APARTMENT 1A

APARTMENT 1A

LUCKY

Monday, 3:24 PM

It’s said all of Shanghai wept when she died.

It’s said over three hundred thousand marched in a funeral procession four miles long that blustery March day in 1935. It’s also said that somewhere in the sobbing throng several women committed suicide. Their silent screen Goddess, Ruan Lingyu, ending her life with a fistful of sleeping pills at the too-young age of twenty-four spawning a grief only death could calm.

Whether or not myth wrestled with fact to become legend, and some claimed it did, everyone agreed this was a sad full stop to the short sentence of what might have been a glorious career.

A week later, in one of the many squalid shacks that still hug the outskirts of Shanghai, an early birth followed this now iconic end, the young mother’s overwrought anguish shocking her into the delivery of a small, sickly daughter. A dangerous unlucky beginning for a dangerously lucky life.

Or at least that’s what little Ruan Liu’s family said.

Decades had passed since her calamitous arrival on the wild wind of a wet night. Decades since she’d slipped from the unending horror of Shanghai and into the gentle cruelty of Toronto, and Paris, and East Berlin. Lifetimes, really, each with their own name, history, tale to tell, since the eve of her twenty-fourth birthday when seven small sips of steaming tea sealed her fate and brought her end.

Now, safe in elusive anonymity, her life behind her, her ledger running with red, Ruan sat and waited.

Having already said how-dee-doo to the big 8-0, any sane person would think the ire she felt over her cursed beginning would’ve been tossed on the ash heap of memory long ago. But no. Her cool palms quieted the flush staining her cheeks only to feel the stinging heat of the past return. And with all she’d lost, the one thing that remained, the one touchstone, the still beating heart thump-thump-thumping in her chest, was anger.

And Ground Zero, as it were, happened the day she was born.

Against Chinese custom, her parents had named her after a celebrity. It didn’t matter that it was a famously dead one or the emotional wounds of the girl’s suicide still bled. They’d branded their babe with the bedeviled woman’s memory, tying her forever to the endless anguish of a wandering ghost.

Then they’d watched, certain little Ruan, who’d christened herself Lucky—

the Killer, Lucky the Devil—

at the not-so-tender age of ten, would meet the same fate as the infamous Goddess: a life of struggle and sadness followed by an early exit at twenty-four.

But why think about that now? she wondered as she ignored the ghost whispering from the shadows, another cigarette shoved between her lips, the phosphorous flame jumping as she struck the match.

Lucky the Shadow, said the thing snarling from the corner.

Though the words cut like so many knives, she never paid attention to the voice. Her eyes watched the storm fill the cracks on Eidolon Avenue below. She took a breath, steadying the thumping of her heart. Her hands trembled, the flesh withered and drawn, the skin pale. Like moonlight, she thought as thunder rolled. She took another drag, drawing deep, and then deeper still, the smoke swallowed and held until, her lungs screaming, she relinquished it in a reluctant brume of blue.

Her past revisiting her was no surprise. In those spaces tucked along the edge of clarity marched an army of memories. And with time running short, daybreak to dusk a quickening parade of regret and guilt, there was little else for an old recluse to do than tug emotional threads from a century’s worth of unraveling quilts.

“Just go away,” she said to the ghosts.

They stood near, melding with the matted carpet and cluttered coffee table. Their sightless eyes watching her slow decline, the failing memory and faltering eyesight, they waited. Or sat opposite, legs spread, imbrued arms splayed. Or crouched in the corner hurling half-truths, each accusation showering her like beads of blood to splatter and scar the perfect white of selective memory.

“Drink,” Madame Xuo urged from the past. The wealthy woman with the painted face leaning close, smelling of expensive silk and dangerous secrets, the red slash of her lips curling in a macabre grin. “Drink, little—”

Lucky.

Why? she thought. Why didn’t I stop at three? She wiped away the tears, the movement impatient and quick.

Like the ghosts sitting opposite, or leaning against the wall, or standing at the window watching their hungry brethren on the avenue below, that day refused to die. “That was the end,” she said to the memory blackening the corner. “At twenty-four, that was the end. But who cares?”

You do.

Those ghosts who refused the grave drew closer. The Silent in expensive gold. The Favored with the heavy eyes. The heat, the red. The low table with the brew—

“It can fell armies,” she said, her voice small.

as old as China itself—

“And raise kings.”

waiting in a large cup, a dragon whipping around the delicate porcelain.

“Just stop.”

These random pieces of memory were exhausting. Memories she didn’t want to remember. That she couldn’t remember. It was useless. Nothing but confusion and dread.

She stopped.

What have you done? it said from the corner.

She remembered.

Secret doors opening onto narrow halls the color of fire. A hidden world of servants crawling, or shuffling, or waddling. Their legs weeping stumps thumping the floor as they whimpered, the tears heavy and wet. Their reaching arms ending at the rounded shoulder with five knotted fingers and five scratching nails. Their greasy heads turning to look, to see, to find, the rounded, smooth skulls too large for their twisted, turned necks. The rancid smell of sick and sweat and blood and fear.

The nightmare steaming in painted porcelain her final bow and the birth of—

The Killer, the mysterious Chinese woman with no name and a numbered Swiss bank account.

The Devil, who would step, soft and quiet, from the darkest of corners to strike without hesitation or regret.

The Shadow, her cold eyes the last thing the innocent, the powerful, the unlucky would see.

How many did you kill? came the snarl.

Her stomach turned, the fetid burn of remorse in her throat.

Do they stand below, three hundred thousand deep?

The cigarette clenched between her teeth, she dragged long and hard, the acrid bite of the smoke little comfort.

March in a procession four miles long?

The Echo annihilated, she stubbed it out on the blackened windowsill, her trembling fingers balling into a fist.

It wasn’t arthritis, though her joints ached. And it wasn’t Parkinson’s. Of that she was sure. She would have given the little she had left to slap either label, any label, really, on the tremor in her hands. Anything other than the one thing she knew it was. The one thing she feared the most.

Which is?

She laughed, the sound more a snort than a guffaw. “Well, it’s not fear, you son of a bitch,” she said.

No? said the voice from the corner.

“No.”

It’s time.

For a moment, the room spun. For a moment, she closed her eyes, the horror of the life she’d lived and the death she’d wrought rolling in like a thick, living cloud of unwilling memory. For a moment, just a moment, the army approached and the ghosts won.

“You can see me?” Lucky said, sinking into her chair, her voice small and weak.

Arms reached, their fingers flexing to find and grab and wrap around her neck. Tiny mouths opening to taste her flesh. To bite and suckle.

“How can you see me?”

Revenge spitting from painted red lips or snarling through yellowed teeth.

“Stop,” Lucky said. “Please, stop. I’ll be yours soon enough. And you, all of you, you slaughtered, forgotten nameless—

standing three hundred thousand deep—

can tear me limb from limb.”

He stood among the cracks on Eidolon below. The memory of this man, the one she loved, the one she cherished—

The one you butchered—

“Yes—”

to save yourself—

“No—”

as you kissed his lips—

“Stop—”

red with blood—

his ghost fighting to find form. The eyes, the arms, the angry jut of his chin, not yet clear.

“Soon,” she said, her hand too tired to wipe away fresh tears. “Not now, but soon.”

With a blink, he was banished, the avenue once again a familiar strip of cracked concrete awash in rain.

Across the room, a key slid into the lock, the dead bolt turning, the front door swinging open with a gentle shove.

Lucky relaxed. The trembling stopped. She took a breath. The hungry fingers left her neck, the seven mouths ceased their suckling, and the not-so-dearly departed, their true terror relegated to the realm of erratic recollection, departed once more.

A breath later, her red coat dripping with rain, her blonde hair as bright as the sun, her salvation arrived.

***

“Of course, Bobby Lee always was a bit of a pill,” her salvation was saying. “That’s what Mama always said. ‘He’s a pill, that Bobby Lee. As wild as the day is long, God bless his heart.’ And she was right, of course. But Mama was always right even when she wasn’t.”

Although the salvation standing in the kitchen loading up the cupboards with a week’s worth of groceries had a name, to Lucky she was and always would be Evangelical.

“Are you hungry?” Evangelical would say over her shoulder, her arm shoved deep in the cupboard. “Are you cold?” Evangelical would ask, her voice an echo as she stocked the fridge with government cheese and cheap cold cuts. “Is there anything else you need?” Evangelical would continue, her brow knitting as, slow and steady, she folded her reusable grocery bags. Creasing only on the creases, the corners lined up just so, the whole painstaking ritual more tedious than a Roman Catholic catechism.

Silence, Lucky thought. If there’s anything I need, it’s silence.

But not wanting to wound this devout woman with the kind heart, she kept quiet, offering a small smile, the shake of her head answering No, I’m not hungry, No, I’m not cold, No, I don’t need anything.

And so it would go. Every Monday afternoon around three, blonde, blue-eyed Evangelical, a young woman of contradictions, her tall Midwestern height and wide hips at odds with the sweet syrup of the South that stuck to her every word, would arrive bearing two bags of groceries and a week’s worth of Gospel.

A loaf of bread with a bunch of John. Some macaroni and cheese with a chaser of Mark. A pint of ice cream followed by Luke and a bit of Matthew with a box of instant mashed potatoes.

Getting no response from her stoic charge, she’d then talk of family. The bags emptied and folded, Evangelical would sit, her head cocked to the side, her face looking somewhat skewed. Then, freshly brewed tea in hand, one cup offered, the other sipped, she’d bury the rest of the afternoon in breathless homilies and sly bromides.

And Lucky would listen.

“So, of course,” Evangelical said as she sat, her thick thighs pressed together. “Mama being who she was, well, she never did take Bobby Lee over her knee which is exactly what Grandpa Will and Grandma June would tell her needed to be done.” The blue of her eyes peered through her blonde bangs as she watched Lucky. “Yes they did, God knows, but Mama, she wouldn’t listen, no siree, not to one word.

“But, really, you can’t help but wonder how different Bobby Lee would have turned out, you know?” she said as she hoisted herself forward to collect her cup. “Or at least I do. What path would he have taken had she smacked his backside with a switch now and then. Because he went off the rails, that one. Absolutely off the rails. Until that day in a crowded bus station when the good Lord redeemed him and brought him home.”

Two small sips as Evangelical grew quiet, the memory of her Bobby Lee a sudden storm darkening her light, her smooth brow wrinkling for the smallest of seconds.

“But, oh, I don’t know,” she said, the clouds lifting. “Can your past really determine your future? Do all those memories and mistakes and whatnot really butt their noses into one’s here and now? And believe me,” she said, the cup on the table to hide somewhere in a valley of unopened mail and yellowing newspaper. “I’ve tried talking with Pastor Dan about this, but he won’t hear it. ‘Well, what do you think?’ he always says. ‘I don’t know,’ I always say. ‘That’s why I’m asking you!’ And we laugh. But there’s never an answer. Or at least not one from him or anyone else I talk to.

“So, what do you think?” Evangelical said, waiting.

Lucky looked at her, this simple, sweet soul. Wise, yes, but still so naive and unsuspecting. “I think we carry our pasts with us wherever we go and whatever we do,” Lucky decided to say, playing it safe.

She swallowed. Her voice felt strange. Trapped and scared. She looked down to find her fingers around her tea, the mug balanced in her lap. She didn’t remember lifting it from the table, or carefully bringing the steaming Lipton close. She cleared her throat again, pushing down the years of lies scrambling to her tongue, eager to slip past her lips.

“Are you your past?” Evangelical asked. She leaned closer, her knees still locked together like a vestal virgin. “Is it still a living thing, your past? Or are you able to move on and leave it behind?”

“I am all I’ve done.” She coughed, finding the rim of the mug pressing against her lips, the tea begging her for a sip.

No.

“And what’s that?”

She put it on the table, pushing it out of reach, and leaned back. They grew restless on Eidolon below. She could feel them. Could feel their formless faces tilt skyward, their ghostly ears cocked and ready for her to lose her battle and for those words, all those words, to escape. She could feel them gather and grow, pressing forward, their bloodied mouths opening to laugh, or shout, or scream in rage at the lies that would fall from her lips.

But no. No lies. Not today.

“What’ve you done?” Evangelical said. Her smile sweet, the blue of her eyes clear pools of innocent wonder, she waited, her thick fingers with their pink nails knitted together on her lap as she sat. “Wanna talk about it?”

Lucky turned away, the catch in her throat snatching her voice and stealing her courage.

“It’s good to talk now and then, you know,” her salvation said.

A dozen now stood below as the long-dead Madame Xuo whispered from the past,

Strong as stone—

A dozen waited in the rain, finding their forms.

Cannot falter—

Remembering her.

Cannot fail—

Remembering themselves.

“We should talk.” Evangelical’s voice sounded strange. Distant. As if she was standing on the other side of a large door. A locked door that had no key.

It is forever—

“No,” she said.

On Eidolon, their eyes wild, their teeth bared in bloodstained snarls, they gathered together and drew near.

“No?” Evangelical said.

“No.”

Lucky pushed the past away. Why on earth would I say anything? she thought. What good could come from knowing what she’d done?

It would destroy the best parts of who Evangelical was. And she just didn’t have an appetite for that kind of cruelty anymore.

“Are you alright?” Evangelical watched her. “Should I go?”

No, Lucky wanted to say. Shocking herself, she leaned forward, her hand out to touch the girl’s knee, or pat her hand, or something. Offer some small something to comfort, like a normal person would.

Seeing you is a burden, the man with the knife said, the waves crashing beneath him.

She stood in the kitchen, Evangelical. “More tea?” she said over her shoulder, her hands reaching into the cupboard for two thick white mugs.

Lucky closed her eyes. That missing minute, Evangelical here and then suddenly there, haunted her. Her throat tight, she swallowed again. Found herself considering taking a sip, a small sip, from her tea.

She looked up to find Evangelical at the door, shaking the rain from her red coat, a bag of groceries at her feet, the second one still balanced in the crook of her arm.

No, that’d been earlier. She blinked, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, just a moment, and opened them. Evangelical came close with two steaming mugs of tea in hand, past and present once again on the same page.

“We should talk,” her salvation had said.

I want to, Lucky said in that quiet voice that only she could hear. But there was too much. Too much dust, too many cobwebs.

You have much to answer for.

Yes, the blood had dried and the flesh had been nibbled and the bones gnawed years ago. Nothing worthwhile hid in the past.

There will be other chances, the slaughtered said from the corner, the words slow. She knew why they were thick. She knew why they sounded wet.

Lucky looked to the window and squeezed her eyes shut. Stop it, she thought. Nothing of use waited under those stones left unturned. To speak now of what was then, it was pointless.

Her stories could only destroy.

Besides, she wondered, her trembling hands rising to cover her ears, who would believe her beginning began the day she died?