Help for the Haunted(83)

“Tell you what, Sylvie. If you stay here and keep an eye out, I’ll walk down to that bodega and see if I can get us some sandwiches and sodas. Would you like that?”

I hadn’t eaten anything since leaving the house that morning, so I told him lunch sounded like a good idea. Before getting out, Heekin instructed me to stay put and keep the doors locked. I watched him grow smaller in the reflection of the side-view mirror until he disappeared into the bodega.

Alone, I did my best not to think of the last time I’d been instructed to wait in a car by myself. I stared down at the floor of Heekin’s car, thinking of my mother sitting in that very same seat, nudging soda cans away from her feet while turning the pages of that swatch book plucked from the pile behind the hardware store. If she really was as tired of their work as Heekin said, it made sense that something as ordinary as a book of wallpaper samples would excite her. I remembered her showing that book to me, making no mention of her excursion with Heekin, simply turning the pages, gazing at the bursts of colors and designs with a kind of wonder in her eyes.

“Each has a mood, the way each person has a personality,” I remembered her saying. “Which would you be, Sylvie?”

“You mean, which would I want for our kitchen?”

“No. Which would best match who you are?”

The sharp and sudden sound of knuckles banging against the car window startled me. I looked up to see a man with a withered face and long yellow teeth that made me think of old piano keys. He made a rolling motion with his fist, wanting me to lower the window. Instead, I made sure my door was locked then glanced back for some sign of Heekin. The most I saw were the faded flags above the door of that bodega.

I figured the man outside the car wanted money, and I nervously waved him away. He stayed put, though. On the other side of the glass, I heard his muffled voice say, “Sylvie?”

My name passing those wrinkled lips should have allowed me to relax, but it only left me more nervous. “Yes?” I offered in a tentative voice.

His mouth began moving again, but the shhhh made it difficult to piece together all that he was saying. At some point, he must have read the confusion on my face, because he stopped talking and made that winding motion with his fist again. At last, I cranked the window down a couple inches. “That’s better,” he told me. “A little anyway. You are Sylvie, right?”

“How do you know my name?”

“That’s what I was trying to explain. I know your uncle. Knew your father too when he was young, before he went off and got famous. Before— Well, I wasn’t exactly the nicest to him back when he was a kid. He probably never mentioned me.”

As he spoke, the stories in Heekin’s book came back to me. “Are you . . . Lloyd?”

He let out a breath, smiling with those piano key teeth. “You got it. I wouldn’t have known it was you out here, except I saw that reporter and remembered him from when he came poking around months back. I was with Howie when you called earlier. Put two and two together. Anyway, bingo. Hello there, Sylvie.”

“Hello,” I said, warmer, though not lowering my window any farther.

“Guess I’ll get to the point. Howie wouldn’t appreciate me doing this, but if you want to see him, I suggest you come with me.”

“Come with you where?”

“Easier if I just show you.”

In the side-view mirror, there were only those flags above the bodega door. I imagined Heekin inside, watching a clerk smear mustard on our sandwiches or roaming the narrow aisles in an effort to excavate something edible among the cigarettes and magazines. “If you don’t mind, I’ll wait until that reporter gets back so he can come too.”

Lloyd looked down the block, making a tapping sound with his tongue against his teeth. “Try seeing your uncle with that guy in tow, and things aren’t going to go so great. Tell you that right now. Howie doesn’t want to talk to reporters. Especially that one.”

“Why doesn’t he want to talk to him?” I asked, even though what I most wanted to know was why he didn’t want to talk to me.

“Better off letting him do the explaining. If that’s what you want, come with me.”

I studied Lloyd outside the car—his thick fingernails, chipped and worn and yellow as his teeth. Hadn’t he been one of the people to laugh at my father? “Why are you here?” I couldn’t help but ask.

Lloyd shifted his feet, kicking one of his work boots against the curb. Having this conversation through the narrow opening of the window frustrated him, I could tell. But he didn’t say anything about it, leaning forward instead, putting a hand on the roof of the Beetle. “Back when your grandparents were alive, I was the maintenance person around this building. I hung on to the job even when it became a different sort of place. Now that Howie’s back, I’m still here. So like I said, I’m making you the offer before your reporter friend shows up again. You want me to take you to your uncle or not?”

Some instinct warned me not to trust him, to roll up that window and wave him away as if he really were a vagrant begging for money. Even as those thoughts filled my mind, however, my hand reached for the door handle and pushed it open.

Outside the car, I saw that Lloyd was smaller than I realized, not much taller than me, in fact, with a loose belly and long, monkeyish arms that dangled at his sides. Rather than say anything more, he simply motioned with one of those arms. We walked back across the street, and I thought he might pull a key from his paint-splattered jeans for one of the doors out front. Instead, he went to the alley around the side. Before stepping into the shadows, I glanced down the block to see if I might catch a glimpse of Heekin exiting the bodega, our lunch in his hands. No sight of him, though. Considering that I’d dragged us there on what amounted to a lie, and he’d already been kind enough to forgive me, I knew it was wrong to wander off. But it seemed too late to turn back.