“Janine said that sometimes people don’t come back for years,” I say quietly, catching up. “But it sounds like you were just here.”
“I was,” he says. “My last life finished in 1986 when I was forty-two.” He glanced at me. “Heart attack. When or where we return is one of those things we can’t explain. Sometimes it takes decades, and sometimes just a few years. Pretty random.”
I wonder if I’ll get used to the ever-growing list of questions that don’t seem to have any answers as Griffon stops in front of a stack of singles, staring at the one in front.
“‘Strange Fruit’?” I ask, reading the label.
“Billie Holiday,” he says, with an edge of sadness in his voice. He makes no move to pick it up, just stares at the small black record with the white label.
“You want to get it?” I ask quietly.
He shakes his head. “Too many memories,” he says, and from the way he says it I assume they aren’t all good ones. Griffon looks around like he’s forgotten where we are. “Places like this are hard sometimes.” He takes a deep breath and smiles at me. “MC5, then?”
“I think he’ll like it,” I answer, trying to lighten the mood. “It comes highly recommended.”
We stand in line in front of an older guy with long white hair. He smiles at us, then points at the record I’m holding. “MC5,” he says, his eyebrows raised. “I thought kids your age only liked that hip-hop rap crap that comes blasting out of the cars around here.”
“I think that’s what people said about the MC5 back in ’68,” Griffon answers.
The man laughs from deep within his rather large belly. “True,” he says, nodding. “I imagine you’re right.” His smile causes the wrinkles around his eyes to deepen. “They were good, though. That’s the best live album ever recorded—Detroit, 1968.”
“They had an awesome show at the Fillmore East in ’69,” Griffon says. He glances at me with a tiny smile on his face.
“At the Fillmore, huh?” the old guy says. “I don’t remember any live recordings in New York.”
“I don’t think they made any,” Griffon says. He nudges me with his elbow and points to the cashier. “Our turn.”
We walk up to the counter, leaving the old guy with a confused smile on his face. It’s fun, but strange to be in on Griffon’s little joke. “That wasn’t very nice,” I whisper. “Were you really at that show?”
“Yeah,” he whispers back. “I wasn’t lying. It was awesome.”
I hand over the album and the cashier rings it up. On the counter are some silver pendants hanging on black cords. I pick one up and look at it. It’s a cross with a loop on the top, but it seems really familiar.
“Here you go,” the cashier says, handing me my bag and some change. She sees me looking at the necklace. “You want to add one in?”
Just holding it makes me inexplicably sad, like I’ve just lost something important. “No thanks,” I say, putting it back. I don’t like necklaces in the first place, but my reaction to this one is doubly strange. All I get is a feeling—no visions or memories that might explain it. “I was just looking.”
“That’s an ankh,” she says. “The Egyptian symbol of eternal life. Very mystical.”
Eternal life. A few weeks ago, that wouldn’t have meant anything to me, but now everything is so different. Griffon is watching me closely as I murmur, “Maybe next time.”
We walk out into the blazing sunlight and stand on the sidewalk, trying to decide where to go next. Instead of thinning, the crowds seem to be getting heavier and louder. Griffon squints up the street. “You know what I’d really like?” he asks.
“What?”
He turns and focuses his sharp amber eyes on me. “To be alone with you.”
I smile, releasing the tiny thread of anxiety I’d felt since I arrived. “That sounds perfect.”
Fourteen
As we pull up to his house, the lights are off, even though it’s starting to get dark. “Is Janine gone?” I wonder how she’ll feel about coming home and finding me alone with Griffon in their house. Most mothers wouldn’t deal with that very well, but then, Janine isn’t most mothers, and Griffon isn’t most sons.
“She’ll probably be back later,” he says, not seeming to give it a lot of thought. He walks ahead of me to unlock the heavy front door. “Janine doesn’t sit still for very long.”
We hang our jackets on hooks by the door, and I follow him across the hallway. The house is quiet, and I feel how acutely alone we are in it. Griffon doesn’t say anything, but I know we’re headed up to his room. As we approach the stairs, I hesitate just a tiny bit, but it’s enough for him to notice. “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” I say. More than anything, I want to follow him up the stairs—it’s all I’ve wanted since that day in the café, but a small part of me is afraid of what might come next. I glance up at his broad shoulders and strong jaw, and see something in him that’s older than he appears. More experienced. I wonder how many times he’s been in this situation, how many first times he’s had. He’s right, it isn’t exactly a level playing field, but the pull I feel when he’s near me obscures most of my rational thoughts, and I know that once I climb those stairs, everything might change.
Griffon walks back down two steps until he stands right next to me. Reaching over, he brushes my cheek with his hand and runs his fingers through my hair. He bends down and kisses me softly on the mouth, then traces a line up my cheek, planting gentle kisses on my eyelids. I can feel his hand tremble slightly as he holds the back of my neck, and I force my breathing to stay even as he presses closer to me.
Taking one small step back, he holds my chin in his hand and runs his thumb over my lips. “Never do anything you don’t want to, understand?”
I nod. “I do want to,” I say quietly. “I’ve wanted to be alone with you since the first time I saw you.”
A smile flickers across his face, full of emotion yet unreadable at the same time. “Don’t forget, I saw you first,” he says. He holds out his hand and I take it, letting him lead me slowly up the creaking wooden staircase and through the door to his room.
I’m not sure what I expected, but the room looks like a seventeen-year-old boy lives there. Clothes spill out of his closet and papers lie across a large desk, practically burying a small laptop. Against one wall, a dark comforter has been hurriedly pulled over a queen-size bed. “Nice to see you cleaned up for company,” I say, kicking at an abandoned red T-shirt on the floor.
“Glad you noticed.” Griffon bends down to pick up the shirt and tosses it in the general direction of the closet. “I was hoping there’d be someone up here this afternoon to appreciate all of my hard work.”
The unmistakable meaning of his words makes my stomach flip, and just for a second the thought that I’m in over my head flashes through my mind. “So, pretty much anyone would do?” I ask, trying to make my voice light enough so he won’t guess how much I want something to happen between us, and how terrified I am at the thought that it will.
Griffon stands in front of me, his expression serious. “No,” he says. “Not just anyone.”
I smile what I hope is a mysterious smile and wander over to his desk, looking at the things he keeps, trying to find out what they say about him. I see a spiral pad open to a page covered in pencil drawings. They’re all different views of the same girl. She has long, straight hair that’s tied in a braid over her shoulder and is wearing a Renaissance Faire–type gown. More arresting than what she’s wearing is the fact that her face looks incredibly realistic, her eyes intent on the viewer, as if these are all photos instead of a drawings.