It’s no longer night time; a yellowish-gray light has broken over the city. My brain expects to see water everywhere, but there isn’t a drop of it in sight. My neurons scramble and reorder themselves to the reality of gray concrete, pedestrians, and two- and four-wheeled vehicles cruising past in both directions, up and down the hill my tent is pitched on.
“What is all this?” I whisper out loud.
The flap rustles behind me, and I turn to see a dark-haired boy emerging. “Good morning,” he says.
“Carlos?”
He nods.
“Did you give me a drink of water last night?”
“It was warm, but at least we had some.”
“It tasted like it’s never been reclaimed.”
Carlos gives me a funny look, tilting his head to the side. “You feeling okay, Lita?”
I flex my fingers and toes, then look down at my feet. “What are these things?” I say, gesturing to the booties on my feet.
“You tell me. They look like hospital slippers. Is that where you came from? Dez thought you went to juvie.”
“Juvie?” My heart pounds. “It’s flooded there. Way too dangerous.”
Carlos chuckles and pretends to shadow box. “It’s way less dangerous now that you’re outta there, right?” He turns and motions for me to follow him. “Come on. Let’s get some breakfast.”
He starts to walk downhill, but every nerve in my body screams ‘danger’ and I stay rooted to the spot. He looks back at me. “You coming?”
My eyes must be wide with panic. I shake my head. “Could we go uphill?”
He shrugs. “Pioneer Square’s usually a better bet than Pill Hill, but if you feel that strong about it, I guess so.”
My body sags with relief, and I don’t even know why I was so tense in the first place, but I’m grateful to Carlos for being so easygoing. “Downhill just feels really dangerous,” I say.
Carlos nods sagely. “You always gotta listen to your sixth sense. I tell everybody, you get that feeling, that prickle on your neck, whatever, that tells you something isn’t right, you gotta listen to it. That’s your animal instinct coming out. That’s evolution. Too many people ignore that voice.”
We begin moving uphill. I’m so hungry that my head hurts. My eyes scan left and right, looking for nourishment, and I hit the jackpot almost immediately. “Over there!” I cry, pointing and running to a spot where the sidewalk meets the edge of a brick building. I reach down, grasp a handful of green leaves, and pull. The entire dandelion lifts from its crevice, and I laugh in delight. I pluck off two of the leaves and stuff them in my mouth. It’s heavenly. I pop off the flowerhead and suck the juice out of the stem before a hand clasps my shoulder and pulls me backward a step.
“Lita, what are you doing?”
I’m immediately ashamed. It was like an animal inside me took over. “I’m sorry. I was just so hungry. I should have shared. I’ll help you look, and the next one is all yours.”
Carlos’s mouth drops open in disbelief.
I brush loose dirt off my fingertips and hold my fingers in a V. “The next two.”
Carlos throws back his head and laughs long and loud. “You’re as crazy as Old Dirty P!”
I smile uncertainly. Carlos slings an arm around my shoulders. “You had me going for a minute, Lita. I didn’t know you were so funny. I wasn’t sure about this at first, but I might be glad you picked our tent to crash. Come on.”
Carlos leads me up the hill, and even though we pass at least a dozen more wild dandelions – what is this magical place? – I don’t stop to dine. My immediate hunger is sated, and I’m curious to find out what Carlos has in mind.
We’re not alone. Other people walk the streets as well. They walk with purpose, like Carlos, as if they all have places to be. Their destinations must be important because not one of them stops to gather any of the manna I see everywhere.
We cross beneath something like a concrete lid, and the noise level rises dramatically. When we emerge from under the lid, the noise decreases and the sunlight is dazzling. Carlos tugs on my elbow, pulling me off the sidewalk and onto a narrow little side street between buildings.
“You in the mood for Thai?”
Tie? I shrug noncommittally.
“There’s a place at the end of this block that’s only open dinner hours. Probably something good and maybe no hassle.”
I nod, absolutely no idea what he’s talking about, and follow him down the narrow street, which is blocked at the end by a large green metal container. Carlos approaches it and whacks it with the side of his hand. “Dammit!” he exclaims.
“What?”
He jiggles the lid up and down a couple inches. “Dumpster’s padlocked! Jerks!” He kicks the base. “Like it’s really going to hurt anyone. It’s garbage! It should be fair game!”
I look at the simple combination lock that seems to have Carlos so perplexed. “You want to get in there?” I ask.
“Yeah, but apparently they’re smuggling priceless antiques from the Ming Dynasty in there. It’s off-limits.”
Carlos hasn’t been making sense for a while now, but if he wants to see what’s inside the big locked box, I know I want to help him, and somehow, I’m sure I can.
He crosses his arms, huffs in exasperation, and begins to walk back down the narrow street, but I don’t follow. Instead, I walk to the big lockbox, flip the combination lock so that I can press my ear against it, and I begin to spin the dial.
“What are you doing?” Carlos asks.
“Shh,” I admonish. “Now I need to start over.”
I shake the lock in my hand, position it against my ear again, and turn the dial once more. The lock behaves as if it’s brand new. The clicks, clinks, and tumbling noises are so loud, I could probably do this without having it pressed against my ear. Two revolutions to the right, one to the left, and a half twist to the right, and the lock springs open in my hand when I yank down. I unlace it from the metal closures it had been holding together. I gesture to Carlos, who’s still several feet away from me. “Here you go,” I call out.
Carlos’s mouth is open in an ‘O.’ “Dude, you just cracked that in like fifteen seconds.”
I’m not sure if he’s being critical or not – his tone is inscrutable – so I hedge my bets with my response. “It went pretty smoothly, but maybe I could do it faster next time.”
His lips quirk up into a grin. “Lita, you are something else.”
Something else besides what, I’m not sure, but he’s smiling and it gives me such a warm, happy feeling that I smile back. The muscles in my face ache, like they’re not used to doing this.
Carlos lifts the lid on the box, and the aromas that erupt from it hit me so hard, I stagger a step.
His grin hasn’t left his face. “Jackpot!” he exclaims. He reaches in and pulls out a large black bag. He loosens the ties on it to open it all the way, revealing a cornucopia of treats the likes of which I’ve never seen.
“Is that all edible?” I breathe.
“Most of it. I’m not a big fan of yam naem, but with enough peanut sauce, anything tastes good. Haven’t you had Thai?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t know.”
He roots around in the bag, finds a plastic spoon, and dips it into a sauce. “Here, this looks like red curry. Try it.”
I place the spoonful in my mouth and the flavors explode across my tongue in a riot so intense, it brings tears to my eyes.
“Spicy?” Carlos asks.
I wipe a tear away while I roll the food around in my mouth, letting it hit every part of my tongue. “Can I have more?”
“Let’s take it back to the tent. We’ll share with Dez and you can have as much as you like.”
I understand now why the box was locked. I can’t wrap my mind around how valuable this must be. I dart my gaze up and down the alley. “Are you sure? What if we’re followed? Somebody has to be watching us.”
“Nah, this place is only open
dinner hours, like I said. We’ll put the lock back on; they’ll never even know we were here. We’re not leaving a mess or anything. Could you pop that lock again if you had to?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Anytime.”
Carlos smiles at me again. “I wish we were gonna hang together longer. I’ll be sorry to see you go when Jimmy turns up to collect you.”
I smile uncertainly. He keeps talking about this Jimmy person, but I have absolutely no memory of him. In fact, on a quick scan, I don’t have thoughts or recollections about anything, really. All I want to do right now is consume the food Carlos has hefted over his shoulder. The amazing smells coming from the black bag almost make me forget my pounding headache. I’m still holding the lock to the metal box, so I close the lid and lace it back through the holes that line up in the metal, and I snap the lock shut. “Let’s eat,” I say. This time, on our way back down the hill, I note the locations of the multiple dandelion outcroppings we pass, but I don’t regret leaving them behind. I know where they are, and despite the fact that the sidewalks are now crawling with other people, no one has harvested them. I can come back for them later. If that black bag is as stuffed full of food as I think it might be, I might not even have to.
At the tent, my fantasies turn into reality. The bag is heaped with food, and it’s not just the dish Carlos called red curry. There are piles and piles of edible items that I don’t have names for. Some of them even come in little paper boxes with folding tabs and thin metal handles. There are long wiggly items that Carlos and Dez call noodles. I take in everything without much comment, loading the vocabulary into my brain. I instinctively know that I can’t show my ignorance. Noodles, chicken, beef, curry, peanut, and more. I sample flavors and commit the nouns Carlos and Dez use to describe them to memory. Some of the words ring faint bells, but most of them are totally new.
After we finish eating, I lay back on the blankets and sleeping bags and rub my tummy. This sense of satiation feels unfamiliar, like I’ve never been truly stuffed full of food before. It’s wonderful. My headache has receded into a totally manageable mild pain at the base of my skull.
“You look different, Lita,” Carlos comments. “Thai suits you.”
“I feel better,” I say. “I had a really bad headache before.”
“You never said nothing.” Dez leans back, rummages in a pile, and pulls out a white plastic bottle. “I have some Tylenol.”
“Oh, thanks, but I’m okay now.” I’m not sure what Tylenol is, but like the other new terms I’ve absorbed, I can tell it’s something a normal person should know, so I keep my ignorance to myself.
“We should probably look into getting you something else to wear,” Carlos says. He fingers the sleeve of my jacket. “This is still wet. Not soaking anymore, but it’s not gonna dry all the way until you air it out. I don’t think we’ve got anything that would fit you, though. How tall are you?”
I shrug. “I’m not sure.”
“Step outside with me for a minute. Come on, Dez. You too.”
We all exit the tent and Carlos has me and Dez stand back to back. “Dang, you’re short,” Carlos says to me.
“I am not,” I fire back. I take a peek back at Dez and see that I’m about eye level with his shoulder. “He’s a giant.”
“He’s five-foot-eight.” Carlos laughs. “And you’re straight outta The Wizard of Oz, right up to the part where you fell on our house.”
“Dorothy fell on the house. She wasn’t a Munchkin,” Dez corrects.
“Nobody fell on a house, a house fell on them. I said it wrong,” Carlos replies.
I massage my temples, feeling a tiny thread of headache inching its way upward. “I’m not a Munchkin and my name’s not Dorothy,” I say. “Why are we even doing this? What does it matter how tall I am?”
Carlos grins and holds up his hands. “You’re five feet of fury, Lita. Maybe four-eleven. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It just means you can’t borrow anything from us without looking like you just climbed out of a clown car. But that’s easy enough to fix when you know the right people.” He snaps his fingers. “Dez,” he says authoritatively, “hold down the fort. Me and Lita are gonna pop some tags.”
It’s way easier for Carlos to talk me into walking downhill when I have a full stomach, but it still makes me nervous. But I do it because unlike me, Carlos seems totally sure of himself.
And nothing bad happens. I don’t know what I expect, but my heart races like crazy with each step downhill, and I’m glad when we turn left on a street marked with a sign that reads, “4th Ave.” Fourth Ave also seems to be taking us gradually downhill, but I can handle it better than the first steep hill, where it felt like I was racing straight into the open, waiting arms of doom.
Carlos walks beside me, his arms swinging loosely. “Just so you know, I’m not actually planning to pop tags. I don’t steal.”
“Me neither,” I say with conviction. I don’t know much about anything right now, and it feels good to respond so decisively and automatically.
“Really?” Carlos says. “I didn’t know that. No offense, but I guess I had you pegged wrong.”
“I’m not offended,” I say, even though a part of me kind of is. Now that my headache has mostly worn off, I’ve had a chance to think, and what I’m coming up with is scaring me. Because I’m drawing a blank. About virtually everything. I think Lita’s my name, but I don’t know for sure. I believe I’m sixteen, but I don’t know why. I’m not sure how I ended up in Carlos and Dez’s tent, or how I got there, or why I was apparently soaking wet. And when I search my mind, I feel like I’m trying to walk backward across a long expanse of pure white nothingness. I don’t remember anything. Maybe if I can get Carlos talking about me, I’ll start to recognize myself through his assumptions. “Why did you think I’d be a thief?”
“It sounds really bad when you say it that way,” Carlos mumbles beside me.
“Like I said, I’m not mad. I’m just curious.”
“Well… you’re Jimmy Squint’s girl. So I figured you were more like him.” He trails his fingers along the brick wall of the building we’re walking next to. “And you live in The Jungle. Me and Dez, we stay outta there. It’s no picnic living on James Street, we take a lot of shit from the bourgeois, but it’s better than being around all the drugs and the crap that goes down where you’re at.”
I still don’t recognize the name Jimmy Squint, and ‘The Jungle’ means nothing to me. I walk along in silence, trying to think of another question I can ask him that will get him to tell me stuff about myself without revealing my own ignorance when Carlos stops in a doorway and starts addressing a large pile of debris. “Hey, Old Dirty!” He crouches down and prods the pile of garbage, which shifts and groans.
“Is that a person?” I blurt out.
“It’s ODP,” Carlos nods. “Old Dirty Plastered? You don’t know him?”
I shake my head.
“I thought everybody knew him. How long have you been on the streets?”
I shrug. “A while.”
He turns back and shakes the lump by its shoulder. “Dirty? We call him Ol’ Dirty after… Well, never mind. You probably don’t know him, either.”
He gets down on his hands and knees and lifts a sheet of newspaper, revealing a bulbous nose and a chin covered with long, scraggly gray hair. “Dirty? You okay in there?”
I can’t quite make out the mumbled reply, but Carlos pats the man’s shoulder area. “Gonna be a hot one today. I’m leaving you some water. It’s right here by your head, okay?” Carlos reaches into a pocket of his cargo shorts, pulls out a plastic bottle of water, and sets it on the sidewalk.
There’s another mumble, and a tan hand with filthy, torn fingernails slides out of the pile of fabric and papers, snatches the bottle, and retreats.
Carlos rises. “You take care, Dirty.” He crooks his finger at me. “C’mon.”
We walk a few feet away before I speak. “Is he, like, your friend?”
“ODP is a fixture. He doesn’t have friends. I’m really surprised you don’t know him.”
“Maybe I know him by some other name.”
“Yeah, right.” Carlos laughs. “You probably call him Bill Gates.”
I totally do not understand Carlos’s sense of humor, but at least I’ve gotten to know him well enough that I can tell he’s joking with me, so I smile back.
“I have General Gates on the comm, can I put him through?” I reply. I have no idea where that comes from, but Carlos laughs.
“Old Dirty’s a loon. He must have done some real bad drugs in the sixties. I would say he’s harmless, but I know for a fact he’s not. It worked out in my favor, though, so I’m not complaining.”
“What happened?”
Carlos kicks a rock on the sidewalk, and it skitters down the street. “One night I got a little too close to the edge of The Jungle, and I was by myself. Not too far from here, now that I think about it. Anyway, it was late at night, and a few guys came up and started shaking me down. I didn’t have anything to give them, they got pissed, and next thing I know, I’m on the ground and I’m getting kicked in the face.”
I shudder, and I think somehow, I know exactly how that felt. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what would have happened – maybe they would have given up when I blacked out or maybe they would have killed me – but all of a sudden that crazy bastard drops out of the sky, lands right on one of the guys, and beats the living crap out of all three of them.”
“He fell out of the sky?”
“Well, not really. ODP likes to climb; you’ll see him all over the city climbing stuff. Climbed a tree in Westlake Center once around Christmas, shut the whole damn block down for hours – it was awesome. You see him on fire escapes a lot. Like that one over there.”
Carlos points across the street to a brick building with a ton of windows, row after row of them. It has a metal staircase clinging to the outside of the brick façade, with a small landing at each window level. The apparatus ends in a ladder that hangs about six feet above the ground.
“A staircase on the outside of the building,” I marvel. “What an interesting idea.”
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