Girl in Snow(29)

“No,” she says. “It is okay. If I am being very honest, I have not thought enough about it. I’ll let you know later, okay?”

She drops her cigarette on the filthy pavement and stamps out the flame. Pulls her sweat shirt tight and retreats back into her sparkling heart-pound world.



“What’d you bring me today?” Howie asks.

Howie wears a peeling visor and an Ann Arbor sweat shirt he found last January. He leans against his shopping cart, legs crossed, jiggling one bare foot. The first time I saw Howie’s feet, I nearly vomited—they’re swollen. Cracked. So black with grime you can barely distinguish his toes.

“Sorry,” I say to Howie. “Slim pickings.”

I hand him a block of cheddar cheese, the cheap kind that comes by the prepackaged pound. It’s practically plastic, the sort of cheese the patrons of the Hilton Ranch won’t miss. Howie is well acquainted with the lost, back-end contents of the Hilton Ranch’s walk-in refrigerator: the half tub of olives I brought last Thursday, the still-frozen breakfast croissants from the Thursday before.

Howie pulls his cheek to the side with one swollen finger, using his molars to bite into the naked hunk of cheese. Like a sneer. Saliva leaks from the corner of his mouth into his crusty beard.

“Why do you eat like that?”

“Doesn’t hurt as much. You wouldn’t know. All that money your grandma paid for your teeth could feed me for a year, little Celly.”

Howie thinks my name is Celeste—call me Celly. I am an orphan living with my ailing grandmother in the hills (my parents were killed in a tragic car accident). I am nineteen, and engaged to be married to the love of my life. I justify these stories with canned artichokes—like if I leave some offering, I’m allowed to lie.

“Come sit,” he says.

“That’s okay.”

I sat on Howie’s blanket once, last winter. After a few minutes, he reached one nubby finger beneath my ski jacket and into the waistband of my jeans.

“You hear about that girl?” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Pretty girl, she was,” he says. “I saw her picture in the paper. They came talking to me, but I don’t know nothing about her. Pretty girl, she was; pretty girl, I told them. But you know, Celly, my little Celly-girl, she’s got nothing on you.” Howie’s gaze travels from my neck to my boots. His eyelids droop.

This awful habit: trying to see myself through other people’s eyes. This is probably why I visit Howie on Thursdays, adding half a mile to my commute home from the Hilton Ranch. Around the back end of the suburb, past the small patch of forest, is the library, Howie’s shield from wind and snow. I park Ma’s car down the street even though half the time Howie’s eyes are shut and when they’re open it’s impossible to know what he sees.

“How’s your Ed-ward?” Howie asks. He licks his lips with a glazed, lazy hunger.

“Actually,” I say, “I have big news. Edouard and I are leaving in a few months. We’re moving to Paris together before the wedding.”

“Paris, eh?” he says. “Paris, Paris, Par-eee. That’s great for you, Celly; that’s great for you, my Celly-girl.”

I wish I wasn’t such a good goddamn liar. I swear, for the rest of my life I’ll remember how Howie looks now: huddled in the shadow of his shopping cart, gnawing the block of cheese I stole from the Hilton Ranch, swaying back and forth, lost in some fantasy.

Maybe he’s picturing me, in love, in front of the Eiffel Tower. Maybe this makes him both happy and jealous. This might be what I came for.

Then I see it: a painting. It rests between Howie’s shopping cart and the graffitied wall of the library. The bottom is browned and muddy from snow. But even then, her ankles—a ballerina. She’s lacing up her shoes. It’s Lucinda’s Degas, the same image she printed out and taped to the front of her notebook. Not hers, of course. Its long-lost twin.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask, but he’s nodding off, out of it. “Howie, where did you get that painting?”

“Found it,” he says, and his chin lolls against his chest. His eyes sink closed.

The surrounding night feels all-encompassing, so thick it could swallow me. For the first time, I wonder if I’ve spoken with him—Lucinda’s killer, whoever he is. If I’ve sat across from him and had normal conversations, both of us ignorant to the dark in each other. Cameron. Howie. Zap. Anyone. Me, and my stupid spell. I think of the man from Modern Witchcraft, hanging from the ceiling in a house of locked doors. Lucinda, holding her Degas notebook. You don’t even know him; he’s not crazy. And Cameron, standing on her lawn just minutes before she was smacked so hard that she fell and cracked her neck. And of course, Chapter Two: “Signs from the Dead.”

The Image.

A chilly wind slithers between Howie and me. I blow on my hands to warm them. I don’t bother to say good-bye, because Howie is gone, burrowed deep in his demented mind. I slide back into Ma’s freezing car. The simple rumble of its engine is a relief, company. And me? I am glass. A bristle. A stutter.



They’re at the dinner table. Terry has three cans of beer in front of him, which means the meal has already progressed into argument. Amy sits on the couch, curled up with a plate in her lap, earbuds in and bopping her head to her Discman, which is probably playing Kelly Clarkson. The house smells vaguely like Indian food.