Write My Name Across the Sky Read online

  The Reuben is the most glorious thing I’ve sunk my teeth into for months. Everybody in the world thinks they know how to make a good one, but you just don’t know if you haven’t had the real thing, with real pastrami from a deli where they’ve made it authentically for generations and then layered it with fresh, crisp sauerkraut and swiss cheese, all of it grilled on true rye bread. I’ve never cared for the dressing, which Gloria remembered.

  “This is stunningly delicious,” I manage after a few bites. I set the sandwich back into its wax paper wrap and wipe my fingers, feeling the sense of home and comfort expand, deepen, spread through my body.

  “I wish I had your metabolism,” she says for probably the millionth time, and that, too, is comforting. “Your mother was the same. She could eat anything.”

  “Luck of the draw,” I say and push the potato chips her way. She adores them but will only eat two. “You look fit and happy.”

  She turns her head away from the small television, where a twenty-four-hour news channel plays on a shelf of the poorly lit kitchen. This is a new habit. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” she says and turns it off with a remote.

  “Did something happen today?”

  “Not really.” She swings her foot beneath the caftan. Her toenails are a candy-apple red. “It’s just noise.”

  I nod. I wonder if she’s been lonely, but that’s not really in character. All my life, she’s been very sure of herself and her needs and perfectly able to meet them. I offer her another chip, and she takes it distractedly. “Where are you going this time?” I ask.

  “Sorry?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Your trip? Isn’t that why I’m here?”

  “Oh. Yes. Dani is going to the islands and invited me to come stay at her guesthouse.”

  “That sounds good. February in the tropics.”

  “Yes.” Her gaze drifts back toward the television, and I notice she hasn’t put down the remote.

  “Is everything okay, Auntie?” I ask.

  “Of course!” Again, she seems to refocus, pouring fresh tea into my cup from one of the pots she’s collected in her travels around the world. This one is green enamel with white leaves, and I know she chose it for the green tea on purpose. “I’ve missed you, sweetheart. Tell me about everything.”

  But I can tell she’s still not really with me. Something is definitely off.

  Chapter Three

  Sam

  The release party for Ganymede’s Ghosts is held at Hops and Heads in Brooklyn, a leathery place masquerading as a hip brewpub so that all the aging boy wonders can reassure themselves they’re still cool. I’m only there because Tommy Gains, the designer, is one of my oldest friends in the business and he personally called to invite me.

  I hate these gigs, but I polished myself up and wore a belted yellow tank dress that does wonders for my boxy body, and some heels that make me stand a full head above most of the guys. Ever since I was thirteen, people have asked if I was a model. Not because I’m beautiful, because I’m not; it’s just the only thing they can imagine a woman of five feet eleven would do, especially if she has “strong” features like I do, a bold nose and heavy eyebrows and a super-wide mouth that gives me a ridiculous number of teeth when I smile, like Jerry Hall to the twelfth power. I make it a practice not to smile and paid an optometrist to fit me with several pairs of geek-girl glasses, horn rimmed and round wires and some very cute pairs of colored acrylic. Just donning a pair of glasses awards a woman an extra fifty points of intellect. As a woman in the competitive field of computer games and game apps, I need all the help I can get.

  The noise is frenetic, with an electronic beat thrumming through the room, not too loud, not too soft. My goal is to find Tommy, give him a punch in the arm, and get out. I don’t want to see the pity in the eyes of those who know what’s going on with my company, and I also don’t want to fake it with those who don’t.

  I’ll be forced to do both, of course. The faster I go, the less I’ll suffer.

  One of the things that surprises me as I make my way through the crowd at the pub is just how many women there are in the room. Since Gamergate in 2014, major companies have overtly recruited women and invited them into the circle, which has led to more females in college programs and showing up on the staffs. A few of them notice me, give me a chin lift.

  One earnest girl with rainbow tips in her long hair swings around, and her mouth drops open. “Oh my God! Sam Janssen! You’re the whole reason I’m in this field. I absolutely loved Boudicca when I was a little girl.”

  When I was a little girl. “Thanks. What’s your name?”

  “Ashley Madrid.”

  “Nice to meet you.” I shake her hand and start to move past her, but she’s got some grit and moves her body a little to keep me there, sliding a card out from somewhere, one that she presses into my palm.

  “Look, I know I’m nobody, but I would seriously love to talk to you. Just coffee?”

  “I’m kind of—”

  “I would intern with you for free, for whatever. I would bring your tea or run errands or whatever you wanted, just for a chance to see how you work.”

  It’s hard to resist a pitch like that, with her big brown eyes full of hope and the surety that Big Things Await. “Maybe,” I say and tuck the card in my pocket. “I’ll think about it.”

  She gives me a namaste bow. “Thank you. Have a good night. I saw Asher over by the snack table, if you’re looking for him.”

  Asher.

  A jolt burns through me, happiness and sadness all mixed up together. Asher is my oldest friend, my erstwhile business partner, and one of the people I love most in the world. Once upon a time we would have shown up here together, amusing each other with snide remarks. “Thanks.”

  What I should do is steer clear, but some ancient part of me makes a beeline for the snack table.

  Before I reach it, I run smack into Jared Maloney, a big hale guy with very little hair left on his head and a bushy blond beard to make up for it. His jeans are up to the minute and the paisley button-down is painfully hip, but no matter how much money he makes, it’ll never hide the miserable adolescence he suffered. His voice is always just slightly too loud, and he doesn’t respect personal space.

  “Samantha!” he says, using the full form of my name even though no one in our world does. I know he does it to remind me that I’m female. “Just the lady I wanted to see.”

  Lady. “How are you, Jared?” I say without inflection.

  “Very well, thank you.”

  “Good, good.” I look over his shoulder to see if I can spy Asher. Surely he’d rescue me if he saw me standing here with Jared, who has one main theme, which starts in . . . three, two, one:

  “I just scored a prize bit of Billie Thorne memorabilia—a poster from her first show at CBGB.”

  My attention snaps around. “CBGB?”

  “She played there.” He sips his beer delicately. “You didn’t know?”

  “I have to admit I didn’t.” There’s no rescue in sight. Sometimes, just giving in to his desire to rave about his favorite rock star, my mother, is enough to buy some goodwill. And for all his wretchedness, he is a very powerful guy in my world, known for aggressive takeovers and splashy buyouts. I have no doubt I’m on his list of upcoming acquisitions. “That sounds like quite a prize.”

  “Yes,” he says. He tells me the songs she played for the gig, the people in her band at the time. It was early on, for sure, before she made the album that sent her star skyward, Midnight Morning. “I found a photo,” he says and scrolls through his phone, one finger in the air to pin me in place. “Here it is.” He swings the phone around.

  It’s my mother at age twenty, skinny and still blonde, her hair in ribbons over her shoulders, her nipples poking out of a T-shirt, seven necklaces ringing her neck, her arms full of bracelets. A cigarette is burning in her right hand. She’s punky and hippie and beautiful—and I’ve never seen before how much my sister Willow l
ooks like her. A year or two after this shot, she chopped off her hair and dyed it black, turning herself into Billie Thorne instead of Billie Janssen.

  “Great, isn’t it?” Jared says and looks at it again.

  I feel pierced, seeing her so young. Untouched. For a while when I was very small, she grew out the black pixie. A memory slips through my mind, me brushing her hair over her shoulders as she sits on the floor. An entirely too familiar sense of loss breaches my walls, and I have to take in a deep breath to make it recede, staring off into the crowd so that he can’t read anything.

  I give a nod. “Yeah.”

  “You’re lucky you knew her,” he says, and I know he means it most earnestly. “She was one of the best singer-songwriters to ever live.”

  “She was definitely something.” A junkie, a lost soul, never really a mother at all.

  He drops the phone in his pocket and looks at me. I’m instantly on alert, his body language transmitting something my body picks up on but my mind is slow to recognize. “Sam.”

  I raise my brows. “Jared.”

  “I’m hearing rumors.”

  Fuck. Here it is. “About?”

  “Boudicca’s in trouble.”

  I turn at the mention of my company, ready to flee, now urgently searching for a face I know. “I’m not talking about this.”

  He touches my arm. Just touches it, right above the elbow. “I want to help.”

  I plant my feet, fury rising through my spine, stiffening it. “Help? Don’t you mean take over?”

  “No, no, no! It’s not like that.” He spreads his hand over his chest. “I swear on Billie Thorne that I would never do that.”

  Weirdly, I believe him. Or maybe I’m just desperate enough to entertain any kind of possibility. “What, then?”

  “I would like to sit down and talk with you about the company. I have some ideas.”

  He is probably going to offer to buy Boudicca, where it will be absorbed into the massive brand that is Arrakis, his game company. Even the thought of it creates stars of fury behind my eyes. And yet Boudicca is in trouble. I wait.

  “Dinner, tomorrow?”

  Something has to be done, and I don’t have to say yes to anything he says. “Sure.” Instantly, my temple starts to ache.

  “I’ll have my assistant send the deets.”

  Then I’m standing there in the crowd where I don’t know enough of the players anymore, feeling 150 years old, a has-been at 40. I realize this is probably how my mother felt when she went on the road that last time, after a flopped album and a half dozen stints in rehab for a heroin habit that started probably right around the time that CBGB photo was taken.

  Just give me one more chance. It’s not a prayer because I don’t believe in God, but maybe something is listening anyway.

  I make my way to the bar. I miss beer deeply but haven’t been able to drink it in ages, and at the best of times, I’m not a big drinker. I’ve just never seen the point. But right now, I need something to take the edge off this headache. “A vodka soda with lime, please.”

  The bartender, with muscles popping from below his shirtsleeves, says, “A woman who knows what she wants.” He pours the drink and passes it over with a wink. “Good health.” His accent is Irish. He’s really quite hot, and how long has it been since—

  Nope. He can’t be thirty, and I haven’t yet started seducing boys. “Thanks.” I raise the glass and face the room, promising myself I only have to make the rounds once, find Tommy, and get the hell out. I take a sip and stand there, searching the room for my points of entry.

  “Didn’t expect to see you here,” says a familiar voice in my ear.

  “Asher!”

  He smiles his big, happy, welcoming smile. His glasses are not fake prescriptions but correct a very serious nearsightedness, which he has always claimed is the mark of a brilliant mind. His hair is wild as ever, loose black curls he never bothers to tame with product, and below it is the most welcome face on the planet.

  Before he can put up his guard, I dive in for a hug, and before he can remember not to, he hugs me back. He smells of fresh air and Safeguard soap and a note of cinnamon that marks him completely. “It’s so good to see you,” I say, inhaling. Feeling.

  He doesn’t immediately let go, which I take as a hopeful sign. His arms are tight, and I can feel the density of his torso. “Ditto.” He disentangles himself. “I thought you and Tommy fell out a couple of years ago.”

  “We did.” He posted a thoughtlessly sexist comment about female gamers on social media, and I sliced him into little tiny pieces. “And then we worked it out.” I give him a level look, trying to use telepathy to say that’s what I want to happen with us. I punch his arm lightly, and even as I do it, I think it’s stupid. “How are you?”

  “Good. You?”

  “Great.”

  Then we stand there awash in an ocean of things. Things we can’t talk about. Our long friendship, our ill-fated night, our broken relationship. “How’s your mom?” I ask.

  “She had the flu that’s been going around, but she’s fine now. You should go see her. She misses you.”

  “It’s just been busy.” A lie, but I missed the way things had been so much the last time I visited Deborah that I just can’t do it. It underlined all the echoey emptiness that is my life these days. “I’ll make it happen soon.”

  “How’s Gloria?”

  I give him a half smile. “She’s Gloria. Her Instagram account has two hundred fifty thousand followers now. She’s a bona fide influencer.”

  He laughs, showing his big white teeth. “That’s great. Give her my love.”

  “You should do it yourself. You know you love her. Willow’s home too.”

  “To stay?”

  “Doubtful. You know Willow.”

  He nods. “She’s a free spirit.”

  He swivels to pick up his beer from the bar. We squeeze down to let a trio of twentysomethings belly up to order drinks. “I feel about ninety-seven years old in this room,” he says.

  “Right? When did we become the older generation?” I shake my head. “A girl who played Boudicca when she was a ‘little girl’ offered to be an intern.”

  “Ow. But also, that’s a good thing, right?”

  “I took her card. What are you working on now?”

  “New game,” he says and mimes zipping his lips. “It’s at that embryonic stage.”

  “I get it.”

  “You?”

  “A couple of things,” I lie. My business is in trouble entirely because I’ve had a dearth of ideas since Asher left the company. “Still on the AI app. Just can’t quite get it right.”

  “Anything you want to talk out?”

  I look up. His familiar brown eyes meet mine. In them, I see patience and kindness, qualities I have undervalued my entire life. “She still feels like an annoying, needy girlfriend. The opposite of what I’m going for.”

  He chuckles. “That’s a time thing, right? Training.”

  “Yeah, probably.” I sip my drink and think of a million ways to express how awful life is without him. I choose the simplest sentence. “I miss you, Asher.”

  “Me too, Sam.”

  “Can’t we just have lunch or even just coffee sometimes? Go to a movie?” We often spent Saturday nights watching anime, a habit we’d started way back in grade school, long before anime was hip. I aim for a lighter note. “It’s kind of hard to talk adults into picking up the anime habit.”

  He bows his head. “No. I’m not there yet.”

  I swallow. Give myself a minute so I won’t sound as intensely emotional as I feel. “This is crazy. We’ve been best friends for thirty years. How am I supposed to just go get another one?”

  “I don’t know.” His mouth twists with regret. “I’m lonely too.”

  “Then why—”

  His jaw sets. “No. Sorry.”

  “’Kay.” If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to make a big scene, and that’s not goi
ng to do me or my business any good. “I have to go.”

  He catches my arm. “I’m sorry, Sam. I wish I could.”

  “Me too.”

  I walk away.

  Chapter Four

  Gloria

  I’ve been online since dawn, trying to figure out exactly what’s happening with Isaak, googling and following links down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. It’s still not clear what he’s charged with, exactly, or where he will be tried. It pains me to think of him in a cell, wearing rough cotton, eating horrible food. He has always been so careful with his clothes, so particular about his food.

  I’m standing over the sink peeling a boiled egg and drinking black coffee when a news story pops up on the small television planted on a shelf in the corner. Willow is still asleep—poor girl looked even more waifish than usual last night—and I plan to let her sleep as long as she likes. I’ve had a few suspicions about that manipulative boyfriend of hers, and by the haunted look in her eyes, I’m not wrong.

  The announcer says, “France has announced that they will extradite Isaak Margolis for trial. The suspected art thief is connected to dozens of paintings that were lost during World War Two, which Margolis is suspected of selling during a flurry of activity in the late seventies and early eighties. Interpol is still seeking several accomplices. It is not known if the paintings were actually the lost masterpieces Margolis claimed or forged reproductions.”

  My heart whirls into a staccato rhythm, and I wonder if I’ll have a heart attack and be spared all the decisions I need to make. I press the heel of my hand into my breastbone.

  “Two masterworks in particular are thought to be among the lost paintings, a Renoir and an early-medieval masterpiece stolen from a hidden cache of Nazi holdings in 1947. In other news—”

  I click it off. Stand here trying to think through the noise in my brain. Will he be prosecuted? Will they trace things back to me?

  Carefully, I brush my fingers clean and walk through a swinging door into a small butler’s pantry that smells of dust. At the other end is another door, nearly always propped open, into the formal dining room where none of us ever eat.