Don’t Let Me Go by Catherine Ryan Hyde
In memory of Pat, who got me into my first writers’ workshop…somehow.
Billy
Every time Billy looked out his front sliding-glass door, he saw the ugly, gray L.A. winter afternoon move that much closer to dark. A noticeable difference each time. Then he laughed, and chastised himself out loud, saying, “What did we think, Billy Boy, that sunset would change its mind and break with tradition just this one night?”
He looked out again, hiding behind his curtain and wrapping it around himself as he leaned in front of the glass.
The little girl was still there.
“We know what this means,” he said. “Don’t we?”
But he didn’t answer himself. Because he did know. So there was really no need to belabor the conversation.
He pulled his old flannel bathrobe over his pajamas, wrapping it too tightly around his stick-thin frame, then tying it with a rope that had replaced the robe’s sash some half-dozen years earlier.
Yes.
Billy Shine was about to go outside.
Not out the apartment door and on to the street. Nothing that insanely radical. But out on to his little first-floor patio, or balcony, or whatever you might properly call that postage-stamp-sized piece of real estate adorned with two rusty lawn chairs.
He looked out again first, as though he might see a storm or a war or an alien invasion brewing. Some act of God that might justify his failure to follow through. But it was only a tiny bit closer to dark, which was hardly unexpected.
He unwedged the broomstick — the improvised burglar-proof lock for his sliding-glass patio door — coating his fingers with dust and lint as he did so. It hadn’t been moved in ages. And it shamed him, because he prided himself on cleanliness.
“Note to self,” he said out loud. “Clean everything. Even if it’s something we think we won’t use anytime soon. On principle, if for no other reason.”
Then he slid the door open just the tiniest bit, sucking in his breath, loudly, at the feel of the chill outdoor air.
The little girl glanced up, then down at her feet again.
Her hair looked almost comically disheveled, as if no one had brushed it for a week. Her blue cardigan sweater had been buttoned incorrectly. She could not have been more than nine or ten. She was sitting on a step, her arms wrapped around her own knees, rocking and staring at her shoes.
He’d expected something more from her, some more dramatic reaction to his presence, yet couldn’t put his finger on exactly what he’d thought that might be.
He sat gingerly on the very edge of one rusty chair, leaning over the railing, looking down at the little girl’s head from maybe three feet above her.
“A gracious good evening to you,” he said.
“Hi,” she said, in a voice like a soprano foghorn.
It made him jump. He almost upended the chair.
Though hardly an expert on children, Billy reasoned that a girl who looked that depressed should speak in a barely audible voice. Not that he hadn’t heard this little girl’s voice through the walls many times before. She lived in the basement apartment with her mother, so he heard her often. Too often. And she’d never sounded only barely audible. Yet, somehow, he’d expected her to make an exception on maybe just this one occasion.
“Are you my neighbor?” she asked, in the same startling voice.
This time he was ready for it.
“It would seem that way,” he said.
“Then how come I never met you?”
“You’re meeting me now. Take what you can get from this life.”
“You talk funny.”
“You talk loud.”
“Yeah, that’s what everybody says. Do other people say you talk funny?”
“Not that I can recall,” Billy said. “Then again, I don’t talk to enough people to gather a genuine consensus.”
“Well, take my word for it. It’s a weird way to talk, especially to a kid. What’s your name?”
“Billy Shine. What’s yours?”
“Shine? Like the stars, or like your floor shines if you wax it?”
“Yes. Like that.”
“Where did you get a name like Billy Shine?”
“Where did you get your name? Which, by the way, you still haven’t told me.”
“Oh. It’s Grace. And I got it from my mother.”
“Well, I didn’t get the name Billy Shine from my mother. From my mother I got Donald Feldman. So I changed it.”
“Why?”
“Because I was in show business. I needed a dancer’s name.”
“Donald Feldman isn’t a dancer’s name?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“How do you find out what is and what isn’t?”
“You just know it in your heart. So, look. We could sit out here all night and continue this charming exchange. But I actually came out here to ask you why you’re sitting outside all by yourself.”
“I’m not, really,” she said. “I’m really out here with you.”
“It’s almost dark.”
She moved for the first time since he’d come outside, looking up as if to fact-check his sentence.
“Yeah,” she said. “It is. So, you’re not in show business any more?”