Before You Knew My Name (44)

Ruby nods, then shakes her head. ‘I think I can understand that,’ she says, though it comes out more like a question.

‘You know how magicians take people who are whole and saw them in half, Ruby? Think of what I do as a reversal of that trick. I take broken people and put them back together again.’

Lennie does another wand-wave of her fork, sweeps it across the table—‘Ta-DAH!’—making Ruby jump in her chair.

Lennie immediately sets her fork down.

‘I’m so sorry, Ruby. I don’t mean to be flippant about this stuff. I’ve been doing this so long, I forget it’s not everyone’s idea of normal.’

Normal.

Ruby laughs at the word, but the sound comes out brittle, breaks when it hits the air between them. She wants to tell Lennie that normal feels like a foreign country these days. Wants to say she knows why the dead need magicians to put them back together again.

Tell her the truth, I am thinking, when something bristles on Ruby’s skin, a gust of cool air in this warm room.

She shudders, and Lennie leans forward in concern.

‘Someone just walked over my grave,’ Ruby starts to explain, and then stops, shakes her head, as if to dislodge something.

Tell her the truth, she thinks.

‘Turns out it’s not so abnormal to me, Lennie. I found the girl. The girl who was murdered in Riverside Park.’

Now it is Lennie’s mouth that pops open.

‘Holy shit. From last week? The case that’s all over the news?’

Ruby nods, and, with Lennie’s coaxing, she begins to talk, letting out everything she has held in these past nine days. The running and the rain and the fear, and those tangled yellow reeds, and the moment she understood she was looking at a young woman’s body. She speaks haltingly at first, but soon the words tumble out of her, a mouthful of rocks covered in dirt and sodden leaves and brown, brackish water, and Lennie, mercifully, does not flinch at the ugliness set down before her. It took her years, she assures Ruby, to get used to seeing the damage people can inflict upon each other.

‘To have it thrust upon you like that. I cannot imagine.’

With Lennie’s quiet understanding as a guide, Ruby continues telling her story. By the time she gets to her awkward meeting with Officer Jennings outside the precinct, she feels as if something has been extracted. Like a tongue curling against the hole where a tooth used to be, she casts about for what is left, and discovers, to her surprise, it is mostly sadness. She is grieving for the girl on the rocks as if she knew her, as if they were friends.

‘It’s so strange, Lennie. The way I can’t stop thinking about her. I thought maybe I was just having trouble processing what happened—it’s why I came to the meet-up tonight, like I might have PTSD or something. But it’s not that, or not only that, at least. I feel … connected to this girl. Deep in my bones. Is that weird?’

‘I don’t think it’s weird,’ Lennie answers without pause, her dark eyes glistening. ‘I’ve come to think that intensity, not time, is what connects us. And what could be more intense than being the one to find her? I’d say the weird part would be if you didn’t feel anything at all.’

They have been talking so long, the lights in the restaurant have dimmed, and chairs have been lifted onto tables. Ruby knows they will have to leave soon, and this new, precious connection will be severed. There is something she wants to know first, something to hold onto when she goes home alone.

‘Is that what happened to you, Lennie? Why you go to a PTSD meet-up, I mean? Because of all the things you’ve seen in your work?’

Lennie considers the question, weighs the intent as if holding it in her hands.

‘Ever notice how it’s only ever women in those boxes?’ she says, finally. ‘The ones that get sawn in half. For a time, it got too much. I saw too many dead girls coming through the door.

‘But Ruby’—Lennie reaches across the table, takes Ruby’s hand, squeezes tight—‘I expect just one would be enough to break your heart.’



The invitation comes through just after 2 a.m. Ruby is awake, going over her night as if untangling a necklace, carefully picking at the chain of events, when the notification dings on her phone.

Dear Ruby,

You are cordially invited to join Death Club at 11 a.m. this Sunday. We will convene at Nice Matin (see map—it’s close to you!), where mimosas and in-depth discussions await. The founding members of the club look forward to seeing you there.



The short message finishes with a quote:

‘The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?’ Edgar Allan Poe



Though the phone number is unfamiliar, Ruby knows, without question, this is the work of Lennie Lau, the dark-haired magician from Brooklyn who puts women and girls back together again. She remembers how Lennie took her hand at the restaurant. What was it she had said? Something about too many dead girls coming through the door. To have met someone who understands this particular type of haunting, the way dead girls can follow you home—Ruby can hardly believe her luck.

And now her mind is racing ahead to Sunday, to this mysterious Death Club and what it might mean. Perhaps this is her chance to find what she’s been looking for. She knows she shouldn’t get her hopes up, not after the PTSD meet-up proved such an ill fit. But, then again, look what came out of that. A new friend, and an invitation. There can be no harm in seeing where this takes her.