The bicycle wheel sat there inert, its apparent purpose nothing more than casting shadows. Briefly she scanned the titles on his bookshelf, a lot of organic chemistry texts and books on art. A whole shelf was devoted to books about alchemy. On the desk was an old manual typewriter. Lee picked up a steel fountain pen and rolled it between her fingers, resisting the urge to pocket it—how delicious would that feel?—before setting it back down. She opened the desk drawer. His black ledger sat there, the one he’d been writing in when she first met him.
Its pages were filled with tiny, neat handwriting in black ink: dates going back nearly four years, followed by a series of numbers. Each number was followed by an “M” or “F,” which was followed in turn by notes in shorthand or code. The last entry was from a few days before: #46, F. Beside it he had simply written a question mark and circled it.
Then Lee spotted something shining dully from beneath the bed. She crouched and pulled out an old metal lockbox. She placed it on the desk. Its lock was broken. Inside was a bound stack of Polaroids. When she twisted off the rubber band, the Polaroids popped out of her hand, spilling across the desk in a crowd of faces gazing placidly up at her. Teenagers, all of them, black kids and white kids and brown kids, hair short and long, braided and cornrowed and spiked, skin smooth and acned and freckled. An array of faces that could have come from the yearbook of her high school. On the back of each was a number.
Lee saw her own face among them; it was the photo Ester had taken in the cafeteria. On the back was written #46. And then she recognized another. As she held the photo up, Claire Faver’s face stared back at her. Lee didn’t know what to do with this information. She had been here a week—surely she would have seen Claire if she had been here, too. Then her eyes landed on another photo, framed and hanging above the desk. Lee put Claire’s photo down and lifted the frame from the wall. Had it been here before? Lee couldn’t remember, but surely she would have noticed it. The photograph looked a hundred years old, cracked at the edges and peeling. In it a young woman stood with her hands clasped in front of her, staring past the camera. Her dress was identical to Lee’s, her hair pulled back in two braids tied above her head. More than that, she had the same nose as Lee, the same sleepy eyes. Lee looked more closely. It could have just been something on the photo, but the woman even had a dark mole above her lip, just like Lee’s.
She was shaking now. The dress felt suddenly grotesque, and she wanted to rip the braids from her hair. How had she found herself here? Lee thought back to the man in the park who had told her to come to this place, find the Station Master. Had the Station Master been waiting for her all along? First he’ll tell you you need to earn his trust. Then he’ll tell you his name. Then he’s gonna tell you it’s time. Then you’ll see what’s upstairs. Her hands shaking too much to get the rubber band back around the photos, she dumped them back in the box and slid it under the bed where she’d found it. Lee was about to leave when she saw it hanging from a wood and metal coatrack on the wall: the satchel that the young man had brought the Station Master. She grabbed it. Footsteps were coming down the hall. There was no way she’d get back to her room without being seen.
She looked at the armoire—she could fit. Then she saw the fire escape outside the window. The window wouldn’t open at first, and Lee almost smashed it before she saw the latch. It opened easily and she climbed out, shutting the window behind her.
The sidewalk was a long way down, too far to jump. Lee dropped the bag and pushed down on the ladder, but it wouldn’t budge. He would be back in his room any second now. Lee wondered how much time it would take him to realize that someone had been there, and how much time from then to look out his window. Another ladder led up. Lee took it.
She climbed to the next floor, freezing when the landing groaned beneath her weight. Lee looked up, but the ladder stopped there. There was another window at this landing. Through it she could see a hallway lit only by the lights from the few open rooms; most of the others had their doors closed. At the far end was the door they kept locked. On the other side of that door was the main stairway, which led out to the street. If she could get there before the Station Master realized she’d been in his room, she might make it.
Lee lifted the window quietly and crept down the hallway. One of the doors ahead was open. She slowed as she got to it, angling her head around.
Inside the room a girl sat on a bed. She had ringlets of curly red hair and a face full of freckles, and she was dressed in a tight purple half top that pushed her breasts up and a tiny pleated purple skirt, with white stockings and matching purple pumps. She sat with her legs curled beneath her, staring straight at Lee, two big blue jellyfish eyes oscillating in her head. It was clear she both saw Lee and did not see her, that she was looking at Lee and through her at the same time. Her outfit, but more than that those huge nonseeing eyes, made her look like a cartoon. Lee felt herself go dizzy, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She stood there, unable to move. Until the girl smiled at her, which was enough to break the spell.
Across the hall was another open door. In an identical room a boy, maybe fourteen and wearing nothing but a pair of tight blue underwear, swayed to music she couldn’t hear. His big brown misshapen irises took in Lee as she passed him, but he said nothing. Lee had seen him before, and it took her a moment to place him: his was one of the faces in the Polaroids from the lockbox. His eyes had been normal in that photo. Lee took off running.
She was nearly to the door at the end when she was stopped in her tracks by three loud knocks. Lee froze. The same girl she’d seen manning the door before came out of her room. She kept her back to Lee as she opened the door. A man in a shiny suit came through but stopped when he saw Lee. He leered at her. “Who’s that?”
The girl turned, and when she saw Lee, her face went stricken.
Lee made it back to the window in a half-dozen strides and exited so fast she nearly lost her footing and fell. She took the ladder down and looked up to see the girl staring down at her from the landing above. Then Lee felt another pair of eyes on her. She turned. The Station Master was on the other side of his window, facing her. He held in one hand the open ledger, his expression the bewildered look of a boy who’d just had his feelings hurt.
Lee looked down. She’d break her legs if she jumped; she had no doubt about that. She pushed on the ladder again, but it didn’t budge. When she heard the window open behind her, Lee jumped on the ladder with all her weight and felt it give way beneath her. She held on and it took her to the ground, dumping her onto the sidewalk. Lee sprung up without checking to see if she’d been hurt. The bag was a few feet away; it must have tumbled down after her. She grabbed it and took off down the street.
FOUR
HER mom’s old Geo Prizm was not in the driveway. Lee didn’t recognize the newish green Prius that sat there instead, but the string of Tibetan prayer beads or whatever they were hanging from the rearview had the stench of Steve all over them. She went between her house and the neighbors’ and around to the back.
With any luck her mother would be at work. Steve was always home, not having a job to speak of, but he was clueless, and if she was stealthy enough, she could be in and out without his noticing. Lee rolled an old wheelbarrow to the back of the house, upended it, and climbed on top. The window to her room opened easily.
For a moment she thought she’d come to the wrong house. It certainly wasn’t her room anymore. All her stuff was gone, replaced by wicker tables holding orchids and scented candles. Where her bed had been, a pair of cushions sat facing a wooden cabinet, on top of which squatted a stone Buddha, sticks of incense embedded in a pool of sand between his legs. Where once was taped the picture of the female archaeologist, there now hung a bamboo scroll with lacquered Asian script and a woven mandala. Even the desk and chair where she used to do her homework were gone. The room smelled of burnt sage, and she stepped through quietly, trying not to gag,
concentrating her anger to stay focused. It was as if they’d erased her.
She slid open the closet door. A neat stack of unopened boxes with Steve’s company logo—a jolly laughing Buddha—plastered on each took up most of the space. But on the shelf above sat a row of old boxes. She pulled a few down. They were stuffed with her clothes. She grabbed a pair of jeans, a few shirts, a gray hoodie, underwear and socks, and her black Chuck Taylors. The guitar case was nowhere to be found. Lee began tearing the boxes apart, pulling them aside noisily, not caring if anyone heard. Then she saw it, leaning way in the back behind the tallest stack of Steve’s boxes, almost covered by an unrolled sleeping bag. Lee exhaled. Maybe she’d take that bus to Ohio after all. She found herself thinking of Edie again, wondering where she’d gone to school, but pushed that thought from her head. She shoved the boxes aside and grabbed the handle of the case.
Lee could tell from the weight that it was empty. Her mother, who had once created an entire tinsel-strewn gala of old dolls and stuffed animals when no one showed up to Lee’s sixth birthday party, had stolen her money, or had let Steve steal it, to buy a car and a bunch of plastic nonsense. She opened the case anyway. Everything she’d been saving for, her entire college tuition, gone. Her hope of a new start, gone. The only things left, in the corner of the case, were seventy cents and a little blue glass bottle, the tiny silver die still inside. Lee stuffed the clothes and the sleeping bag into the canvas satchel, pulled on her sneakers and hoodie, and shoved the bottle into her pocket.
Those fuckers. Lee didn’t know why she’d expected her money to still be here. It wasn’t theirs to take, and that had seemed enough. She wanted to scream, to smash everything in the room, to squat and piss on the stone Buddha. She grabbed the mandala and tried to tear the thing apart in her hands. It was the only silent act of destruction she could manage, but she couldn’t even manage that—the mandala, which looked woven, was just a hard piece of colored plastic.
When she opened the door, Lee could see, down the hall, Steve’s elbow scrunched into a leathery pouch against the kitchen table. As she made her way toward him, she heard the clank of a pan and smelled bacon cooking. Then her mother crossed into her sight line, and Lee froze. She asked herself what she hoped to accomplish by confronting them. Somehow her mom hadn’t seen Lee, despite the fact that Lee was standing practically right in front of her, and when her mom turned away, Lee slipped into their bedroom.
Steve’s wallet was lying on the nightstand, with two hundred and twenty-three dollars inside. Lee considered rummaging around to see if there was any more of her money stashed away but knew she shouldn’t push her luck. Steve would call the cops on her without hesitation, and her mom would let him. One of his necklaces, a purple crystal with a leather cord tied around it, was hanging from the mirror. Steve called it his transcendental amulet, and he wore it when he was in special need of positive energies from the universe. Lee took it just to spite him.
• • •
A few bus rides and twenty minutes of walking later, Lee came across a fenced-off field of junk—engine blocks and rusting axles and radiators, old refrigerators and piles of scrap copper, spaced in neat rows like some sort of orchard of crushed metal. It was just as Maria, back at the JDC, had described it. SANTIAGO’S SALVAGE CITY was strung across the front gate in a sign made from twisted hunks of metal, broken lengths of pipe, and old golf clubs. Most of the lot was filled with the rusting heaps of cars. Some were stacked on top of each other, others so mangled Lee could smell the death on them. But one area was given over to cars that were more or less whole.
Lee slipped in behind a pickup full of scrap metal and ducked between a row of old appliances to where the intact cars sat. She chose an old van up on blocks because it had few windows. She was happy to find it carpeted inside. It must have been, back in its day, a real studmobile. Now it was a rotting hulk of metal that smelled of mold and stale beer and puke. But she had a change of clothes, a bit of money, and a place to sleep, at least for now. She thought about what she’d seen upstairs. Those kids. What had happened to them? And the Thrumm kids in Wonderland—hollowed out, adrift. They were the same. The diary girl. Had she become like them, too? Was that the fate Lee had just escaped herself? The thought of it made her sick with relief and rage.
• • •
The screech of crashing metal jolted Lee awake, and it took her several seconds to remember where she was. She crawled toward the front of the van and peeked out the driver’s side window into the morning light. A few men were unloading junk onto a pile, and another was sorting through it. A flatbed truck was waiting to unload an old 1970s sedan with its entire rear end crumpled in.
For a moment she wondered if the past days had all been a dream. Then she saw the Station Agent’s canvas satchel in the corner of the van. She crawled over and opened it. She tossed her clothes to the side. Beneath them was a small cardboard box. She took it out and placed it in her lap, then undid the flaps. Sitting on top of a nest of crumpled newspaper was a strange object: a ball of twine encased within two identical brass plates and held tight by four long screws. She picked it up. It looked very old. The top plate was about five inches square. Carefully painted in block letters, it read:
P . G . . ECIDES DÉBARRASSE .
LE . D . SERT . F . URNIS . ENT
AS HOW . V . R COR . ESPONDS
Lee turned it over in her hands. Along the bottom, in the same block letters, it said:
. IR . . CAR . É LONGSEA –›
F . NE , HEA . , . O . SQUE –›
TE . U S . ARP BAR AIN –›
Something inside rattled when she turned it. Whatever she’d been expecting to find, this was a disappointment. Still, she hoped that it meant something to the Station Master and that part of him had died when he found it missing. She put it back in its box.
Lee hadn’t eaten in nearly a day, and her throat was parched, but she huddled in the hot darkness of the van for several more hours, until she heard the sounds of men leaving and then the front gate shut. She waited a half hour more, biding the time by removing the cord from Steve’s crystal and using it to fashion a necklace of her own around the little blue bottle. She turned her attention back to the twine-ball object for a while, trying to decipher the code. Lee had always liked puzzles; she and her father used to spend mornings and evenings working through a big book of brain teasers he had bought her for her seventh birthday. But after a while she grew impatient and tossed the object aside. When she was sure the yard was clear, she climbed from the van and out of the yard, slipping beneath a loose section of cyclone fencing near the back.
A mile down the road Lee found a gas station convenience store, where she bought a package of beef jerky, a bag of corn chips, a Coke, and a tin of sardines. As she chugged the Coke and the rush of sugar seemed to puff the blood back into her, her eyes landed on a bulletin board by the front door. A face stared back at her. It couldn’t be, but it was. Lee wasn’t used to seeing Edie in glasses, but in this photo she wore them, smiling, along with a tight red cardigan. Lee had stolen that sweater for her herself. Above the photo the word MISSING was prominent in big block letters, and below that EDIE OSWALD. Along the side were Edie’s statistics: her age, her height and weight, her hair and eye colors, her complexion. Lee tore the photo from the board and read the rest of it. Edie had last been seen the night of August 1, leaving her Belmont Village home. Nearly five weeks ago. The date triggered something, and Lee stared at it until it came back to her: August 1 was the date on the flier she’d found in the girl’s diary. Was Edie in one of those rooms upstairs? Lee thought she might burn the Crystal Castle to the ground if she knew she could do it without any of those poor kids getting hurt.
• • •
That night in the van, every time she closed her eyes she’d see the face of the girl in the room upstairs. The eyes of that girl kept hovering there, just past her vision. Lee wondered wha
t was going on behind those eyes. She thought of the men visiting upstairs. They didn’t look like they were part of the Crystal Castle. They were clients. Lee remembered what the Station Master had said to her about the currency of desire. At the time it had sounded like something profound. Now it disgusted her. Whatever happened to those kids might have happened to Claire. And now maybe Edie. Lee wondered if Edie, too, had slept in one of those rooms at the Crystal Castle. If he’d told her his name, then invited her upstairs. It could have been Lee there, if she’d stayed any longer. It would be some other kid next.
Lee thought again about returning, slipping into the Station Master’s room and stabbing him through his eye as he slept. She would never have the guts to do that. But she could do something. Lee found a phone booth a few blocks from the yard.
When the operator asked who she wanted to call, Lee didn’t know. “The police?”
“Is this an emergency? If this is an emergency, you should dial 911.”
The Readymade Thief Page 8