No One Knows Us Here(3)

Mira took this as her cue and stood up. “Listen, I’ve got to get going.”

I looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was midnight. “Where are you going at this hour?”

She smiled and raised a perfectly shaped black brow. “Oh, you know me. Cinderella off to the ball at the stroke of midnight.”

“Cinderella has to leave the ball at the stroke of midnight,” Wendy informed her, holding up a finger as if she were making a serious point. I realized then she was drunk. “Not go to the ball.”

Mira picked up an overnight bag by the door. “You can crash in my room if you want,” she said to Wendy. “Just three nights, though.” Then she was gone.

I turned back to my sister. “So I guess you can stay here for three nights.”

“Two weeks,” she said.

I looked around the apartment and gestured to the living room. We didn’t even have a couch—just your basic hodgepodge collection of rickety chairs, only one of which was upholstered. “There’s nowhere for you to sleep,” I said.

“Oh, we’ll figure something out.”



My job felt more pointless than usual. I paced around the maze of the store, Ms. PAC-MAN in slow motion, feather duster in hand. I dusted the ash from shelves, from the tops of boxes. Ash flew from the duster into the air, up our noses, into our lungs. Then it drifted back down again.

This is the kind of important work I was doing instead of hanging out with my little sister, my last remaining relative on earth, who had run away just to be with me.

A half hour before the end of my shift, I asked my manager if I could leave early. Rich was a gay guy in his early fifties. He always came to work wearing a suit and spit-polished black dress shoes, which we—the employees on the sales floor—found quirky and endearing. Even the store owner didn’t dress up that nicely when he visited. “Go for it,” Rich said. Then I asked if I could take the next two weeks off, claiming a family emergency. He shrugged. “Sure, I think we can survive without you.” He didn’t even bother to consult the shift calendar.

“Way to make me feel like I’m making a difference, Rich,” I said.

“Enjoy your family emergency. See you in two weeks.”



The ash settled down into the dirt, and the sky turned blue again. The city was beautiful, sparkling the way it did sometimes in the summer, when people visit and wonder how anyone ever leaves. I would show her a good time. It was the least I could do.

We ate blackberry pie and drank huckleberry milkshakes for dinner. Stayed up late watching movies and slept in as long as we wanted. When Mira came back from her trip, Wendy slept out on the balcony in a sleeping bag on an air mattress. During long summer afternoons, we did whatever we wanted: rode orange city bikes up and down bridges, sat in dark movie theaters, ate picnics in parks. We threw a party in the apartment. All my roommates and everyone I knew from work came and danced under the lights we’d strung across the ceiling.

On our last night, my little sister and I watched two old Hitchcock movies and grilled BOCA burgers and ears of corn on the hibachi grill out on the balcony. Charcoal smoke drifted up and dissipated into the evening sky. At three in the morning we were still sitting there, wrapped in quilts, looking over the treetops. It was quiet, no cars or people or even birds. The dead of night, as they say.

“Don’t make me go back,” Wendy said.

“You’ll have to come visit again.” I kept my tone light, as if I hadn’t noticed the desperation in her plea. “Christmas, maybe.”

“Mira’s moving out next month. She told me.”

“So?”

“You could move into her room. We could move into her room.”

“My friend Margorie is supposed to move in. Maybe in a few years—”

“A few years?”

“I have a lot going on,” I said. “I told you this. I’m studying for the LSATs. I’ve decided to apply to law schools. That’s the plan. I’m up to my ears in student loans already.” I laughed—a humorless bark of a laugh—and gestured to the direction of my bedroom. “I live in a closet, Wendy. I can barely take care of myself; I can’t take care of a kid right now—”

“I’m not a kid. I’m your sister.” Wendy was crying now. I pretended not to notice.

“I’ll ask Rich for more shifts,” I said. “I’ll fly you here for Christmas. I’ll work something out.”

“You never even called.” She looked so young then, the way I remembered her. She didn’t bother to brush the tears from her cheeks.

“Maybe it will snow. We’ll have a white Christmas.”

“You liked me. You used to like me.” The tears had stopped, and she wiped them off quickly with the back of her hand. When she looked over at me, her eyes seemed extra bright, the blue of her irises glowing. “We played Barbies for hours. You made them outfits. Built them houses under the dining room table. Gave them voices.”

I picked up a skewer and prodded at the coals in the hibachi grill. A plume of white smoke curled from the coals like a ghost.

“It wasn’t like you were just babysitting me. You were into it, right? Or maybe you’re just a great actor.”

“You should eat something.” I unwrapped a BOCA burger that had been languishing in its cellophane sleeve all night and set it on the cold grill. She didn’t eat it.