He had a girlfriend. She knew that. It didn't matter, then. It wasn't that kind of feeling yet. It was just: *there is a person who stays.*
She invited him the next year, and the next. Evelyn called every year at eleven. Sam was there every year when she did.
---
"Two things," Sam said now, in the present, in the room. He had put the balloons down and was rehanging the garland on the curtain rod, properly this time, with the tacks pushed all the way in. "She said two things."
"She wants to see the room with people in it."
"And the second?"
"She wouldn't say on the phone."
He drove the last tack in with his thumb. He did not mention the question he had asked her. He was good at that. He was good at not mentioning things, which was one of the reasons she loved him and one of the reasons she had never said so.
"Then let's put people in it," he said.
II. The Room With People In It
Nell came first, at eight, as she always did, with her boombox and a shoebox of tapes and a stack of red plastic cups, and this year with someone else, too, standing half a step behind her on the landing in a navy peacoat and a knit hat with a pom-pom she seemed embarrassed by.
"This is Ronnie," Nell said, in the voice of a person who has rehearsed a sentence in the car. "Ronnie, this is my sister. Delia, this is Ronnie. We've been — she's — this is Ronnie."
"Hi," Ronnie said. She had a broad freckled face and a CTA employee pin on her coat lapel, a little bus in enamel. "I brought dip. It's from a packet. I want to be upfront about that."
Delia had known about Ronnie since May, since a phone call about a bus driver on the Clark Street route who had stopped between stops in the rain because she saw Nell running. *I'm telling you so somebody knows,* Nell had said, and then, *Don't tell Mom.* Their mother lived in Peoria with their stepfather and a collection of decorative spoons and was not, in Nell's estimation, ready. She had been waiting since May for this landing.
She took the dip. She hugged Ronnie, pom-pom and all, and said, "The packet's the best kind," and watched her little sister's shoulders come down about two inches.
Faye Lindqvist from the first floor came up at eight-thirty with Swedish meatballs and her pager clipped to her good slacks. Faye was fifty-three, a labor and delivery nurse at Swedish Covenant, divorced twice and unbothered by it, and on call every New Year's Eve by choice. "Babies love the holidays," she said, "and I love time-and-a-half." She surveyed the room. "Sam," she said. "You hung that garland."