The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“Nothing,” I say.

I was going to say So Janeanna’s loaded, but that doesn’t seem like the right thing to say. Gran always told me it was rude to talk about money. Though in New York it seems like money is all anybody ever talks about. For sure it’s all anybody thinks about. I don’t know what is the right thing to say, so I go with, “What’s your dad do?”

Maddie flares her nostrils and focuses more closely on the menu.

“My dad,” she says, “doesn’t do a goddam thing.”

I sit, watching her browse the menu with unnecessary attention, feeling the cool breath of the restaurant air on my skin, realizing that as soon as I think I understand something, I don’t actually know anything at all.

? ? ?

“So what’s your movie?” Maddie asks me. It’s starting to feel normal, hanging out with her. We had an easy breakfast, laughing and making goofy smiles out of orange slices. She’s not as bad as I thought. She’s actually pretty cool.

We’re back outside on the sidewalk, my wallet thirty bucks lighter, and I’m starting to get antsy. I want to get back and edit in the footage from the guy in the pizzeria, and the stuff I took of Janeanna, and Tyler’s been blowing up my phone about something, and anyway, Maddie makes me self-conscious. I don’t get why she wants to be hanging out with me. I mean, she’s got a neck tattoo. She lives on her own in a squat. I’m just some guy.

“It’s a documentary,” I say, shifting my weight and trying to come up with way to escape.

“What kind of documentary? Can I see it?” she asks. She actually sounds interested.

I’ve pulled out my phone and I’m scrolling through all the messages I’ve missed. I come upon the film still I took of Annie and stare at it, not answering Maddie right away. Annie’s hovering, gazing off camera at me. She’s smiling, trying to tell me something. Something pulls at me, in my chest.

“Wes?”

“Huh?”

I glance up and see Maddie waiting for me to answer her, and she looks so genuinely interested and friendly that an immediate wave of guilt and remorse crashes over my head, drips down my body, and puddles around my feet. She’s here, right now. She could’ve ditched me anytime, but she didn’t. Instead she invited me to her weird hangout, and she rescued me from her dissipated rich friend, and then she wanted to have breakfast with me like a completely normal person. Annie’s this girl in my imagination. But Maddie is real. She’s realer than I am, even.

“Know what?” I say with a rush of inspiration. “I’ll do you one better. Come on.”

She giggles as I take her hand. We hurry together down the SoHo streets, elbowing aside people laden with shopping bags, dashing in front of a taxicab as it honks to a halt. We turn down Wooster, laughing, breathless, breaking into a run for no reason, and then I pull her through some glass doors and into a space that is gray and hushed and very, very expensive.

“Welcome to Abraham Mas,” says a young male voice, and then Eastlin is standing there, looking first surprised, then pleased, and then kind of weirded out, presumably because Maddie and I are soaked with sweat and out of breath and laughing and are probably going to get him in trouble.

“Hey!” I grin at him. “What’s up, man? How’s it going? You never texted me back.”

Maddie is stifling laughter behind her hand. A couple of Fifth Avenue blondes pause their browsing nearby long enough to scope Maddie up and down, exchange a look between themselves, and then turn their backs. Eastlin notices, and I see him notice, but he doesn’t say anything.