The Lost Ones

by Sheena Kamal

  “I’ll bring you a treat when I get back,” I say, to lighten the mood. She lifts her gaze and her eyes hold no hope that we will ever see each other again. She is preparing for the worst, but still, her lack of faith in me stings. “I’ll be back this afternoon.” From her dubious expression, she doesn’t think it’s likely. She walks away.

  “You should be a cat,” I call to her retreating back, as a parting shot. She doesn’t acknowledge that she’s heard it, the bitch.

  Outside I see a vagrant rifling through the dumpster and I surreptitiously survey the Corolla to make sure that he hasn’t touched it. Not a scratch, well, except for the ones that I have made, so I pass him and try to ignore that he is sniffing at the moldy remnants of a sandwich that someone has tossed without finishing. Desperation makes some things easier to swallow. It’s hard to look into the eyes of someone who is in need. Desperation made me an addict for a while and nobody could quite meet my eyes. Can’t say I blame them.

  “Spare some change?” asks the man. He avoids my gaze and I avoid his. It’s better for the both of us this way. He looks to be about sixty years old, but on the streets that would place him anywhere between forty and fifty. As a rule, people don’t age gracefully living in back alleys and rifling through dumpsters.

  I toss him a granola bar I find in my pocket and he stares at it suspiciously as I beat a hasty exit. Whether or not he eats it is his prerogative. I’m not trying to make any sort of statement with handing out food rather than money. I just don’t carry cash on me. That way, if I get mugged, all the asshole will get is something to snack on while he thinks about his life choices.

  The streets are busy as I walk down East Hastings in leggings and a dark jacket with reflective stripes, a reluctant thrift store expense. Along with the bicycle helmet and ratty messenger bag, the bill came up to twenty-two dollars, which was twenty-two dollars more than I would have liked to have spent, but after pondering my options this seemed to be the best one.

  The drizzling starts just as I pass Main and turn onto Broadway, and I pick up my pace. I doubt anyone in my path has stopped to wonder why a bike messenger is sans bicycle, but I power on just in case. It’s just after lunch when I approach the squat three-story building. People are slowly getting back to work. Likely they are stuffed with carbohydrates and sodium and are looking for a quiet corner to take a nap so that their digestive systems can recover. Actually, I’m betting on it, that they just might be distracted enough to let an errant bike messenger slip past their defenses.

  The building itself is innocuous. Its weathered brick façade fades into the background and the neatly landscaped walkway is pretty enough to be pleasing to the eye, but doesn’t draw unwanted attention. I wait until I see two men wearing slacks, collared shirts, and glasses go up the front walk and then I sidle in behind them, close enough that I’m just a blur on the various subtle cameras pointed in our direction, but not so close that they notice before we’re in the doors.

  “Oh,” one of them says when he sees me enter behind them. He holds the door open awkwardly while balancing a tray of takeout coffee cups. The other one holds a tray, too, so I presume by the way they’re dressed that these must be the gofers of the IT department. As I pass by, my shoulder jolts the tray and the man holding the door loses his grip. Tsk-tsk. How clumsy. The other reaches over to help and his own tray gets away from him. Scalding liquid splashes on me from both directions.

  “You morons!” I shout. “Look at what you’ve done! If you ruined my packages I’ll sue all of you! I need this goddamn job! How am I going to pay my bills?”

  The receptionist hurries over, in full damage control mode. “Are you okay?” she asks me, sending a glare over at the two IT guys.

  “No, I am not okay.” I muster my finest impression of an imperious messenger, holding up my dripping bag. “Do you have a washroom I can use to sort this out?”

  “Oh, our facilities aren’t really for public use . . .” she says, her eyes flickering upward to the two cameras set up over her desk. One is pointed at the door and the other at the second receptionist at the desk. He’s watching with undisguised interest.

  “Do your employees normally accost the public with scalding hot beverages?” I say, giving her a stare worthy of Medusa, implying with my eyes that this could be a potential lawsuit if she’s not careful.

  She blinks, wants to get rid of me, but sees that I’m not going without a fight. “But, clearly it’s an emergency, so . . . follow me.”

  Smart lady.

  She crosses to a set of double doors just past the elevators. “Frank, get maintenance in here, please,” she says to the other receptionist at the desk. Almost as an afterthought, she turns to the two IT guys. “You two better go back and refill your order. And not on the expense account this time, Walter.” The receptionist gives the one named Walter a knowing look and continues on, completely ignoring the other IT guy, whose name she probably can’t even recall.

  The two IT guys look crushed, but what are they going to do? Complain that I bumped into them? Which, of course, is the truth. These young men are a decent sort, however, and just accept that their day has gone from normal to shitty in mere moments and they’re out of pocket for two trays full of designer coffee.

  Past the welcoming wood-paneled reception area, the building is much more sophisticated and austere in the interior than it appears from outside. This is more in line with what one would expect from the city’s biggest security firm. The hallways are spacious enough that people can walk comfortably side by side, but not so spacious that the mounted cameras that are at every turn will miss you. I thank my good fortune that the peak of my bicycle helmet is long enough to cover the top of my face. How much can someone tell from a chin, anyway? Behind the camera, I feel that someone is watching. It’s always better to assume that someone is.

  The receptionist swipes her key card at the entrance of the washroom and a light on the black box flashes green. She moves to follow me inside, but I jerk my head toward the trail of coffee drippings that I’ve left in my wake and say, “Look at the mess! Hope you guys don’t have too many appointments this afternoon.”

  The receptionist frowns and glances at her watch, now concerned about the afternoon appointments. “I better go make sure Frank got in touch with maintenance,” she says. “Please wait in the washroom until I come back for you. You’re not really supposed to be here, you know.” As if it is somehow my fault that coffee got spilled all over me. Which it is.

  I wait until the clicking of her heels round the corner before I exit the washroom, my bag hastily wrung out in the sink and the bottom of my shoes dried with paper towels. I sidle down the main corridor and try to look lost, even though I’ve never met a messenger with a poor sense of direction. The hallway has the sterile feel of a medical research facility and branches out in several directions. I follow along, pretending to check messages on my phone whenever I spot a camera. All doors require a key card to open and I am running out of time when a door opens in front of me, almost knocking me to the ground.

  “I have no idea what’s taking them so long. Freaking newbs,” a harassed woman with tired eyes announces to the room behind her. She is dressed in slacks and a striped shirt, the feminine version of what the IT guys I bumped into were wearing.

  “Excuse me.”

  The woman looks at me, surprised to see me waiting behind the open door. A quick peek inside reveals a large office space crammed with cubicles.

  “Yes?” She takes in my helmet and messenger bag. “Aren’t you supposed to leave packages at the front?”

  “I’m a singing messenger,” I tell her. “For Walter. It’s his birthday today and his grandma wanted him to have a special surprise.”

  I’m sweating with the effort of the lie, and my voice has increased a decibel or two, but she is apparently nonplussed by the idea of a sweaty singing messenger, a natural contralto who has suddenly turned mezzo-soprano, because she doesn’t seem to notice. She bl
inks for a minute as her mind processes this all, holds on to the most juicy tidbit of information I’ve offered, and then turns back to the room. “Hey, guys! Walt’s grandma sent him a singing messenger for his birthday! A granny-gram!”

  The room behind her erupts in a gale of laughter. “I could just wait at his desk, if you don’t mind. It’s better when they’re surprised,” I say when the laughter subsides.

  “Yeah, yeah, okay. I gotta go pee quick before he comes back. I can’t miss this.” She points to an empty cubicle at the corner of the room. “Hang out there, but don’t touch anything.”

  I head for the cubicle, nodding at the IT gnomes as I pass by. Their benign faces are eerily lit by their computer screens and they appear like a bespectacled ghastly horde of the digital era. There is an underlying hum of excitement at the prospect of Walter getting serenaded publicly at the behest of his grandmother by a damp singing messenger in tights.

  By my calculations, I have a few precious minutes to get something out of this trip. Walter’s laptop is open on his desk, but a swipe of the trackpad on the keyboard shows me that it is password protected. It takes only a few minutes for the IT department to become distracted by their screens again, and when I feel confident that their attention has moved away from me I lean over, placing my bag in front of the computer as a makeshift guard, and type in “password.” Not accepted, but it was worth a try.

  I search the cubicle for clues to Walter’s personality, but either he has none or he is an extremely hard worker. I feel the ticking of the clock, even though there are no clocks in the room apart from the ones on computers and phones. His workspace contains only paperwork and detailed to-do lists. No personal effects. Poor Walter.

  The door to the office opens and I catch a glimpse of the receptionist with the IT woman that let me in trailing behind her. They both look confused and flustered. The IT woman points in my direction. I’m out of time. I slip the laptop into my messenger bag and step out of Walt’s cubicle as the receptionist heads straight for me. The door opens again and the two IT guys I met at the entrance of the building appear, carrying trays of coffee. They were quicker than I expected. Someone must have called ahead to order.

  I have never liked the improvisational nature of early jazz because sometimes you can stray so far away from a song that it’s hard to find your way back. You can get lost, and lose your audience while you’re at it. But the good thing about it, the very best thing, is that moment when you don’t know what happens next but you know it’s going to be good. Looking from the receptionist to the room full of expectant IT workers, who are now waiting slack-jawed for something to happen to turn this into a day that deserves the effort they put in ironing their collared shirts and putting on clean underwear, I feel a sense of daring burst through.

  As the receptionist opens her mouth to speak, I make eye contact with the plaid-shirted IT worker named Walter and break into a very loud “Happy Birthday.” A rich, husky contralto escapes from my lips and bathes them all in a birthday song like they’ve never heard before. I have not sung in more than fifteen years, but my vocal cords remember what to do before my mind processes what’s actually happening here. The room goes quiet, stripped of sound and breath and movement that do not emanate from me. A tremor in Walter’s hand shakes the tray of coffee as I move toward him. I hit my stride and hold the final run for several seconds longer than anticipated. It feels like it will never end and I’m soaring with the headiness of it.

  When I was a child, Lorelei, the beautiful one, the baby, could smile at you and if you happened to drop dead the next moment, you would feel blessed that hers was the last face you’d seen. Me? Well, you could stare at me for an hour straight, look away for a minute, and not be able to describe my face. But if I sang to you . . . you would never forget it.

  My mouth closes but my last note floats there in the air, the reverberation in the room keeping it alive. And I wonder if the people in this office know that the high ceiling, hardwood floors, sparse office furniture, and shoe-box shape of the room have created a perfect sound chamber if any of them wanted to hold an impromptu concert. The acoustics in here are incredible.

  They stare at me, stunned, and I feel perversely happy that I’ve still got it, even though it has been more than a decade since I last wanted it, and that it still has the power to make closed jaws hang open and cold hearts turn to putty in my hands. The note dies out and I take their shock as an opportunity to tell Walter that his grandmother loves him and head for the door. Behind me I hear Walter finally protest that it isn’t even his birthday and his granny is on a cruise, but then the door closes and I’m too far away anyway to see the outcome. I feel a twinge of pity for poor Walter; he’s never going to live this one down.

  The receptionist, no slouch herself, catches up to me moments later with long strides that could put a Kenyan marathon runner to shame. Boy is she quick. “I thought I told you to stay in the washroom?” she says, without breaking her pace.

  “It smelled really bad in there. Won’t happen again.”

  We’re practically sprinting now, both of us wanting me to be gone as soon as possible. “No, it won’t. You never told me you were a singing messenger. I thought you were a courier. When the coffee spilled on your bag—”

  “Those were the words to the, um, songs,” I say as we reach the doors leading out to the front entrance.

  “You need lyrics to ‘Happy Birthday’?” She puts a hand on the door, blocking me from opening it. I tense, preparing to push her aside. She’s thin, but in great shape, and I see her bicep flex underneath her sheer blouse. She looks at me, frowning. “You have an incredible voice, but you can’t just go wandering about people’s offices, okay? It’s quite unprofessional. What is the name of your company? Is it Singing Sensations?”

  “Mmm,” I say. She takes this as affirmative. I duck under her arm and pull open the door.

  “You’ll be receiving a complaint!” she shouts at my back.

  I see a security guard approaching from the elevators and I make a beeline for the entrance. He’s also fast, but nothing compared to the receptionist. I am close now to the doors and make it out and down the walkway by the time he clears the lobby. I weave through traffic and horns blare in my wake. There is not much time, so I hail a cab.

  “Waterfront Station, please.”

  The cabdriver stares at me in the rearview window, taking in my attire and the messenger bag I’m clutching to my chest. “Stole your bike, eh?”

  I don’t reply. I have lied enough for today and can’t stomach yet another. There is stolen property in my bag, property that can easily be traced. Or so it seems to my overactive imagination. I pull out my cell phone and send a text, 911, Waterfront Station, and then bury the phone deep into my pocket.

  The cabdriver takes my silence as an affirmative and shakes his head as he changes lanes without signaling. Horns blare behind him, too. This is hardly the smooth getaway that I had planned but, in all fairness, I hadn’t anticipated stealing the computer. “This city is going to shit,” says the driver, who I can see from the laminated card on the back of the seat is named Maurice. “All the junkies and crackheads. You wouldn’t believe what I see every day, lady. I came to Canada for a better life, but it’s the same old shit everywhere.”

  “Free health care, though. Right?”

  “You think I don’t pay for it with how much they tax me?”

  I study his profile and try to place his country of origin, but in the end it doesn’t really matter because he’s right. It is the same shit everywhere. I wonder whether Bonnie has had a better life with the Walshes. She lived in a big house with two parents who cared about her. It’s more than I could have given her, even if I’d wanted to. And still, look at what happened.

  The cab pulls over and I’m forced to pay this additional expense. They aren’t kidding when they say having children is financially draining. “Hope you get your bike back,” Maurice says to me before he pulls off.


  I unzip my jacket and leave it, along with my helmet, in a pile just outside the entrance to the busiest station in the city. Then with my hood up I slip inside to wait.

  17

  She shows up dressed entirely in black and wearing a heavy black wig and dark makeup. She has chosen to keep her jewelry light, however, and sports only her basic eyebrow and nose rings. This is by far the cleverest disguise I have ever seen. She is a mixture of Dutch and Japanese, but by her current appearance you’d never know what she really looks like underneath her mask. People pay attention to the outfit, not the person.

  She sits beside me on the bench. “What’s the emergency?” she says in a husky voice, only slightly deeper than mine. “You know I dance tonight, right? These legs ain’t gonna shave themselves, babe.”

  I hand her the sleek laptop. “Password protected.”

  She frowns, but takes it regardless. “I thought you had a job. Never pegged you for a thief—ooh, this is nice.” She flips the top open and runs her hands over the smooth keyboard. She’s wearing leather driving gloves, leaving no fingerprints in her wake.

  “I do have a job. This is for something else. And it’s from WIN Security.”

  She stills. “Honey, you stole a laptop from a security firm? You know they can track this.”

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  “I wouldn’t have come if I thought otherwise,” she says, eyeing me. Her gaze is unflinching. Out of all the sad sacks at the meetings I used to go to, she was the least sad sack of them all. And she took pains to mask her real identity by using her onstage persona, which seemed to be a prudent step. A drag queen named Simone by night, the creator of web-based security software named Simon by day. She was the one who suggested Brazuca as my sponsor, though I suspect this might have started out as a private joke on him—and possibly ended that way as well. “I do a lot of shady shit, babe, you know that, but this is a bit much even for me. Why?”