“You said,” she says, cornering Jerry by the walk-in, “you didn’t remember Jane.”
Jerry groans, rolling his eyes and throwing a tub of butter on the shelf. “How was I supposed to know there was a waitress operating a Jane Su shrine out the back of my restaurant?”
“It’s not—” August takes a squishy step back. “Look, I’m trying to figure out what happened to her.”
“What do you mean what happened to her?” Jerry asks. “She left. It’s New York, people leave. The end.”
“She didn’t,” August says. She thinks about Jane, alone on the train. No matter how angry she is, she can’t stop imagining Jane fading in and out of the line, untethering herself. But she doesn’t really think Jane will forget, not after all this time. Maybe, if she can find proof that there’s hope, she can change Jane’s mind. “She never left New York.”
“What?” Jerry asks.
“She’s been missing since 1977,” August says.
Jerry takes that in, slumping heavily against the door. “No shit?”
“No shit.” August levels her gaze at him. “Why did you tell me you didn’t remember her?”
Jerry huffs out another sigh. His mustache really has a life of its own.
“I’m not proud of who I was back then,” Jerry says. “I’m not proud of the friend I was to her. But I’d never forget her. That girl saved my life.”
“What? Like, figuratively?”
“Literally.”
August’s eyes widen. “How?”
“Well, y’know, we were friends,” he says. “I mean, she was friends with everyone, but me and her lived on the same block. We’d give each other shit all day in the kitchen, and then we’d go to a bar after work and drink a Pabst and talk about girls. But one day she comes into work and says she’s moving.”
“She was?” August blurts out, and he nods. That’s new. That’s not on the timeline.
“Yeah,” he goes on. “Said she’d heard from an old friend she never expected to hear from again, and he convinced her to go. Last time I saw her, it was her last day in town. July of ’77. We went to Coney Island, said goodbye to the Atlantic, rode the Wonder Wheel, had way too many beers. And then she dragged my drunk ass to the Q, and let me tell you what a dumbass I used to be—there I was, drunk as my aunt Naomi at my cousin’s bris, and I walked to the edge of the platform and puked my guts out, and when I got done, I fell clean off.”
August presses a hand to her lips. “Onto the tracks?”
“Right onto the tracks. Biggest dumbass move of my life.”
“What happened?”
He laughs. “Jane. She jumped down and got me out.”
“Holy shit,” August exhales. Typical Jane, throwing herself onto the tracks to save someone else like it was nothing. “And then what?”
Jerry gives her a look. “Kid, do you know what happened in New York in July of ’77?”
She runs through her mental files. Son of Sam. The birth of hip-hop. The blackout.
Wait.
Myla’s voice jumps into her head: But let’s say there was a big event—
“The blackout,” August says. It comes out high and tight.
“The blackout,” Jerry confirms. “I passed out on a bench, and when I woke up, it was fuckin’ chaos. I mean, I barely made it home. I guess I lost her in the chaos, and her bus was first thing in the morning. So that was it. I never saw her again.”
“You didn’t try to call her? To make sure she made it out?”
“You do know what blackout means, right? I couldn’t even get down the street to see if she was at her apartment. Anyway, she lost my number after that. Can’t say that I blame her, after I almost got us both killed. Whole reason I stopped drinking that year.”
August gulps down a mouthful of air.
“And you never heard from her again?”
“Nope.”
“Can I ask you one more question?”
Jerry grumbles but says, “Sure.”
“The place she was moving … it was California, wasn’t it?”
“You know what … yeah, I think it was. How’d you know?”
August throws her apron over her shoulder, already halfway out the door.
“Lucky guess,” she says. On her way out, she stops in the back office and plucks the postcard off the wall.
At a tiny electronics shop a few blocks over, she buys a handheld blacklight and ducks into an alley. She shines the light over the postmark, the way her mom used to with old documents where the ink had rubbed off,