Have You Found Her

by Janice Erlbaum

  “And how many will be in your party?” asked the reservation agent.

  I had to ask Bill before I could answer. When I’d originally conceived the trip, in that flash of desperate inspiration, I’d thought it would just be me and Sam. Now, five months later, I was an engaged woman. If I was unofficially adopting Sam, I wasn’t doing it alone. Bill had made it clear that he wanted to be my partner in every way, including my relationship with Sam. Which was typically wonderful of him but also made me nervous. I didn’t know what I’d do if they didn’t get along, if Sam was jealous of Bill, or vice versa. Maybe she’d feel like I did, all those times as a kid, when my mom would invite some guy along on one of our weekend jaunts, and he’d ruin the whole thing, and then she’d wind up marrying him. Sam, meet your new stepfather, Bill.

  Except Bill wasn’t just some guy. Maybe Sam hoped it would just be me and her on this trip, but she’d soon see that she was better off with the twofer. Bill made my life better; he’d do the same for her. And Sam would enrich Bill’s life in return.

  I pitched Bill the Disney scheme as though it had just occurred to me. “I was thinking, since Sam got her diagnosis, I’d really like to do something for her around the holidays. She’ll be about a year sober by then, and I think it’ll give her some extra incentive to hang in there through this difficult period. Maybe we could take her to Disney World for a long weekend or something.”

  Bill was an easier sell than I’d thought. Aesthete that he was, I expected him to scoff at Disney, but he surprised me. “I think that’s a great idea, babe. You pick the dates, and I’ll arrange for the time off.”

  “You’d want to come with us?”

  “Sure,” he avowed. “I mean, I’m sure it’s cheesy, but I’ve never been, and you’ve made it sound kind of fun. Especially with you and Sam.”

  “That’s great.” I beamed. “I’ll book the rooms this weekend.”

  So this was how the rest of the year was shaping up: Get married, take weeklong honeymoon in Bermuda, go to Disney World with Sam. It was almost too much to look forward to, too much to plan, too much to think about when I lay down to sleep at night. Too much good fortune, and too much guilt—spending too much money, when everybody else had none. When I went to the shelter on a Wednesday night, and girls were arguing over a four-pack of SnackWells, pushing one another hard enough to nearly get themselves discharged. When people were dying in Iraq, in Darfur, in an AIDS hospice a few blocks away.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and turned over. I’m doing my best. And turned over again. No, I can’t accept it. But most of all, what I couldn’t accept was my own happy, privileged life.

  July 11, 2005

  Janice,

  Thanks for your letters. I’m sorry I’ve been so lame about writing back. I think about you all the time and stuff I wish we could talk about. And I’m really happy that you and Bill got engaged. I know I barely talked to him, but he’s a great guy. I can’t wait for the wedding in September, and you can put me down as a guest for sure, because I’m moving out of this dump this weekend! They don’t know yet, only me and my roommate Valentina know. Me and her have been saving up and we have enough to live on for a few months, so I’ll have time to get a job. We’re bouncing on Sunday as soon as we get our allowance and we already talked to this lady who’s renting us a room. So everything is set up, and I’ll call you as soon as we break out. I can’t wait to talk to you in person but for now here’s the info you asked for: T cells = 145, viral load = 275,000, multiple opportunistic infections, multi-drug-resistant strain. So the doc says it looks like full-blown AIDS, not just HIV. But I’m still doing really well for right now, I feel good and happy and motivated. Every day I wake up grateful for what I have and I look forward to what’s coming (school, work, spending time with friends, Disney World). Believe it or not, life is really good, and like you used to tell me, it’s only going to get better from here. Well I better go but I’ll talk to you real soon.

  Until then, peace.

  Sam

  I read and reread the letter, trying to figure out what to do. She’s going to elope from her program, I told myself. What’s to figure out? I remembered when she almost skipped out on the halfway house last time, how grateful I was that Jodi had talked her into going back. I had to be the responsible one now. I had to call the program, call Jodi, call Maria, call everybody, and tell them what Sam was planning. She could not be allowed to run.

  But…the numbers. T cells © 145, viral load © 275,000, multiple opportunistic infections, multi-drug-resistant strain. So the doc says it looks like full-blown AIDS.

  The numbers were bad. They were beyond bad. Five minutes of web searching confirmed it: she was toast. There were not enough meds in the world to keep her alive for more than a year, if that. It was a minor miracle that she was standing upright.

  I called my friend Jay, who had volunteered for God’s Love We Deliver. He tried to buck me up. “You know, sometimes people on my route who looked like they were seriously dying would surprise me and rebound for a few months. People can live long past their doctors’ prognosis, you never know.”

  Right. In which case, she might live to see twenty-one. “Thanks,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I decided to sleep on the news of Sam’s escape plot, call Jodi in the morning, let her decide whether or not we should tell the halfway house what was going on (which would win her yet another thirty days with no contact), or if we should somehow try to appeal directly to Sam (how, when we weren’t allowed to call and speak to her?). I could afford to think about it overnight—it was only Thursday, and Sam said they weren’t planning to bolt until Sunday.

  I was at my desk the next afternoon when my cell phone rang. “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me.” Sam. She was overjoyed, her voice brash and excited; I could hear her mile-wide grin, along with the traffic in the background, the music from a passing radio. Shit. I’d blown it. They’d already eloped.

  “Hey! Where are you?”

  “We’re in Union Square,” she said with relish. “I’m so psyched to be outside. Can you come meet us?”

  I was already rising from my chair, stuffing my feet into my sneakers. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. By the dog run.”

  “Great. Thanks, Janice.”

  I dashed off, calling to leave a message for Jodi as I jogged toward the park. “Hey, it’s Janice. Sam and her roommate just eloped from their program. I’m going to meet them in Union Square and try to talk them into going back. Please call me if you get a chance.” I rehearsed my pitch in my head—Listen, you guys have to go back. You need the support right now. Jodi’s looking for a new place, but in the meantime…

  I arrived at the park, saw Sam sitting on a duffel bag under a tree near the dog run. She was positively pink and glowing, cheeks flushed with excitement and stretched into a huge grin. “Hey!” She rose to embrace me, and I noted her outfit with an internal smile—same old black cargo pants, now worn with new spiked leather wrist cuffs, a T-shirt featuring a smiley face with a bullet hole in its forehead, and a homemade choker with the anarchy symbol on it. No more hair gel and dress pants; Sam was on the loose. “Janice, this is my friend Valentina.”

  I turned around and got my first good look at Valentina. She was almost as tall as Sam, with long, flowing brown hair and an elegant, feline face. Budding breasts pushed against the fabric of her T-shirt, and muscled, hairy calves peeked out from under her basketball shorts. “Hello,” she said, in the dulcet tones of a teenage girl.

  “So nice to meet you,” I said.

  We sat on the grass for an impromptu conference. What were they planning? I asked. “I thought you two were going to wait until Sunday; I was hoping to reach you before then and see if I could convince you to stay.”

  Sam shook her head, defiant. “No way. I already called Jodi and left her a message. We’re not going back. And they told us when we discharged ourselves, they wouldn’t take us back even if we wante
d them to. But we saved up some money, and we got a plan—Valentina already arranged to get her government check directly, so we’ll have that every month, and I’m going to apply for benefits, too, while I’m looking for a job. But right now, she’s going to the bank, then we’re going up to the Bronx to meet this woman who has a couple of rooms for rent. We already spoke to her this morning; she said come up as soon as you get the cash. So we should have a place by tonight.”

  She smiled smugly—everything taken care of—and again, she made me want to smack my forehead. What kind of harebrained scheme was that? This is New York, I wanted to tell her; you can’t find a place to live in an afternoon. “Are you sure you’re going to have a place by tonight? Because I don’t want you guys spending the night without a place to stay.”

  Valentina pouted a little at the “you guys” epithet. “Naw, we’re good,” said Sam. “We already spoke to this lady, now we just gotta get her the money.” She turned to Valentina. “You want to go do that, and I’ll wait here with the bags?”

  Her partner in crime nodded. “Be back in a hour,” she promised, slipping away. She had to go to her home branch in Brooklyn to withdraw directly, Sam explained; she had no bank card because they charged fees. In the meantime, though, Sam and I could catch up.

  “So.” She looked so happy and triumphant; I didn’t want to plunge her straight into despair—So how’s that advanced case of AIDS treating you?—but it seemed the most salient topic of conversation. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m…all right,” she admitted. “I mean, it’s definitely been hard to deal with. I was real depressed for the past few weeks, but I think part of it was the halfway house, and the way they were treating me. ’Cause once they found out my diagnosis, it was like, everybody was real weird around me, and that was bumming me out. The staff didn’t do a real good job of keeping my privacy.”

  Neither did I, I realized, sheepish. I’d already told Bill and my brother and a few friends; if I hadn’t been sure it would alarm my dad and stepmom, I would have told them, too. “That sucks,” I said. “You’d think they’d be more sensitive; I’m sure they deal with HIV-positive residents all the time.”

  She wrinkled her nose, looked skeptically at me. “That place was the pits. They don’t do shit for you but give you a bed and some food. I’m so glad to be out of there, Janice—you know I never complained about the shelter, or rehab even, but this place….” She shook her head, and I knew there was no way she was going back.

  “And how are you feeling physically? You’ve been okay since the pneumonia, right?”

  She waved her hand, so-so. “Mostly. I had a couple of bad fevers, and my lungs aren’t so great—I gotta keep using the inhaler they gave me. And the doctors are worried about my kidneys again. I can’t take a lot of the sulfa drugs because of them. But they worked out a meds plan for me, and I got everything with me.” She patted the duffel under her butt. “Plus I’m gonna keep following up with them at the hospital. I’m doing what I gotta to stay healthy.”

  “Good.” I smiled, looking into her eyes. There was so much more I wanted to ask—chiefly, Did they give you a prognosis? Or, more bluntly, So how long do they give you? “It’s good to see you,” I said instead.

  “You too,” she agreed, real gratitude in her voice. “It’s real good to see you. You been an awesome friend to me, Janice; without you, I wouldn’t have gotten through all of this.”

  I tried to brush it off. “Oh, you made it far enough before you met me, and you’ve got Maria and Jodi, too.”

  “I know.” She looked down at the grass, face serious, picked up her head again. “Sometimes I can’t even believe how lucky I am.”

  There she was: the lucky girl with the losing numbers. My heart officially broke. “I feel lucky, too,” I said.

  What do I do now? I wondered, as Sam detailed more of their plans—the list of calls she and Valentina had made to various employment agencies, all the interviews they’d set up for next week. I couldn’t spend the day walking around with them, looking for these elusive rooms for rent; I had to get back to work. But as always, if I didn’t sit directly on top of her, I risked losing her completely.

  “Listen,” I said. “You’re not going to be able to get a job or an apartment unless you have a phone number where people can call you back. Let’s go across the street and get you one of those no-contract phones—then at least I’ll know how to reach you.”

  “Oh, great, that would be so great.” She was instantly on her feet, struggling with her huge duffel and grabbing her skateboard while I hoisted Valentina’s bags. We crossed the street to the Virgin Mega-store, and I bought a phone with twenty hours of talk time. Then we made our way back to our original spot. “Thank you so much, Janice. I’m totally going to pay you back.”

  “No worries,” I told her. “But I’m going to have to get back to work soon, and I’m trusting that you and Valentina have really thought this through. You’re saying you have a place lined up, you just have to get the money?”

  “Yep. Spoke to the lady right before I spoke to you. It’s all good.” She grinned, resuming her cross-legged seat on top of her duffel, pulling her Converse-clad feet toward her.

  I frowned, ever the killjoy. “Well, I don’t know. You haven’t seen the place. It might not work out. You’re sure it’s not a scam, right?”

  She shook her head impatiently. “We got it from the newspaper! Rooms for rent! Same day! We spoke to her!”

  I put my hands up in surrender. “Okay, just give me a call every few hours, all right? And if you haven’t signed an agreement and got a key in your hand by five P.M., let me know, okay? I’m not letting the two of you spend the night outside—worst-case scenario, we get you a hotel room overnight.”

  “All right. But we’re not gonna need it.” She was already fiddling with the phone, listening to the available ring tones. “This is so cool of you. It’s really gonna help us out a lot, like, for jobs.”

  “I’m glad.” I entered her new number into my phone: Sam. “But you better use it to call me. And Jodi and Maria, too.”

  “All right. Thanks, Janice—thanks a lot.”

  She gave me a hug good-bye, and I trotted back home to my desk, where I kept checking my phone for unannounced messages. No call by five, no call at six. I called Sam’s new number, smiling at the outgoing message she’d recorded since lunchtime: her voice, over some loud death metal, politely asking callers to leave their name and number at the beep. “It’s me,” I said. “I hope everything’s okay. Call me when you’re in your new place, or if there’s been any kind of problem. Talk to you soon, I hope.”

  But it wasn’t until Bill got home, around eight o’clock, that my phone finally rang, interrupting my latest Sam update. “That’s her,” I said, and picked up. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Janice.” She sounded frustrated, dejected. “We had a problem. Can you come meet us in the park?”

  Of course I could. I’d already discussed the matter with Jodi, briefly, between her many appointments. “Look, they’re not going back,” she’d said, “and the halfway house won’t take them back anyway. I don’t know what they’ve got planned from here, but I hope it’s good. If you want to try to help them find a room for rent, that’d be great of you, but I wouldn’t give them any money. I think this is a premature step for Sam to take, but I don’t blame her, considering the news we just got. Let me know how it goes.”

  So I had my mandate—help Sam and Valentina find a room for rent; don’t give them money. I said good-bye to Sam, hung up, turned to Bill with a grimace. “I think I’ve got to get them a hotel room for the night. You want to come meet them?”

  “Hell yeah,” he said—if I was in this, then so was he. He rubbed his hands together, excited; he was finally meeting Samantha. “Let’s go.”

  It was a muggy summer Friday night, and Union Square was packed with musicians, political protestors, tourists, skateboarders, college kids, and various street urchins. Sam a
nd Valentina were sitting under the same tree by the dog run, looking significantly more bedraggled than when I’d seen them earlier. “Hey!” they hailed us, Sam’s eyes lighting up when she recognized Bill with me. “Oh, hey! You’re Bill!”

  “And you’re Sam!” They shook hands enthusiastically, and Bill met Valentina, then we huddled for another conference. There was a problem at the bank that morning—the welfare check that was supposed to be directly deposited to Valentina’s account had been sent to the halfway house instead, and the house hadn’t received it yet. “They should get it tomorrow,” Sam asserted. “Then alls we gotta do is go get it, and cash it.” Meanwhile, they’d called the broker who was supposed to show them the rooms; she wouldn’t make an appointment with them until they had cash in hand. “But we can meet her tomorrow, right after we get the money.”

  I told you, I wanted to say, but Sam said it first, shaking her head at the ground. “You told me something could happen, but we planned so hard, I thought for sure it would all work out.”

  I reached up and put my hand on her shoulder. “Well, I’m glad you called me. Let’s get you someplace overnight, for now, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

  I pointed the four of us toward St. Marks Place, to the hotel on the corner of Third Avenue. Sometimes kids used to scrape up a few bucks and crash there, back in my day; it wasn’t a flophouse anymore, but it still looked cheap. Sam and Bill took up the rear, starting an amicable chat about the anarchy symbol around her neck—“I’m more of a nihilist these days, actually,” she clarified.

  “I guess nihilists don’t have a logo,” said Bill.

  I took the opportunity to try to get to know Valentina, who was humming to herself as she carried her oversized purple handbag and a giant plastic tote from Chinatown. “So Sam tells me you’ve been going to school at night?”

  She cast her brown eyes down and to the side, like a geisha, and smiled faintly. “Katharine Gibbs School,” she said in her breathy voice. “Business management.”