The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

My camera hunts for, and then finds, Maddie, who has settled in the beanbag chair, knees knocking together, looking up at me with her head cocked to one side. She’s smiling in a way that suggests maybe I’m not as bad as she thought.

“Anarcho-syndicalist fregan,” the wisp says through another mouthful of something that I don’t want to see. She’s started vamping for the camera now, sticking her tongue out, turning one shoulder this way and peeling an edge of T-shirt down to reveal a burnished expanse of tattooed skin.

“What’s fregan?” I ask, zooming in to capture the vamping.

She fixes me and my camera in a glare so deadly the pixels seem to vibrate.

“You don’t usually bring me such stupid delivery boys,” she sniffs to Maddie.

Maddie laughs, hoisting herself out of the beanbag, comes over, plucks my T-shirt, and says, “Come on. You promised to buy me breakfast.”

“I did?” I swivel my camera around and train it on her face.

“Yep. Don’t you remember?” Her hand has closed over my upper arm with surprising strength, and she’s started to drag me bodily away. I wonder if Maddie is rescuing me. Like she can tell how nervous I am.

“Bye-bye, delivery boy!” the wisp slurs. I guess the beer is hitting her. She’s pretty small, after all. “Come back later and you can film me some more. If you know what I mean.”

“Shut up, Janeanna,” Maddie calls over her shoulder, hustling me through the vacant living room and down the hall. Through my camera lens everything is confusion and darkness, and then suddenly we’re back outside under the hot summer sun.

Maddie hauls me along as my feet scramble not to trip and I try to stuff the video camera back safely into its bag. A taxi honks as we tumble into the street.

“Hey,” I say. “Wait up.”

“Hey, yourself,” she says. “I want eggs.”

“Eggs? Eggs aren’t vegan.” I’m pleased with myself. I hooked up with this girl in Madison for two glorious weeks last summer who was vegan. She didn’t eat dairy or eggs. She wouldn’t even eat honey. It used to really piss her off when I teased her about caring for the feelings of insects.

Maddie rolls her eyes so hard I can almost hear it.

“Fregan, Wes. God.”

“Yeah, but what’s fregan? Nobody’s told me yet,” I point out.

“It means vegan, unless it’s free. You’re buying, so it’s free. I want eggs. Also, this place is fair trade, so it’s okay. Come on.”

When I look up I see that we’re now in SoHo. The sidewalk is six deep in tourists, skinny girls in little sundresses and huge bug-eye sunglasses. It’s hard to believe the burned-out shell of Maddie’s squat is five minutes away.

“Maddie?”

“Hmmm?”

“I didn’t think they still had squats on the Lower East Side,” I say. It’s all Disneyland now, Dad opines in my mind. A movie set for people who’ve watched too much cable television. You should have seen it when I was there.

She laughs through her nose, steering me into a cavernous natural foods restaurant and then to a booth in the back. It’s the first time today I’ve been in air-conditioning, and the sweat immediately evaporates from my skin, making my scalp tingle with relief.

“Yeah, well.” She shrugs, propping her knees up on the edge of the table and looking with interest at the menu. “It’s not really a squat, exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

A quick scan of the menu reveals that buying breakfast for me and Maddie is going to set me back at least twenty dollars. A twist of anxiety lodges in my stomach, which is already full of pizza anyway.

I just won’t eat, then. It’s fine.

“It kind of belongs to Janeanna.” Maddie shrugs. “Her dad’s a developer? His company bought the shell. They’re going to tear it down pretty soon. So we sometimes stay there. There’s sort of a group of us that comes and goes. Everybody contributes. Everybody’s welcome if one of us vouches for you. A collective. Like I said.”

“Huh,” I remark. “So Janeanna’s, like . . .”

Maddie glances up at me with arched eyebrows under her bangs.

“What?” she challenges me.