn’t like her very much.”
“Maybe she was jealous?”
“Maybe a little-because she and Mickey had such a bond. He’d never really had a serious, serious girlfriend before. But she’s not really like that. Lily likes nice people, kind people, people with passion. She has good taste. I’ve always kind of felt that if Lily doesn’t like someone, then there’s usually a reason.”
Lydia nodded. “So why did Mickey move up there in the first place?”
“He was burned out. He’d made a killing, put a lot of money away. He had always had this dream of owning a coffee shop that was like a performance space at night, you know, small bands, poetry readings. He wanted to hang a different artist’s work on the walls every month. Something really artsy and cool, totally different from the insanity of his Wall Street job. So he went for it.”
“But it didn’t go well?”
“It seemed to, at first. We went up there after he opened. The space was beautiful, there seemed to be a good crowd. He was talking about applying for a liquor license.” She moved away a wisp of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “He seemed like the same old Mickey but happier. Less than six months later, he was dead.”
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Lydia, leaning forward.
“You know,” said Jasmine, looking down. “Since my residency started I have been so busy, so exhausted all the time, that I really didn’t pay the kind of attention that I should have, I guess. I knew Lily was upset about the way Mickey was acting. She kept saying, ‘There’s something really weird going on with him.’ We talked about it but I guess I was only half-listening. Now when I think about those months, trying to figure things out, I feel like I only have small pieces.”
“What are some of the things you remember her mentioning?”
“She was talking about how he was hanging around with a weird group of people, friends of this girl he was seeing.”
“Do you remember her name?”
She closed her eyes for a second, as if trying to recall. Lydia noticed for the first time how pretty Jasmine was. With her hair back and her baggy scrubs, her beauty hadn’t been obvious at first. But in the bright sun coming in from the window, Lydia admired her fair golden skin and inky black hair, the delicate lashes on her wide eyes. When Jasmine opened her eyes again, Lydia saw that they were light hazel, with the slightest tease of green.
“I met her when we went up to visit over the summer,” she said slowly. “I think it was Mariah. I don’t think I ever got her last name. She was beautiful, with this really long blonde hair, bombshell body. There was something cold about her, something sneaky. But Mickey was smitten. Big-time.”
Lydia flashed on Lily’s message. “I’m out of my league. Big-time,” she’d said.
“He was always looking to throw himself into something. When he was a trader on Wall Street, it was his religion. He lived and breathed the Journal. When he got into the martial arts, it was his obsession. Then it was Buddhism. Lily always called him a ‘seeker.’ She said he was always looking to belong somewhere but that he always felt like he was on the outside looking in. Lily always thought that it was the death of their father that made him like that. Lily was only two when their dad died, but Mickey was seven. Old enough to feel the loss. Mr. Samuels, their stepdad, loves them both; he was always good to them. But Lily never remembered her biological father; Mickey did. I think there were some challenges for Mr. Samuels in taking on the role of father for Mickey.” She shook her head, chewed on the cuticle of her thumb. “I hate myself for not being more present. I should have listened better.”
Lydia saw the tears start again before Jasmine put her head in her hands. She felt a familiar, helpless sadness opening within her. It was a terrible empathy she’d always had for the people who’d lost loved ones. She saw their pain, their fear, that slick-walled abyss of grief within them, and it connected with the space inside her that still grieved the murder of her own mother.
“Go easy on yourself, Jasmine,” she said softly. “It’s too easy to blame ourselves. And it doesn’t help anyone.”
She nodded but didn’t look up from her hands. Lydia gave her a minute. She got up to find a tissue for Jasmine and looked around the apartment. It was the apartment of a person who worked a lot, didn’t have much money and spent most of her time in the space sleeping. It was neat, tasteful, but didn’t have the charisma and energy of a more home-centered person. The fixtures were generic; even the simply framed posters on the wall-Van Gogh’s Starry Night, some erotic bloom by Georgia O’Keeffe, the inevitable Robert Doisneau print of The Kiss where a couple are lip locked in a crowded Paris train station-were on the walls of a thousand other apartments all over the city.
She found some tissues in the bathroom and brought them to Jasmine, who thanked her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, blowing her nose. “I still can’t believe this is happening. When I’m working I can almost forget about it; I’m on my ER rotation and there are so many people hurt and in pain. It’s so frenetic. I can forget about Lily, about what has happened. Isn’t that awful?”
“No. I think it’s normal,” said Lydia, sitting back down. After all, she’d been doing it all her adult life, using her work to avoid her pain and problems. Better than heroin, she thought. “The brain can only handle so much worry and grief at a time. It needs a way to shift off for a while.”
Jasmine nodded doubtfully.
“When the news came about Mickey,” she said with a sniffle, “Lily was just destroyed. I’ll never forget her face or the way she screamed. I was here when her stepfather called. The next few days were kind of this miserable blur. The viewing, the service, the burial.”