"We are all good at those things, Charlie," she said, placing her palm on my cheek. "Please, do not worry. We’re in America. We’re here, and we’re going to help you find Amelia, ja?"
That statement helped me perk up and forget about the awkward living situation.
"Our apartment is just about six miles away from Battery Park, where the ferry will bring us. We will need to find a cab," Claude said, lifting his suitcase and marching toward the port side of the ferry.
It wasn’t long before the three of us were crammed in a yellow cab with a stripe of red painted down the center. It was New York fashion all the way. My heart was thudding, just trying to come to convince myself that I was actually in America. The air even smelled free.
We drove through the theatre district where billboards appeared as large as the buildings, all covered with red and black showcase letters. Juliette was bouncing in her seat with excitement. She was much like a little girl on Christmas morning. "I simply cannot wait to start searching for auditions. Claude, can you imagine?" she gushed.
Claude wrapped his arm around Juliette, tugging her in close to his shoulder. "They will be looking for you before you know it, darling."
Juliette presses her hands together in prayer. "I can only hope," she said.
The cab dropped us at our new address in between several overshadowing buildings that seemed taller than the sky. People were bustling along the streets just as they did in Zurich and Bavaria, but New Yorkers walked around as if they had a bigger purpose—as if they had reason. How could they not?
"That’s it. Right over there," Claude said, pointing across the way at a large building with a red brick facade and wrought iron decorative framed windows at the corner of each level. The building must have at least a dozen floors of apartments.
There was a black awning and an oversized door at the top of a steep cement stairwell. We collected our belongings from the cab driver and pulled our trunks and bags up the steps, one by one.
We piled into the building—the interior smelled of pie—someone on a lower level must have been baking. "The building manager said he would be in his office until later today," Juliette explained. "He said his office was here on the first floor. Wait with our things, and I’ll find him."
Claude and I watched as Juliette strode down the hallway, stopping in front of the last door on the right. She knocked loudly, and the door opened almost immediately. Juliette held up her forefinger as she disappeared into the office.
It wasn’t five minutes before she reappeared in the hallway, gleaming from ear to ear as a key dangled from her fingers. "Boys, we’re on the twelfth floor. I hope those muscles of yours are up to the task."
By the time we lugged all of our belongings up the stairs, I had vowed never to move out of the apartment. Claude and I both dropped to the ground once we could close our front door.
Our apartment was pleasant, with two bedrooms, as Juliette mentioned. The appliances were quite outdated, but everything seemed to be in working condition. Our view was of a theatre, and I imagined what it would look like at night with the marquee of lightbulbs lit up.
It took us a week to settle into our new apartment, and we had all been assiduously searching for jobs. We had given ourselves two months to fall back on with our finances if need be, but we all wanted to secure jobs sooner rather than later.
"I have an audition later this morning," Juliette told me as she scrambled some eggs in a frying pan. "I am quite nervous."
"You are going to do wonderful," I told her, sipping on a cup of steaming coffee.
"How about you, any closer to finding a job?" she asked.
"Actually, yes. There’s a large bakery a few blocks away, and they told me to come back at the end of the week because they might have a position available then."
"Fantastic," she chirped.
Claude had been out since the wee hours searching for hiring signs in shop windows. He was determined to find something by the end of this week. "Charlie," Juliette spoke up, sounding unsure in the way she said my name.
"Yes?"
"We overheard you talking to someone last night, in your bedroom."
I felt confused by her statement. I was certainly not talking to anyone in my bedroom. In fact, I fell asleep early. "I’m afraid you must have heard something else. Perhaps you were listening to a conversation next door. I had heard them speaking now and then."
Juliette removed the frying pan from the stovetop and placed it down on an oven mitt next to the sink. She wiped her hands on her short blue apron, and her blonde barrel curls flipped over her shoulder as she faced me. "Charlie, you were talking to Amelia. We heard your voice, and you said her name more than a few times. Of course, I’m not trying to embarrass you. We are just concerned, is all."
We. It was alwayswe.
"I must have been having a dream," I told her, simply.
"You were crying, Charlie," she added. "You were crying out, ‘Please don’t go, Amelia.’" That comment made my cheeks hot. I was embarrassed to find out I was crying in my sleep.
"It won’t be an issue soon, Juliette because I am going to find her. We can’t be more than a few miles apart at this very moment, ja?"
