The Luster of Lost Things

by Sophie Chen Keller

  “Over here, Walrus.” Beaver snaps his fingers under my nose and the hair on Milton’s neck bunches into porcupine quills and he growls.

  “Dog talks better than you do,” Beaver sneers. He eyes Milton warily. Todd feints at me and I shield the pocket that the Book is in.

  “What’re you hiding, ’tardie king?” he taunts, and Milton snaps at his hand and misses and he laughs and Milton seizes his foot, so swift and sure that I think it was the plan all along. Todd yips like a Chihuahua and tries to shake him off, and Milton digs in his heels and suddenly Beaver is there, snatching the Book out of my pocket.

  “Now, now. He doesn’t know—he’s dumb as a retard. We have to help ourselves.” He opens the book to the first page and holds it up, and the sight of the Book in his hand is paralyzing and I feel the cut of his fingernails against my arm, his foot hooking around my ankle.

  A ripple of boats sail past him and my vision clears and I see him silhouetted by the lights in the pond, and his outline is not strong and solid but pocked with holes and bristling with jagged shards. His edges—easily crumpled, nothing to be afraid of. I thought I was a coward when I shrank away from risks, and now he is the only coward I see.

  I look straight at him and moo soft as a lullaby and Milton releases Todd’s foot.

  “What’s he saying?” Beaver and Todd look at each other and back at me.

  I raise my voice. “Retards are not dumb. I am not dumb.” The words do not flow or come out straight but my voice does not wilt and I take two determined steps forward, my eyes fixed on Beaver’s. “But you are a sad lump of meat.”

  Without taking my eyes away, I take a final step forward and stop one breath away from Beaver, and the force and intention of it sends him reeling back. One heel hits the granite ledge and the other is carried by momentum and his body arches and his arms windmill. The loosely fitted pages of the Book flap against the covers, and as the people around us notice and grab for Beaver’s wrist, his coat, the wind rises and sends him toppling into the pond with a mighty splash and I count one, two, three, four, five, six pages torn away like rose petals, spiraling into the inky night sky.

  Beaver yells but I am turning away from him, pushing through the crowd, and I leap for the first page I see and already it is out of reach, taking flight into the night, and I wheel about for the pages that are still visible, sprinting left and right wherever the wind takes them, chasing in vain until the last page melts out of sight.

  “Help! I’m drowning!” Beaver flails in the water, grabbing at the boats around him and snapping masts in half, and the thought smashes into me—the seventh page. Where is the cover and where is the seventh page?

  I tear back to the pond, dodging the hands that reach out to haul Beaver to his feet. He stands and the water barely reaches his knees and floating next to him, like a brown lily pad, is the cover of the Book.

  I run to the ledge and slide onto my knees and a flustered Beaver grabs at me, trying to climb over the rim, and water slops over the ledge. I lean away and he slips and I reach forward again, my fingertips straining for the cover, and then a tightening around my chest, a backward pressure, and I turn my head and Milton looks up at me through a mouthful of jacket, holding on tight so that I don’t fall in too.

  With Milton as my anchor, I lean out a little farther and grab the cover just as Beaver finds his footing and sloshes out of the pond. Hastily, I dry the cover and flip it over, and the seventh page is not there, and I put the cover into my pocket and cast both arms into the water and do a frantic sweep and water cascades over the ledge.

  “There you are. I thought I was going to have a hard time finding you.”

  I stop sweeping and Ruby is standing behind Milton, holding her boat. She looks at my arms sunk into the water and Beaver wringing out his clothes.

  “Did I miss something?” She is breathless, exhilarated from her race.

  “Mind your own business,” Beaver snarls, squishing past her, and while she glares at him I turn back to the pond only the water has gone still and so do I, and a bitter ache pools under my tongue.

  My peripheral vision shimmers with a new wave of boats, and in front of me the crushed remains of a few old boats float and mix with soggy clumps of paper. I am hypnotized by the largest piece as it sags in the middle and sinks, and the darkly alluring blues and blacks and silvers bleed into the gray of an unalluring blob and the remaining page—the first page of the Book—is now marbled gray, beyond repair.

  23

  “It could be worse,” Ruby says, sliding on her mushroom. We are sitting on a bronze statue of Alice in Wonderland, in an alcove bordering the pond. I knock on the Mad Hatter’s hat to disguise what I am feeling, not knowing what else to do with myself.

  “Really. The pages got blown away—you can keep searching. I’ll help you, of course. And I’ll make Grandmother and Grandfather look, and I’ll have Jane and Heather and Gabby and everyone I know . . .”

  She trails off when I do not respond. There is an unsettlingly slack quality to my skin, like it is a soft baggy shirt that I am wearing. I tug at the loose rough skin of my elbow and there is no thread of tension, no trace of the pull that draws me into and through my searches. It is not that I am afraid or tired: I started and I came a long way and I finished, and if the Book became lost again, I could wring out another drop and keep trying.

  But for the first time, I have no heart to search anymore; with the first page melted into the pond and ruined, the Book is lost beyond repair, and that means it is too late. Even if I find the other six pages and put them together, the Book will still be incomplete. Besides, I have used up most of the day and how much farther could I go, really, with my calves quivering and the scalding burn of a blister on my little toe?

  The shop is as good as dead. Lucy will have to call the landlord tomorrow and tell him we cannot meet his terms, and then what will become of us?

  I lift my face to the moon and its rays are pale and silvery as the wisps of my breath.

  Ruby soldiers on. “The pages can’t have gone far—the wind was coming in short bursts. I have binoculars. I’ll climb a tree tomorrow, get a good high view and scout out the area. Or I’ll help you climb the tree—”

  She’s still thinking of ways to help me because she does not know about the destroyed page and she does not know that tomorrow is already too late. Her knuckles tap-dance on the bronze mushroom because she can’t contain herself, and despite the Book being ruined, the fate of the shop sealed, a spot of warmth blooms and fizzles in my chest like a tiny firework.

  She rattles off a few more ideas and I interrupt in the middle of one. “Too late. Deadline tomorrow.”

  Instead of growing small she snaps open like a fan. “It’s not too late. We’ll search all night if we have to.”

  A few kids run by, cutting toward the pond, and the music pounds and the moon overhead is high and full, and I look at Milton for his opinion. His eyes are dark and fluid and I can see my red high-tops in them, like looking into the surface of a chocolate miroir cake. I picture Lucy pouring the glaze over the cake and swiftly dispatching bubbles of air with a needle, so that when the gelatin cools the glaze will set into a smooth mirror that reflects the best parts of you.

  Milton opens his mouth into a grin and lowers himself into a deliberate sit in front of Ruby—I’m with her—and with both of them in agreement, I reconsider my assumption that it is too late. I think back to my cases; what could I do when something lost was beyond repair?

  There was the case of the missing five-year-old girl whose snowball melted when someone left the freezer door open. Instead of focusing on what was already destroyed and assuming it was too late, she decided to walk from Park Slope to the Catskills—where she made the original snowball—to find a new one. She tried searching in a different way, and maybe I can apply that approach too, for the ruined page, and for the pages that were blow
n away.

  It was not about the particular snowball—it was about the place it came from and the meaning and sentiment attached to that. What if it was the same with the Book—what if I could replace the destroyed original with a new one from the same place?

  The original page was a gift, from an artist and a friend. I think of Ruby sketching the curve of a neck and Mister Philipp calling her Ruby-angelo. Ruby is an artist and also a friend—and if she remakes the page and gives it to me, I can make the Book whole.

  “Good news. Bad news.”

  Ruby narrows her eyes in concern and I tell her about the first page falling into the pond, and she gasps and claps both hands over her mouth and I say, “Do not freak out.”

  Hearing her own words reflected back, she groans and punches my arm.

  “You can remake it,” I say. “While I find the others. Will you help?”

  Without hesitating, she says, “All right. I’ll draw it. But how are you going to find the others?”

  I have not figured out that part yet, but I have an idea for the different approach I should take, yet another way of searching that I have not tried before. Searching is something I have viewed as my own, and I did it alone; Lucy has offered to help and I have never accepted.

  But now I have a jumble of thoughts that need sorting and an important idea that needs to be thought out and I know Ruby will be interested, and I feel the pressure lifting, cotton balls clearing from my mouth and nose and ears. Ruby is tapping the mushroom and humming and I am not sure if I am imagining it but her humming has been growing louder, and the moment I open my mouth she stops tapping and whips around.

  “Yes?”

  “I do not know. Can you help me? Come up with a plan. If I tell you about my day?”

  “God. I thought you’d never ask.” She slides her bun to the side and leans against the White Rabbit, and so I start at the beginning and she giggles when I tell her about Nico in the dog wash and bites her nails when I reach the rats and turns pensive when I tell her about Junker and a sorrow so vast that kingdoms could be built in it. I hesitate because it is an insignificant detail, but I show her the Caravelle bar and I am already moving on to the next important part, assuming she will too, when she grabs the bar.

  “What’s this? Where’d you get it? What are you doing with it?” she demands, interrupting me as I focus on words for talking about Karl, and in my surprise I babble something nonsensical.

  “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” Ruby says quickly, not to be outdone.

  It is like stepping out into the rain and seeing the sun still shining—startling and splendid, something I have not seen before. There was connecting, which was about exchanging the essential things, and friendship was about that too, plus a kind of harmony, shared moments of celebration and tribulation. The rest of the time, though, is filled by the mundane things, the ordinary routine of living and the unimportant thoughts and events that crop up. Now I see that was also friendship—having someone besides Lucy who would be interested in knowing that I am wearing smelly socks from the hamper, that I set a new record for shaping croissants.

  Ruby peppers me with questions, When are you giving it to Lan? and What was next to it? and my heart swells as I answer each one. When she surrenders the bar, I stow it away and move on to Karl and his hang gliding plans.

  “He wanted to launch tonight. The rain stopped. He could be launching still. As we talk.”

  “Walter.” Ruby stares at me like I have done something unforgivable and I review what I said, half-afraid and half-guilty. “You were going to pass that up? How could you not be dying to go up there with him?”

  I think it is obviously the dying part and Ruby says, “I would be all. Over. That. And you should be, too, if you want to find the other pages.”

  Milton and I exchange glances, and then we look at Ruby and tilt our heads—Why?

  “You said you’ve been following this trail, right?”

  Milton squirms modestly to accept the praise.

  “Well, could you do it at night, too?”

  My mind begins to churn with fear again, which seems to be my standard response to Ruby’s ideas.

  “Like I said, all you have to do is get a good high view. You’ll see everything from up there.”

  I have always avoided high places and the mere thought of a good high view sends my nerves and thoughts and pulse skittering, but if I can get high enough to see where the wind has scattered the pages—the blazing signs of all six at once, like looking at a map—then it is a simple matter of rushing to gather them before I run out of time. I can’t get any higher than flying over the city, and that is exactly what Karl plans to do tonight. If I can convince him to let me fly with him—that is how I will create my bird’s-eye map.

  “I have to go,” I say, scrambling to my feet.

  “I’m coming,” Ruby says, waltzing around her mushroom cap. “No, I’m not. I’ll be in the lobby drawing the page.”

  “With Milton,” I say, and Ruby claps her hands and squeals.

  “Party time,” she says, holding her hand up for a high five, and Milton gets it wrong and pokes his nose forward instead and I am sorry to leave him behind too, but I don’t think he will take well to a hang glider.

  24

  With the prospect of the weekend ahead, two entire days wrapped and tied with a bow, the train is crammed with people and spirits are high as we rattle through the underbelly of the city. Three women in sequined dresses are bunched in the corner, preening in the car windows and passing around chewing gum, and a baby girl in a stroller grins gummily up at me and an unkempt man strikes up a conversation in another language with an Asian man carrying a bundle of fishing rods and a bucket of freshly caught fish.

  Heads fit under armpits and elbows curve around backpacks and chins jut over shoulders, strangers fitting themselves against each other like jigsaw pieces. It smells like cigarettes and heat and fried foods and shampoo and fish markets. The end door opens and a blast of chill air momentarily clears out the haze.

  The train empties as it travels uptown. At Dyckman, I tighten the laces on my high-tops and reach for Milton, remembering with a pang that he is with Ruby.

  I follow the conductor’s instructions, taking a left out of the station and going uphill until I find a gate and a plaque that says Fort Tryon Park. Behind it, a footpath climbs up and disappears around a bend. I push at the gate but it is locked for the night. Channeling Ruby, I look around first, and then I wiggle a foot between the bars and climb over the gate.

  The path wraps around the hill in layers like a tiered cake and I climb up each layer as fast as I can, my ears straining into the night where my eyes do not see anything but shadows. Trees rustle around me and twigs snap and I smell the brittle powder of decayed leaves.

  I climb higher with the rush of a highway to my right like a river and beyond that, seemingly under my feet, the actual river, liquid metal in the moonlight and framed by forests of trees dense as broccoli tops. I quicken my steps and imagine my legs long and slight as a deer’s and it is second nature to draw the silence around me like a cape and disappear into it.

  At the top of the hill, the path bypasses a medieval-looking castle and then it straightens and steepens as I continue climbing, skimming the tops of trees with the glittering highway and river sprawled below. I take one glance over the mossy stone wall and shrink back from the sheer drop. Looking up instead, I see, at the top of a large boulder, two discs of light—planted there by someone to delineate the end of a runway. I can’t see Karl or his hang glider but I know they are up there, preparing to launch, and I am hopeful and fearful that there is a place for me.

  I come around the side of an elevated terrace and the path peaks under a stone arch and that’s when I see her—Carrie, perched just past the arch like a vigilant bird of prey, straining against the wind, tied down to a sign pol
e sticking out of a block of cement. DETOUR, the sign says, and I smile to see the airspeed indicator attached to the side of the triangle. Karl must be nearby.

  I walk around the hang glider and the path unrolls downhill in a steep straight line, illuminated by markers that arrow toward the boulder I stood under earlier. On the neighboring grassy knoll, a gangly figure skips and swings his arms erratically, flailing like he is trying to keep himself from going under, and I would recognize a Safety Dance anywhere.

  I breathe into my stomach and force the air out so that my voice is not blown away by the wind. “Karl!”

  At the sound of his name, Karl stiffens mid-spring, alert as a hound scenting the air with one leg hitched in front of him. “Who is it?” He stares into the darkness, waiting for me to appear out of it.

  “Ach—it is you. Hallo, Walter,” he says, perplexed. “I am preparing for the launch. As you see, my launch has been delayed to approximately 9:00 PM, with the turn in the weather and wind situation. I am judging current conditions to be fair, albeit less than ideal. I am now performing the preflight ritual as I have been taught.

  “I am pleased you came to support my launch,” he says to me. “I did not even ask. That is a kind act.”

  I scuff my toe on the ground. “I came to. To ask you—” and what do I ask him? It will take too long for me to explain and time is running out; I can feel that insistent pull under my belly button, thin and sharp as a hook. Karl waits with one finger grazing his cleft chin, and I remember a woman who came into the shop this summer, an hour after the morning rush, carrying a cardboard box with pens rolling around the bottom and a desk lamp sticking out of the top.

  “I need something light,” she said to Lucy, and it was a simple ask, frank, and I could hear the layers in it, and it was the combination that lent her request urgency and eloquence. Lucy asked no questions and made no comment as she reached for the miniature bowls of gooseberry fool that balanced and spun on stilts, and I know that is how I can ask Karl too.