“That must be him,” Ruby says. Someone passes in front of me and my view is obscured and then I see the mailman drop a sheaf of letters and his pocket watch slips loose and time stops. Raindrops suspend overhead like crystal chandeliers and that is without a doubt Mister Philipp’s face, and that is Mister Philipp’s brass watch chain.
I notice then that he is shaking like an earthquake is going to split him in two and who knows how long he has been here like this, with his gray slacks turning to wet cement. As one, Ruby and I rush to the truck.
He quakes and presses his forehead against the truck and one hand clutches the front of his work vest and the other shudders toward the ruined letters. The brim of his cap tilts up and his eyes find mine, brown and crinkled, and there is no lift of recognition. I can see the ice-shine of his face and the moisture trickling out from behind his glasses as he convulses and gasps for breath like a dying fish.
“Out of the rain,” I yell at Ruby, and my words are twisting and melting under the stress and I am sure she won’t understand the stream of gibberish but she has, and I jam my shoulder into Mister Philipp’s armpit and wrap his arm around me. He stirs and tries to find his feet and we stagger and maneuver him into the driver’s seat.
I whip around, scanning the sidewalk and the street, and the world pulses and sharpens around me and I hear myself shouting for help that does not come, and then I feel the pressure of Ruby’s hand around my arm.
“Come on, we have to get the doorman,” she says, and again, louder. I start after her and Mister Philipp slumps over and I see him boneless and dark purple around the edges, and his hands clamped shut like not letting go, and I cannot leave.
I shake my head and tell Ruby to go ahead and she races away for help and I jump into the truck on the passenger’s side and kneel in the middle next to Mister Philipp. Milton soaks in the rain and licks Mister Philipp’s cold hanging hand. A sound leaks out of his mouth and I tilt my ear closer.
“David,” he says. His left foot slips out into the rain and I crawl over to pull it back in. The bottom of his shoe is coming away and I think that his socks must be wet, his toes marinated and wrinkled as dark prunes. I reach over to slide his door shut. My teeth begin to chatter and I think, Hurry, Ruby, and then I feel like an impostor for staying and thinking that it will somehow help.
What can I do for Mister Philipp? I am not an EMT like the woman who lost a string of milky pearls at the beginning of the summer, and I don’t know the Heimlich like the teenage lifeguard who saved a boy’s life when he choked on a macadamia nut at the shop. Either of them would be better than me; I don’t have anything to give Mister Philipp. I crouch empty-handed in the mail truck, crowding his space, fighting him for air.
“That you, Davey,” Mister Philipp mumbles again like talking through a mouthful of sand, and his eyes look through me, reflecting shapes that are not there.
“I—I—it is me. Walter,” I stammer.
“I was young and a fool to run.” It hurts to hear his voice and my face contorts with his and his breath thins and he whimpers with the loss.
“Rest. You should rest,” I say, tucking my knees under my chin. Rain beats against the truck and profiles pass through the window, and maybe on another kind of day—clear and radiant, like the day Lucy almost sank into the Atlantic and Walter Lavender Sr. was there to catch her—on that kind of day, there could be no tragedy, and Mister Philipp would sit up and sling the mailbag over his shoulder and say, “Not today, son.”
He mumbles, “I been trying to show you I’m sorry. Where’d you go?” His eyes jump and dart, frightened, seeing nothing. “You grow to be a good man?”
I squeeze my hands into fists and rest my head against my knees. His hand hangs, limp. His breathing grows more faint and labored and his body sinks into the seat, head drooped into his chest, and he could be sleeping if his color wasn’t so strange and his eyes weren’t open.
He thrashes feebly, barely moving. “Is it enough? I been alone. Eye for an eye. Tell me how to make it right.”
He gurgles a little like drowning, everything he wants to say rising in his lungs, filling behind his eyes, trickling out of his mouth, and my hysteria mounts as I think of him dying on this rainy day in a mail truck next to a kid he used to deliver mail to, and I rock and grip my knees tighter, chanting, If only, if only, if only I knew something about saving lives.
“My life to make it right. I’m paying. You see that, Davey?”
This Davey—is he why Mister Philipp is still alone? A deliberate sacrifice, reparations for leaving him behind, and now Mister Philipp closes his eyes and drifts, and we wait. With the street darkened and emptying and the traffic noises fading, I have the lonely prickled sense that we are the only two left alive, and still we wait.
For some reason, I think of the spot on his back, and I wonder if it itches now. I watch him closely, checking for the flutter under his eyelids, and it could be any of the days I watched for him, waiting for him to deliver the sign I knew would come, somehow, if Walter Lavender Sr. could not.
I can be certain now that he wants to be found, so if there is no sign then he will return, looking for the light like he promised, and maybe there has been some wrong turn, some unavoidable delay, and that is why it has taken a little longer than we thought.
Before Mister Philipp transferred, I knew that if the sign came in the mail, I would receive it. His arrival was a constant, steady and fixed as the line on the horizon. One time, Lucy offered him respite from the wintry mix and he swiped the gray slush from his face and declined because he had a duty to arrive on time. People had things to look for, he said, and they needed these small things to rely on. It was his implicit promise to them that he would show, and that he would be on time, and that he wouldn’t drop or break or tear or lose whatever it was that they were waiting for.
That is what he did for me too, and I should have wondered who did it for him. Was there anyone there to tell him, “Not today,” so he could take a break from the waiting?
I didn’t ask when I could and now maybe I will never find out. I already know that losing something unexpectedly leaves no time for asking, and no chance to say good-bye.
Mister Philipp’s eyes are still closed, and the dark purple has bled deeper. “Not enough. I’m paying. Where are you?”
He is still looking for Davey, and I do not know how to save him so that he can go on and finish his search like he intended. All I can do is show him that he is not alone in this moment, and that is not really anything definitive.
Maybe, when it comes to endings, it is enough to find something to lean on, and to be at peace.
“Left you alone. I been alone. Make it right.” He opens his eyes and they are round as his face, his glasses. He searches my face, seeing and not seeing. “See how much I mean it. You grown, Davey?”
He falls silent but this time he doesn’t close his eyes, and he drifts, and he waits, and he watches. I press my thoughts flat and still and into something calm, as Walter Lavender Sr. would have done when he saw the sea of shimmering blue glass rushing toward the cockpit window, foaming with clouds like diving into the sky. In his last moments, the sun would have been forever-bright in his eyes. He lifts his hand, blinking.
I reach out and take Mister Philipp’s hand. It is much larger than mine, and weary.
“I am here,” I tell him.
Mister Philipp’s fingers flicker and pull me back, and he slumps against my arm. To help him know where I am, I start to whistle but I don’t know how, and so I hum instead underneath the rainy patter, a song I have heard Lucy sing at this time of the year when she is pouring out mugs of hot spiced wine and cider.
“Should old . . . acquaintance be . . . forgot . . .”
My arm goes to sleep under his weight. I think of Walter Lavender Sr. and I sing to Mister Philipp. “For auld . . . lang syne . . . we’ll take a cup . . .
of kindness yet . . .”
As I hum, lights flash in the rearview mirror. The doors on both sides slide open, and Mister Philipp is lifted up and taken away by yelling people, and Ruby and Milton are there, crowding into the frame as I step off the mail truck. My joints and nerves have hardened and when I fall into them, Ruby hugs me tight and Milton’s soggy tail beats against my knee.
“Walter, look,” Ruby says, spinning me around.
The last page is creased and pressed into Mister Philipp’s seat—on time as ever, one more delivery for me.
I can’t make myself move. Ruby removes the damp page from the seat and we slip into the gathering crowd of curious onlookers, forgotten in the commotion, and make our way back to Ruby’s building. I take the page from her and study it, thinking about Walter Lavender Sr.’s last lesson, and it occurs to me that somewhere along the way today, I learned something else about real kindness—seeing and choosing not to ignore what I saw.
I feel in my bones a grinding and settling, the world finally realigning in the right places.
22
The Book is found. The shop is safe. I test my limbs, stretch, and this is still happening—this is real. I look at my reflection in the mirror and tell myself, The search is over, and I look at Milton and tell him, The search is done. The nightmare is over and I am waking to a thousand more dazzling days. What will it be first? Vols-au-vent mice, I decide—dozens of them, and people will see them skittering through the displays and that is how they will know, and they will come running.
Ruby and I run the hand dryer in the lobby bathroom four times, taking turns holding the last page under the gush of warm air. Milton overturns the trash can and digs into the heap of paper towels, his jaws like steel traps.
“The race starts at seven,” Ruby says over the dryer. “We’ll go upstairs to get the boat and Grandfather and I can walk you to the subway before going into Central Park. Unless you want to watch?”
I work a wad of paper-gum out of Milton’s mouth and lower the black and pink flap of his lip, and the dryer shuts off. The silence is deafening, a reminder that I have to put the Book back where it belongs as soon as possible, before the shop goes dusty quiet and tables and chairs are swept up and stacked in the corner to be taken away.
“No big deal, I figured as much,” Ruby says lightly, hopping off the counter. “Your loss, it’ll be a lot of fun.”
I lay the Book out on the counter, flipping gently through the pages, and as I turn the third page, one of Junker’s, the last thread holding it to the spine gives away. Ruby picks up the fallen page and replaces it, leans over my shoulder with anticipation, and I turn two more pages and smooth out and insert the sixth one.
Together, with bated breath, we look down at it, the final missing page, a little puckered from drying but whole and stirring in its scope: the expansive grid of blocks and avenues, the towers and skyscrapers and building blocks, the people and memories and shadows that inhabit them and flow over into the streets, the ground, the air.
A city, a girl, an army of the lost.
“And this will bring the shop to life?” Ruby says, holding the bathroom door open. “Let’s get a snack before you go.”
“See for yourself,” I say.
“I will. Who knew life could be so—glamorous, too.” Ruby links her arm through mine and skips toward a waiting elevator. “Skip better,” she says, hauling my elbow higher. “Like Milton.” Milton stops frolicking and snapping at his tail when he hears his name, and his tongue lolls from the side of his mouth.
We hear the screaming from the hallway. Ruby starts running and unlocks the door and a fresh scream blasts it open, and the screaming voice is choked with impotent rage and my blood sours, burning through my veins. Ruby’s grandfather rushes past, hair disheveled. Ruby grabs his arm.
“Is Debbie okay?”
“Yes—yes, it’s just—she’s having one of her tantrums—who knows, maybe the wrong door opened, a box slipped down—”
Another scream of anger shears off the rest and his bloodshot eyes drain and dart toward the hallway. “Sorry, honey, I have to get back before Debbie hurts herself.”
Ruby stares after him and I can’t see what she is thinking, and after a while she lets out a heavy breath, forgetting about the snack and walking straight to her room, and I trail her, powerless and ghost-like. She does not bother to turn on the light and the sail of her model boat forms a dark solid peak against the cool glint of her mirror, and she picks up the boat and the block with an antenna sticking out of it.
“I’d better get going.” She shrugs and tucks the controller under her arm and constructs a steel-plated smile. “And you, obviously—you have a shop to wake!”
She’s right—the Book is found and there is nothing else keeping me away. Beyond her window lurks the dark unknown, and I reach up and put my hand against the glass and the cold press of it makes me shiver.
I have been waiting all day to return to the shop and Lucy has to give the landlord a decision tomorrow and surely she is sick with worry about where I am. Night has fallen and I should keep a tight hold on the Book and make my way as quickly as possible to the shop’s cocoon of warmth and light. But that means leaving Ruby to venture out alone, and that feels wrong because I can map another way, a new possibility: accompanying her to the races, and out there is cold, uncharted space where anything can happen but at least we would be there together.
It does not take me much longer to decide.
I say, “Later,” and, “I have a race to watch,” and I can see the shine of her teeth as she turns to me, brightening and opening like the face of a sunflower.
The rain has stripped away the tough skin of the city and the night glistens underneath, fresh and raw. We arrive at Central Park and become part of the current of people, coats and scarves, boots and sneakers, model sailboats small and large, all battling against the wind, toward the muffled pounding of music. Automatically, I look for gaps to thread into, slowing down, speeding up, and when that doesn’t work I let myself be pushed along, step after shuffling step.
It’s the same kind of crowd I found myself caught in when my delivery schedule collided with the pre–Yankees game transit rush—masses of people, similarly accessorized, moving forward as one. It felt mindless then, surrounded by so many people who looked the same—except me, with my delivery box and conspicuous lack of baseball stripes. As I shuffle along now, I take a better look around and I see a boy holding a plastic boat and a man blowing his nose and a woman with hair that skims the folding part of her knees. I wonder what they have seen and what they have lost—not just their things, their possessions, but the parts of themselves they are missing and looking for that I can’t begin to know from here. Everyone does not look so similar. I do not feel so different.
“Don’t get separated,” Ruby shouts in my ear, and I tighten my grip on Milton’s collar and on the Book and concentrate on avoiding elbows and heels and the prows of boats. The path slopes down and I catch a glimpse of the dark stillness of a pond in the hollow ahead—full of floating lights, and there are hundreds of them, glowing lamp-orange across that dark mirrored surface. I seize a moment and write, ECHOES OF A LOST CITY, SUNKEN UNDERWATER.
The people around us disperse in different directions, and the movement and music engulfs us in a storm that roils around the clear hush and twinkle of the pond. We push through the crowd to the nearby booths and Ruby checks in and hangs her number on the side of her boat. A gust of wind lifts the number and it flaps against the sail.
“The next wave starts in fifteen,” she says. She flips a switch and her boat blazes, sinking her face into a pool of shadow. “Wish me luck!”
I watch Ruby shield her boat and make her way to the far end of the pond, where a balloon arch billows and glows. She bumps into a girl she knows and pauses briefly, and then the crowd swallows them both. Squeezing Milton’s colla
r, I take a deep breath like diving and plunge forward. I find a viewing spot close to the water, behind two boys sitting on the ankle-high granite rim. They are twisted around toward the pond, making tsunamis in the water with their hands so that the boats pulling eagerly through the water spin off course and crash into each other.
“Gotcha,” one boy roars. The larger boy swats his hand down.
“Shut up—stop splashing—look at that one.” He points at a boat slicing through the water in our direction. It is larger than most of the other boats and instead of two triangles it sports a network of black sails, and red flags emblazoned with skulls flutter from the black masts. The pirate ship reminds me of the toothless gingersnap cannons Lucy made after the Book became lost, and when the Book is back where it belongs, they will once again inhale and spit out ricotta balls riddled with candied bacon.
“Doesn’t look like a retard made it,” the larger boy says. “Check that no one’s watching—” He snakes his arm out toward the approaching pirate ship and his fingertips brush the prow and he strains forward a little harder. A gale pushes the boat out of his reach; he curses and slams both of his hands into the granite and at that moment when he untwists I recognize the blunt knob of his nose and take a fast step backward, my fingers slipping out of Milton’s collar.
The movement draws Beaver’s attention. His lips retract and his teeth sharpen. “Lucky me—if it isn’t Walrus, king of the ’tards.”
My mouth is parched. I lick my lips and search for an escape but the crowd cheers and presses forward with the launch of the next wave of boats, so I try to look past Beaver and Todd and scan for Ruby’s boat instead. I know that if I tune them out long enough, they will lose interest and look for something more satisfying to poke at.
The Luster of Lost Things Page 22