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William had already found gifts for everyone in his family except his mother. So he stopped at a Salvation Army a few blocks from the hospital, where he spotted an enormous and truly heinous pink vase covered in golden chrysanthemum blossoms, on sale for five dollars. The gift itself wasn’t as important as how little he’d paid for it. Any present that came from a retail store she’d return later and then complain about how much money he’d spent. Always she had seen the exact same item for a tenth of the price at some church sale just a few weeks earlier.
As a boy, he had once spotted a beautiful silk kimono on sale at the gift shop of the Guggenheim, where he was taken on a class trip to see an exhibit on Eastern Art. He’d sold his collection of Aqualad comic books to Mi-cha Yu so he could buy it. But then Christmas morning arrived and his mother opened the gift. “What is this?” she’d asked, so he’d told her, “A kimono” and she’d given him a withering look. “Kimonos are Japanese. We are Korean.” She’d dragged him all the way back to the Upper East Side to return it, but since the Eastern Art had gone out and the Monets had come in, they no longer stocked the kimonos. Furious, his mother had flung it deep into a guest-room closet, where it hung still.
William walked down Third Avenue with the vase under one arm for blocks and blocks, trudging over the snow that was still unshoveled in many places. As cold as he was, William kept on walking without fully thinking about just where he was heading, though his feet seemed to have some idea. The storefronts were quiet; the roads were empty. It wasn’t often, he thought, that you got to have the city to yourself.
By the time he realized where his feet were taking him, he was far closer to Fourth Street than to the hospital, where he knew he ought to turn around and go. Something about the way that she had taken his Iliad off the shelf had struck him, as if it actually belonged to her. Without thinking, he had found himself lifting the keys from her purse while the doctor had been explaining the chemotherapy to her. He’d thought he could surprise her — run inside, despite the bug-bombing, and bravely grab a bag of clothes to wear to dinner that evening. She couldn’t show up wearing William’s old blue jeans and a necklace made from a curtain chain. As he came down Avenue A toward her block, he told himself that she’d be delighted.
But by the time he got to her building, he knew he was kidding himself. Irene would surely not appreciate what he was about to do, but his mind was unquiet with questions. Where was she from, and why had she run away? The thought that maybe she had been abused, or worse, was difficult to push aside — even though she’d assured him it hadn’t been that. Who was “Alis-ahh”? Had he even heard her properly? Was she one of these girls that she claimed to have slept with?
Irene’s building was a crumbling brownstone with trash cans around the entrance that were chained up and overflowing. The ground floor windows were covered with boards, and the boards were covered in long-faded concert posters. He opened the door and walked up three flights of crooked stairs; the railing became more bent the higher he climbed. Hadn’t she said her whole building was being fumigated? There was no sign on the front door, and he could hear people in the other apartments. He climbed all the way to the fifth floor and came to her door, expecting to find a department of health sticker, or caution tape on the knob, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. The cheap vase still tucked under his left arm, he slowly unlocked the door and stepped into Irene’s apartment.
Looking around, William could see haphazardly discarded blankets and workout clothes heaped on the floors and over the top of the bathroom door. The apartment was filthy, from the overfilled sink to the paint-peeled ceiling. He stepped over the remains of a Sunday Observer and several brown boxes filled with flea market objects: glittering marbles, rusty doorknobs, a tangle of wiring, old movable type letters, several novelty wristwatches, bookends shaped like cartoon faces, dozens of Barbie dolls still in their individual packages, empty mirror frames, children’s soccer trophies, and a plethora of silk flowers. He was just about to ask himself what on earth it was all for when he saw the far end of the room.
The end nearest the window was relatively cleared of junk. It seemed to be a working area. Sketch pads lay open on a low coffee table, with pages covered by rough lines of blue ink. Against the paint-flecked walls of the apartment were perhaps a dozen paintings of different cities and landscapes, neatly stacked from smallest to largest. Badlands and prairie grass. Arching, shadowy bridges and marshes at twilight. An Albuquerque desert and an icy Alaskan plateau. Against the opposite wall were several half-finished collages and combines, made from odds and ends. Marbles, painted like eyeballs, were pressed into putty, numbers and bits of maps were connected by hairy bits of yarn, above a backdrop of still, mounted butterflies and gigantic death’s-head moths. It was all assembled on a heavy plywood base. William thought it looked like a corkboard belonging to an elegant serial killer.
William looked through a few of the dresses on the floor but couldn’t tell which, if any, were clean. He noted her size on one of the labels, thinking that if he just bought her a new one, he wouldn’t have to admit he’d broken in. Didn’t you have to put things away if someone was spraying for bugs? Wouldn’t it smell weird, only half a day later? The more he thought about it, the surer he was there had never been a pill fly infestation. But why had she lied to him? If she had just wanted to come over, she hardly had to make up a reason. She must have known that.
Just then he saw a box wrapped in white ribbon, with a card on top that said “For William.” He picked it up and gently shook it, but there was no rattling inside. What could it be? Should he have bought something for her? He wanted to open the box, but then she’d surely know he’d broken into her apartment, so he set it back down where he’d found it.
His eyes fell on a brass birdcage by the window that was filled with jewelry boxes. He stepped lightly over to the cage and carefully searched for any kind of door. Puzzled, he reached through the bars, but they were barely spaced enough for a single finger to go in and fish out an earring or a necklace.
“How the hell did you get the boxes inside?” he asked the empty room.
Then, just as he was about to back up again, he noticed a small book covered with soft black leather, wedged between two of the jewelry boxes. He tried to snag the book, but no matter how he tipped or turned it, it wouldn’t pass between the cage’s bars. Sweating despite the pervasive chill in the apartment, he stood on his tiptoes to try to make out what was inside. If he squinted, he could just see what appeared to be — yes, names and addresses! An address book! Perhaps, somewhere inside there was an entry for an Alissa or an Alicia or an Alis-ahh.
Where on Earth are you from? he asked as he tried to flip the pages through the bars. Who are you? Then the book slipped a bit from his hand, and a half-dozen black-and-white photographs slipped out and fluttered to the bottom of the cage. There were some old train ticket stubs in there too. William felt around to gather them. Baby photos? Old school photos? A bucktoothed, no-eared middle-schooler, not yet run away from home? William had to crane his neck awkwardly in order to see clearly, but by bracing his foot against the windowsill, he was able to inch upward a little further and get a good look at — Irene’s naked body.