The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

Tyler has appointed himself ambassador to my rube’s awakening in Manhattan. He’s even talking about making me to go a Broadway show, before I leave at the end of summer school. Wicked or something. Except I hate musicals, and I hate heights, and I don’t want to leave, and all I can think about is what’s going to happen when Annie finally puts her cameo ring back on.


I’m supposed to go home in four days. Four days is nothing. Four days to fit in everything I haven’t done. I haven’t walked the full length of Broadway. I haven’t been to a punk show in the East Village. I’ve only been to Brooklyn, like, twice, both times with Tyler. I haven’t been to Yankee Stadium, or Chelsea Piers, and I’ve only been to the High Line once, and it was so crowded I could barely move.

I’ve done everything in Madison a million times. When I think about Madison now, it’s all in tones of gray and beige. New York unspools before me in Technicolor, those saturated reds and blues of expensive film stock and flickering lights. I want to go backstage at the Abraham Mas show and watch Eastlin dress girls of such impossible thinness and beauty they seem almost like insects. I want to go to the gallery in Chelsea and see Shuttered Eyes installed in one of those white rooms with concrete floors that make everything, no matter how mundane, look rare and expensive. I want to collaborate with Tyler on his next film project, and maybe see my own work projected in one of those galleries. I want to see where Maddie moves after the squat she shares with Janeanna gets bulldozed for new condos. I want Tibetan dumplings in Jackson Heights and knishes on the Lower East Side and barbecue in Harlem and congee in Chinatown and pupusas in Washington Heights and eggs at four in the morning no matter where you are. I want Preston Sturges retrospectives at Film Forum and shuffleboard in Brooklyn and EDM in a warehouse in Red Hook that I’ll never find again. I want to live New York City. Not live in it, but live it. I want to be alive, right here. Right now.

It’s what I want most in all the world.

A finger pokes my upper arm, startling me out of my obsessing. It’s Tyler, who says, “Come on. They’re here.”

I turn around and spot two young women with similar faces, both in tattered burgundy dresses and old-fashioned hair, making their way slowly through the crowd. Maddie is leading Annie by the hand, and Annie has her other hand over her eyes like a blindfold. She’s grinning. As Maddie approaches, she presses a finger to her lips to keep us from saying anything.

Tyler fires up the video camera, and Eastlin pushes himself off the wall where he was leaning. We gather around Maddie and Annie.

“Okay,” Maddie whispers. “Keep them closed. Promise?”

“I promise,” Annie says.

A short family, a mom, a dad, and three little kids, all five feet tall or less, circle past us, talking together in Spanish. The mom pushes the glass door open to the observation deck, and a chill breeze blows into the room where we’ve been waiting, carrying with it the sounds of car horns and shouting school children.

“Where are we?” Annie asks.

“It’s a surprise,” Maddie says. “Come on. Eastlin, you help me steer her.”

Eastlin blanches and doesn’t move. It’s funny to me that he’s so suave and jacked, but when it comes to Annie and her . . . situation . . . Eastlin’s afraid.

“Here, let me,” I say, circling my arm around Annie’s waist.

At my touch, Annie catches her breath, and her body shivers against mine.

“Trust me,” Maddie murmurs into her ear. “This is perfect.”

We three walk haltingly to the door. God, I hate heights. I really, really don’t want to be doing this. Tyler steps in close with the camera to catch the expression on Annie’s face, and he bumps into me without really meaning to. It makes something in me snap.

“Will you watch it?” I shout at him.

He glances at me over the eyepiece of his camera, giving me a hurt look. “Yeesh. Sorry.”

Maddie, meanwhile, has pushed open the glass door and is steering us out onto the observation platform, right up close to the fencing that curves up and back over our heads. I swallow to get rid of the sickening dizziness snaking through my body.

“Ready?” she whispers to Annie.