The sound of glass rattling against metal caused her to look to her right. Someone was rooting through the trash can. They were wearing a long woolen coat beneath a blanket that kept slipping, its ragged edges trailing on the damp ground.
She crossed her arms and legs, hugging herself closer, trying to ignore the fear that was rising inside her. She called up the memory of Kath’s mouth against hers as they kissed beneath the stairs at the club. Last night. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel Kath there.
She heard footsteps coming from her left. They slowed down, and then someone sat on the bench beside her. She blinked her eyes open as a man said, “Nay ho, little girl.”
He was lanky and scraggly looking, with an unshaven chin and a stink about him, and she realized he was trying to speak to her in Chinese.
The fear she had been trying to keep at bay flooded through her. She jumped up and ran, and she heard him calling after her, laughingly, “I’m not gonna hurt you, China doll. Just saying hello. Nay ho, nay ho!”
Her skin crawled and she ran faster, leaving the park behind as she fled uphill. Coit Tower loomed in the distance. She remembered leaving Tommy’s party with Kath that night, Coit Tower a candle behind them as they emerged from Castle Street.
Castle Street. Lana and Tommy lived there at number forty-something.
The idea was so startling, and it felt so right that she almost laughed out loud. But her relief was short-lived; she suddenly remembered that the Chronicle had said Tommy had been arrested. She was probably in jail.
But Lana might be there, and Lana would know what to do.
Lily glanced up at Coit Tower, trying to remember where it had been in relation to Lana’s apartment. North Beach wasn’t that large, but it wasn’t her neighborhood. At the next corner store, she went inside and asked the man behind the counter where Castle Street was. He gave her a funny look, but he also gave her directions, and then she headed up the steepest part of Green Street, passing slivers of dark alleys on her left—one of them might have been the one that Kath had pulled her into—and then there it was.
She turned onto the block and started studying the building numbers. She was afraid she wouldn’t recognize Lana’s building, but when she came to it, she was certain. She remembered the front stoop and the way the curtains hung over the window. Light shone through a crack in the curtains. Someone was home.
She hesitated. There were plenty of reasons she shouldn’t knock on the door. Lana barely knew her. She would be a virtual stranger showing up like a beggar on her front step. And if Tommy was in jail, this had to be a terrible time for Lana. The wind whipped around her, plastering her fog-dampened hair across her eyes so that she had to scrape it aside with freezing fingers.
She had nowhere else to go.
She climbed the three steps and found the button labeled JACKSON and pressed it. She heard it ring. Just when she was about to try peeking through the crack in the window curtains, the door opened.
There was Lana, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, dressed in slim blue checkered pants, a pink sweater, and a pair of red-and-gold Chinese slippers.
Her penciled eyebrows rose in surprise. “You’re that girl from the club—Lily, isn’t it? My goodness, you look like a drowned kitten!” Lana glanced behind her at the empty street. “Well, you’d better come in.”
42
Take off that sweater—you’ll catch a cold,” Lana said. “And leave your shoes there. I’ll bring you a blanket.”
There was a gently compelling quality about Lana, and Lily felt a sense of relief in surrendering to her orders. She peeled off her cardigan and took off her wet shoes and socks, putting them in front of the electric heater. Lana returned from the bedroom with a crocheted purple-and-white blanket, which she wrapped around Lily’s shoulders. She stepped back and gave Lily an appraising look, as if she were examining a rather sad work of art, and said, “Take a seat. I’ll make you something hot to drink.”
“You don’t have to,” Lily said.
“I’ll just reheat some coffee.”
Left alone in the living room, Lily sat down on the rust-colored sofa, tucking her cold feet under the edge of the blanket.
“Do you want cream and sugar?” Lana called from the kitchen.
“Yes, please.”
A pile of unopened mail on the coffee table bumped against a dinner plate stained with the remains of what looked like scrambled eggs. A half-filled ashtray squatted nearby, along with a smudged wineglass, a half-empty bottle of wine, a table lighter in the shape of a nude woman, and a pack of Lucky Strikes. The record player was standing open on the octagonal table in the corner, and a few records were leaning against it on the floor. Only one lamp was turned on, giving the living room a warm, golden glow. It felt different than it had the night of the party—cozier, more like someone’s home—and when she remembered Sal and Patsy dancing together in the small open space between the bench and the kitchen door, it seemed like a strange fantasy.