“Why don’t I meet you somewhere?” she said, her voice righting itself. “We can get you two out of that car, find you something to eat.”
“Sure, we’re about past ready for that,” he said, again seeing her dark hair, eyes. She mentioned a pizza place near the hospital, off Broadway Avenue.
He wondered how he might help Elise, his mother. They were in a fix. Chance had intervened and he was being asked to set things right. He looked in the backseat and Alice had fallen asleep. Her eyelids twitched, dreaming.
He and Alice parked near the L station at Wilson and Broadway, not far from the hospital. Michael wanted to get his prescription filled before meeting Elise. He’d already gone through the few tabs he’d taken from his dad. It was lunchtime, and bundled-up people hustled back and forth, off buses and into the station. The L rattled overhead, and a dusting of snow fell on them. On Broadway, he saw a tall sign that read WIGS AND HAIR. They found the pharmacy a half block away. He told Alice she could pick out a toy, something small, while he did business with the pharmacist, who looked over her glasses at him with distrust after he handed her his forged prescription. “Texas, eh?” she said. He needed a cigarette. The front door bell chimed. Otis Redding sang over the intercom. Michael smiled stupidly, told her they were here for a visit with Grandma. “Long way from home,” the pharmacist said doubtfully, but smiled anyway. She looked off down an aisle where Alice was playing with some stuffed animals and a plastic dinosaur. Behind Alice, a large black woman in silver snow boots was talking with a stock boy. The pharmacist said she’d have to call the doctor for approval. Common practice for out-of-state script. It might take a little while, she said. The person who’d sold him the prescription—a bicycle mechanic with a radio voice—was supposed to answer on the other end of the phone, rattle off a combination of numbers that would lower the volume in his head.
Afterward, they walked a half block away to the pizzeria, where they’d meet Elise. It was snowing more heavily now. He held Alice’s hand. The pizzeria was also a convenience store, which seemed right somehow. A Middle Eastern man with an impassive face sat behind a counter window. Small liquor bottles lined the shelf behind him. The room smelled of baked pizza crust. Chairs, tables, and a video arcade room were wedged into the back. Alice wanted to play the games, so he got quarters for her and struck up a conversation with the Middle Eastern man. Because of his accent, Michael didn’t catch much of what he said, only that his children were attending Loyola.
The front door chimed. A young woman in a parka came in, and he went up to her, thinking she might be Elise, but she didn’t speak English. She looked away. She paid for her pizza and left.
He felt the Vicodin begin to work away at the edges of things.
The arcade games made pinging and squawking noises.
He asked the Middle Eastern man if he’d seen a dark-haired woman, early twenties. Tall.
“Your girlfriend?” the man asked without a smile.
“No,” Michael said. “My sister, actually.” He looked off at Alice, feeling suddenly close to Elise but knowing it was the pills. “My stepsister,” he said, correcting himself. The baked warmth of the room pressed in. Alice made a disappointed sound in the little arcade room.
“You have other siblings?”
“Yes. A brother,” Michael said. “But he died.”
“Unfortunate,” the man said, and nodded. He seemed about to say something else, but the phone rang in the little pizzeria window at the back of the room and the man held up a finger and went over to answer it.
“Michael?” a woman’s voice said, and he turned.
Elise was shorter than he thought she’d be—different from what he remembered of his mother’s descriptions. Her eyebrows dark, thick. Blue eyes. Her short hair and wool hat made her look boyish. Pretty in a way that made him uneasy.
They ordered a pizza and sat at a table in the back. Alice joined them and said she was out of quarters. She sat beside Elise and drew on some stationery that Elise pulled from her purse. “How do you spell ‘My Little Pony’?” Alice asked Elise, and Elise wrote it out for her in purple-crayoned letters. Other customers gathered at tables. The room grew pleasantly warm.
Elise filled him in while they ate pizza. Mentioned her father’s shortness of breath at her graduation the night before, his mother’s concerns. His mother’s hands shaking so badly that the cabbie thought she was the one who was ill. Elise had joined them both at the hospital. There was a vagueness to all of it, Michael thought, that only left-out people could feel.