Skin tags smothered his neck. They swam up to his chin and down into his chest; he had a small cluster at the dip below his lip. Visions of myself ripping them off with my fingernails swirled in my head.

He said something in Russian, to which I nodded, pretending I understood, though by now I probably should have, and he handed over Nicoletta’s body to me. Thank you, I said.

The man—one of our ancient neighbors that smelled of cigarettes and burnt cooking oil—turned a corner into darkness before I heard his front door slam shut.

My sister was a sleepwalker. Often I found her roaming the vacant halls of our building occupied in large part by Russians who’d been around since the complex first opened in the thirties. Many tenants were born in the same apartments they still occupied. It was easy guiding my sister back to bed; she was submissive in most aspects of her life. A part of me pitied her, another part wished I were the same. So easy-going as to be malleable.

In the morning, she asked if she’d sleepwalked. I told her she hadn’t.

But my feet are all dirty, she said, inspecting the soles from her spot at the kitchen table. Nicoletta wore her usual ratty nightgown, the one she’d had since middle school, the one our mother had bought a matching pair of years back, where cartoon elephants hopped across clouds bladed through with rainbows. It hardly fit Nicoletta by now.

You need to wash them, I said. When you shower.

I do.

Harder. And don’t forget your legs. Lots of people forget their legs. Wash them with soap, hard. Use the loofah.

Okay, thanks. I will.

When Nicoletta raked her fingers through her hair, her hand got caught there, trapped in a cluster of knots. She looked disheveled, the way she usually did, bloodless and tired. Like she no longer believed in the utility of the comb, or showers. But instead of burying her beauty, I thought this intensified it. She looked like a lost soul everyone was meant to save; I was trying my best to.

Our father lumbered into the kitchen, grumbling good morning as he rubbed his left eye. Another lost soul. I told him to stop touching it, that he’d only make his eye worse. He said it itched, he had to scratch the itch.

Ever since our mother left, our father had been complaining about his eye. He said it was red and swollen and he worried it would pop out one day. Just like that. It was true that it was a little red, but this seemed more a result of poking and prodding it into anger than anything else.

By now, our mother had been gone some years. According to our father, she had returned to the homeland, where she was knee-deep in some kind of special mission. He used words like covert and infiltrate to explain her to us. Whenever our father told us one of these stories, I nodded, still half-believing them. My other half remembered the time my mother had shaved her head clean. In order to better hear our thoughts, she’d said, smashing our heads together then giving us a loopy smile, certain she’d heard what I’d been thinking: I love you and I’m scared of you.

Is Mom a sleepwalker? Nicoletta asked. She’d made herself a mug of hot chocolate. Two giant marshmallows floated against the rim.

I don’t know.

Did I get it from her?

I don’t know.

Do you think she also sleepwalked last night? Nicoletta asked. She’d pinned her attention to me, her eyes hungry for a reaction. Hope hovered there, and I didn’t have it in me to bulldoze it away. My sister still believed our mother was a spy dispatched to the homeland. I didn’t fault her for this. It was easier to believe in a fantasy than grapple with the truth: she’d abandoned us, and we couldn’t be sure she was even alive still.

My father filled his thermos then kissed the tops of our heads goodbye. Though my sister’s eyes had returned to her mug, her question hung in the air. Just something else to be left unsaid between us.

 

My father worked at the church a few avenues over. For most of my childhood, I’d assumed he was a priest at St. Matthew’s—we rarely ever went to church; my mother had her own ideas about prayer—and only later learned he was a janitor. This was less humbling than I’d imagined; for some reason, I felt proud of my father for being a janitor. It felt more honest. Besides, priests weren’t ever up to any good.

Although he mostly swept and mopped the floors, cleared out the trash, polished the wood, sometimes, if a funeral was poorly attended, he’d slip into a suit and sit in the back, pretending to be a guest.

This was what he was doing when I stopped by with his lunch. Since our mother left, he always forgot to eat. At first, he grew lean, and I thought it suited him, then he grew gaunt, and I thought it no longer suited him, to look like the corpses he sometimes presided over.

It’s Spam today, I said once the service was over and we’d retreated to the closet he called an office. Cleaning supplies towered in one corner while a battered desk faced the other. Like my father, the office was nothing if not solemn.

I love Spam, he said, slipping out of his sportscoat and into the vest he used for cleaning. It was immaculate; how he kept the vest so stiff and bleached was beyond me. Though I thought it suggested something true about my father: he was good at his job.

I know you do. Who died?

The butterscotch man.

When my father saw confusion cloud my face, he explained. The man owned a butterscotch empire, my father said. He pressed his face close to the tiny mirror he kept hung on the back of the door. He was looking at his eye. With his finger, he prodded at the bottom then the top, then he rubbed his eyelid.

You’d think there’d be more people, I said, watching my father grow more and more aggressive with his touch.

When you’re rich like that, he said, I imagine it’s hard to trust people. Easy to alienate people. Even his family hated him. None showed up.

While my father spoke, I wondered what his funeral would look like, and who would fill the gap in the back if he wasn’t around.

My funeral will have you two and that’s enough for me. He smiled weakly. Turned his face away from the mirror. The eye, which hadn’t been particularly noteworthy before, was now red and swollen.

We’ll invite the Russians, I said.

They hate us.

They understand death better than any of us. They’ll be there. So many they won’t all fit.

People spilling out the doors? That doesn’t sound so bad.

My father fought the impulse to touch his eye again, leaving his finger beside his temple, and he tapped, and he scratched, and then he smiled again.

 

I was a woman’s pet. This is what Cheyenne called me. While I was, in fact, her personal assistant, she insisted on telling people—the many guests that dropped into her townhouse in the Upper East Side throughout the week—I was her pet.

I ran errands for her, picking up prescriptions for her and her twelve dogs, all of whom seemed to constantly need deworming, which made me wonder what kind of rot or infestation lived behind the hand-crafted wallpaper imported from Vienna, or beneath the basement’s Italian marble tiling.

Now she was having me fire one of her maids. A watch had gone missing. Though the maid had been around for decades, Cheyenne was quick to blame her. Cheyenne could be heartless like that.

She watched from the living room as I told Escarlet her services were no longer needed. This was the same woman who’d made countless meals for me. She liked experimenting. Flipping through Cheyenne’s many cookbooks that went otherwise unused. An Italian wedding soup in particular comes to mind. The glee in Escarlet’s face as I slurped spoonful after spoonful before asking for seconds. Now, she was crying. But what will I do? she asked.

I had no right answer for her. I said, You will persevere. You always do.

Cheyenne had her moments. This is probably why I stayed. She plucked me out from the streets—literally, only moments after I’d dropped out of school, she tapped me on the shoulder at Washington Square Park, my eyes red with tears, and told me she had all the power in the world to fix whatever was wrong. In some sense, this wasn’t hyperbole. She’d actually been able to fix so much of my life then. That I still lived in a cramped apartment with my father and sister was a personal choice. That I could leave at any moment was the comfort I needed to stay.

Cheyenne loved the color blue. She wore blue eyeliner and blue lipstick and was always sporting a blue tracksuit, a strange affectation. She was an eccentric. When money isn’t a problem, it’s hard not to be. There’s no one to stop you. No one to tell you what’s tasteful and what’s ugly. No one to tell you what’s right or wrong, good or bad. At the top of her head floated a swatting of grey hair she accented with blue highlights. And she had large breasts that swung in opposite directions, a large gap where there shouldn’t have been much of a gap at all. I could have squeezed my head between both breasts, twice over.

Cheyenne slipped a few hundred-dollar bills into my coat pocket after Escarlet left the townhouse with a suitcase stuffed with everything she’d amassed over the years. While Cheyenne eyed the luggage with curiosity—was Escarlet taking something that didn’t belong to her, including the suitcase itself?—she didn’t stop her.

Thank you honey bun, she said to me after. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Shall we get pedicures?

 

Another night of wandering the halls searching for Nicoletta. I’d discovered the front door open, the light from the outdoor hallway pouring in. When I found her at the opposite end of the floor, she was with our neighbor. He gently guided her back towards me, his palms barely grazing her shoulders. His skin tags flared beneath the harsh hallway lights.

Do you ever sleep? I asked, taking hold of Nicoletta.

He waved this away. Insomnia. I never sleep. Anyway, life’s too short for sleep. He said this then disappeared back into his corner of the complex.

After I settled Nicoletta back into bed, I sank into the end of her mattress, and I scrubbed away the dirt from her soles.

 

My father was polishing one of the church’s many wooden statues of Christ on the cross when I arrived at St. Matthew’s the next day. I had his lunch with me. Salami.

As he rubbed a soft rag against the statue’s leg, I told him he should be more worried about Nicoletta. I said, She’s sleepwalking nearly every night.

His mouth twisted into something between a smile and a wince. You take such good care of her, he said. She’s in the right hands.

What if I’m not there one night? She needs you too.

She’s not like her mother, he said. She’s stronger than all that.

You’re disappearing. Soon we won’t just be down one parent but two.

He dipped his rag into his tin of polish before rubbing the statue’s leg once more. One hand ran up the lean thigh while the other floated towards his left eye. I’m here, he said, staring at his work. I’m here.

Stop touching your eye.

 

Escarlet had on her work uniform, her head pitched up, unfocused gaze latched to the clouds drifting in the sky. I’d found her on a bench by the park facing Cheyenne’s townhouse. When she noticed me sitting beside her, she told me she’d had a vision.

My mission in life is to work for that woman, she said. I’m supposed to help her accomplish everything she’s going to accomplish.

Escarlet, she fired you.

I know that, Escarlet said.

Though Escarlet was beautiful, she had large moles splattered across her body, thick black hair growing from the many dark spots. The largest visible one, on her arm, glowed under the sun, and the hair that emerged from it looked particularly powerful. Like it had a life of its own.

She’s not going to give you your job back, I said.

I made her life easy for her.

I know that.

This is my life’s work.

You should go home.

He’ll wonder why I’m early, Escarlet said.

She hadn’t told her husband? Of course not, she said. There are secrets and there are lies and some are worse on a person and some are a necessity. Escarlet tipped her head back up. Was she going to spend all afternoon here, staring at the sky? I was too afraid to ask. I told her if she needed anything, anything at all, she should call me. I reached for her palm, gripped it tight. Her hand was so cold.

Where are your gloves? I asked.

They were Madame’s.

You need gloves if you’re going to spend all day here, I said, and I slipped mine off and placed them on Escarlet’s lap.

Thank you, pet, she said. Her tone was mocking and acid.

Every day that week I found Escarlet on the bench, wasting away the hours, doing not much else but watching the sky. Sometimes taking breaks to fish out a snack from her bag. These were not the elaborate meals I’d learned to associate her with, but sandwiches and pretzels. That she’d been relegated to anemic-looking packed lunches was probably the saddest thing about her days at the park.

When I pointed out what Escarlet was doing to Cheyenne, all she did was make a clucking sound. Worry about yourself, pet, she said.

 

My sister was awake in bed when I went in to check on her. The nightlamp bathed her bare shoulders in a bluish tint while shadows stretched across her face. I’m not sleepwalking, she said. She had her thighs crushed to her chest, a small plate floating on her knees.

Midnight snack? I asked.

Nicoletta nodded, slotting a small oval into her mouth. Boris gave them to me, she said. They’re pierogies.

Who is Boris?

Our neighbor. The old one.

All our neighbors are old.

You know which one. They’re pan fried. Nicoletta lifted the plate, aiming it in my direction. I’m okay, I said, taking a step back. My head felt light and my stomach swirled. The scent was too powerful. The scent of that man.

He gave you pierogies? I asked, taking a further step back, away from the pleasant stink of burnt cooking oil.

 

Because the elderly Russians congregated in the building’s courtyard every morning at eight, it was easy to find Boris in the daytime. I sat beside him as he smoked, my eyes wandering to his skin tags, my nose taking stock of his scent, and I thanked him for the pierogies. He waved this away. I made too many by accident.

Thank you for everything with my sister too.

I’m jealous she can sleep through anything. I haven’t slept a full night since the war, he said—I wanted to know which war, but felt it would be stupid to ask. The world was constantly at war.

She said something about your mother being a spy?

He took a suck from his cigarette, his gaze lingering over me. I told him it must have been part of her dream.

So you’re not Russian? he asked. But there’s something very hard to you. Very Russian.

Isn’t that just life?

You’re too young to have had life make such a mark on you already. But Russians, we’re born with that hardness. It’s in our blood.

You’re survivors.

So are you.

 

When something else finally went missing—a gold necklace, something Cheyenne claimed was a family heirloom, though whether that was true or not was up for debate—Cheyenne had me fire the remaining maid.

You can go out and tell Escarlet she has her job back, Cheyenne said. She was strangling her head with a blue bandana, twisting her neck from side to side as she inspected her work from her dresser mirror. She touched her clavicle, where the necklace would have been, and a pained expression flashed across her face. A performance.

Is it so easy?

What is? she asked, pouting her lips at her reflection.

For you to ruin someone’s life.

Just as easy as fixing it. You would know.

Did you know it wasn’t Escarlet this whole time?

People need to know that things can go away just as easily as they come. It wasn’t to humble her. It was to harden her. I won’t be around forever. You could use a similar lesson.

Cheyenne continued playing with her face. I left her there, her lips pushing up against the mirror, her bandana pulling at her scalp.

When I told Escarlet the good news, she gave me a strange, plain stare. Like I mentioned, she said, it’s my life mission.

I thought you’d be happier, I said.

You think I want to clean up after a woman like Cheyenne? You think I want to clean at all?

Then why have you spent every single day out here like this?

I needed to prove something. To myself, to Cheyenne. Besides, I already said it. It’s my life’s work. The vision told me so.

Before, I hadn’t taken the mention of a vision so literally, but now I was less sure. Maybe she was more spiritual than I’d imagined. I handed her key back and wished her luck.

You’re leaving? she asked.

She’ll just ruin your life all over again, I said. I can’t sit around and let her do the same with mine.

But she saved you.

I no longer need saving.

 

My father crushed a damp towel to his left eye. This was how I’d found him. Body crumpled in the bathroom, blood bleeding through the cloth. What have you done? I asked.

His remaining eye looked at me with a crazed expression. Me! I told you the eye was on the verge of popping out.

Blood pooled beneath my father. Did it? I asked. Pop out?

What do you think? my father said. He reached for the bathtub’s ledge, and I offered him my arm, pulling him up. I asked where the eye was.

How would I know? I can’t see!

Blood continued to run down his face. Somehow, we made our way outside, stumbling into a cab that drove us straight to the emergency room. The doctors were perplexed. He did this to himself? My father stretched out on a gurney behind the curtain, his poor body writhing in pain.

Yes, I said.

I didn’t!

 

I returned from the hospital after midnight. Had left my father there, settled with a morphine drip and a bandage over the hollow of his eye—an eye patch would rest there for the rest of his life.

The front door to the apartment was wide open, and, once again, I was beginning my search for Nicoletta. Heading to the spot where the old man normally found her, Boris’s corner of the complex. But she wasn’t there. Nor was he.

I continued floating down the halls. Passing doors from which I could hear faint voices, always in Russian. And when I finished my sweep of every floor and still hadn’t found her, panic shot through me: I’d checked every floor but the roof.

I bolted up the stairs, my heart banging against my chest, and when I swung open the door, there she was. Gazing at the sky studded with stars. Nicoletta? I asked.

She didn’t turn. Only mustered a gargled sound from her throat. She was asleep.

I guided her away from the roof, back down the stairs and towards our apartment. I waited to run into the old man, the way we always did, but nothing. His absence hung heavy that night. Had his insomnia run its course?

 

The nurse explained it was the morphine that was making my father more cheerful. He tossed me a dazed smile as he stretched out in bed, a fresh bandage covering half his face. You have no reason to be so happy, I said. Do you understand what you did?

I feel so much better, he said. It worked.

You’re on drugs.

I cured myself.

Losing an eye won’t make you miss Mom any less.

I’ll miss her every day for the rest of my life, he said. But at least my eye’s better.

At least it was just one eye. Imagine if you’d destroyed both.

A look of alarm passed my father’s face then. Do you think it could happen to my other eye? He looked like a child, suddenly, and it made my heart lurch. I felt frightened for him, and for however grief was having its way with him.

No, I said. I think you’re right. It’s all over.

Okay, he said. Can I see Nicoletta now?

 

Old photos fanned out from where my sister sat. Propped on her thighs, the family album. Moisture sparkled from her red-rimmed eyes. What are you doing? I asked as she fingered one of the photos of our mother, warped and stained from age. All of them were warped and stained, like the photo album served no real purpose at all. Nothing but a faulty container.

I’m not stupid, you know? my sister said, lifting the photo. Our mother cradled my sister in one arm and me in the other. I told my sister I never said she was.

She’s not coming back, I know that. She said this then flicked the photo away, the photo landing in some spot on the other end of the living room. She plucked another photo, considered it before doing the same, the photo flying beneath the sofa.

We don’t know that, I said.

There’s no point in holding onto false hope, she said. Photos kept flying across the living room.

Maybe she sleepwalks every night too, I said. I hadn’t believed this before, and maybe I didn’t even now, but I needed to say something to change what was happening to my sister.

My soles were clean last night, she said once she’d flung every photo. Have been a few nights in a row now. I think I’m done sleepwalking.

I twisted my mouth at her, something like a smile that really was a wince. Guilt nibbled away at me for having deceived her. But this was a kindness on my part, I thought. Good, I said. That makes me so happy.

 

From the funeral parlor, I waited for my father to be done raking the leaves outside so I could hand over his lunch. Baloney today. He collected the leaves into small clumps, sometimes stopping to scratch the phantom itch that remained, his finger lingering on the eyepatch; there was no longer anything there for him to prod. At the end of the funeral parlor perched an open casket. Deep walnut exterior, hues of red. Above the casket, the stained-glass window glowed with many colors. It was beautiful, the way yellow light filtered through the curtains. That a place saved for death could be so beautiful made my head spin. Wasn’t death supposed to be ugly? Taking people from us. Bringing with it nothing but pain. I made my way to the casket, the crushed red velvet that caught the light. I ran my hand across the material before I noticed who was inside. The old man from my building. Boris. My attention, as always, drifted to his skin tags. They looked longer than ever. Like scales, almost. Magnificent, almost. This was why he hadn’t been there to help Nicoletta the other night. He’d been dead. I reached over and thumbed one of the tags. Pinched it with my fingernails. And then I pulled.