The Luster of Lost Things

by Sophie Chen Keller

  It is a page of the Book.

  Stunned, I take the page and it adheres to my hand with a faint static electricity like it has tumbled through the dryer, the soft persistent cling of warmth and comfort, and I peel it away from my palm.

  “I think now is bedtime for this old lady.” She wraps one of my hands in both of hers and then she wraps a blanket around her shoulders and yawns. Milton licks her face and she pushes him away lightly and says, “Yes, I rest a bit, get up later.” He comes back and licks her again for encouragement and she cackles. “Yes, yes, nag dog. Soon, soon.”

  I stop on my way out and take a moment to concentrate. “Where did you see the man last?”

  “See him every day. I look for bottle, he camp outside. Essex near subway.”

  Milton barks and she echoes him with a faint, “Wong wong,” and turns to me. “You look for thief? For book?”

  I nod and she says, “When on journey, you remember. You start, you keep going, you make sunflower seed friend.”

  That is what matters. I still don’t know what lies ahead and maybe I will fail, but my mind is lucid and my movements too, and my fear is no longer so paralyzing. My newfound courage is frail, still taking root, but I have started, and now I set off for the F train to see what I can find next.

  12

  We get off the train at Essex-Delancey and emerge from the station and the bottle thief is camped out right there, shoving a box of crackers under one of his bags. He has sharp cheekbones and skinny legs folded into a pretzel, and a wooden shark’s tooth spikes one earlobe and a helmet of sticky curls hugs his head. His sleeping bag is balled up next to him and his sign says: Free!! Hit me with a quarter.

  I fish out a quarter and fling it at him for stealing bottles and books that are not his, and I am rewarded with a sharp plink off his forehead.

  “Heyyy, angry little man,” the bottle thief says, rubbing his head. “Extra dollar for leaving a mark.”

  I cross my arms and brace my tongue. “Pole—” My tongue unfurls and I shake my flyer in his face instead.

  “Who’s Pole? Name’s Nico,” the bottle thief says. He settles back into his smelly bags like they are his throne. “Yeah, I’ve seen it. It’s got some depressing fairy tale, cool drawings, right? Found it in a shopping cart.”

  I know he stole it from a stolen shopping cart, and so he is lying and that makes my cheeks warm with anger. You stole it, I snap, but it comes out scrambled and runny.

  “Speak up and talk proper, little man,” Nico says. I flush but then I think of Lan limping along in the night, gathering bottles only to have them seized, and I force myself to stand taller and cross my arms so that I feel like Lucy, and that helps. I imagine the fierce tone she would use. “Took. Book. Took can cart.”

  He pales and struggles to sit upright. “How’d you know about that?”

  He grimaces like I have hit him and looks at the ground by my feet. His breath whistles past clenched teeth. I uncross my arms and wait for him to gather himself, and when he does I hand him the flyer.

  He studies it and takes a swig of beer and drags a hand across his mouth. “You need to chill out. Your book’s lost? Get over it. I’ll tell ya something, everything you have’s going to be taken away at some point.”

  As he talks, I skim my eyes over his pile of bags. He took the Book, so where is it now? I take a breath and say, clearly, “Where is it?”

  “Some guy has it.” He finishes the beer and crushes the can against his kneecap.

  What guy? Why? What did he look like? Where did he go? I focus my mind and flex my jaw and Nico bounds, sprightly, across the gaps of my silence.

  “I don’t need you thinking I’m some thievin’ deadbeat. I was a hard worker, man—worked my way up from shit-scrubber to assistant stage manager. Those bottles I took—I needed the money. More than canner lady. Get it?” His face is tense, his voice forceful.

  I stare at him and his eyes bore into mine, bent on making me understand, and I can’t understand and my head moves left, right, left.

  “No?” The tension drains from his face. “You gotta understand—you gotta know I got nothing. No home to go to and nobody to love me and—and—”

  He breaks off and scuttles back, away from me, and he wraps his arms around himself and starts to rock, and I reach out and suddenly Milton is there, nudging his arm, and his rocking pauses long enough for Milton to lie down and put his head on Nico’s knee.

  Nico’s arms loosen in surprise. Milton crawls forward and settles in his lap and blinks coolly into the distance. Nico untangles his arms and strokes Milton’s back and the weight is like an anchor, the warm mass a blanket of security. Once Milton senses that Nico is restored to an even keel, he gets up and plods back to me and sits against my leg. He looks up at me and I stare at him and he tilts his head—What?—and then Nico says, “Wait—don’t leave me, you gotta listen—here, sit here, cardboard’s new.”

  He looks morose and gaunt now, starved for conversation, and besides, I need to get a closer look at the pile of bags. I sigh and take a seat, tightening my nostrils and breathing through my mouth and surreptitiously patting around for the Book. Milton sniffs the ground and makes three circles and curls up into a big ball at my side.

  “I used to think—man, I was doing all right for myself. I was really doing it, taking care of my little brother and my deadbeat parents, making a life for us—got a job, a girlfriend, a roof. Then I lose my brother. Already lost Grampy. Get back one day from the theater and see my parents found the sock, took off with my savings. Girlfriend takes off. Lose my job. Well, shit. Lose the roof. Lose everything. How many times can a guy get knocked down?”

  The words pour out of him like they have been welling up, trapped, with nowhere to go. Has he been here all this time with his eyes bloodshot and darting, sleepless, restless, waiting for someone—anyone—to stop and listen to his story?

  It can be hard to see the important parts of your own story. It helps when someone listens and can see those parts for you, and in Nico’s story I see that he hasn’t actually lost everything. Whatever it is that keeps him getting up and coming here—that is something, and as long as he has it, then he hasn’t reached the end, where everything is lost.

  Hope, Milton says plainly, standing and stretching his back legs.

  The ground rumbles, a subway train pulling into the station, and Nico perks up, holding his sign aloft. Some of the exiting people read his sign and their mouths twitch, but most don’t see him. I write, FREEDOM IN CONVENIENT BLINDNESS, and a group of teenagers throw an apple core at him.

  “Quarters, you Neanderthals. This is not a—coin, it’s a fruit,” Nico admonishes, lobbing the apple core at their retreating backs. He puts the sign down and says, “You still think I was wrong. You don’t get it. Gave her the cart back, didn’t I?”

  I raise my eyebrows and my head is shaking again because the cart was empty when Lan got it back, and I do not know what forces drive him and maybe they rise up towering and immovable like the landlord, but he did not have to empty the cart and steal her bottles and that is why he is still a thief.

  “You gotta see I had no choice,” Nico protests, pulling himself onto his elbows in agitation. “Been to every store from here to Chinatown and no job in the world will take me smelling like this, ya know.” He raises an arm and I am surprised by my agility as I bend as far away from his armpit as possible.

  He tucks his arm back down, resting his hands on his knees and letting them hang. He watches me intently and waits for me to free him from what he did, and finally I shrug to say that I understand even if I do not agree.

  “You got it,” he bursts. “It was really too bad. It’s been on my mind, but now ya know. Wasn’t how it looked.” He exhales for a long moment. “Although shoulda known there was no point trying. Got laughed out of every shitty hotel. Thirty bucks can’t even get a guy a qu
ick hop in the shower. Just a date with my old buddy Jim.”

  His sleeve has ridden up and I can see the parched white knob of his wrist bone. He hangs his head between his knees like looking into a well and seeing the bottom all dried out, and now he really looks like a man who has lost everything.

  “What I wouldn’t give to be behind that stage again,” he sighs. Memories foam at the edge of his irises. “The lights—the music—the acts, the revelry, the spectacle . . .”

  His stomach gurgles and he shushes it like a fussy baby, patting and crooning and reassuring. It reminds me that I haven’t eaten, either, and I take the brittle out of my pocket and break it in two and offer him one of the halves. He takes it and below us another subway arrives, and he balances the slab of brittle on his lap and swings his sign up like a sword and looses his battle cry.

  “Hit me,” he bellows. “Your quarters, your dimes, your nickels. Ow—not in the eye, moron.”

  He shakes a few coins out of the folds of his jacket and rolls forward to collect the coins on the sidewalk and he stacks them by size, quarters to dimes, and slides them into his pocket. This done, he cocks his head and bites into the brittle with his molars.

  “I’ll say—little man—wow—” He crunches away, crumbs sprinkling his chin, each crunch escalating in vigor.

  “This stuff is magical, magic on my tongue. Magic in my arms and legs,” and he thumps his chest instead. “Where’s it from?”

  I point at the flyer.

  “This your shop? Right on, right on, my man, that’s some real magical crunchy shit.”

  I do not respond and I am thinking about the brittle Lucy makes now and how it isn’t the same and soon there might be no brittle at all. I crouch over, caving a little around the hollow in my chest, unable to ask my next question.

  “Hey, hey, what’d I say? You still salty about that book? Aw, man, like I said, some other guy’s had it for a few days now. Traded it for his hamburger—that’s what he wanted and I felt bad for him. So sue me, I got nothing.”

  That’s something, and I open my mouth to ask him why the man wanted the Book and what he looked like but the ground trembles and Nico pushes his sign into my lap as a new crop of riders is expelled from the bowels of the subway system with a steamy sigh of body musk and eye-watering florals.

  He flutters his hands at me, Go on, go on, like a proud parent before the talent show, and I roll my eyes and give the sign a dejected flop that proves surprisingly effective. When the sidewalk clears, I have collected a small mountain of coins and a dollar bill, and a Kaiser roll and a smashed snack cake and a half cup of raspberry smoothie.

  “You’re the secret!” Nico says, looking only a little offended. “You gotta stay for a while. Look pitiful.”

  Nico must have noticed more than what he has told me, other clues that might show me where to look next. Carefully, I ask him what else he remembers, and he says, “What what?” and I focus and tighten my diaphragm and increase the flow of my breath so that I can ask, louder, “What else do you remember?”

  He sticks his hand out. “Deal,” he says. “Stay here and hold my sign and I’ll tell ya.”

  I shake his hand. “What did he look like?”

  “No pinkies. Like he’d gone and chopped them both off! Guy couldn’t even hold on to his food bag with one hand, for cryin’ out loud—he had it crushed up between both hands.”

  My eyes widen and I lean forward so I don’t miss anything he is saying, and he pauses dramatically and I can see how pleased he is to have an audience. He nudges my elbow and I flop the sign about, prompting a fresh drizzle of coins and a can of chips, and a blue sweater with buttons and a miniature box of wheat cereal and the last pair of dress socks in a drugstore pack of three.

  “You are a little man of few words,” Nico observes. “But you look like you could have lots to say. Why so quiet? Stop staring at me and listening and taking notes, it’s freaky.”

  I frown and hide my notebook. I have spent too long here, where the Book is not, and I plan how to work around Nico’s hunger for conversation and extract the rest of the information I need about the man with no pinkies.

  “Come on, I didn’t mean it like that, don’t get all butt-hurt. Here, let’s try this—chill out, it’s not going to hurt. So, see, as assistant stage manager—former assistant—I got to call out cues, Stand by!, Go!, that kind of thing. When someone’s daydreaming or being slow to remember their lines or get to their marks, I help them out by mooing. Really, it’s motivating. A good proper moo, like so—” Nico leans back and tucks his chin in and takes a deep breath and hurls himself forward into a “MOOOOOOOO!”

  I nearly jump out of my skin, and Milton springs to his feet and barks and all down the street startled faces swivel around. Nico waves at his audience and turns to me and says, “Your turn,” and I think, Not in a million years. Not ever again.

  When I messed up my words, noises like that came out instead and Beaver made fun of me or teachers were impatient or the little boy in the shopping cart dropped an artichoke and said, “What’s he doing?” I did not have a voice—it was a cow mooing and a duck quacking and a seal barking, and it was an embarrassment.

  I examine Milton’s fur where it bristles around the neck. Nico wrenches himself back and emits another deafening moo and I nearly pull out a handful of golden fur as Milton torpedoes into Nico’s side and sniffs his arms and legs and face frantically. Nico raises an eyebrow at me and gears up for another round, sucking air through his nose, and before an innocent passerby bursts an eardrum or Milton drives himself insane, before I know it, my mouth has formed an O and a staccato puff of air and sound.

  “That was the wimpiest sound. How is that going to inspire anybody? Observe, again, like so—” He rears back, nostrils flared, and thrusts his neck forward, and out comes another sidewalk-shaking, bark-inducing moo.

  “Together now,” he says, leaning back again, and when he says it like that it makes me think that this is different since we are both making the noise and besides, his will be loud enough to cover up mine, and I mimic him and as we’re leaning he catches my eye and I am struck by an urge to laugh at his strained purple face, but then he is taking a pull of air so I widen my nostrils and breathe deep and—

  “MOOOOOOOOOO!”

  I catch my breath. We were so loud that ghostly moos ricochet off the buildings and that is when I realize that the only moo echoing down the street is mine.

  Nico makes a fist and bumps it against mine. “All you, my little man.”

  I gape at Milton and my eyes feel like they are growing out of my head. Is that what I sound like? That voice came from me and it was mine and it must have been there the whole time, and I have never heard my voice so powerful.

  Suddenly exhilarated, I rock back and inhale and “MOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” until every drop of breath has dried up and my throat is raw and buzzing.

  A different moo comes from farther up the street, a distant reply. I squint and see two men with highlighter vests and helmets, and they are broad and round. One of them has a foot hiked up on a crate and his hands cupped in a tunnel around his mouth, and even though I hadn’t said a single word, had not done anything but moo into the wind, it hits me and I am astounded—electrified—they heard me.

  It could not be more basic. They heard someone and they understood and they responded. A conversation without words, just the noise of an unbridled feeling, and did that mean I had a voice, too, one I did not need to be embarrassed of? Could I be bold enough to be heard, even when my words came out wrong? A pounding grows strong in my ears and I inhale again—soaring and wheeling and inhaling the dizzying scent of escape.

  A gaggle of kids with matching purple T-shirts topple out of the subway, corralled by adults in bigger versions of the purple T-shirts, and I moo at them. They hear me; they shriek and dissolve into giggles and soon I am giggling with them, and I
do not think the novelty of this feeling will ever grow old, an unseen connection strong and fragile as the bindings of a book you could read again and again. So this is what the view is like from inside the pages, inside the story, and could there be any better angle to observe from?

  “Moo,” they sing. “Moo, moo, moo.”

  I rock back again and Nico grabs my arm and says, “Easy there. Don’t want a passed-out little man, not good for business.”

  The hammering purr of an engine drowns out my response, and I look to see an aluminum food cart pulling up at the curb. I don’t mind; now that I know that the Moo is there I can always find it again. The bags sink lower as Nico settles in and I prod him in the side to remind him that he still has questions to answer.

  Too loud, he mouths, and I shake my head emphatically and he crosses his arms behind his head and starts to doze, and a burst of movement captures my attention, a dart of red—a man in a red sweatshirt hopping out of the food cart.

  He surveys the street and his eyes take on a restless, feverish quality, and they wouldn’t miss a man with no pinkies if he walked past. I roll to my feet, to see what the food cart man knows.

  13

  “No tickets today, no asshole neighbors. No tickets today, no asshole neighbors,” the food cart man repeats, and it could be a command or a prayer or a mantra. He pulls on a mustard-yellow apron and notices me approaching. “Bad luck spell,” he explains. He goes around the back of the cart and slides the window open.

  “Open for business,” he says, setting his forearms on the counter. A neon strip of light frames the window and flashes in hyperactive bursts. “What can I get you? Lamb and rice? Chicken gyro?”

  I tuck my chin down and shake my head. He leans farther out the window to see if anyone else is coming and I sidestep to stay in his line of sight. I hold the flyer out and his lips frame the words, Lost Leather Book.