Julie nodded. “But kids tend to gravitate to the same hangouts they always have.”
“Not Nia. I told you, I don’t think she even has any real friends her own age. She just never hung out with anyone on a regular basis.”
“But kids on the run do,” Julie said. “Protection in numbers and all of that. Your daughter’s bright, isn’t she? She’ll know to find people her own age, kids in the same situation as she is.”
“I suppose. But Nia can be so contrary when it comes to what the other kids are doing.” A faint smile twitched on her lips. “Gets it from her mother, I’m afraid. I was never much of a joiner either—especially not as a teenager.” Julie returned her smile. “I can imagine.” She paused a moment, then added, “Unless you’ve got a better idea, I think we should start looking now. We can check in with your answering machine if you’re afraid she might call while we’re out.”
“You’re right,” Lisa said, but then the immensity of the task returned to her all over again. “God, where can we possibly start?”
“I’ve got a niece who turned seventeen recently,” Julie told her. “Why don’t I give her a call and see if she can’t give us a list of a few places.”
“And if we find Nia,” Lisa began.
“Not if—when. Let’s think positive.”
“Okay. So when we do—how do we get her to come back? I don’t even know why she ran away in the first place. I know we had an argument yesterday morning, but we’ve had them before and this has never happened.”
“You said she was getting distant.”
Lisa nodded. “I guess we both were.”
“You’ll have to talk it out,” Julie said. “That’s what I did with my parents. It wasn’t easy, but we worked it out.”
“And if we can’t?” Lisa asked. Because that was her real worry. That even if they found Nia, her daughter was still lost to her.
“I don’t know,” Julie said.
Her voice was soft. She hesitated for a moment, then slowly reached a hand across the table. Lisa looked at her hand, then raised her gaze to Julie’s face.
“About what happened earlier,” Lisa said. “I was overreacting, I guess. I didn’t...I don’t know...”
Julie shook her head. “Let’s deal with one thing at a time.”
Lisa gave her a grateful look, then reached her own hand across the table to take Julie’s, accepting the present comfort. Her whole future felt uncertain—not simply the uncertainty of what was going to happen with Nia, but this whole other strange and somewhat frightening relationship that was developing with Julie. But she knew Julie was right. Trying to fit what was happening between them into the equation only made everything that much more confusing.
“Thanks,” she said. “For...you know, everything.”
Julie smiled. She gave Lisa’s fingers a squeeze, then said, “I should call my niece...”
Lisa held on for a heartbeat longer before letting go.
15 MAX
I feel sorry for Buddy, but it’s all I can do not to laugh. I waited until we could have the place to ourselves, then took him into one of the park’s public washrooms and gave him a scrub down, getting as much water on myself as on him in the process. Lord knows we both needed it. But he’s looking at me now like I’ve betrayed his trust—bedraggled and wet, big eyes looking up at me like they’re welling with tears, if I want to anthropomorphize. But at least he’s cleaner than he was—almost respectable, the more his fur dries.
“The only reason you weren’t smelling so rank to me anymore,” I tell him, “is because I got used to the stink. Got used to my own, too.”
He makes a querulous sound in the back of his throat.
“So what? We may be bums, but that doesn’t mean we’ve got to look or smell like them.”
I ruffle the wet fur on his head and that starts him into another vigorous bout of shaking, water spraying everywhere. I jump back from him and catch movement in the corner of my eye, but it’s only my reflection in the mirror.
My reflection.
I step closer to the mirror and look at the stranger the glass throws back at me. I’m never going to get used to this. Every time I see Devlin’s face I get this ache inside me for my own body that won’t let go. But I know I can’t run with it. I have to stand firm, deal the hand I’ve got. No matter how much it hurts.
I lift a hand to the stubble on my cheek. Next stop, a drugstore. Maybe I can get a collar and leash for Buddy while I pick up a razor and some deodorant. What else do we need? I start to think of toiletries and a change of clothes but that leads me to where I don’t want to go, to what we really need: A home. A life.
Buddy pushes his muzzle against my leg. Perfect timing. It lets me step away from getting all maudlin and feeling sorry for myself.
“That’s right,” I tell him. “I promised you a decent meal, didn’t I?”
I swear he understands everything I’m saying. His tail starts to wagging and he gets this eager look on his face as though I’ve already lifted the cover of the platter and I’m now offering him the steak.
“We’re not rich,” I tell him, “so don’t get your hopes up.”
I made around thirty-five bucks today. It’s not going to take us far, but we’re better off than we were this morning.
I turn to the mirror once more, slick my wet hair back with my hand. The stranger doesn’t look any more familiar. I start to wondering if I shouldn’t go for some facial hair, something to make me look less like Johnny Devlin, even if I can’t be myself, but Buddy bumps my leg again.
“Okay, okay. I get the hint already.”
We go looking for something to eat.
I’ve always been one to watch my money. Not exactly a tightwad, but I’ve always paid attention to how much I’m spending and what I’m spending it on. At least I thought I did. I realize now that I took a lot for granted. If I got hungry while I was out running some errands, I’d grab a takeout sandwich and a coffee and not even think about it. If the cover of a book or a magazine caught my eye, I’d pick it up.
Those days, I realize now, are long gone. My thirty-four dollars and change disappears so fast, it’s like I never had it. In a discount store I buy some underwear and a T-shirt, deodorant, a collar, a leash, and a seriously cheap knapsack—lime green, which has to be why it was so cheap. In the Korean grocery next door: a few cans of dog food, stew and spaghetti, a lighter, a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, a jar of instant coffee, forget the sugar, some beef jerky. And that’s it. I’m down to a couple of bucks, so we’re sleeping in the open again tonight, but I’d already been planning on that.
I load everything into my knapsack, then go collect Buddy, who’s tied to a light post outside. The poor guy’s totally disoriented by all the people, the traffic going by on the street. Too much movement and noise. He cringes from me when I bend down to give him a hug and my heart feels like breaking. But what can I do? I can’t let him run loose in the street.
I hold his head in my hands, look down into his big browns.
“Did you think I wasn’t coming back?” I ask.
His tail thumps once on the pavement.
“No way,” I tell him. “It’s you and me. But there’s things we’ve got to do if we want to get along with the rest of the world. I can’t walk around naked and neither can you.”
He squirms a bit when I put the collar on him, paws at it a couple of times while I’m uncoiling the leash, but he doesn’t try to run away. I snap the lead on and he stops fidgeting to give me the big-eyed look again.
“Soon as we get back to the park, I’ll take it off. Okay?”
I guess I’m really losing it, talking away to a dog the way I am, but it helps to ground me. Makes me feel a bit more real. Because the weirdness is always there, lying underneath the so-called normality. I’m never far from completely losing it. The longer I’m in this situation, the more it feels like my previous life was a dream. I’ll think of the crazy street people I’ve seen, mumbling away
to themselves, and start to wonder if the truth is that I’m just like them. This is what I am and the rest is something I’ve just made up. Some people are hiding from aliens. Me, I used to have another normal life until I woke up in somebody else’s body.
It’s easier to believe that this is who I am. That this is who I’ve always been. Then I have to remind myself that, impossible as it seems, the other life was real. I’m not crazy. But I understand better than ever what Bones meant about getting too comfortable in this skin. It’d be so easy to simply go with the flow, make what I can out of this life instead of trying to deal with the impossible.
Buddy starts to sniff at the knapsack and brings me back. I coil up the rope that Bones gave me and stow it away. Slipping on the knapsack, I pick up Buddy’s lead and we head back to the park, Buddy walking so close to my leg that I start to feel like we’ve become surgically attached. I don’t push him away, though. I’ve got my problems, but he’s had his, too. Maybe I can’t help myself, but I can at least give him a better life.
I’ve been thinking lately about how we define ourselves. Part of who we are is dependent on our memories, on where we’ve been and what we’ve done with our lives, how the past has shaped us. But part of it depends on how others see us, too. If everybody treats you like a loser, it’s hard not to be a loser. Buddy treats me like the one good thing that’s ever been in his life and I find myself responding to that responsibility. Even if I could have my old life back, snap my fingers, here it is, right now, I wouldn’t go without bringing Buddy with me. You can’t turn your back on your friends, fourlegged or otherwise.
And it’s not just because he needs me. I need him, too. More than anything, he’s what’s keeping me sane.
Buddy starts to perk up when we get near the park, walks a few steps ahead of me, tugging on the leash. He smells the green. I can’t smell it yet, but I can see it, dark and welcoming, the detail of individual trees lost in the failing light, but the forest of them rising skyward on the far side of the park’s wall is impossible to ignore. My heart lifts the same as his does.
We stand on the curb at the corner of Palm Street and Lakeside Drive, waiting for the light to change. It’s only been a couple of hours, but I feel we’ve been gone too long in the city. The park’s our home and it’s never looked more magical than it does right now. We’re in that space between day and night, the long summer twilight that makes the days seem so long. The sky’s a shimmery grey above us. Behind us, the sunset plays hide-and-seek between the office towers, a light show that ranges from blood red through orange to a mix of pinks and mauves. The traffic’s sparse and we have the sidewalk to ourselves. When the light changes, I’m as eager as Buddy to cross.
I let Buddy off the leash once we’re on the other side of the street. He does a little dance step, happy to be unencumbered by the lead, wants to run, but doesn’t want to leave me behind. We walk along the wall toward the southwest gate, past a couple of phone booths. Buddy pauses at one of them, suddenly nervous, whining. At first I don’t see what’s got him upset, but then I see that what I took for shadows pooled on the floor of the booth, is actually a kid. A girl. Huddled up and crying.
I look up and down the street, hesitating, not sure I should—or even want—to get involved. Who’m I kidding? I can’t just walk on by—especially when there’s no one else around to help her.
I work the folding door open so that it doesn’t bang into her, then go down on one knee beside her. I touch her shoulder.
“Hey,” I say. “What’s wrong?”
She turns and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Her name pulls free of my lips before I even realize I’m saying it.
“Nia?”
She looks at me, nervous, eyes so full of tears she probably can’t even see straight. I can’t figure out what she’s doing here, what’s got her so upset. This makes no sense. I feel my carefully propped up equilibrium unbalancing.
“You...” she begins, clears her throat. “You’re that guy...are you really Max?”
I find myself nodding. “How can you know that?”
“I...I saw you...back at the apartment when you were...you were talking to the monster...”
That’s as good a description of Devlin as any I’ve heard.
“Oh, Max!” she cries.
She pushes away from the side of the booth and totters on her knees. I grab her before she falls and she wraps her arms around my neck. The tears have started again. I pat her awkwardly on the back, but I don’t know what to say. I can’t tell her that everything’ll be all right because I don’t even know what’s wrong. I feel Buddy pressed in close beside me, working on getting a smell of her. Nia’s trying to say something through her tears, but it takes me a moment to work it out. When I do, it’s like my heart stops cold in my chest.
“They got my mom, too,” she’s saying.
16 TANYA
As soon as she left the apartment, Tanya stopped at the corner store to buy a package of cigarettes. She lit one outside and smoked it to the filter in quick, nervous drags, then lit another. Stuffing the package in the pocket of her jacket, she set off, walking aimlessly, trailing smoke.
It was that time of day she liked the least, not quite night, but no longer day, the definition between buildings and street indistinct, the shadows all disjointed and swallowing detail, everything so grey and washed-out. She saw the dusk as a gloomy, unhappy pall, a cat lying on the chest of the day and stealing all the life from its lungs. A time when unpleasant things happened—or were remembered. This evening it suited her mood perfectly.
She and Zeffy rarely had arguments and she wasn’t all that sure what this one had really been about. The anger that had come over her earlier made no real sense now. It wasn’t that she’d been wrong. Zeffy had been unfair, the way she’d taken Johnny seriously enough to check out his story but pretty much laughed off Tanya’s own feelings. And then there’d been that goofy look in Zeffy’s eye when she’d started out talking about this Johnny who maybe wasn’t really Johnny. It proved she was just as susceptible to his charms as Tanya had been. Tanya understood that. What she didn’t understand was why she’d let it get under her skin, why she’d overreacted the way she had.
The whole thing had left her with a headache—especially this business with Johnny. Whatever Zeffy might think she’d proved one way or another, Tanya knew what she’d seen yesterday morning. She couldn’t explain it, she couldn’t tell who was there inside Johnny’s head, but she knew it wasn’t Johnny. If it wasn’t this Max Trader, then it was someone else, because it hadn’t been the Johnny she knew. The differences were too many—the way he’d spoken, his body language, the fact that he really hadn’t known them. There hadn’t been any pretense in that. She knew Johnny better than Zeffy and those were all things that couldn’t be faked. Not unless Johnny was a very good actor. Which he wasn’t. That was something she knew as well.
Tanya sighed. The evening held a bit of a breeze now and she had to step closer to a store window to get yet another cigarette lit. Stamp albums, their pages open, filled the display in the window. Track lighting centered on the pages, leaving the draped cloth under the books in dark shadows. She leaned against the glass, gaze drifting from the colorful stamps on one page to those on another. Thinking of acting, seeing the stamps, reminded her of Kenny Brown, the key grip on the two-week shoot for Sisters of the Knife. Except for Kenny, that had not been a happy point in her life.
Considering her history with men, it was surprising that she hadn’t slept with him, or even thought about it. It certainly hadn't been because he was unattractive. Kenny had probably been the best-looking guy on the shoot, including the leading man, Alan Clark, who by the end of the two weeks, had slept with every woman on the set, herself included—not a particular source of pride for her, even thinking back on it now. Clark was oblivious, of course, to any possible shortcomings on his part. He was always on center stage, whether the camera was running or not, while Kenny, good looks not withst
anding, preferred the background, which explained, perhaps, why one was an actor and the other a technician.
Kenny had figured out what she was getting into before she herself even had. How, she still didn’t know. She’d been shooting up between her toes so it wasn’t like there’d been track marks or anything. But he’d known and taken her aside one day to talk to her about it.
“I know it’s none of my business,” he began, “but Clark’s—”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I figured out pretty quickly that he’ll sleep with anything that stands still for longer than a couple of minutes. Being one more notch on his bedpost isn’t exactly a high point of pride for me.”
“I wasn’t talking about sex, Tanya. I was talking about the drugs.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. I’m not like a regular user or anything. I just need a little something to get me through this shoot, that’s all.”
“Some things are easier to get into than out of—trust me on this. I don’t want to sound like a little Nancy Reagan voice in the back of your head, telling you to just say no, but if you don’t give it up now, you’re going to make it that much harder on yourself later. If you even have a later.”
“Oh, come on,” Tanya had said. “You make it sound like I’m already a junkie. So I’ve shot up a couple of times. It’s no big deal. Really.”
Kenny shook his head. “You’ve got a compulsive personality. I know, because I’m the same way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That it’s really easy for us to get addicted. Maybe it’s shopping, or smoking—”
“Or boyfriends,” Tanya broke in, a wry tone in her voice.
Kenny shrugged. “Or boyfriends. They’re all things we do, inadvertently or not, that make it harder for us to get on with our lives. Smack’s the worst.”
“I’m being careful,” she said. “Really I am.”
“Do yourself a favor and be more than careful. Get out of it now, while it’s still easy.”
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