Tom Finder

by Martine Leavitt

  “Is anyone looking for me?” Tom asked. He was breathing hard, like he’d just run a long way, and the knuckles on his hand were white where he gripped the counter top. “Maybe someone rich?”

  “Why? Are you lost?”

  “I was just wondering if anyone called in looking for me.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tom.”

  “Tom what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The officer studied him a minute, his fingers hooked on his gun belt. He went to a file on a desk. “I went through missing persons just this morning. I don’t remember seeing a picture of you, but I’ll check again.” He shuffled through papers for a long time, occasionally glancing up at Tom. Soon it would be over, Tom thought. Not so bad. Not so bad. He was doing this. He’d sleep in his own bed tonight.

  The officer said, “Nope.”

  Tom suddenly couldn’t remember what that word meant.

  “No one matching your description, kid, and no pictures of you.”

  Tom rocked on his feet. His neck shot with pain, as if gravity had just sat on his head. He felt his spine compress. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t say, “That can’t be right.”

  “Listen, kid, I think you’d better come have a seat. Maybe we can help you.”

  Tom reached into his backpack and took out his book.

  “What have you got there?” the officer asked.

  Tom read his notes. Someone had thought he was nice. Nice didn’t come from parents that didn’t look for you. There had to be some kind of explanation. For a moment he thought about trusting the officer. Maybe he could help.

  Tom took a deep breath and asked, “Can you tell me what happened to that dog that was hit on Macleod and Seventh?”

  “Sure, I heard about that . . . Oh, so you’re the one . . . Yeah, I heard about that.”

  “Where’s the dog?”

  “Put it out of its misery.”

  “They couldn’t fix him?”

  The officer shrugged. “Would have cost a fortune in vet fees. The system isn’t set up to take care of strays.”

  Tom nodded slowly. “Makes sense,” he said. He turned to walk out the door.

  “Hey, where are you going? Maybe if I had a last name . . . You know your own last name, don’t you, kid?” the officer called after him.

  Tom walked until he was back to his island. Along the way he found a twenty-dollar bill. When he reached the island, Tom got out his notebook and wrote in it, The streets love Tom. He curled up in his blanket, and in the last fading light he read once more Peter Pepsi Sivorak’s obituary.

  He stared at the page a long time until all he could see was the space, the loopy letters, zeroes on a string.

  Chapter 6

  Tell me, good friend!

  Have you ever been so fortunate as to see

  this goddess of the night?

  – Act 1, scene 2

  The streets loved him, but gave him only a little money at a time—mostly loonies and toonies and quarters, sometimes a five or a ten. He knew that at this rate he couldn’t find enough money in a lifetime to rent a billboard. He couldn’t think of what else to do. For a long time he thought about why his parents weren’t looking for him. He figured they thought he’d run away over some typical teenage squabble and they were giving him his space. Maybe they thought he was visiting a relative. He probably had dozens of cousins, and an uncle who took him swimming.

  He was looking for HELP WANTED signs and thinking of all this one morning when he walked into a bucket filled with water.

  Someone snarled at him. “Hey, watch where you’re going, or you’ll kick the bucket all right.”

  It was the kid from the shelter with the Betty Boop tattoo on his arm. He was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, and Tom could see that he had a lot of other tattoos as well.

  “Hey, it’s the lipstick licker. What are you doing here, girl?”

  “Looking for a job,” Tom said. His legs twitched, ready to run.

  “Yeah? Well, you’re in my territory.”

  Tom glanced around. “It looks like a regular street to me.” He told his legs to be still. He could fight if he had to, he reminded them.

  Tom thought Betty Boop jiggled a bit. “Well, maybe you’re not a girl after all, eh?” He pointed at himself. “Jamie.”

  “Tom.”

  Jamie spat. It lay there looking alive on the sidewalk. “Now, Tom, I’ll explain to you. See, I’m a businessman. I provide a service—I clean windshields.” He gestured toward the bucket Tom had kicked. It had two squeegees in it. “This is my corner. All the cars that come here are mine.”

  A businessman. That sounded good. His dad was probably one of those.

  “How do I get a corner?” Tom asked.

  “You got a work ethic?”

  Tom thought he could probably find one.

  “ ’Cause you gotta hustle, you know. You gotta love customer service.”

  Tom nodded seriously.

  Jamie sized him up. “I could probably arrange something for you. But first you’ve got to get yourself a little investment capital.”

  “I’ve got capital,” Tom said.

  “Yeah? How much?”

  “A hundred and twenty-three dollars and fifty-one cents.”

  Jamie regarded him shrewdly. Tom could tell he was impressed.

  “Well, what do you think?” Tom asked.

  “I’m thinking that’s enough to buy my corner,” Jamie said.

  “Really?”

  “Well, I’ll think about it while you get the money. That is, if you really have the money.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tom said. “That money includes the squeegees and the bucket, right?”

  Jamie smiled and gestured eloquently toward the bucket.

  Tom ran to the bus depot to get the money from his locker. He was sure Jamie would be gone when he got back, but he wasn’t. It was almost dark by the time the transaction was complete. Tom picked up his inventory, as Jamie had called it, and paid Jeans a visit.

  “I found a job,” Tom said. “Self-employment.”

  “Say again?”

  “Windows. I used my money to get us these.” Tom tossed over the two squeegees. “You’re welcome to come in on it with me.” Jeans stared at them and didn’t bend to touch one.

  “Squeegees,” Tom said.

  “I know that.”

  “You stand on a busy street corner and—”

  “I know. I know that.”

  “Oh,” said Tom.

  “I been here a long while. I tried it once.” Jeans pointed at nothing. “If you lucky, people point. If you lucky, people pay, don’t give you six cents. On a bad day, you jump ’em, but most times then they don’t pay. They jus’ scowl at you for cleanin’ up their pretty car. You make twenty, maybe thirty dollars a good day, nothing or ten on a bad day. One day you get lucky, you make a hundred dollars. Keeps you goin’, but it took all my squeegee money jus’ to stay street lovin’.”

  “Paid ten dollars a day to stay in a junk place with six others. I figured that landlord gettin’ twenty-one hundred dollars a month for a two-bedroom shack with big ol’ beetles in the cupboards and a stove that shock you every time you stir the pot. The ten dollars left got me burgers and ice cream. Job like this,” Jeans pushed one of the squeegees with the toe of his foot, “just keep you street lovin’.”

  Jeans sat down into the down-coat nest. Feathers flew.

  Tom sat down. No feathers.

  “Hope they didn’t cost you much,” Jeans said.

  “Oh. No.”

  “You go ahead,” Jeans said. “Maybe they like the look of you better.”

  Tom shook his head. They both sat in silence a long time, staring at the squeegees.

  “I miss home,” Jeans said.

  Tom sighed. “Me, too.”

  “You think we ever get home?” Jeans asked.

  Tom thought Jeans looked about nine years old at that moment. “We’ll
get home,” Tom said.

  “Yeah? How do you know that?” His voice cracked.

  Tom got out his book. He opened it and started writing.

  “What?” Jeans said. “What are you writin’?”

  “Says: Jeans bought a plane ticket and went back to Jamaica.”

  “Oh, man,” Jeans said. “You got a talent there. A talent, is what I say.” He sighed and sank down into the coats. He didn’t talk much after that.

  Tom left. When he tried to sell the squeegees back to Betty Jamie Boop, the kid laughed and shook his head. “Sorry, Lipstick Licker. I already invested the capital. I’m in big business now. Speaking of which, you want some Forget?” Tom left the bucket and walked away without answering. He was back to needing $5,388.

  The next day Tom looked for HELP WANTED signs in windows again.

  Over the next few weeks, he got odd jobs, deliveries, inventory, but nothing permanent. And nothing Jeans could do. Jeans couldn’t work indoors. Evenings Tom hung out at the LRT stations, shelters, parks, bars, looking for Daniel. Most days Samuel Wolflegs would be sitting on the bench in the park with a sandwich or fruit or a chocolate bar. Samuel thought Daniel had quit smoking and Tom should find different bait.

  Tom tried saving his chocolate bars for bait, which also did not work. But every day Samuel would remind Tom that he was a Finder. “You have evil magic enough in your lives, you kids,” Samuel would say. “You need good magic to fight it.”

  Some mornings Tom thought maybe it wasn’t true, but every night, whether he found something or not, he knew it had to be true even if it wasn’t. Some mornings, what was true was that he smelled and his clothes looked like he had slept on the ground all night.

  He showered at the Greyhound station when Tuba was on duty. Once in a while, he exchanged clothes at the Sally Ann. He occasionally got food at the soup kitchen, but he didn’t like that people looked at him there. He could always count on Samuel having something for him.

  “Hey, aren’t you having any today?” Tom asked Samuel one afternoon while he ate a cheese sandwich.

  Samuel shook his head.

  It occurred to Tom that he had never seen Samuel eat. At the same time it registered that the man had lost weight. “You on a diet or something?”

  Samuel looked at the river. “My son is not eating tonight.”

  “What?”

  Samuel looked at him.

  “You mean you’re not eating until I find Daniel?” He stared at Samuel, then at his sandwich, and threw the rest of it into the river. The baby geese, almost grown now, devoured it. “You’re zoid, you know that. You know that? You’re going to quit eating until I find your kid . . . ?”

  “You are a Finder.”

  “What if I’m not?” Tom shouted. The geese on the river half-swam, half-flew away. “If I was a Finder, wouldn’t I have found Daniel by now, and my parents, and a freaking million bucks?”

  Samuel had on that blissful believer’s face that Tom had seen before. Tom swore and ran away as fast as he could.

  That night he didn’t sleep on the island. He slept under the bridge and was so tired he hardly woke up when the old man came through yelling, “Ghosts, ghosts!”

  In the morning he looked for Janice. He wanted to run some of his writing by her, see what she thought, see if she laughed at the part where it said Tom was a Finder. He found her and Pam, standing in front of a window. Pam was braless under a T-shirt that said THE TRUE NORTH STRONG AND FREE. Janice was scratching her thigh. “Shelter rash,” she said as Tom approached. Seeing Pam made him forget why he’d come looking for Janice.

  The mannequins were all wearing black. Each one was carrying a wineglass. Tom stood beside Pam and looked in the window with her for what seemed a long time before she noticed him. Finally, she turned her attention to him and smiled. Tom wondered how you went about becoming prime minister.

  She gestured to the window. “This would be good if they were selling wineglasses. Your eye focuses on them.” She walked along the window. “There’s really people like that, you know, people who dress so fine and wear diamonds. We just don’t see them much. But these windows—it’s like a peepshow into their world.”

  “How can they have fun, knowing there’s us?” Janice asked.

  Pam looked at her thoughtfully. Tom silently promised himself he’d ask his parents about that when he got home.

  “I do that a lot,” Janice said. “Throw cold water on a potentially good time. It’s a gift.” She took a step closer to Tom. “You’re still not one of us,” she said.

  “Janice,” Pam murmured.

  “He’s not. You can see it in his eyes.” She stepped away and said, “I’m going to check out the baby clothes.”

  When she was gone, Pam grinned at him. “You busy?”

  “Busy looking at you.”

  She rolled her eyes, then smiled again. “I’ll take you on a tour.”

  He took her hand. “Okay, let’s go,” he said. Tom was amazed at himself. Was he good at girls before? He must have been. Things were coming back.

  Pam led him on a tour of all the display windows she loved best: men’s clothing, women’s clothing, children’s clothing, hats, shoes, bags and briefcases, umbrellas, scarves and gloves, hardware, houseware, plants, pets, wedding, bedding, watches . . .

  They went into some stores, played on computers, listened to CDs, played with the toys, read all the greeting cards.

  “Some stores are for smelling,” Pam said. They stood in front of bakeries, coffee shops, soup spoons, pretzel and popcorn booths, hotdog stands, cigar shops, soap and perfume places. They stood outside the Crispy Chicken place, and Pam told him that smelling was ninety percent of tasting.

  “Does this make you happy?” he asked Pam. “Window-shopping?”

  She nodded. “But it baffles me,” she continued. “All there is in the world. Like there’s this world of shopping, but it’s not a world for me. It’s for looking, smelling, wishing, sometimes touching—but not for having or buying. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Kind of,” he said. “Sometimes I think the world of the street is the only real world. All the rest is a story, with characters moving around on the pages, but not really having anything to do with me.”

  She stared at him.

  “Yeah,” he continued. “Except sometimes the characters—they speak in whispers to me, like dialogue on a page, but I can’t talk back, no more than I could jump into the pages of a book. It’s there, I can see it, but I can’t figure out how to be a part of it.”

  Pam faced him. “See,” she said. “That’s why you’re a poet, Tom, because you can say things people are feeling that they can’t say for themselves.”

  She hugged him. For two long seconds she pressed up against him, and her hair smelled like the soap store.

  “Pam,” he said. “About this new boyfriend. Janice says he’s a . . . not a nice person.”

  “Um . . . in case you didn’t notice, Janice is one bootie short of a pair.”

  He said, “I have some money, if you need it.”

  “Gotta go, Mr. Poet,” she said. He watched her vanish into the crowds until someone bumped him hard. It was a young man, big, but clean-cut and well-dressed. He shook his finger at Tom, and walked after Pam.

  Cupid, Tom thought. He’d been watching her.

  The starlight on the river was so bright that he could see to write in his book. Pam had inspired him. He wrote: Tom found a job. Two jobs. Everything’s going to be okay. Then his moat sang him to sleep.

  The next morning Tom found the jobs hanging by cables outside the Agcor Building. Two men suspended in a cage were washing windows. Tom watched for three hours until the men finally touched down.

  Tom approached them, standing with his best posture.

  “Excuse me, but I’m looking for—”

  “A kick in the pants if you don’t get lost,” one of the men said without looking at him. Tom wished he would look at him so he could see how straight h
e was standing, how perfect his posture was. The man had dreadlocks halfway down his back, braided with beads. The other man was shiny bald. His ear had been tattooed into a screaming mouth. The ear hole was the throat of the mouth.

  “I’m looking for a job. Two jobs. One for me, one for my friend.”

  “You got a friend?” asked Dreadlocks, and Tattoo laughed. “How old are you?”

  Tom guessed, “Um . . . eighteen? My friend’s probably . . . um . . . twenty-one. We’ve got window experience.”

  “Oh. Okay. Sure. Whatever you say.”

  “What’s your name, kid?” Dreadlocks asked.

  “Tom.”

  “Tom what?”

  Tom shrugged.

  “Maybe you should be looking for a real name,” Tattoo said.

  Tom stood still as if waiting for a more intelligent answer.

  “Gotta have guts to do this job,” Dreadlocks said.

  “I’ve got guts,” Tom said. He couldn’t remember if he had guts, but he could fight and swim and he had a way with girls. He didn’t think they’d care if he could spell.

  Tattoo was getting irritated. “Kid, where’s your mommy? Go home.”

  “I am home. This is where I live.”

  “In the Agcor Building?”

  “No. Here. On the streets.”

  “In the Core?”

  Tom nodded.

  Tattoo shook his head. “Guess you do have guts, then. Just no brains.”

  “Listen. I’m a writer. I’ll write an article about you, about skyscraper window cleaners. It’ll be great for business. You let me and my friend come for a day to research. If you don’t like us, then don’t give us a job.”

  Dreadlocks laughed. “Come back tomorrow and we’ll talk.”

  That night Tom returned to the park and Jeans’s tree. He climbed and found Jeans lying on the coats, staring up into the leaves with his hands behind his head.

  “I’m dreamin’ of chicken soup,” he said without looking at Tom.

  Tom got himself all the way onto the platform. He liked it up here, but wondered how Jeans didn’t roll off the platform in the night while he slept. He lay back in the coats. “Jeans, I am a poet.”

  “You say what?”