coat buttons, “I was just thinking about time travel on the way here.”
She laughed. “Time travel is so easy! It’s devastatingly easy! All you have to do is live long enough!”
Roman stopped with his arm halfway down his sleeve.
“Listen,” she said. “When I was born, the streets weren’t paved.”
Yale was still thinking about that when Roman said, “But Ranko. We never heard the end.”
Debra opened the door, let the freezing air in. “He showed back up, and his hand didn’t work right, and he killed himself,” she said. “That’s the end of the story.”
Yale and Roman said “Oh” at the same time, Roman an octave higher.
Nora said, “Right in front of me, I’m afraid.”
Debra opened her mouth, and before she could make things worse, before she could announce what an enormous mistake Yale had made, he walked out the door, made sure Roman was following.
* * *
—
Outside Milwaukee, Roman turned off the radio and said, “It’s great that he killed himself.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“It’s a better story this way! And the better the story, the more likely Bill is to include his stuff. If it’s just some random guy, then they’re just cow sketches. But if it’s her love, and he killed himself, then it’s, like, the main story of the collection. When we go back, we’ll get the details! Do you think he shot himself? He must’ve, right?”
Yale’s stomach was a mess, and he needed to put his head down and sleep. He didn’t want to break it to Roman that he’d quite possibly never get the end of the Ranko Novak story, at least not firsthand.
Roman said, “Did you know that when Jules Pascin slit his wrists, he wrote a message for his mistress with his blood?”
“How romantic.”
A minute later Roman said, in a quieter voice, “You know that’s not—last night—that’s not the kind of thing I do.”
“Okay.” Yale kept his eyes on the road, tried to act completely neutral.
“God, I’m so messed up.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” He tried to remember why he’d let it happen, who had initiated it all. The heavy stickiness of that room was still with him, but none of it made sense anymore.
Roman’s face was turned completely away. What good could he even be to this kid? It was January 29, three days past the circled spot on his calendar, and he was heading back to the city, to real life, with everything he still owned in the back of a rental car he’d have to return before dinner. He had a few dates jotted down for Bill, but no scoop on any artists besides Ranko Novak. And he might have just burned their one bridge to Nora. He had no idea where he was spending the night. Roman might have needed a role model, but it sure as hell shouldn’t be Yale.
He said, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to turn the radio up.”
2015
Starting when Claire was eight, she would come in on Saturdays to help Fiona in the resale shop. Fiona had just been made manager, and she still needed to spend twice as long as she would in subsequent years with the balance sheets, the payroll, the ancient and temperamental computer. She’d pick Claire up from ballet and head back to work as the store was closing. Claire would wander, dusting and straightening. She’d come and tell Fiona if a bulb was burnt out, and Fiona would give her a notepad and tell her to write down which one.
Or sometimes it was Claire and a friend, some girl who thrilled at the prospect of walking around an empty store as the streetlights came on outside, pretending to be trapped in an old mansion.
The store was chic and sparse and curated, two floors of artfully arranged living rooms and dining rooms and closets. Sometimes Fiona would ask Claire to straighten up the ladies’ shoes, and Fiona would emerge from the office an hour later to find the high heels sorted by color into rainbow stripes. Just as often, she’d find Claire sitting on one of the couches, staring into the middle distance, not having done a thing Fiona had asked. It didn’t matter much—she’d really just been inventing tasks—but this, Claire’s teachers said, was what she did at school too: Sometimes she’d do her work and sometimes she’d stonewall them, just sit silently drawing trees, impervious to threats of lost recess.
Once, that year, there was a tremendous snowstorm, and Sophia, the friend they’d brought back to the store from ballet,