Passenger(52)

The woman and child leave through another open archway. I cannot tell if they are deliberately avoiding me or if this is just their natural flow. I follow nonetheless. Here, tallow light spills across the lacquered hardwood flooring. My own reflection is in startling evidence on the overly shiny floor; I look up and down at myself simultaneously. Thunderous applause erupts outside along the balcony and the carolers strike up a new song. My feet, weighted with cement blocks, are too obvious in the noise they make on the floor. Yet the woman and child do not seem to notice. Across the room, the woman is bent to the child’s height. She is explaining something to him, pointing up at a framed oil painting that takes up nearly half the wall. It is a painting, I believe, of Odysseus fighting the Cyclops. Tremendous, all of it. I loiter, farther back, Jack the Ripper-like, my head forced toward the floor, my left shoulder brushing up against the wall, pretending I am invisible. I watch the woman’s profile as she talks to the child. That profile. Then, as the child responds, I watch his profile as well. Those profiles…

Because I know them.

Or because I think I do.

Then they are gone again, slipping out into the white hall. I follow again, but the distance between us has given them ample time to formulate an escape. They are gone, gone, disappeared among the crowd. Below, the carolers chant a new song. I do not recognize it. Many people watch from the balcony. I lean against the balustrade and peer over the side, watching the swarm of colors below, sporadically scanning the crowd for the lost mother and child.

Vanished.

Vanquished.

From down in the lobby, Nicole waves to me. I wave back and manage a smile.

Downstairs, we crowd around one of the tables, pressing our chairs close to each other to hear ourselves speak over the singers.

“You look winded,” she says.

“You’re late,” I joke.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Not yet,” I say. “It’s not midnight.”

“Here,” she says, and a square white box materializes on the table before me. “Don’t wait for midnight. Open it now.”

The gesture takes me aback. “Nicole…”

“I wanted to.”

“I feel horrible.”

“Don’t,” she says. “It’s Christmas. Or almost is Christmas.” She rolls her eyes. “Anyway, open it.”

It is fitted with a thin red ribbon. I pull the ribbon apart and lift the box lid. Inside, centered on a square of cotton, is a military-style dog tag on a chain. It is engraved with Nicole’s name and address.

“Hey,” I say, picking it up. “Wow. What…?”

“So you can stop writing cryptic phrases on your hand,” Nicole tells me. “Wear it. Always. This way, if you ever forget again, you’ll come straight to me. And I’ll tell you who you are.”

“Who am I?”

“Well, we haven’t figured that out yet.”





Ding, dong! Ding, dong!

Song of good cheer,

Christmas is here…





“What ever happened to the girl at the bar who tried to commit suicide?”

“She lived. Timmy said he’ll have her back at the bar as soon as she’s able.”

“What a sad thing.”

“Hmmm.”

“That guy Tate saved her life.”

“Hmmm.”

“What is it?” she says, cognizant of my disinterest.

I shake my head. I am still thinking of the mother, of the child. “Nothing.” The world seems to be caught in a loop. “They already sang this song.”

Later, we walk the cold streets among a sea of people. A hazy mist surrounds the full moon. When it starts to flurry, people clap and some of the children cheer. We make our way to the Washington Monument just as its drape of lights is lit. The mayor speaks a few words and there are fireworks.

She says, “I grew up in New York City, an only child. My father was a surgeon and my mother was an attorney and we lived in an expensive brownstone and had people come in three times a week to clean the place. One of the women who cleaned for us, a Hispanic woman, would sometimes bring her son, Guillermo. He was a toddler, a tiny little thing with wandering black eyes, and he called me Fantasma, which means ‘ghost’ in Spanish, because my skin was so white next to his. I would dress him up in my old clothes and he would run around the house saying, ‘Mama! Soy Fantasma, soy Fantasma!’

“We had neighbors called the Singhs next door to us and they kept chickens on the roof of their building, locked up in these wire-mesh cages. In the summer, you could hear them clucking and fussing about if you had the windows open. Could sometimes see feathers fall lazily past your windows on breezy days, too. The Singhs had a boy my age named Vijay, and we became friends. One summer, he took me up to the roof to see the chickens. ‘Look, Fantasma,’ he said, because he had adopted the name from little Guillermo, as had most of neighborhood kids after a time. He opened one of the wire-mesh coops and this thing—this chicken—struts out and flutters its wings and stands all funny on one skinny chicken leg. It was a brownish-red with a white underbelly. Also, it had no head. Its neck ended it a thumb-shaped stump, and there were no feathers, just the pink, puckered little scar tissue and a hole—an opening—that looked…well, it looked pretty much like an anus.”