Free Pain & Wastings by Carrie Mac Page B

drinkers are already into the rice wine in the concrete park across the street. Holly pushes the buzzer marked
Manager
.
    After two tries, we’re let in by a very grumpy but obliging woman in a housecoat and slippers, her thin hair in three drooping rows of curlers. Is this the same woman who ran the building when we lived here? I frown at her, studying her features, trying to remember, but being inside the building is like being in a dream. Or a nightmare. The edges of my vision become fuzzy, and the present is slipping away, no matter how hard I clench my fists around it.
    I was eleven and a half by the time I told Marigold how I got out. Five years after it happened.
    â€œEveryone’s always wondered how you got out, Ethan. When you didn’t have the key for that upper lock.”
    â€œSame way he did,” I said.
    â€œHow’s that?”
    â€œHe came back and opened the door,” I said matter-of-factly. “The key was hung up and I couldn’t reach it. But he could.”
    If she was surprised, she did an amazing job of not showing it. “Wow. That was nice of him.”
    â€œHe’s not nice at all.” I scratched out the frog I was drawing, covering it in black marker.
    â€œYou’re right, Ethan. He’s not.” She slid a fresh piece of paper in front of me. “Do you want to tell me more?”

Chapter Nineteen
    Holly asks the woman if there is an empty apartment, one we could just have a quick peek at. The woman eyes the two of us, takes another look at Holly’s paramedic uniform and heads off down the hall. We follow her. She stops at her suite to collect a ring of keys.
    â€œWhat do you want to look at it for?” she asks, with a grunt for the question mark.
    â€œI used to live here,” I say, not giving Holly the chance to make something up.
    â€œYou did not,” the woman says firmly. “I’d know. Been here twenty years.”
    I remember her name all of a sudden. “Delores, right?”
    She hesitates in her search for the right key. We’re standing at the back on the second floor. My mom and I lived exactly one floor up.
    â€œThat’s right,” she finally says. And then, as she’s fitting the key in the lock, “I know who you are. I know you. You’re Christine’s boy.”
    She opens the door and shuffles away before I can say anything else.
    â€œThank you,” Holly calls after her.
    I step inside the dim front hallway. Kitchenette to the right, bathroom to the left. Closet. And then the rest of the room, with only the one window at the back. Exact same layout.
    â€œYou okay?” Holly hangs back at the door. “Want me to leave you alone?”
    â€œNo!” I didn’t mean it to come out so desperate, but I am. I don’t want her to leave. I open the closet. It seems so small, but I remember it being much bigger. My mom used to lay out a sleeping bag with a flashlight under the pillow and all the stuffies I wanted to keep me company.It was the closest thing to a bedroom I ever had. I loved it.
    â€œI’m right here,” Holly says. She lights a cigarette and moves into the kitchen so she can tap her ash into the sink.
    â€œHow much do you know?” I ask.
    â€œAll of it.”
    â€œTell me.”
    â€œHow much do you know?” she counters as if she is considering what to tell me.
    â€œI was here.” I point into the open closet. “Right here. There’s nothing you can tell me that I don’t already know.” In my head or heart. Or gut.
    â€œYour mom’s name was Christine,” Holly starts. “But she was called Ella on the streets. She was an amazing singer. She could sound just like Ella Fitzgerald one night and Nina Simone the next. She was amazing. So talented. I’d go watch her sometimes at the Honey Lounge. She was like something out of another era, you know? With beautiful dresses and her hair swept up. She was