The Readymade Thief

by Augustus Rose

  Lee stirred it around and continued eating, staring at Ester’s bare feet until the girl sat down beside her.

  “It’s okay?”

  Lee nodded, her mouth still full.

  “I know you’re in trouble,” Ester said, “but you’re safe here.” Ester was sitting so close Lee could feel the heat of her. She kept herself from leaning into it. Something about the way her body responded to Ester reminded her of the way she was drawn to Edie, and she didn’t trust it.

  “I also want you to know that you don’t have to tell me anything but that I’m always here if you want to talk. About anything at all.” She undid the handkerchief from her hair and wiped upward along Lee’s neck.

  Ester shook her head, and her long blond hair fell around her shoulders. With her hair down she went from Russian starlet to ’60s peacenik.

  “What is this place?” Lee said.

  Ester folded the handkerchief and handed it to Lee. She got up. “We call it the Crystal Castle. For now, just think of it as a safe place to stay. You’ll get the lay of the land soon enough. Until then, feel free to roam around, introduce yourself to the others. Just don’t go upstairs, okay?”

  “What’s upstairs?”

  Ester smiled. “Put in a little time first. You’ll see eventually. When you’re ready.”

  Lee closed her eyes for what felt like a second, but when she opened them, Ester was gone. She was so exhausted her body felt evacuated, as if she were just old bones held together by stretched skin. She fell asleep immediately.

  When she woke, it was dark, the room lit only by the faint glow of the streetlamp outside. Lee lay awake, watching shadows pass along the walls. Somewhere upstairs a door opened and closed. Once Ester passed Lee’s room on her way to see the Station Master. Lee heard the low hush of their voices.

  Lee wished Ester would come in to talk to her, but when the girl left the Station Master’s room and saw Lee awake, she only offered up that gap-toothed smile. For so many months in the JDC, Lee had lain awake imagining what it would be like to walk freely through the city. To eat a meal at a restaurant, to go to a movie, to hear waves crashing and feel beach sand between her toes. Lee was out now, but she still couldn’t do any of that. She had accepted the offer of these people, whoever they were. Was she now trapped in this place? Suddenly the room was shrinking, not much larger than her cell in solitary. She began to feel dizzy. Lee got out of bed. She took her shoes and carried them, stepping as quietly as she could down the hall and into the stairwell, expecting someone to lurch from the dark and grab her at any moment. But she made it to the ground floor. Lee put on her shoes. She crossed the lobby, expecting the building’s front door to be locked, but it opened right onto the street.

  A siren wailed in the distance, but otherwise the neighborhood was silent. Lee walked down the middle of the street, everything around her yellowed and wan from the streetlamps. She wondered what would happen if she went back home, stood pale and wasted in front of her mother, told her what it had been like in the detention center. What would her mother do? Steve would want to turn her in, but maybe her mom would stand up to him?

  Lee reached the corner 7-Eleven, but Lois was nowhere to be seen. Lee wondered where she slept, and why it wasn’t at the Crystal Castle. She watched a man inside the store in a dirty flannel shirt and sweatpants buy diapers and a pack of cigarettes. Outside, he did a slow double take as he passed her, as though she were a ghost he couldn’t be sure he had seen at all. For the past eight months she had imagined this moment of freedom in various incarnations—she’d be walking along the beach, through a park, along a downtown street, even on a silent and empty street such as this—but in none of them did she imagine she’d feel so alone. Lee thought of Edie. It was mid-August; she’d be saying her goodbyes and packing for college. Lee turned and headed back.

  She was back inside and across the lobby when she heard the door open behind her. It was too dark to make out much more than the frame of a man, wearing a hat and a dark coat, silhouetted in the doorway. Lee ducked into the dark crevice behind the stairs just as he turned on a cell phone flashlight.

  She saw a flash of gray stubble on the wattle of the man’s neck as he passed and went up the stairs. He made it to the first landing, her floor, and headed up to the next. Upstairs. There was a knock, followed by a door opening and closing. Lee crept up after him. At the top landing was the door. Behind it she heard a woman’s voice, not Ester’s, and a man’s reply but couldn’t make out the words. Lee tested the knob. It was locked.

  • • •

  The next morning Lee awoke to the faint chords of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People” coming from somewhere downstairs. She could hear voices and smell something cooking—pancakes, maybe, and bacon.

  In the morning light she examined her room more clearly. The carpet was stained, and the windowsill was burned by all the cigarettes extinguished into it. Along the wall above the mattress someone had drawn a series of stylized mouse heads, seventeen in all—three neat rows of five, plus two. They were each identical, except for the eyes, which grew slightly bigger with each iteration.

  “Sleep okay?”

  Lee turned around to find Ester, backlit and haloed in dust motes, looking a little sleepy. She held a mug.

  “Come on, we’ll get you some breakfast, introduce you around.”

  Ester brought Lee down to the lobby, then through another door to a stairwell going down. She could increasingly hear the sounds of people talking over one another and of silverware clinking against plates. Ester and Lee came into a large basement space, where maybe two dozen kids Lee’s age sat around a cluster of tables eating breakfast. One girl in a too-large Steelers jersey and no pants kept getting up and moving from one table to another, instigating something between the two groups, who were playfully trading insults back and forth. No one looked up when Lee entered the room, until Ester stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled.

  “Everybody,” she called when the room grew quiet, and Lee suddenly felt all eyes on her. “This is Lee.”

  A chorus of voices sang out, “Hi, Lee!” Then they all turned back to what they’d been doing.

  “And that’s that,” Ester said, taking two plates of food from a shirtless boy in an apron. She brought the plates to an empty table, and Lee sat across from her, pushing the scrambled eggs around her plate before taking a bite.

  “So,” Ester said, waiting for Lee to meet her eyes before continuing. “Tell me what you’re good at.”

  “What I’m good at?”

  “What you’re good at. Everybody contributes, and so we try to start with what you’re good at.”

  Lee thought about it. She did well enough at school but didn’t excel in any one subject. She didn’t cook. She wasn’t especially strong, or fast, or artistic. She was a lousy typist. She could steal. And she could disappear. But these didn’t seem like the kinds of skills you advertised.

  “How are you with computers?”

  Lee shrugged. She wasn’t anything with computers. She began to feel useless.

  “How about your personality skills?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind.” Ester clicked her teeth. “Anything?”

  Lee stuck a forkful of egg into her mouth so she wouldn’t have to answer.

  Ester seemed to sense Lee’s shame, and her face softened. “Don’t worry, there’s room for you here. We just have to figure out what your role is. Everyone down here has a role; it’s important. And no role is more than any other. That’s also important. You understand what I’m saying?” She touched Lee’s shoulder so tenderly it felt like a hug.

  It was the kind of thing Steve would say, but coming from Ester, it was a warm blanket she wanted to wrap herself in. Lee looked away, afraid of her own emotions.

  “God, you’re pretty, though. And you don’t even know it, d
o you?”

  Ester was one of the most beautiful girls Lee had ever seen. She wondered what pretty looked like through those eyes.

  “Here,” Ester said. “Let me show you.” She got up and pulled an old Polaroid camera from a shelf full of old books and came back. “Smile,” she said, holding the camera up and clicking a photo before Lee could do more than gape.

  She popped the photo out and waved it in the air until the image clarified. “Pretty as a picture,” she said, showing Lee. “My grandmother used to say that. Pretty stupid, huh?” She dropped the photo into her bag. “You can do dishes for now. Everyone can do dishes.” Ester gave Lee that smile that made Lee think everything was okay, then she got up. “Go see Doug when you’re done.” She nodded to the boy who had given her the plate. He was standing by an open trash can, scraping off a pan into it. “I’ll come find you later.”

  Lee ate the rest of her breakfast by herself, watching as, one by one, the other kids finished their plates and stacked them in plastic bins before leaving. When she finished, she got up and went to see Doug about the dishes.

  • • •

  It took Lee nearly two hours to get through them all. Doug had pale eyes that never landed anywhere for long. He wore earbuds the whole time, taking one out only to answer her questions, and he left her to finish up before they were half through. But Lee liked being alone in the kitchen, and she liked the feeling of contributing something, even if it was only dishes. When they were all clean and stacked and put away and the floor was swept and the counters and tables were wiped down, she went back upstairs, looking for Ester in the rooms down the hall, then heading up to the second floor. Lee put her ear to the door. Just as she did, it opened and Lee nearly fell forward into a girl. She caught a glimpse of a nose ring and a pink lightning bolt tattooed across one shoulder and stammered something out about looking for Ester.

  The girl shut the door in Lee’s face without a word. Lee was still off balance but turning around when the door opened again and Ester was there. Lee caught a glimpse down the hallway behind her; it was just like the one on the floor below, except that these rooms all had doors. She could hear the low pulse of techno music throbbing out from somewhere. Ester squeezed into the stairwell, closing the door.

  “What did I say about coming up here?” She wasn’t smiling.

  Lee cringed under the admonishment. She followed Ester downstairs. “I finished the dishes.”

  “Good.” At the landing she turned to face Lee again. “And how was your breakfast?”

  “It was good. Thank you,” she said to the floor, ashamed she hadn’t thanked her before.

  “That’s okay. But those breakfasts don’t pay for themselves.”

  “Oh, I . . .” Lee could feel herself turning red as she dug into her pockets, knowing there was nothing to find there. What had she done? Ester’s tone had changed completely.

  “That’s not what I mean. Remember what I said about contributing?”

  Lee nodded.

  “Ever spare-changed before?”

  Lee heard the door open and close upstairs. She stepped aside as Doug shouldered past them, carrying a plastic tub full of dirty dishes back down. Ester didn’t wait for Lee’s answer.

  “There’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it,” Ester said when they’d reached the first-floor landing. “But once you get it down, there’s nothing to it.”

  Lee tried to imagine herself approaching strangers and asking for money. The thought of it made her a little ill. But the thought of disappointing Ester was worse. “Is there something else I could do?”

  “Worried about cops?” Ester put an arm around her and squeezed. “Don’t. Just keep your head down and you’ll be all right. I get the feeling you’re good at keeping your head down. And here—” Ester plucked a trucker cap from a passing kid, who kept on going without a beat; she plopped it down onto Lee’s head. “Presto—incognito.”

  Lee pulled the hat down low, until it was nearly covering her eyes.

  Ester winked at her. “You’ll be just fine.”

  She introduced her to a girl named Kellygreen, who gave Lee a story, one she used herself all the time, she said—that she had left an abusive stepfather and all the shelters were closed for the night and she was trying to get enough together for a room—and told Lee a good corner to work where others would watch out for her. “Don’t worry,” she said when Lee seemed surprised at this. “We keep an eye on our own.” Kellygreen had long strawberry-blond hair and waxy red cheeks and eyes that conveyed such trusting naiveté that Lee knew the girl had no trouble persuading strangers on the street to hand her money. Lee wasn’t so optimistic about herself.

  • • •

  For an hour Lee paced her corner, an intersection crowded with tourists and students from nearby UPenn, and tried to work up the nerve to approach someone and tell her story. She tried to stay out of sight and measure potential donors simultaneously: this one looks too poor, this one has had a bad day and isn’t feeling generous, this one seems like a creep, this one has the New Age stink of Steve all over him. The few who passed muster were long gone, down the block or into one of the restaurants or shops or cafés, by the time she had decided on them.

  Kellygreen hadn’t said anything about how Lee was supposed to break through the shame. By midday she was disgusted with herself. She imagined going to Ester empty-handed, and the shame of that was even worse. Lee thought about Lois, who just made up a cardboard sign and sat on a corner waiting for people to throw her a few scraps. Maybe she didn’t take in much that way, but it seemed something Lee might at least be able to pull off. But then she might as well put up a sign for the cops to come harass her. Maybe she could steal something, but Ester was expecting cash.

  “Excuse me.”

  Lee hadn’t realized how deeply lost she was in her thoughts and was startled to see a man in front of her, middle-aged, in a tie and black cardigan, carrying a canvas satchel.

  “You’re looking a little misplaced. Can I help you out with anything?”

  Maybe he was a professor at the university. Lee took comfort in his beard. “I’m just trying to figure out what to do,” she said.

  “Can I help?”

  “Only if you can get me back to Cincinnati.” The lie came so easily.

  “Ohio?”

  “Jack said we’d get work out here, he promised to take care of me. I’m so stupid. I’m sorry, sir, this isn’t your problem, I’m just a little . . . I just need to figure out a way back home.” It was as though someone else were speaking, another girl out on her own, looking to get home. She almost believed herself.

  “I guess things didn’t work out with your boyfriend.”

  Lee examined a squashed piece of gum on the ground. “No.”

  The man pulled out his wallet. For a moment she thought he was going to flash a badge, but then he took out sixty dollars, all that he had there. “I don’t know if you’re telling me the truth, and I guess I don’t really care. I’ve got a daughter about your age, and I hope that if she ever did something as foolish as you, someone would do the same for her. Even if she wasn’t telling the truth.”

  Lee didn’t take the money until he placed it in her hand. She watched him thread through the crowd down the block until he turned the corner and disappeared.

  Before Lee returned to the Crystal Castle, she bought a can of Coke with a twenty-dollar bill and asked for her change in ones and quarters. She would give this to Ester and call it a day’s work. That way the sixty bucks could last her a few more days. Lee just hoped that eighteen dollars and change was enough. But when she gave it to Ester later that evening, Ester didn’t even count it, just shoved it into her pocket and went off to see about something upstairs.

  • • •

  That night Lee showered in one of the bathrooms of the Crystal Castle, drying herself with a damp towel
already hanging on the rack. Earlier, at dinner, a girl had spilled her spaghetti all over Lee’s front. The girl had tried to play it off as an accident, but Lee knew it hadn’t been. Lee looked at herself in a mirror and barely recognized the face staring back at her. Her hair was stringy and matted; her eyes were sunken and dark and somehow puffy, too. And she’d lost weight—she could see it in her jutting pelvic bones and in her sternum, which looked as white and brittle as a soup cracker. She got back into her dirty clothes stained with red sauce and fixed her hair as best she could. She took one final look at herself in that ridiculous purple T-shirt. TOUGHER THAN CANCER. Right.

  That night, as she lay in bed trying to sleep, a young man passed by her room. He wore a funny little white suit, a white cap, and he carried a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. Lee didn’t see his face beyond a flash of glasses. He knocked on the Station Master’s door.

  “You have it?” she heard the Station Master ask.

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “The Priest?”

  “I can handle the old man. He’s trapped in a room, what’s he going to do?”

  “This will change everything. You understand—there’s no going back.”

  “I know it.”

  “Give it to me,” the Station Master said.

  When the young man passed by her room again, he was no longer carrying the bag. Lee wished she had some business with the Station Master. He had told her to come to him anytime, that they were family. But what would she say?

  • • •

  It was late and Lee was finally falling asleep when she felt a presence in the doorway and jolted awake. She knew it was him. It was as though he had heard her thoughts. She could feel him enter her room and gave herself a moment before turning her head to him. He wore the same suit as the day before.

  “I’m sorry to wake you; it’s been a busy day. But I wanted to check in. Did you get enough to eat today?” He came into the room and sat beside her. He was holding a cup of tea.

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”