Leonard was wearing a jean jacket, as he had most days of most years since Alice was born. “Can’t believe you’re sixteen, Al.” He had brought a can of Coca-Cola for the road, which he now opened with that satisfying release of sugary bubble air. On their way out, Alice had glanced at the guardhouse, which looked filled with stuff, as it always had been. The end of last night was blurry except for the barfing, which had been very pink and very gross. Where else had she been for sure? Alice tried to piece it together, like doing a complicated math problem in reverse. “Me neither,” Alice said.
After talking to Sam, Alice had found what she suggested on the floor of her closet: a pair of woolen black sailor pants that had a thousand buttons and a tie in the back, and a silk top that had once been underwear, back when people wore extra layers for no reason and WonderBras didn’t exist. “When you take walks, where do you go?” Alice asked.
She was as tall as her father already—Serena was the taller parent by a few inches, and Alice would end up an inch taller than Leonard, too, but it hadn’t quite happened yet. Her mother hadn’t called to wish her a happy birthday, but it was still early on the West Coast, and who knew what the moon was doing, or the rest of the planets. The planets controlled a lot of Serena’s interactions with the world. The air was cool. Climate change had gotten Alice used to T-shirt weather in October, but now it was still chilly. Had the blizzard already happened? She couldn’t remember, but Alice could see the snowdrifts in her mind, the thick white blanket that had stopped the city for a few days.
“I walk everywhere,” Leonard said. “I walk uptown, I walk downtown. Once I walked all the way around—circumvented the whole island of Manhattan. Did you know that? Why are you asking?”
Alice tried to shrug. “Just curious, I guess.” She was thinking about Simon Rush and the rest of Leonard’s friends—well-read dorks, all, even the ones who were rich and famous. She had so few memories of her father during daylight hours, outside of Pomander Walk. The Sterns had never gone hiking, they’d never gone camping, they didn’t like the beach or national parks or whatever it was that normal families did. All they had done was this—talk. Be in their neighborhood, their tiny kingdom. That was the stuff that Alice wanted to soak up, to absorb as much as she possibly could. What did it feel like, to have their strides match, to both hurry in the face of an oncoming taxi? What did it feel like to have her father next to her, to hear him grumble and hum, make the noises just beneath language? What did it feel like to see him and not worry if it would be the last time?
Leonard put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s very nice.”
She hadn’t touched him until then—she had wanted to hug him when she first walked into the kitchen, but they weren’t really a hugging family, and Alice was pretty sure that she had smelled at best like dirt and at worst like dirt and alcohol and so she had scooted quickly back into her bedroom, too afraid that one of them would vanish into thin air or turn into a pile of dust. Alice put her hand on top of her dad’s. She didn’t remember him ever being younger than this. “What age do you think I was best at?” Alice took her hand back and stared at the ground. “Like, if you had to pick me being one age forever, what age would you pick?”
Leonard chuckled. “Okay, let’s think. You were a terrible baby. Screamed one hundred percent of the time. Your mother and I used to worry that the neighbors were going to call the police. You were very cute after that, to make up for it—say, three to five. Those were good years. But no, I’d say now. I can swear as much as I want to, and you don’t need babysitters anymore. And plus, you’re good company.” Every block they walked had something that Alice had loved and forgotten: the spandex party dresses at Fowad and Mandee, the brightly lit challah bread at Hot & Crusty, the bohemian rich lady shop Liberty House, where Alice had spent her allowance on Indian printed tops and dangling earrings. Tasti D-lite, Alice’s one true love. Were there still Tasti D-lites? Once, in her early twenties, Alice had seen Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson at Tasti D-lite, both of them with small cups, no sprinkles. She started to tell her father that, but stopped. The only Lou Reed song she’d actually owned was on the Trainspotting soundtrack, and she wasn’t sure if it had come out yet. Without the internet, how would she even check? Mr. Moviefone’s voice sprang into her ears, a robotic memory that she hadn’t thought of in a decade, and Alice laughed. It was another century. It hadn’t felt like it at the time, but it was. New York City did this over and over again, of course, a snake shedding its skin in bits and pieces, so slowly that by the time the snake was brand new, no one would notice.