“Hello?”
“This is Amy?” said Evelyn.
“Yeah. Hi, Evelyn. It’s Evelyn, right?”
“It is.”
Evelyn let the silence stretch a few seconds. “Andrea tells me it’s very bad out there.”
“It’s okay in here.”
“Well, I hope you’re drinking something hot.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you think you can come back to the hotel soon?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“I see. You have your things here. How will you get them?”
“I don’t have much I’ll miss. I’ve got my wallet. My phone. All the important shit.”
Evelyn observed the inner cuticle on her left thumb as she spoke. It was ragged and red, as though she had been tearing at it with fingernails or chewing on it.
“Miss Erish is very sad not to see you. She asked me to read aloud the email you sent the day you moved into that lovely apartment. The one overlooking the park.”
“How do you know about the apartment?”
“It was in the email you wrote. That Miss Erish had me read aloud to the others.”
“Is she there now?”
“No.” Evelyn looked around. The concierge remained at his post. The door to one of the elevators was just finishing closing. Evelyn couldn’t tell who was inside as it began its ascent. “No, she’s sitting with Mr. Allen and Mr. Hunter. I am in the lobby. It’s just us.”
“I believe you.”
Amy’s voice sounded very small and much younger than Evelyn knew her to be. She was not a child, not really, but she was inhabiting one, perhaps remembering those nights when she lay awake in a cold bed, with emptiness gnawing like a rat in her belly… in a home where the only notion of escape was intertwined with death, where hope was death because that was how poverty was for a child…
“Now can we talk a moment, just you and I?”
“Okay.”
“Are you afraid of Miss Erish?”
“I’m… I don’t know. I’m creeped out by her.”
“I see. Can you be a bit more specific?”
“It’s the way…” Amy trailed off into silence.
“Does she telephone?” Evelyn prompted. “At odd hours?”
“Sometimes.”
“Can I ask what she calls about?”
“Different things. Sometimes, she asks me if I’ve read a book she’s reading. She has a story she likes to tell—about the river, right?”
Evelyn felt herself smile. Miss Erish first told Evelyn that story on her eleventh birthday, and brought it up from time to time, quite often. It was, as Miss Erish herself described it, foundational. “I know that story too.”
“It’s—” Another pause. “—It creeps me out.”
“Miss Retson told me that you thought Miss Erish was a vampire.”
Silence now. Evelyn supposed the girl was distracted, shooting daggers at Andrea as she must have been.
“Amy,” said Evelyn, sternly, “where do you suppose you would be now, if not for Miss Erish’s generosity? Amy?”
“Yes?”
“Miss Erish likes to talk. Sometimes she calls in the evening.”
“And when she calls—we come, right? No matter what?”
“That’s the deal, Amy.”
“I can’t fucking do it.”
Now Evelyn was silent. Amy—amwilson7@gmail.com, that was the name that Evelyn really understood her to have; this humanizing business of Amy was only an hour or two old, she reminded herself—was so very unsuitable to Miss Erish. Really, the foul-mouthed little slut—there was no other word for her, a little slut—might be better off tramping out through the blizzard with her wallet and her boots and her filthy mouth, finding a bus back to the apartment that she would soon find herself unable to afford, and leave the rest of them to restore the balance. Evelyn swallowed hard.
“You can” was what she finally said.
“Hey.” It was Andrea. “Amy gave me the phone back. It’s me.”
“Put her back on.”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“To the ladies’,” said Andrea. She sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”
“No,” said Evelyn. “Maybe you should just come back. If little Amy wants to leave…”
“What? Let her?”
“She’ll see how it goes,” said Evelyn. “She’ll see the consequences.”
“She has a boy,” said Andrea, “or a girl. She hasn’t said as much, but I’m sure of it.”
Evelyn thought about that. If that was true… well, then that was another thing.
“All right,” she said. “Let me talk to her again when she’s back.”
“Look, my battery’s dying. And I don’t think it’s going to do much good, you talking to her. Let me work on her.”
“No. Let me—” started Evelyn, but Andrea had already disconnected. Let me talk sense into her.
Evelyn dropped the phone back in her purse and wondered: had there been another text from her daughter? She resisted the urge to check and made her way back to the bar, practicing what she would tell Miss Erish: that Andrea was having a talk with Amy… or that Amy was out of sorts… or that Amy had simply proven ungrateful, unsuitable, and that Evelyn wished she could say otherwise… Evelyn had no easy thing to say, and she worried.
As it turned out, she needn’t have. When she rounded the corner, floor lamps made lonely pools of light in the dim space, while behind the bar a young man fussed over a tray of glasses. As for Miss Erish, and Leslie, and Bill, they were nowhere to be seen.
Evelyn returned to the sofa and chairs where they had been sitting. She sat down in the spot where she had been earlier—the spot between Miss Erish and Leslie. The cushions to her right still held Miss Erish’s cinnamon-clove scent. Was the cushion where Leslie sat still warm? Evelyn’s hand lingered there.
“We’re closed,” said the bartender. “Bar opens at three.”
“I know,” said Evelyn. “I was here earlier. Did you see where my friends went?”
The bartender shook his head. “Haven’t seen anyone,” he said. “You’re welcome to sit there,” he added a moment later when Evelyn didn’t move.
She pulled her phone from her purse. There were no new messages on it. Not from Miss Erish. Not from Leslie, or Bill, or Andrea. Not from her daughter.
She began to compose a text—to her daughter, at her home. Not at home. She would likely be on her way to school now: on the bus, heading along the township road to the middle school.
I LOVE YOU, she texted. She didn’t send that one right away. She wanted to add something to it: I DO THIS FOR YOU, maybe. I CANNOT STOP IT was probably more to the point, or WE ALL MUST PAY OUR DEBTS. But her daughter wasn’t ungrateful, selfish Amy—and Evelyn was in no position to chide or even invoke a guilty conscience in her child. Evelyn’s daughter was blameless.
She pressed SEND.
Red flashing lights inched across the highway, but it was hard to tell more than that: the snow flew thick over the river, swirling in eddying winds. Andrea and Amy would not be back soon in that, not both nor one nor the other.
Evelyn texted Leslie next: WHERE R U
She waited a few minutes and thought about texting Miss Erish but couldn’t quite, so she gathered her things and left the bar. She hurried through the lobby to the elevator, and from there to the meeting room where they were all to have met that morning.
There was no note tacked to the door. It was shut but not locked, and when Evelyn opened it, she was assailed by the smell of ammonia. She saw that the dry-erase board had been turned to the wall. A housekeeper was wiping the conference table down, bucket on the floor beside her.