Queen of the Deep

Prologue

The World Room

The icicle outside young Janet Zabrinski’s window had been growing all winter, rooting down from the drain pipe, turning cloudy and gnarled and intentional, until it was too massive and noble to even consider using as a sword. Around it fell the quiet and relentless snow, piling up below the eaves, rising almost to the frozen sword point. By the fourth day of the windless storm, the city was engulfed in endless, powdery layers. People gave up shoveling, waiting it out. Bored children pressed noses against windows, fervent to make their mark on the trackless white.

But Janet Zabrinski was patient. She liked sleds and snow forts, to be sure, but when the heavy snows came, she had interesting alternatives.

Such as her shoebox with her special toys—and the warm and wonderful basement where Starling lived. Sitting on the floor of her bedroom, Janet glanced at the big icicle, tempted, so tempted. But aside from the shame of breaking it off, Janet didn’t think it would last long in the basement, where swords were most needed.

She opened the shoebox to examine her treasures: an agate the size of a quarter, a plastic camel from a Cracker Jack box, a ruby bracelet that didn’t fit her, and a small round ball that she called the blue star.

Janet tried on the bracelet, but it was still too big. It, and the blue star, were presents from Starling. One of his rules was that she must hide them among lesser toys so that her mother wouldn’t notice them and decide they were too important for a seven-year-old to have.

She tossed the blue star into the air. It bounced in front of her and settled in at eye level, glowing a faint blue. After previously trying to toss other toys in the air, she had learned that only the star floated.

Janet had already laid out the pirate costume that Lonnie had bought her for Halloween. She’d worn it for trick or treat, but it had just today occurred to her that she could play boys’ roles as well as girls’, and she was eager to see what Starling thought of that. She quickly dressed and, squinting into the mirror, painted on a thick mustache with her mother’s eyebrow pencil.

She turned to leave just as Lonnie appeared at her bedroom door.

Pirate, huh? Mother sipped at her glass of headache medicine, called a highball.

Panicked, Janet snatched the blue star from the air, quelling it in her fist. She hoped Lonnie hadn’t seen how the ball floated. Unfortunately, the ball was still glowing in her hand.

Staring at Janet’s fist, Lonnie swirled her highball, clinking the ice cubes.

Her mother’s life wasn’t easy. Or so Lonnie often told her daughter. Here she was, at the young age of thirty-three, saddled with a seven-year-old, a stockroom job, and the dismal prospect of Christmas without a drinking buddy. Janet barely remembered her father Emmett, although he’d only walked out as Lonnie put it, two years ago. It was starting then that mother had most needed her headache medicine.

Teetering a little, Lonnie pointed her highball at Janet’s fist. You’re gonna wear out the batteries in that thing. She swooped a look up and down at Janet in full costume, and then swayed away from the doorway, muttering, Such a goddamned actress. Lonnie’s footsteps faded back down the hall toward the kitchen.

Janet didn’t think she’d need new batteries—or any batteries. The ball’s surface was smooth as Lonnie’s best scarf, without cracks or openings. When hovering, it glowed like a robin’s egg lit from within, and when squeezed in her hand, it turned her fingernails icy blue. Janet loved to float it at bedtime for a night-light. But she’d have to be more careful now. Lonnie had seen it.

When Janet was sure her mother was gone, she put the blue star in the shoebox, nested in the center of the ruby bracelet, and pressed it down firmly so it would stay in place. That done, she closed the lid and slipped the box under her bed.

A last check in the bedroom mirror showed her a startling and scary pirate, in spite of the reddish-blonde hair sticking out of her three-cornered hat. Great mustache, she thought. She did not in any way, she felt, resemble a child, but rather a blood-crazed pirate ready for adventures on the high seas—surely a more thrilling place than the low seas. She was ready for the basement.

Lonnie was sitting at the kitchen table over a game of solitaire. Behind her, the basement door.

Can I go outside, Lonnie? She knew the answer would be no. Lonnie turned a slant look at her, kinking one side of her mouth.

’Cause, if it’s too stormy, I’m going to play in the basement.

Make sure you shut the door. I don’t need a bunch of hollering right now.

Janet knew better than to make noise when Lonnie had a headache. As Lonnie sloshed more medicine in her glass, Janet rummaged in the pantry for a packet of graham crackers and tucked them into her pirate sash.

Then, before her mother could change her mind, she opened the basement door and stepped onto the stair landing.

From there Janet inhaled a sour but not entirely unpleasant aroma. The basement smelled of ancient coal dust with a hint of roses. Janet loved this underground place—even if it was not what most people thought it was. The cavernous basement filled out the entire footprint of the building, formerly a well-heeled Victorian mansion now converted to a four-plex.

In addition to the washroom—where, before clothes dryers, people used to hang their wash during the long Minnesota winters—it contained rooms her mother referred to as the furnace room, coal room, and storage rooms. Which they sometimes really were, such as when Lonnie came down. It was important, Starling had told her, that Lonnie never see any magic. It was a rule. Grownups spoiled magic, he’d said, and Janet had no trouble believing it.

She flipped on the light and closed the door behind her, eager to show off her new costume to her friends and to try out her pirate persona on the evil fairies that sometimes appeared. Placing her hand on the railing to steady herself on the rickety stairs, she went down, down into the lovely basement.

The first tendrils of climbing rose met her on the fifth step, and she remembered to whisk her hand away to avoid the thorns. She considered plucking one, but doubted a pirate would wear a rose in his hair. On the ninth stair, the light began a shift from bright white to summer yellow, and the stairs from wood to polished stone. She heard a stirring at the bottom. As always, her playmates began as blurs, as if seen through a smear of Vaseline. The royal ladies and gentlemen of her court were already throwing off a telltale glitter.

As she continued down, the sleeves of Janet’s shirt sprouted lace at the wrists, and in another few steps, she felt the tightening of boots on her calves. The sword at her hip was just coming into form, and before the twelfth step the tip was clanking on the stairs. Janet pressed down on the pommel to lift it off the stair treads.

With that, her champion and suitor, Prince Starling, took form at the foot of the stairs. Today he wore green velvet, his dark hair touching his shoulders. Just behind him, she saw her white horse, Sugar, in his saddle of gold. Gone were the cement walls, cobwebs, and bare bulb ceiling light, transformed to the proper dwelling of a princess with carved wood, tapestries, and chandeliers.

Princess Jane, Starling said, You do us honor to come to court.

Janet loved it when he spoke like that. Thank you, Sir Starling. But we have to be quiet. The Kitchen Witch has a headache.

He gently touched the side of her face. Bella. I’m sorry.

Only Starling ever called her that name. She didn’t know where he got it, but it was their little secret—that he called her Bella, and that they were in love.

Let’s play, she suggested, and Starling nodded, smiling. Of all her basement friends Starling was the most vivid, the most constant. Someday, he would walk upstairs with her and, after vanquishing the Kitchen Witch, marry her.

Starling threw his arms wide, and the basement became her castle. In a rustling of silk and a crush of velvet, the ladies and gentlemen of the court snapped into being. Lady Crystal and Lady Silver wore their best gowns—but seeing the pirate outfit of their princess, they rapidly reformed their wardrobe to heavy boots, eye patches, and single hoop earrings.

Stepping among them, Janet smiled at the bowing throng, commenting on cloaks, jewelry, hats and—most especially—weapons. They had to be ready for bad fairies. Yesterday’s battle had been a bloody fight, and no one believed that they were gone for good. At least Janet hoped they weren’t.

What is afoot, my lord? she asked Starling, using one of the stock phrases she’d memorized from fairy tales.

He smiled at her with a face not less handsome for the fact of his mismatched eyes, one blue and one brown. We could hunt foxes, milady. Some plump ones have been seen hereabouts. He waved at Sugar, who neighed hopefully. Or, we could go to the ramparts to spy out the dark fairy band.

Janet clapped her hands. The fairy band!

At this, the court buzzed with delight. Raised weapons glinted in the chandelier’s golden light. Starling led the way out of the vestibule, followed by Janet and her retinue. They poured into the main hall of the castle, a vast and marbled place that first-floor residents called the furnace room, housing as it did the old hot air furnace with its many-tentacled conduits. As they passed a set of heavy double doors, Janet paused.

Everyone knew what lay behind those doors. Not the old coal room, but the dungeon. Most importantly, it held the dungeon dwellers: things so dreadful that Janet and her band could barely bring themselves to say the name: Notters. Dark, evil, and hungry.

As frightening as the Notters were, Janet was still curious about them. What did they really look like? What did they eat? Why were they so mean? Could they be straightened out by graham crackers, perhaps? In any case, she was, for some reason, attracted to those doors.

Janet slowed her steps, letting her the troupe stream past her. She put a hand on the latch. But the door would not open.

From behind her, Starling’s voice: Bella?

She turned to find her prince looking at her, but not quite as friendly as he usually did.

Open the dungeon door, Sir Starling, she commanded. I want to see inside.

Ah, Bella, the dungeon is black and cold. Nothing to see.

She felt annoyed. Her subjects weren’t supposed to thwart her. Her face must have showed her displeasure, because Starling said, Some other time we’ll peek in. Not now.

"But I want to now."

He gazed at her for a few moments, then sighed. Just for a moment, that’s all. It’s dangerous, and I’m supposed to protect you.

OK, draw your sword. She turned excitedly to the doors.

Starling turned the latch and dragged open the door—it was a quite heavy door with rusty hinges. Janet braced herself against a whuff of air, bituminous and cold.

All light from the castle hall fell off at the threshold, leaving the coal-soaked air beyond as black as covers-over-your-head-at-night. Except the blackness somehow glittered. The room seemed very large. More than large. Janet was struck by a conviction that it was as big as the whole world.

The dungeon, Janet said, enthralled.

At her side, Starling said, Yes, a terrible place. You’ll never come here. I’ll make sure of that. As she stared, she heard strange clicks echoing in the vastness of the black. Then the sounds grew rapidly in volume, to a crackling and shuffling noise just off to the side. The sparkling dark had hidden the source at first, but now Janet could see that it was a group of creatures racing toward the light of the open door. In the split second she had to glimpse them, she thought their heads looked too big.

Starling yanked her backward and, in a scream of protesting door hinges, slammed the door shut.

In the next moment came a thudding crash against the doors. Janet screamed. Sugar whinnied in alarm, and several of her pirates drew swords and rushed forward. As the door shuddered, two of the pirates braced themselves against the quaking wood.

Starling said, They can’t get out. But he had drawn his sword, Jane noted.

At that moment a voice cried out from far away: "Janet! Stop that. What the hell are you doing?"

Lonnie.

The lights lost their golden color, bleeding to light-bulb white. Starling backed away, moving into the shadows. The Kitchen Witch must never see Starling. That too, was a rule. Janet hurried to the bottom of the stairs. Nothing! she called up at Lonnie. I was running around, that’s all!

Her mother stood on the landing, looking immensely tall and witchy. Well, keep it down, for cripe’s sakes! The upstairs door slammed shut. The lights surged golden again, as all attention turned back to the coal room door.

Jane heard a scuttling from inside the dungeon. Then something hit the door in a jolting blow. And again. More pirates pressed their bodies against the bulging wood, taking the brunt of the now-rhythmic shaking. From the other side Jane heard the scraping of feet, followed by another slam against the door that shook the jambs and rattled the latch fit to come off. Whoever was trying to get in must have hurt himself, because he howled in an echoing, high-pitched scream.

The other Notters took it up, screaming and throwing themselves at the door.

At last it subsided. In the quiet, Starling gathered Jane in his arms. Never ask me to open that door. Never again.

In the lull, Janet heard a new threat, this one coming from the stairs. Lonnie had thrown open the upstairs door and—unthinkably—was coming down.

Starling fled behind the furnace. As he did so, the lights whitened, and Sugar and the pirates vanished.

At the foot of the stairs, Lonnie stood, hands on hips. Jesus H. Christ. Spying Janet from the next room, she strode into the furnace room, grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. Lonnie squinted at the coal room door. "What the hell is all this noise?"

She reached for the latch.

Janet screamed, No!

Lonnie stopped, looking annoyed and weary at the same time. I thought I told you to be quiet down here.

Janet began backing away from the door. She didn’t want to be right in front of it when the Notters came out. She fervently did not want her mother to be there, either. Let’s go upstairs! Please! We’ve got to!

Trying to show by example, Janet ran to the foot of the steps and began to climb.

Lonnie was reaching for the latch to the coal room door.

There was only one thing to do. Janet raised her hands over her head and, pretending to slip, made a spectacular fall down the five steps she had so far ascended.

The side of her head scraped into the wall. Her shins dug into the stair treads. Nothing she had ever experienced hurt this much. She didn’t know that anything could hurt this much. Her harrowing scream lingered in the air, punctuated by a few coughed sobs.

Lonnie was bending over her, swearing. It was terrible to hurt so much and to have her mother swearing, too. From her sprawling position on the floor, Janet managed to check out the coal room doors. They remained closed. Her mother had not turned the dungeon latch, and for now, the door was quiet and ordinary-looking.

Gripping Janet firmly at the elbow, Lonnie pulled her up and helped her to hobble up the long flight to the kitchen door. To make sure that Lonnie kept going up the stairs, Janet whimpered as convincingly as she could. In the kitchen, Lonnie offered graham crackers and a glass of milk. Janet ate, bright-eyed and amazed that she had managed such a convincing fall. That had been the beginning of Janet Zabrinski’s acting career, or at least her first public performance.

* * *

One day she and her mother moved away from the apartment with the lovely basement, and in the many moves thereafter, things got lost like shoeboxes full of toys and memories of pirate bands. Once on her own, Janet Zabrinski would change her name to Jane Gray, a better stage name, and one that contrasted nicely with her most remarkable feature: her reddish gold hair.

It was proof, Starling had always said, of her royal blood.

As basement dramas gave way to ice follies and high school plays, Jane’s castle companions receded from memory. Even Starling did, though he was the last to fade. As she put magic things behind her, there was one thing she never forgot: the coal room door with its strange and sparkling dark. Visions of it crept upon her sometimes at night, when she would lie awake, her mind supple and unguarded. This was a good thing. Because when the sparkling dark returned one day sixteen years later, seeming to reach through the deep rock and deep years to find her, she was ready. Or as ready as you can be for such things.

Part I

The Coal Room Door

Chapter 1

The City, Fading

Aspiring actresses Jane and Rickie were perfect opposites: light and dark, slim and ample, earnest and fatalistic. As roommates they made a pretty good pair, facing off against the Broadway hustle and the hunt for the ideal boyfriend. And Rickie’s cancer. Manhattan was the best place in the world for them: it had theater, handsome men, and Sloan Kettering. They counted themselves lucky. They were in their early twenties, surviving on union scale, and until recently had enjoyed serial double dates on which they always had more fun together than with their escorts. As soon as Rickie was feeling better, they could go back to sharing their shabby but beloved apartment in East Village.

Sitting next to Rickie in the waiting room at Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, Jane unbuttoned her coat and shook out her knit scarf. A light dusting of ash fell on the carpet.

Dust was everywhere these last few months, fluttering down from the sky, wafting off windowsills and roofs, blowing in off the East River. In spring this powder might have been blamed on pollen, but this was the dead of winter. Everyone had a theory, from global warming to China’s pollution borne aloft, to a garbage incinerator in New Jersey. Positions were taken, fingers pointed, investigations begun. It went beyond New York City, certainly. There was dust in Eugene, Oregon; Sheboygan, Wisconsin; and Vietnam. But mostly, people were Christmas shopping and showing off the best boots they could afford, tramping through the slush-ridden streets, as the early December snow partially melted under its heat-attracting layer of ash.

By Jane’s cell-phone display, it was 1:25 p.m. and Dr. Hassan was running late. He could be forgiven: Today he was fulfilling his promise to be present for the start of Rickie’s chemo session, the one with the spike of new poisons that were a tad worrisome. Furthermore, Dr. Afi Hassan was handsome and single. That excused a lot.

Jane and Rickie traded magazines and glanced at the waiting room clock, pointless, since it was broken. It didn’t exactly inspire confidence that in this high temple of technology, the clock was broken. The technologies of Sloan Kettering embodied their fabled front line against cancer; the machines had to work, lest the battles be lost. In Jane’s mind it was unthinkable to lose this one. Rickie herself had more short-term goals: like going to a New Year’s Eve party with some hair.

Jane was on the verge of going bald in solidarity. But Rickie had early on threatened Jane with execution if she shaved off her long copper-blonde hair. I kid you not, Rickie had fiercely said. Today, Jane had tugged her hair into a ponytail, so as not to flaunt a woman’s best asset. As to other assets, Rickie had already lost one of them to the surgeon’s knife.

All Jane wanted was her roommate back, safe and whole and belting out Kate Smith songs while making spaghetti. Sickness had a way of simplifying the wants of both women, despite their ambitions—receding at the speed of a train these days—to land plum roles on Broadway and make names for themselves.

Since childhood, acting had been Jane’s dream. In the past few years, summer stock and roles off-Broadway had led her steadily to first-tier roles. Between productions, and sometimes during, she fell in love with her share of handsome men, and if they weren’t exactly ideal, at least they had some of the right moves: charm, good looks, and protestations of love. They’ll walk away in the end, her mother had always warned, having in mind Jane’s father’s departure when Jane was little. But Jane wasn’t buying her mother’s pessimism, and she had no plans to follow her mother’s lead and drink herself to death over a man walking out.

I’m sorry. I’m running way behind.

Dr. Hassan had appeared in front of Rickie. He ignored the stares of the roomful of patients, as their eyes were drawn to the only man at Sloan Kettering who looked good in a white lab coat.

No prob. I understand, Rickie was saying, as Jane stared up at Afi Hassan’s gorgeous face.

An hour’s wait. Dr. Hassan shook his head. I don’t like that. I had a patient emergency. It won’t be long, Rickie.

Hey. It fits in with my denial plans, don’t worry! Besides, we’ve got nothing better to do. She turned to Jane. Do we?

Before Jane could answer, Dr. Hassan had turned to her. Jane, isn’t it? Nice to see you again.

Under the receptionist’s glare, he backed away from the two women. See you in a few minutes. And he was gone.

With the whole waiting room now frankly regarding them, Jane and Rickie went back to their magazines. Out the side of her mouth, Jane murmured, "He apologizes for being late?"

Rickie smirked. He remembered your name.

Not married, you’re sure?

Yup.

I didn’t say a thing to him just now. God, for stupid.

Well it could have been worse. You could have asked to chew on his ear.

Jane’s cell phone chimed from her purse. Snapping the phone open, she found a text message from the theater company she’d recently done an audition for.

Rickie.

What?

"That was a call back. From the Zade! audition."

Wow! But I thought you wrote that one off.

I did. But they want me to read again. Right now.

Rickie spread her hands. So go. Dr. Wonderful can wait for next time.

What about you?

Rickie nudged her friend out of her chair. "This is a call back for Zade!, my girl. Go. Go now."

Jane stood, collecting her things. Call me tonight. Tell me how it went.

What’s to tell? They hook me up and pour a little Drano in. Dr. Wonderful holds my hand and we fall in love. Cinch.

Jane wanted to say, It won’t be a cinch, it will be awful, and you’ll be sick. Instead she said, I’m going to call you tonight, and I want to hear everything.

Rickie gave her famous super smirk and waved her away, mouthing break a leg.

* * *

The subway was stopped on dark tracks between stations somewhere between 30th and 35th streets, doors closed, lights flickering. The worst possible time for a subway glitch, when Jane hadn’t even one minute to spare. People stirred around her, murmuring. Goddamn train…somebody get out and push… A few teenagers standing in the back giggled, checking out their cell phones. The subway had been coasting for years on old parts and the mayor wanted upgrades, using the breakdowns as fodder for a new campaign against the city council. New York was always breaking and renewing, but honestly, why did it have to break today? And why, really, did everything seem to be breaking at once?

Jane flipped open her phone to check for messages. She wished she could have afforded a smartphone, because this would be a good time to post on her favorite blog, fallingapart.com. She’d been compulsively tracking the conversation there for a couple months. People discussing the by-now everyday experience of things breaking down, disintegrating—wood and stone especially, but also metal. People all over the country, as well as in places like Stuttgart and Buenos Aires, were seeing things fall apart. Some saw a conspiracy about escaped nanotechnology particles, and others, the Biblical end times, but mostly it was people taking note, telling what they saw.

Fifteen anxiety-ridden minutes later, the train started up again, spitting out its passengers at various stops, and Jane at hers. Late for the callback, Jane arrived at the theater, only to find that there were no lights on in the lobby. She wasn’t that late, was she? Pushing through the front doors, she immediately spied the doors to the auditorium. She had always had great night vision.

A woman came through from the auditorium. Are you Jane Gray? Jane confirmed that she was. I don’t know why they turned off the lights out here. She turned on a small flashlight. You’re late. Mr. Harris is waiting.

I’m sorry, the subway… I could have used some more notice.

The assistant looked at her blankly. Right, but this is a stress audition. The director wants to see what you can do under stress. No prep, no coddling. Let’s go.

Jane let her annoyance fall away. This was a callback for the major theater event of the spring, even if it was just a small role. She had a chance for Zade! And she was going to give it her best shot.

Here. The young woman handed her a few pages of script, marked up from the last actor.

Jane followed her into the theater, clutching the script, but she planned to audition without it. She had her few lines down, after her audition for the role of Rat Sass, one of the groupies serving the king of the urban nomads.

Zade! was Scheherazade transported to the Lower East Side, retelling the story of a harem wife who avoids a death decree by telling a fresh story for a thousand nights. Zade! gave the old story new twists and Jane loved the script already, with its unapologetic theme that stories keep you alive, even on union scale.

The house was empty except for the director down front with his casting director and a couple of script advisors. A spotlight pierced a thick haze on the stage like a transporter beam. The last actor was gone. Her turn.

As she hurried down the aisle Jane nodded at Jefferson Harris, who hadn’t seemed to like her reading much last time. At the foot of the stage steps, the assistant miked her. Jane climbed up to the stage and took her place in the circle of light, not nervous, not now when she was getting her chance, and despite the stress audition, not worried, when all she’d ever wanted to do was stand in the stage lights and be someone else.

The director’s voice came from the dark house, fifth row back. You’re reading Sahara Zade, all right, Gray? The monologue from act two.

Jane blinked into the darkness beyond the lip of the stage. What was he saying? Sahara Zade? That was the lead role. She’d barely looked at that part.

I read Rat Sass before, she said, her miked voice ghostly and big.

I remember. You’re reading Zade now. You’re on. Go.

Jane looked down at her script. And went. She remembered the monologue, a little—the moment when Zade realizes she can tell the stories that will spare her life. Her voice quavered as she started, a poor beginning maybe, but Jane used that falsetto, went with it, to give her voice the tremulous strength of Zade’s growing revelation. She let her voice fragment at the edges. She sank into Zade’s despair, and gradually, her voice gained weight as she remembered more and more of what this monologue was about: how it had moved her the first time she’d read it; how she’d visualized Zade in that grimy bed, finding her power, not in sex, but in drama.

Jane could relate. She could empathize.

She could act.

Sweating and cold by the time she finished, she lowered the script, gripping it like death. She was unsure whether to go or stay, so she stood rooted to the floorboards. In the murk of the house she could see Harris conferring with his people, leaving her unnoticed for the moment. She hoped, if they didn’t like the reading, that they’d let her read for Rat Sass again, because at the moment she desperately wanted to have a part—any part—of this production.

She checked her script to see if she had pages for any other part. She didn’t. As she shuffled the pages, dust fell from them. It was then that she noticed a gentle rain of ash sifting down from above. Jane stepped out of the spotlight and looked straight up. There, on the gridiron, was a loft block that was tipping sideways. Sawdust fell imperceptibly from it as though it were being chewed by termites.

A voice from the house drew her attention, as Harris’s voice boomed out: OK, Jane, can you join us down here?

She scurried stage left to the stairs, happy to get away from the loft block, and beginning to open her mouth to say the block was loose when, with a muted whomping noise, the thing came thudding down to the floor, exploding into a plume of golden dust. Harris, the script assistant and the others stared at the pile of sawdust that now lay on the stage, its halo still settling.

Christ almighty, Harris said as a couple of stagehands rushed from the wings. You want to kill our leading lady?

Jane immediately forgot about the loft block.

Then Jefferson Harris was standing next to her, the script girl smiling behind him, offering Jane a glass of water, coddling, now. Harris said that she’d given one hell of a reading. Was she available for a lengthy commitment? Er. Yes. Right now.

He smiled. We’ll be getting back to you, OK? Don’t go anywhere, Gray.

Don’t go anywhere? Not on your life. She had the role, she was sure of it. Her body felt like it belonged to someone else. Script girl was writing down her address, asking her if she could come back next week for a consult. Meanwhile crew were on stage, cleaning up the sawdust, looking into the flying space above the stage, pointing to a rope now sagging in view beneath the drop curtain, a rope that had once been secured by a decomposing block.

On her way out of the theater, Jane managed to remember her coat and shoulder bag and was already digging for her phone. Out in the December air, cold enough to clear her head, Jane stood under the marquee and thumbed in Rickie’s number.

Girlfriend, I think I got the part.

Rickie shrieked.

But not the part I did before. I think they want me for Sahara Zade.

Rickie shrieked even louder. The handsome Dr. Hassan must have asked what the trouble was. Jane heard Rickie say: My friend just landed the biggest role in the fucking universe!

Hearing Rickie say that made it all real. She’d nailed the audition. Jefferson Harris had forbidden her to leave town. She felt a surge of joy move through her, cleaning house as it went.

The day had darkened in to twilight by the time her cab got to the apartment building. She stuffed an outrageous tip into the cabbie’s hand, still thinking about Jefferson Harris and a few soaring lines from Zade! She wished her mother could see her now. Such a goddamn actress, she always used to say.

Yeah, I’m a goddamn actress! Jane murmured fiercely, loud enough to turn a few heads on the street.

She detoured around the roped-off utility work in the street outside, work shut down for the day, and climbed the apartment steps, taking the elevator up to her floor. She passed 304, where the door was propped open with a toolbox. Big Arny was standing inside with his hands on his hips, staring out the window to the street.

She peeked in. Place looks great, Arny. Tiny as it was, it was a steal at $2,500 a month, with its tall mullioned windows getting nice eastern light.

He nodded at her, his expression doleful. They left me owing a month’s rent. Didn’t seem like the type, did they. Forestalling her answer, he said, They never do.

Jane wandered in to join him at the window.

A month’s rent. Arny sighed. And now the window’s gone bad.

She looked where he pointed. The floor-to-ceiling window frame was looking a little spongy. The fine old moldings had never been painted, but they might need to be now. Wood putty could hardly make a beginning on the right-hand board that, even as Arny pushed at it, crumbled in a few patches.

Termites, he muttered. Am I made of money?

Jane took off her gloves and pressed on the wood, needing to reassure herself that bugs had done this. She was working hard at the moment not to make too much of the window going bad. She pushed, the wood gave. Little particles fell down to land on the windowsill.

But even termites couldn’t distract her for long. She blurted out, I got a big part, Arny. Real big.

No kidding, you did? He looked at her with generous curiosity. Like, leading-lady big?

She nodded.

By damn. I’m gonna send you champagne. He shook his head in wonderment. See if I don’t.

In a moment’s enthusiasm she gave him a big hug. Thanks, Arny. I can hardly believe it myself.

As she headed to her apartment next door, Arny called after her: We’ll get you some quality people in here. No pimped-out losers! Then he poked his head out the door. How’s Rickie doin’?

Pretty good, considering. He nodded, rolling his eyes, and went back to deal with the window.

She turned the key in 306 and, dumping her coat and purse on the hallway table, poured herself a glass of Pinot Grigio. She sat in Rickie’s favorite chair by the window and watched the lights of the city bloom.

Falling asleep that night she heard Arny still poking around next door. It was comforting to know he was there because she was lonely without Rickie, staying now at her parents’ place so she could be close to the hospital. A distant thumping sound came to her ears. It was probably pumps from the sewer ditch outside, keeping the pit clear of water. She fumbled on the nightstand for her earplugs.

* * *

Jane’s next two weeks brought confirmation that she had indeed just landed the best role of the season. There were celebration dinners with friends, meetings with her agent, and a goodbye to her barista slot at the GottaJava. She had readings opposite potential cast members as Jefferson Harris tried out the dynamics of pairings with the nobody who was now most decidedly a somebody: Jane Gray. With her advance she went shopping, for herself, and for Christmas gifts and LED lights to string up in the apartment. It was a good time in her life despite always looking sideways at the world, expecting things to fall apart. For example, she never walked near construction cranes anymore, and told herself she was safest on the street side of the sidewalk, away from building fronts.

But as Jane’s life took an upward swing, Rickie’s took a downward one.

Jane showed up at Rickie’s on Christmas Eve, finding herself talking in hushed tones with Rickie’s parents before joining Rickie in front of the TV set and a rerun of The Simpsons. It had been over a week since Jane had seen her.

Rickie was bundled in a comforter, holding a large bag of potato chips. She looked up. The thing about being sick is that you can’t be on a diet. I mean, that would be stupid, to diet, right?

Yeah, your body needs potato chips. I’m with you on that one.

Rickie turned an appraising eye at Jane. Got yourself a new coat?

Jane spun around in the powder blue wool, a splurge, but so practical, she told herself.

"And a new hat? Very classy. You look…" She paused.