“I was going to include a library,” Alice says, “over here.” She points to the blank corner.
“It’s so strange,” he says, without meaning to say she is strange. Maybe she doesn’t care. “I love it,” he says in a firm voice.
“Sixteen dollars,” Alice says, now red-faced, pushing some buttons.
James shuffles through his wallet again and finds a ten and two fives. He gives them over and watches her count out the change. Her hands move with practiced confidence at the cash drawer. But when she gives him the money, her fingers shake.
“Alice,” James says, “would you go on a date with me? Hypothetically, I mean—”
“I don’t know.”
“So you won’t go?”
“My mother would probably want me to.”
“Don’t tell your mother.”
She looks up. Her light brown eyes are unreadable, but he knows he’s said something to interest her.
“I’ll text you,” he says, holding her gaze for a moment before it slides away. But of course she doesn’t have a phone. He struggles for a plan. “Let’s just plan to meet tomorrow, later in the afternoon. Five o’clock. I’ll come here.”
“No,” she says. “My mother will be here.”
“Then meet me at the restaurant. No, wait, not the restaurant.”
There’s nowhere in Haven they’re guaranteed to be alone. Work and home, both Leo’s. But there’s a heady likelihood his father will be at work. “My house,” he says with some pride.
Leaving the store, he peers back through the window. She’s seated on the stool again, opening her sketchbook. He stands on the sidewalk, watching as she bends over the pages.
Alf’s Secret
Walking down the avenue, James remembers long-ago scenes private to him and Alice. It’s winter, their mittens are cold and stiff from making a snow fort, and they’re picking their way through slushy ruts in the back alleys of childhood. It’s a summer afternoon, they’re scrambling up to the train tracks, Alice giving James a penny to place on the track and James scurrying away, pulling her with him as huge, dirty freight cars thunder by. These memories transfix his mind; he can’t visit them with anyone else. Now he imagines the two of them on a date: standing in line together at a movie theater, Alice wearing a short skirt and a turtleneck sweater, dark wool tights. Does she own these clothes, would she even like going with him to the movies?
He’s left behind the hollow-hearted greens. Does he have time to retrieve them? He checks his phone for Dagou’s text, studying Brenda’s address.
A snowball slams into the back of his head. Icy water trickles down his neck. His phone slips from his hands and skitters into a puddle.
“Ching, chong, fuk choyyyyyyyy!”
Scrambling for his phone, he twists to catch a glimpse of his assailants. Two middle school boys, small but fierce. Their skinny faces, bright with trouble and accusation, are familiar. He knows them by their brilliant, slanted light gray eyes and Scandinavian cheekbones. It’s Zack and Cody Skaer. The Skaer cousins have been bullying the Chao brothers since James can remember. Trey, the worst of them and Ming’s middle school nemesis, has inherited the family diner; he claims the Chaos compete with them for customers. Zack is his nephew.
“It’s okay,” says Zack. His pale eyes glitter at James like shattered glass; his freckles stand out even in the dead of winter. “You can fix it. You know how to fix a wet phone? Put it into a bag of rice! Ching, chong!”
“Listen—” James begins.
“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” says Cody.
Voices, friends and other cousins, are calling. Zack and Cody run off.
James turns off his phone, takes out the SIM card, and puts the pieces into his pocket. Then he straightens to watch them all run down the avenue, little Zack trailing the fleeter, taller boys.
In ninth grade, James and Don Skaer came to a truce. James let Don copy his homework, and Don offered James his cigarettes, plus once an actual blunt, which James tried to smoke, because he enjoyed standing with someone behind the school on a November day. The difference between himself and Ming, he thinks, is that Ming was once enraged by the fake kung fu sounds and he himself was not. Maybe James wasn’t angry because he couldn’t understand Chinese any better than these boys; it was all Greek to him, as Ming said. It was Ming, fluent in Mandarin, who was infuriated, ashamed, and, therefore, a true target.
James plods through the snow, searching for Brenda’s house. Letter City was once inhabited by the working Czech community of Haven. Now it’s the kind of neighborhood where some residents stay put forever while some move in and out so frequently that you can’t keep track of who lives where. There are narrow backyards abutting narrower alleyways. The houses are quite small, but each has its own porch and small front yard, close to the sidewalk. Now and then James passes a bungalow lavishly festooned with Christmas lights, but most are dark. The unplowed streets are almost impassable. He turns into a windless back lane, unnamed and rarely used. The snow is shallower here but there are no paw prints. Why did Dagou send him on this errand? His thoughts are interrupted by clear chimes, the bells of the nearby church, St. Ludmila.
James remembers he’s been here before.
He must have been eight or nine years old. He came this way with Leo on Mondays off. He recalls his father beckoning him with a jerk of his chin and the two of them heading out, hand in hand down the alley. James closes his eyes. There’s the sound of church bells, the odor of melting earth, old dog shit, and rotting chestnuts. He and Leo standing at a back gate. His father’s hand twitching around his, his breath whistling through the warm spring air with taut anticipation. They had come to visit his friend Sharon, a woman with curly yellow hair and ringing laughter. James understands, just now, that the woman, Sharon, was one of his father’s lovers. It was the dog in him. He wonders how much his mother knew about Leo’s wanderings. She must have known. James makes his way through the snow, down one block, then the next. It’s barely possible to recognize the back side of some houses by their size and color, glowing faintly in the snow: peeled white, slate-gray, dull brown, blue siding. The colors are the same in back as in the front, but the back sides reveal bulky additions, sheds, cellar doors, air-conditioning units, satellites, and laundry lines; they are the secret sides of the houses.
He turns left into a parking area held in common by two somewhat shabby gray bungalows. He checks the address, steps onto the porch, and knocks on the door.
Footsteps, quick and firm. The door opens and fills his eyes with soft gold light. A dog darts from this radiance. James bends toward him and with a yip, Alf leaps onto his snowy knees.
Alf, warm and starry-eyed, wriggles up to lick him. James leans over with relief to grab the wagging dog. The door opens wider. A rush of warmth, the scent of spiced candles. A musical voice cries, “James!”