Page 76 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

Ricki stared at him in frozen disbelief before dissolving into giggles.

“Ezra! You’re supposed to order up front,” she said, pointing behind him. “See?”

“Oh?” He peered over his shoulder and then faced Ricki again. “Ohhhh.” He shook his head, looking bashful. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t be. I weaponized my curling irons; I think we’re even.”

“We’ll never be even,” he said sadly, injecting a jarring bit of reality into the conversation. Neither one of them could pretend that Ezra hadn’t dragged Ricki into a world of trouble. And a possible death sentence.

Ricki wasn’t ready to accept it. The idea of leaving the earth at only twenty-eight, before she’d achieved her destiny, her dreams? Before she’d experienced professional success, a family of her own, her own perfect romance with her own perfect person? She was suddenly so close to grasping it all. Ricki was just beginning to feel like she was standing tall in her new life, making gutsy choices, and winning. And Wilde Things was on the brink of something good—the guerrilla art pieces popping up all over Harlem.

Did any of it even matter if she was going to die? What was it for if she couldn’t stick around to enjoy it? What was the point of anything, anything at all, if she couldn’t run into Ezra’s arms and stay safe there, forever?

“Ricki?” he asked. “Why did you ask me here?”

Ezra’s voice jolted her from her spiral. Panicking was pointless. It was time for solutions.

Ricki threw her shoulders back and got to it. “Yesterday, I spoke with the woman who owns my brownstone. She’s more than my landlady, really; she’s like my grandma. You’ve seen her with me a few times? She’s usually carrying a teacup.”

“Oh right, the older woman. She looks like Cicely Tyson?”

“That’s her,” said Ricki, with a dry swallow. “She’s ninety-six years old. From Louisiana, originally. Everyone calls her Ms. Della, but… but her real name is Adelaide.”

Ezra’s face gave away nothing. Not surprise, alarm, or even vindication. The way he slumped back in his chair was the only sign that he’d registered this information.

“Her mother was Felice Fabienne. She told me the whole story, almostexactlythe way you told it.” She leaned over the table. “She has the pearl bracelet. You didn’t tell me it was inscribed. BW + FF. She showed me.”

Ezra shut his eyes. His chest rose and fell. And then he buried his face in his hands.

“I googled every detail of your story, Ezra. It’s all there.”

“It’s the truth.” He dropped his hands, looking at her. He looked five times more exhausted than he had ten minutes ago.

“And yet,” countered Ricki, “Google searches can be manipulated.”

“Ricki, I have a dial-up modem and still rely on foldout gas station maps. I can’t even navigate Starbucks. How would I manipulate a Google search?”

“Okay, see? This confuses me. If your story’s true…”

“It is, Ricki,” he insisted, voice choked with pain. “It’s true.”

“If Ichooseto believe your story. How is it that you live in the world and don’t know such basic 2024 things, like GPS?”

“I been around a long time,” he explained. “When I was a boy,elevatorswere the wave of the future.Zipperswere the latest invention. When you’ve seen it all, you get innovation overload. So you pick and choose what you deal with.

“I like vinyl, so I didn’t evolve past record players. Not a fan of Google. If I had my druthers, I’d only research in libraries. But I do enjoy Alexa telling me the weather every morning. Washing machines, AC, photocopiers, and LASIK surgery? A-plus inventions. Tinder, automatic transmission, Roombas, CGI? Dumb.” He shrugged. “I’m not that impressed by freezers. They made milkmen obsolete. I miss hearing them deliver those glass bottles at the crack of dawn; it signals a new day has started!” he exclaimed. “Social media? None of my business. Websites frustrate me, mostly. What are these cookies I’m always being asked to accept? TV’s probably my favorite twentieth-century development. I always have the newest model, and these days, it’s all so good: prestige, reality, sitcoms, cartoons. I mean, have you seenSuccession?P-Valley? And, obviously, I keep up with music. All kinds. Good music’s good music; genre’s just the bag you carry it in.”

Ricki’s eyes were anime wide. For want of anything else to say, she sputtered, “I just… But… you say all of this like it’s so normal.”

“It isn’t normal,” he conceded. “But it is my life.”

She gestured vaguely as she tried to formulate a response, shut her mouth, then tried again. “There’s so much I don’t get. You really look like a twenty-eight-year-old dude. Like someone I could’ve known in college. And you’re always beautifully dressed, so current. How does a one-hundred-and-twenty-four-year-old man evenknowabout the Virgil Abloh Jordans?”

Grinning, he glanced down at his feet and back at her. “You noticed.”

Ricki noticed everything about him. “I’d think fashion would be one of the things too exhausting to keep up with.”

“Look at Ms. Della.” He paused, remembering that she was Adelaide. Baby Adelaide. He shook his head a bit and reset. “She’s over ninety with pink hair. Style is innate.”

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