Across the other side of the room, Simon spots Nomi, her figure lit in profile by a flash of green smoke on-screen. She’s talking to a statuesque drag queen in a long black wig, with a feathered mermaid bra and a fishnet skirt and long purple gloves. Nomi’s holding a document envelope of some kind.
He needs to get her attention; they need to get out of here. “Nomi!”
“Raiiiiiid!” Marilyn yells to the whole room.
Nomi turns and sees him at the exact moment four dozen femmes and drag queens erupt into startled chaos in a darkened room against a background of dramaticWizard of Ozmusic and unkind lens flare. There’s squeals and screams, and a mass exodus toward the doorway Simon’s standing in.
“Oh shit,” he mutters.
He steps farther into the entry, only to be pushed back by Marilyn. “Oh my god, you can’tcome in. We need to be gettingout.”
“But I only want to—” He loses Nomi for a second. “Nomi!”
People converge on the entryway. Simon ducks to the side, separated from Nomi by a flooding river of glamorously dressed patrons. Across the divide, he sees Nomi hold up the document envelope and mouth something at him: It looks like “You’re fine.” The drag queen in the mermaid bra is pulling on Nomi’s arm; Nomi mimes that she’ll exit through the back of the ballroom.
Pushed and shoved from six different directions, Simon lets himself be swept back into the lobby, where he finds Cherie over in the corner. She’s opened one side of the lobby door. Now she’s watching the wave of people dressed in feather boas and bouffant wigs and corsets and some truly amazing earrings spill down the hotel’s stairs, overwhelming the four police officers trying to come up.
It’s madness; Simon almost wants to laugh. And he’s remembering his glimpses of Nomi in the ballroom, holding up the document envelope.You’re fine.Is that it? The results of the fingerprint search? Does that mean ... Does that mean everything’s okay? Maybe he has no criminal record. Or maybe he’s got a record, but it’s for something innocuous. Boosting cars. Shoplifting.
Either way, Nomi’s got his file. She’s got his name—his real name.
“Hey! Hey!” Cherie waves at him to get his attention. She’s standing at a skinny side door, opened to show dimness beyond. “Come out this way!”
In the absence of other options, Simon chooses Mystery Door A.
Chapter Eighteen
October 1987, Thursday
Eureka—Enrique, in daily life—grabs Nomi’s hand and pulls her toward the backstage of the ballroom, bypassing the pile of abandoned couches and chairs set up for the movie night. The room is in uproar, and people are moving everywhere.
“Come on—the cops’ll search at least as far as the kitchen because they’re suchbusybodies,” Eureka groans, rolling her eyes.
Behind the white sheet hung as a temporary screen, there’s a proscenium stage with narrow doors on each side. They hustle through the one on the left, up a short set of stairs, then down again on the other side, through the Riverview’s rabbit warren access halls. Fluorescent bar lights overhead make the green paint and beige linoleum look dingy. A cat near the baseboard in the hall scurries away as Eureka rushes Nomi onward.
The echoing sound of chaos filters from the ballroom, but they’ve reached the Riverview’s kitchen, which has aFire Exitsign over the door and a tangle of metal and Formica benchtops. Eureka leads a winding route through the room. A half dozen giant stainless steel pots are suspended near the industrial stoves, where a shirtless guy in California beach shorts and flip-flops is stirring a small pot of noodles over a gas flame.
He looks over, curious. “What’s happening out there?”
“Another raid!” Eureka exclaims.
“Fucking great,” the guy groans.
Eureka beckons toward a door to a corridor. Nomi follows, clutching the document envelope, feeling like she’s holding a hot coal in her hand.
Mischa said that Enrique wanted to see her, which could only mean info from Irma. They met up at the side of the ballroom as the movie played, their conversation largely drowned out by the chorus ofWizard of Ozdialogue recital going on.
“Okay, here’s your thing from Irma.” Eureka swung her long hair back to access an oversize plastic tote slung at her shoulder. “She said it was a dead file. Do you know what that means?”
“Yeah, I know.” Nomi felt a worm of misgiving in her gut. A dead file is an inactive file—a closed case kept for historic, legal, or administrative reasons, or a police investigation closed because the perpetrator died.
“Well, it sounds kinda morbid,” Eureka pointed out. “But anyway, it’s all yours.”
“Thanks.” Nomi took the plain brown document envelope: not thick, but not a single sheet of paper either.
Then the raid happened, and there was no time to think. But now, Nomi feels slightly sick. Noone knows she has the document; she saw his eyes widen from across the room when she held up the envelope and yelled, “Your file!” She’s just not sure he’s ready for what these pages might reveal.
What will he do with this information she has in her hand? Not having an identity, not having a home, is the mystery at the center of his life. Maybe he’s a felon. Maybe he’s a cop; it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Maybe he has a past she can’t even imagine—parents and siblings who’ve been searching for him, a fiancée who loves him.
