The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

For a minute Maddie and I trudge along together in silence. The street is busy now, crowded with people picking up lunch, striding with purpose from one place to another. In New York everyone’s in a hurry all the time.

“I can’t believe she ditched me like that,” I finally grumble, unable to stop myself.

Maddie looks sidelong at me, and then snorts.

“It’s a shocker,” she agrees. “Me? I’m shocked.”

“I’m so screwed. Now I can’t get her to sign my thing. She just ditched me! God!” The complaints crowd out of me, one on top of the other, and only then do I realize I’m actually angry.

“What thing?” Maddie asks lightly.

We’re walking south, gradually wending our way east. And then farther east.

“This stupid release form. It’s not even my film! I don’t know why I care,” I spit. Of course, it’s not the release that’s making me upset. I feel stupid, letting Annie see how much I liked her.

“Show me,” Maddie says, stopping by the gate to an austere cemetery. It looks like nobody’s been in there for a long time. There’s a historic plaque and everything. A marble angel with outspread wings watches our conversation between gnarls of ivy.

I prop my camera bag on my thigh, fish out the crumpled paper, and hold it out for her to inspect. In a glimmer the grocery bag is in my arms and she’s holding the release form.

“Oh yeah. I signed one of these for that guy. Your friend. He was a real dick about it. Got a pen?”

“In there,” I say, nodding at my backpack. The grocery bag is heavy. It smells like all different kinds of leftovers mixed together, Indian and Thai and collard greens and maybe matzoh ball soup. Glass bottles clink around in the bottom.

Maddie pulls out a pen from my backpack, which is somehow now over her shoulder instead of mine, and says, “Turn around.”

Obediently, I turn my back to her.

“What’s her name?” I hear the click of the pen.

“Annie,” I say, and when I say it, something weird happens in my chest and then I’m embarrassed, as if someone might have seen.

“Annie what?”

“Um . . . ,” I stammer, because I have no idea, and yet it seems impossible that I don’t know.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. You’re ridiculous.” I feel the pen press between my shoulder blades, and then Maddie is waving the paper under my nose. “There. Happy?”

It says Annie Cinders in loopy cursive.

“How did you know her last name?” I ask, amazed.

Maddie gives me a coy look. “I didn’t. That’s my last name.”

“Your last name? But what if . . .”

“Oh my God. WES. Nobody cares!”

Maddie shoves my pen in the pocket of her cutoffs and moves off down the street, hot summer sunlight painting white stripes across her shoulders and hair. Her hair looks even blacker in the day than it did the night I met her, like it swallows the light. I have to hurry to catch up. She’s still carrying my backpack over her shoulder. From behind I can see the laurel leaf tattoo wrapping around her neck, coiling up under her hair.

“I guess Tyler won’t know,” I muse. “It’s not like the gallery’s going to check.”

I fish my phone out of my shorts pocket and text Tyler a cryptic note that the paper is signed. Immediately the phone vibrates with a text returned that just says K.

“Tyler. He’s the guy from the other night, right?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I’m getting winded from how fast we’re walking, but I don’t want Maddie to notice.

“He seemed like kind of a tool,” she remarks.

I laugh before I can help myself.

“Yeah, well,” I demur. “He’s got a vision. You know. He can’t let little things like being cool to other people get in the way.”

Now it’s Maddie’s turn to laugh.

“Oh yeah. Me, neither.” She stops, noticing a pizza box on top of an open garbage can. Before I register what’s happening she’s opened the pizza box, discovered half a pineapple pie inside, and hollered, “Score!”