to itself at night.
It’s funny. That’s one big thing out of the way between the four of them, but it’s also a small thing. It makes a difference, but it also makes no difference at all.
Myla hands out bowls, and Wes shuts his book, and they sit on the floor around the steamer trunk and divvy up chopsticks and pass around a dish of rice.
Niko turns up the volume on House Hunters, which they’ve been hate-watching with the cable Myla stole from the apartment next door. The wife of this couple sells lactation cookies, the husband designs custom stained-glass windows, and they have a budget of $750,000 and a powerful need for an open-concept kitchen and a backyard for their child, Calliope.
“Why do rich people always have the worst possible taste?” Wes says, feeding a piece of broccoli to Noodles. “Those countertops are a hate crime.”
August snorts into her dinner, and Niko chooses that moment to whip the Polaroid camera off the bookshelf. He snaps a photo of August in an unflattering laugh, a baby corn halfway lodged in her windpipe.
“Goddammit, Niko!” she chokes out. He crows with laughter and strides off in his socks.
She hears the snap of a magnet—he’s added August to the fridge.
* * *
It doesn’t feel like a Friday that should change everything.
It’s the same as every Friday. Fight the shower for hot water (she’s finally getting the hang of it), cram cold leftovers into her mouth, make her way to campus. Return a book to the library. Sidestep a handsy stranger next to the falafel cart and trade tips for street meat. Hike back up the stairs because her name’s not Annie Depressant and she doesn’t have the nerve to ask about the service elevator inside Popeyes.
Change into her Pancake Billy’s T-shirt. Scrub at the circles under her eyes. Tuck her knife into her back pocket and make her way to work.
At least, she thinks, there will always be Billy’s. There’s Winfield, gently explaining the daily specials to a new hire who looks as scared shitless as August probably did on her first day. There’s Jerry, grumbling over the griddle, and Lucie, perched on a countertop, monitoring it all. Like the subway, Billy’s has been here for her every day, a constant at the center of her confusing New York universe—a dingy, grease-soaked little star.
Halfway into her shift, she sees it.
She’s ducking into the back hallway, checking her phone: a text from her mom, a dozen notifications in the household group chat, a reminder to refill her MetroCard. She stares at the wall, trying to remember if the MetroCard machine at her new station works, wishing she hadn’t had to change her whole commute—
And, oh.
There are hundreds of photos cluttering the walls of Billy’s, mismatched frames bumping together like bony shoulders. August has passed a lot of odd hours between rushes counting celebrities who’ve dined here, the vintage Dodgers photos wedged between Ray Liotta and Judith Light. But there’s this one photo, a foot to the left of the men’s room door, a sepia-toned four-by-six in a blue pearl frame. August must have looked past it a thousand times.
There’s a yellowed notecard stuck to it with four layers of tape, reinforced again and again over the years. In handwritten black ink: Pancake Billy’s House of Pancakes Grand Opening—June 7, 1976.
It’s Billy’s at its most pristine, not a scorched bit of Formica in sight, shot from above like the photographer climbed proudly up onto a barstool. There are customers with blown-out hair and shorts so short, their thighs must’ve stuck to the vinyl. On the left side of the frame, Jerry—no more than twenty-five—pouring a cup of coffee. August has to admit: he was a babe.
But what makes her rip the photo off the wall, frame and all, and fake a bout of puking so she can clock out early with it shoved down the front of her shirt—is the person in the bottom right corner.
The girl is leaning up against the corner of a booth, apron suggesting she wandered out of the kitchen to talk to some customers, the short sleeves of her T-shirt rolled up above the subtle curve of her biceps. Her hair’s chin-length and spiky, swept back from her face. A little longer than August is used to.
Below the cuff of her sleeve, an anchor tattoo. Above that, the tail feathers of a bird. At her elbow, the neat line of Chinese characters.
1976. Jane. A single dimple at one side of her