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“You said you didn’t remember her,” she says faintly.
Jerry looks at her for a second, before the unmistakable jingle of the front door sounds.
“Well,” Jerry says. He turns away, headed for the kitchen. “Somebody’s gotta feed the poor bastard.”
Winfield crunches off through shards of coffee mugs to take the customer, and Jerry salvages the kitchen enough to make a plate of food. He calls Billy to let him know they’re going to have to close until a plumber can come, and even from across the room August can hear Billy swearing about the costs of lost business and new pipes. Another few weeks off the Pancake Billy’s prognosis.
Winfield serves their one customer a shortstack with orange juice and sends them on their merry way, and Jerry tells Winfield to go home.
August stays.
“You said,” she says, cornering Jerry by the walk-in, “you didn’t remember Jane.”
Jerry groans, rolling his eyes and throwing a tub of butter on the shelf. “How was I supposed to know there was a waitress operating a Jane Su shrine out the back of my restaurant?”
“It’s not—” August takes a squishy step back. “Look, I’m trying to figure out what happened to her.”
“What do you mean what happened to her?” Jerry asks. “She left. It’s New York, people leave. The end.”
“She didn’t,” August says. She thinks about Jane, alone on the train. No matter how angry she is, she can’t stop imagining Jane fading in and out of the line, untethering herself. But she doesn’t really think Jane will forget, not after all this time. Maybe, if she can find proof that there’s hope, she can change Jane’s mind. “She never left New York.”
“What?” Jerry asks.
“She’s been missing since 1977,” August says.
Jerry takes that in, slumping heavily against the door. “No shit?”
“No shit.” August levels her gaze at him. “Why did you tell me you didn’t remember her?”
Jerry huffs out another sigh. His mustache really has a life of its own.
“I’m not proud of who I was back then,” Jerry says. “I’m not proud of the friend I was to her. But I’d never forget her. That girl saved my life.”
“What? Like, figuratively?”
“Literally.”
August’s eyes widen. “How?”
“Well, y’know, we were friends,” he says. “I mean, she was friends with everyone, but me and her lived on the same block. We’d give each other shit all day in the kitchen, and then we’d go to a bar after work and drink a Pabst and talk about girls. But one day she comes into work and says she’s moving.”
“She was?” August blurts out, and he nods. That’s new. That’s not on the timeline.
“Yeah,” he goes on. “Said she’d heard from an old friend she never expected to hear from again, and he convinced her to go. Last time I saw her, it was her last day in town. July of ’77. We went to Coney Island, said goodbye to the Atlantic, rode the Wonder Wheel, had way too many beers. And then she dragged my drunk ass to the Q, and let me tell you what a dumbass I used to be—there I was, drunk as my aunt Naomi at my cousin’s bris, and I walked to the edge of the platform and puked my guts out, and when I got done, I fell clean off.”
August presses a hand to her lips. “Onto the tracks?”
“Right onto the tracks. Biggest dumbass move of my life.”
“What happened?”
He laughs. “Jane. She jumped down and got me out.”
“Holy shit,” August exhales. Typical Jane, throwing herself onto the tracks to save someone else like it was nothing. “And then what?”
Jerry gives her a look. “Kid, do you know what happened in New York in July of ’77?”
She runs through her mental files. Son of Sam. The birth of hip-hop. The blackout.
