The Girl in Times Square

Spencer pulled out the stack of lottery tickets out of his wallet. “Twelve. Remember I told you, when I get to twelve, I check them all at once?”

“Yeah … did you win?”

“No, believe it or not.”

“Hmm.”

He took out his notebook, flipped back several pages, and showed her the numbers 1, 18, 24, 39, 45, 49. “But guess what? As I was checking mine, I came across these, from April 18, and they rang a small bell in my head, because I’d seen them before, you see, and I couldn’t remember where, but having searched your apartment, I had written these numbers down in my blotter.”

Lily was quiet for a long time and didn’t look at him. “All right. So? So, there’s a lottery ticket. So what?”

“So what? Lily …” Spencer put his hands, his notebook on the table, staring at her. “Did you … win the lottery?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know if it was the right date.”

“Oh, it’s the right date, all right.”

She didn’t answer. There was no question.

“What’s wrong with you?” said Spencer, and Lily for a moment, just like with her grandmother, didn’t know what he was referring to, so wrong was the feeling of malaise in her own body. “Don’t sit there and pretend that you have no earthly idea what I’m talking about when I say what’s wrong with you?”

“Did you come to deride me? Because I have no energy for it.”

“You have no energy for a lot of things.”

“And how’s that any of your business?” Lily’s face was harsh, angled. “Are we done here? I don’t owe you an explanation, do I?”

Spencer shook his head. “You don’t owe me an explanation, though I would like one.”

“Oh, Spencer.” Lily resisted the impulse to cover her face. “I have no explanation.”

“Did you win the lottery and not claim your ticket? Do you understand why that might seem slightly off the wall to a broke cop making seventy grand a year, talking to a waitress making maybe thirty?”

The sausage soup came. The stuffed cabbage, the Coke, the coffee. They remained untouched between them, as Spencer and Lily sat, she with her hands squeezed under the table, he with his fingers intertwined tensely above it.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Lily finally said.

“Look,” Spencer said. “It’s normal for you to be down on yourself. There is no denying that something terrible’s happened in your life. A young girl disappears, and despite a concerted effort of the New York police, involvement of the FBI, and a private detective, there is no evidence of her. She fell into the earth, she vanished into the air. She left the country. She is dead. She called no one, took no money out, packed nothing, left no note. One day she simply vanished. And we keep going over the same unfertile ground. We have nothing new to say, yet we keep picking at it like an unhealed sore, like the burn on your arm.”

“Detective,” said Lily and broke off. She was hoping her voice would be steady. “What if … how can I go on with my life if Amy—God help me—lost hers?”

“I don’t know.” Spencer wasn’t looking at Lily. “I don’t know how I went on when I lost my wife at twenty-three in a car accident. I didn’t win the flipping lottery, I can tell you that.”

“I’m sorry about your wife.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s been many years, I’ve moved on. But why are you sitting in your room, looking at the four walls, at the six numbers on your cork board?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“So? Make yourself feel better. Paint. Did you do that oil on canvas I saw in your apartment? Of the girl in Times Square? It’s very good. Paint some more.”

“Don’t feel like painting.”

“So go out with your friends, go to a club, go to the movies. Go to dinner. Forget the guy who took your bed, he isn’t worth it. Go out with other guys.”

She shrugged. “Well, look, I’ve just decided that I’m single for a reason and that’s nothing to worry about. Annoying when I have to take the garbage out every Monday and Thursday night. But hey, some poor, desperate soul will find me in the end. That’s the thought I can cling to. And then you get into all the drama of having to be nice to people … who, me?”

“Lily …” he said soothingly, reaching over to touch her hand.

“I admit I’m a little bit stuck. But what about you, detective?”

“What about me? I’m not the point. I have a grown-up life. I’m not twenty-four. I haven’t won eighteen million dollars.”

And Lily wanted to say that she didn’t feel like she was twenty-four either.

49, 45, 39, 24, 18, 1.

“Is it because of her that you haven’t claimed it?”

“Not really.” She didn’t want to look into his face.

“Why then?” he asked. “It goes against human nature. It goes against everything I understand about human beings and I make my living off my gut feelings.”

Lily couldn’t tell him that at the moment she was having some small spiritual difficulties, and she refused to muddle further her already muddled free choices by the temptation of an unsought—and unwanted—miracle. She did not know what kind of life she was supposed to, or even wanted to live but claiming the lottery would remove the choice from her, and even though she was wallowing and foundering and maybe even a little drowning, she didn’t want her Grandma-given, God-given freedoms trampled on in this way. An enslaved heart could not choose wisely—or unwisely. So even though these days she was mostly sleeping—she still wanted to reserve her rights for the just in case.

That is what she was thinking, but to Spencer what she was saying with a careless shrug, was, “I don’t know what to tell you. I just didn’t, that’s all.”

“Why would you not collect your money?”

Lily said nothing.

“Answer me, why?” He raised his voice.

Lily touched the cup of coffee. It was now cold. She motioned the waitress for another cup. But Spencer was still waiting for an answer. “Why are you yelling at me?” she said quietly.

“I want you to give me an explanation I can understand.”

“Detective O’Malley,” said Lily, “no matter how much you want it to, the lottery ticket is not going to figure into Amy’s disappearance.”

Undrunk coffee, uneaten soup, Odessa, August, numb legs, humid heat, noise, feebleness.

And Spencer leaned across the table, and said, “I’m just trying to talk to you, and you’re completely missing my point. Do something besides work and fret. Claim your money, move to another city, give it to the downtrodden, pour it into your brother’s senatorial campaign—anything—” He broke off suddenly, stopped talking, stared at her.

Lily didn’t know how she got up every morning. She had no idea how she was going to make good on her words to Andrew back in spring, when she said she would help him with his campaign.

Spencer was still considering her intently, his mouth mulling.

“What’s the matter?” she said, so tired.