Imaginary Lines (New York Leopards 3)

Mduduzi leaned over to try to see my phone. “What’d he say?”

I clicked it dark immediately. “Nothing.” When they didn’t buy that, I relented. “He wants to hang out.”

“And? What did you say?”

I looked down at my message, and then typed I suppose I’ll be free on Sunday and clicked send. “I said yes.”

* * *

Abe and I walked down the quiet streets west of Broadway, the main drag through Astoria. When my grandparents lived here, it had been mostly Eastern European Jewish immigrants, but now the restaurants and bakeries lining our walk slanted Greek and Polish. We paused to buy honey-soaked baklava before continuing on to the address I’d scribbled on the back of a grocery receipt.

When Abe had asked me what I wanted to do on Sunday, I’d immediately told him

I wanted to go see my grandparents’ old apartment. It had been sitting in the back of my head for a few weeks now, but I didn’t have the guts to go by myself. I wasn’t sure why not; perhaps I was afraid it would be a letdown, to just stare at a building, and I wanted someone there to pick me up.

I’d half-expected Abe to tell me that wasn’t a real date, but he agreed instantly. It wasn’t a date, really, but I wanted him there. I wanted my best friend.

It took a minute to locate the exact building. The numbers didn’t work in an orderly fashion, but skipped by twos and tens sometimes ate up whole dozens. Finally, my eyes landed on 712B.

I stood back to take it in. It looked much like all the other buildings on the street: small, brown and cramped. A small Laundromat filled the ground floor, and I wondered if it had been there when my grandparents had. Probably not.

Abe stopped beside me, tilting his head up. “So this is it?”

“Yeah.” I peered up at the third-floor windows and pointed my finger. “That’s where they lived.”

We stared up at the dark glass. I tried to imagine my grandparents peeking back out at us. They’d been younger than I was when they moved here—twenty-one and twenty-two. “What a strange life.”

He nodded. “Want to see if we can go inside?”

I glanced at the door. “Not really. I just wanted to...ground the stories. It’s weird how by the time they were our age... They were just kids, you know?”

He took my hand. “I know.”

“I’d like to go to Wroclaw. Though that sounds silly—what would I do, stare at the building where the chocolate shop used to be? That would take ten seconds.”

He shook his head. “It makes sense.” He hesitated, and then said with sweetness and sincerity, “I’d go with you.”

I squeezed his hand. “I’d like that.” Another beat of silence passed. “When I was little, I used to think their whole story was so romantic. Love. War. Paris and New York. But it’s not romantic or glamorous. It’s just sad.”

Abe nodded. His dad’s parents and Abe’s maternal grandfather had all grown up in California, from families that had lived there since the early 1900s. But his mom’s mom, Grandma Lewinski, had only come over after the war. She’d been an orphaned teenager, and had been separated from her sister and brother as they were all sent to live with distant relatives all over the country. She didn’t speak English and didn’t know the people she lived with, and there was nothing romantic about that. “I know.”

It was petty, cowardly people who ruined a generation in their quest for power.

We stood there another minute before both of us slowly noticed a family of four hovering in our peripheral vision. Abe glanced at me, and I inclined my chin a tiny bit.

He opened up his body language, and the family was on us in seconds. They were all tall and slim and smiling nervously. Tourists. Tourist Dad had a trim goatee and stepped forward. “Aren’t you Abe Krasner?”

Abe grinned. “Yes, sir.”

The man fumbled in his pocket for his camera. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

Tourist Dad held out his camera to me.

Oh, I saw how it was. I bit back a smirk. A guy in the door of the Laundromat shook his head, his handlebar mustache shaking. My smirk tried to surface even more. Locals disapproved when tourists assaulted their celebrities.

I took several shots of the whole family with Abe, and then the two daughters. Tourist Dad was clearly psyched beyond belief, and so was Tourist Daughter 1, but Daughter 2 looked like she just wanted to get back to Angry Birds.