The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [95]
He lifted Faith’s hair, whispered into her ear, “Let’s split.”
“Not me,” Faith said.
Frustrated, wasted, Wolf wandered off to flirt with an Italian girl in yellow hip-huggers, yellow fabric under his fingers, watching the pants move between his hands as he danced with her. Faith’s glare trailed him around the room, but she was too proud to come near him—that was his mistake. Although he hardly had the heart for it, Wolf followed Yellow up a flight of creaking metal stairs to this giant roof you could’ve launched a plane from. They lay down under stars that in Wolf’s present state were indistinguishable from the shards of glass around the mattress they lay on. All he could think of was Faith, how he wanted to teach her a lesson but was too stoned and wiped out to recall what exactly it was she needed to learn.
When finally Wolf rejoined the party, Faith and Eric had gone. He wasn’t surprised; hell, he’d brought it on himself. But his druggy panic had eased. She’d be back, he thought. They’d been through worse and come out of it.
Wolf turned, meeting Phoebe’s eyes for the first time in a while. She jumped at the contact. “You okay?” he said.
Phoebe nodded. She felt empty, as if her mind had no more proper contents than a road awaiting traffic. The feeling brought its own strange peace.
“Phoebe?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice was disembodied, as if she’d ceased to be anyone at all. Wolf watched her with a remoteness befitting her own faint presence, Phoebe thought. Her understanding no longer mattered, the story had reclaimed him. They sat in darkness.
Faith didn’t come back that night, or what was left of it. No surprise. The next day, either. Wolf hung out, killing time at the Gedächtniskirche, the Park Tavern, trolling the Zoo station looking for her. He drifted into a thing with a Russian art student, a redhead, that was all he remembered about her. Paintings full of DNA patterns.
By the time he saw Faith again, two weeks later, Wolf was half living in the art student’s studio. He’d drop by the carpenter’s pad a couple of times each day, checking to see if Faith had been around. Her backpack was still hidden in a closet, under a Mexican blanket. One day she met him at the door.
“Welcome back,” Wolf said. “What happened to Prince Charming?” Faith looked blank. “You know, what’s-his-name,” Wolf said, “with the flippy eyes. Eric.”
“Oh. I don’t know,” she said.
“So where the fuck have you been?”
“Don’t ask like that! Where have you been?”
She wore different clothes, straight clothes, a blouse with little red diamonds on it. Her hair was trimmed and neat, flat, as if someone had sat her down with a wet comb and worked all the tangles out. Wolf was struck by how unmarked she was; he felt the miracle of this, how the years of wildness had left no visible print. It was all just practice; in the end she would still be a teenager. Wolf felt a thousand years old beside her. “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“I’m kind of back.”
They were alone in the apartment. As Faith came toward him, Wolf noticed she was walking oddly. He couldn’t explain it—as if her center of gravity had shifted. He took her hands. “You look like you’re here to me,” he said.
They lay on the carpenter’s bed. Wolf wanted her so much; it never went away, that part. He wanted other girls, too, but never with this urgency, and the truth was, he’d gladly have given them up if