Hand in hand, Ella and I followed Stu Wolff, the Bard of Lower Manhattan, into the dark and treacherous night. My cape swirled behind me as we walked. Except for the garbage and traffic, it was like following Heathcliff out on the moors.
Ella squashed my fingers every time we crossed a street, as though we were about to fling ourselves over a cliff and into the cold embrace of the sea. This was slightly less distracting than the way she went rigid whenever anyone suddenly loomed out of the shadows.
“Will you please chill out?” I whispered. “We’re going to lose him if you keep slowing down like that.”
Ella was watching everything at once, but I was trying to keep my eyes on the tall, thin figure several yards ahead of us. The darkness and rain made him come and go like a ghost.
“I’d rather lose him than lose my life,” Ella muttered darkly.
Those were not idle words. Stu Wolff might not exactly be a man of the people at home – unless you mean the people who drive $50,000 cars – but let him loose in the wilds of the Lower West Side and he went straight for every blackened window with a Bud sign hanging in it.
Nonetheless, I barely heard her. My mind was leaping ahead to the moment when we finally caught up with Stu. Would he still be angry, or would the walk have cooled him off? Would he tell us what the argument was about? Would he ask for my advice? Maybe he’d take us for a coffee at one of his favourite cafés. I could see the three of us walking into a room filled with plants and mirrors and people wearing clothes with names (Gucci, Armani, Ralph Lauren…). Stu asked for his usual table. “Certainly, Mr Wolff,” cooed the waiter. A silence fell on the sophisticated New Yorkers as we passed among them. “Look who it is…” they whispered. “It’s Stu Wolff… But who are those girls with him?”
Ella moved even closer as we trudged across Sixth Avenue for the third time. I wasn’t sure if it was for warmth or protection.
“Where do you think he’s going?” she whispered nervously.
“God knows,” I whispered back. Which put God in the minority. Not only was it pretty obvious that Stu had no destination, it seemed pretty likely from the number of times we came back to the same places that he wasn’t always sure where he was.
I wasn’t always sure where we were, either. I’d recognized Chinatown (because of all the restaurants and Chinese people), the East Village (because we walked right past my dad’s building), and the West Village (because of all the out-of-towners), but not everywhere we went was on the tourist maps, or someplace where my parents used to take me to eat, or the street that was home to my father and his dog.
Stu lurched unexpectedly to the right.
“Let’s walk a little faster,” Ella whispered. “We don’t want to lose him.”
I couldn’t have agreed with her more. You wouldn’t think it was possible in a city that never sleeps, but once we left the bright lights and heavy traffic of Sixth Avenue behind, the streets were pretty bleak and desolate. Figures rustled in the shadows like rats. Every sudden noise sounded like a threat.
“We won’t lose him,” I reassured her – and me. “He can’t even walk straight.”
We turned the corner. And stopped.
“Where’s he gone?” whispered Ella.
I squinted into the darkness. There were cans and bags and boxes of garbage piled up along the curb and the wheel of a bicycle chained to a lamppost, but, aside from that, the narrow street of warehouses and lofts was empty. I wasn’t worried, though. It wasn’t the first time Stu had disappeared in front of our eyes.
“He must have gone in somewhere again,” I said. That was Stu’s trick, suddenly vanishing through a door.
Ella shook her head. “Where would he go? There aren’t any bars.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t go into a bar this time,” I said a little defensively. “Maybe he knows someone who lives here.”
When I used to imagine what the Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare did in his spare time, I always pictured him watching sunsets and gazing into the depthless sky, his mind filled with cosmic questions and universal truths, not fighting and drinking beer – but so far tonight he’d done nothing else.
Ella pressed her lips together. “Nobody lives here,” she said. “Not inside.” She looked over at me. “I’m really getting scared being out here alone, Lola.”
“But we’re not alone,” I reminded her. “We’re with an adult.”
“Aside from the fact that he isn’t actually with us,” said Ella. “Stu Wolff isn’t actually an adult, either; he’s a rock-and-roll star.”
As thunderstruck as I was by this unexpected display of disloyalty, I decided not to say anything. Later, when we were talking and laughing with Stu, I knew she’d regret those callous words.
“Well, whatever he is, we have to find him,” I said diplomatically.
We started walking again, cautiously, taking small, tentative steps as though tip-toeing through a minefield. There were no bars, no coffee shops, not even an alleyway Stu might have cut through.
We stopped when we reached the next corner. Ahead of us, in all directions, were more streets just like the one we were on.
Ella sighed. “We have lost him.” She didn’t sound as disappointed as you might think.
“It’s impossible,” I argued. “He was right in front of us.”
“Well, he’s not in front of us now,” said Ella. “All that’s in front of us is uncollected garbage.”
We were both so tired, so wet, so hungry – and at least one of us was so disappointed – that it might have turned into a real argument if we hadn’t been successfully diverted at that moment.
Someone – or something – groaned.
Ella practically jumped in my arms – which saved me the trouble of trying to jump into hers.
“What was that?” she hissed. I’d never seen her eyes that big. She looked really beautiful, if half drowned.
I had to get my own heart out of my mouth before I could speak. “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “Maybe it was a cat.” Or a rat.
Clutching each other, we looked up and down the street again. But there was still nothing to see.
“Umprrgh…” moaned the empty night.
Ella’s nails dug into my arm. “That’s not a cat.”
It didn’t sound much like a rat, either. I pointed across the road and back the way we’d come. “I think it came from over there,” I said into her ear.
The night moaned again. Painfully. Tragically. Without a shred of hope.
“It must be Stu!” I pulled on her arm. “Come on. It sounds like he’s hurt.”
Instead of moving forward, as I’d intended, I stayed where I was, much in the way I had stayed where I was when my heel got caught in the grate. Ella wasn’t budging.
“If he’s hurt, then someone hurt him,” said Ella in her Miss Totally Reasonable voice.
“Maybe you should be a detective when you grow up,” I suggested acidly.
Ella still wouldn’t move. “And maybe you should be a kamikaze pilot.”
A garbage can crashed to the ground, the sound echoing through the vacant streets. Both of us jumped, but Ella jumped higher.
“Look!” My voice was low but urgent. “I was right. It did come from over there.”
A head had appeared among the plastic bags and cans. A hand clawed the air. I was sure I heard a strangled cry for help.
Without another word – without any thought for my own safety – I let go of Ella and raced towards the hand.
“Lola!” screamed Ella, but she was already running after me over the cobbles.
We reached the fallen garbage can just in time to see the Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare throw up all over the sidewalk.