Brave New Love (28 page)

And the clerks would say more or less the same thing every time: “You think I remember all my customers? You must be out of your mind.”

Even so, Miranda would write down her first name and her phone number and ask if they’d please call her if they saw that boy again.

•  •  •

A month passed, and in the throngs of people that surged by Twisto Snax at station 47, Owen had not seen the girl with the red scarf. But one day, after work, he stopped at
station 79 to buy some groceries, and when he went back down to the subway, he passed a train standing at the platform, its passengers already loaded on, its doors closed. In one of its windows, he
glimpsed a bit of red and even through the grime on the window he could see that the red was a scarf, and it was around the neck of a girl, and the girl was looking at him, and she was
the
girl.

He stopped; he stared. Their eyes met. Both opened their mouths as if to speak, and the girl pressed the palm of her hand against the window. But the train began to move. Owen put a finger to
the glass and, loping sideways to keep up with the train, he wrote in a few fast strokes: O M A R K S. The tail of the S trailed away as the train pulled forward. He stood watching with his hand
still raised, as if he were waving goodbye.

When the train was gone, he realized how stupid he’d been. Why hadn’t he written his phone number instead of his name? How was his name going to help her find him? There must be
millions of people named Marks in this city, and thousands named O. Marks—Oliver, Otis, Orville, Orlando, Oscar . . .

Stupid, stupid! He’d had a one-in-a-million chance and messed it up! But at the same time, he thought: She saw me! She looked at me that same way! He was not making up the connection
between them. Whatever it was, it was real.

•  •  •

Miranda had taken a break from her pet store visits the afternoon she saw the boy. She’d had no luck, and was feeling discouraged. So to cheer herself up, she’d put
on her red scarf and taken the 82 train to the huge shopping mall at the west end of the city, where she was determined to buy some small nice thing.

It was when the train stopped at station 79 that she saw the boy through the window. His face was suddenly there, looking up. A shock went through her. She leaned close to the window; she
pressed her hand against the glass. Her eyes met his, and the look shot between them again. She opened her mouth to call out to him—but what to say? No words came. The train began to move. He
leapt up and wrote on the window, but the train pulled away from his hand and left him behind.

What had he written?
, the letters said, and she reversed them and got O M A R K S. It must be his name, or
part of his name. But what was it? It seemed to be Omar. K could be the first letter of his last name. But what was the S, then? Omar K. S. Maybe K was his middle initial. But she could never find
him just by his first name. He must have thought he had time to write both first and last.

The train rocketed forward, and she studied the letters on the glass as if they were the key to her life. Maybe he
had
written his last name. Omarks. Or O’Marks. That one gave her
an idea, that Marks was a last name. Maybe he was O. Marks. But there must be thousands of people named O. Marks in the city. Whatever he’d written, it wasn’t very helpful.

Still, she was elated. He had seen her. He had given her his name and it hadn’t been her imagination. He wanted to be found.

•  •  •

Now that Owen had seen the girl again, his thoughts tortured him. Had he made a mistake by taking the job at station 47? Did she go more often to station 79? Should he be riding
that train, looking for her? He just didn’t know.

“Owen,” Emma said to him one evening. “My bird doesn’t sing any more.”

“Not at all?”

“No.”

He hadn’t even noticed. What a bad brother he’d been, mooning over a girl he didn’t even know and neglecting his sister! He felt terrible. He would get another bird, he
decided, to keep the first one company. Then they’d both sing. But money was a problem. It had taken him nearly six months to save the money for the first bird and he didn’t want to
wait that long to get the second. He would need another job. Not a different job—an additional job.

Clement provided the answer. Ever since Owen had got rid of the fake official (who had never come back), Clement had been almost embarrassingly grateful. He leapt at the chance to do Owen a
return favor. “I will ask around,” he said. By then he had met many others like himself, people who had come from other places and who met to keep each other company and exchange useful
information. Very soon, he greeted Owen with an eager smile and said, “I know a job!”

He knew the guy who swept the platform at station 178, he said. This guy had a friend who was a sweeper at station 179, and he knew that the sweeper at station 212 had quit due to a bad case of
pneumonia.

Owen got the job. He gave up school for the time being. His life became all work: he sold pretzels at station 47 from six in the morning until noon, then he rode the 89 train to station 212 and
swept platforms from three to seven every evening. He lived in the dark, under the surface, like a mole. But it wouldn’t be this way for long. He’d have the money for the bird in a
month or two, if all went well. And if all went
very
well, he’d see that girl again.

•  •  •

Several weeks later and Miranda had visited nineteen pet stores. So far, no one had remembered the boy who’d bought the canary. Her quest was going nowhere, but her
knowledge of pet stores was growing fast. She didn’t always like what she saw.

The Stop’N’Pet store on Rockland Boulevard, for instance. At the back of this huge store were wire cages where puppies with runny eyes slept in heaps. The water in their bowls was
scummy and their cages stank. Miranda complained to the clerk. “Those puppies aren’t being cared for,” she said. “They’re not well.”

“So you’re some kind of expert, I guess,” said the clerk.

“I can see,” said Miranda. “And smell.”

“Good for you,” the clerk said. “Leave the rest of it to us.”

At other stores, she saw more of the same: a white rabbit crouched in the corner of a pellet-littered cage; kittens with bare patches in their fur; an aviary full of fluttering finches that
looked all right until she noticed two of them lying dead on the cage floor.

When she pointed these things out to the salespeople, they either said hurriedly, Oh, yes, yes, they would take care of it right away, or they told her she was wrong and that everything was
fine. So Miranda had an idea—she would give Ferris Slocum a chance to bring down the law on something that deserved it. She started keeping a list of stores where animals were mistreated,
with notes about what she saw.

As time went by, it was less and less likely that anyone would remember the boy who’d bought the canary, and it was more and more upsetting to see the poor animals trapped in awful places.
They would never be free, never be loved. Miranda started feeling that way about herself. She decided to go to three more stores. And after that she’d stop.

At the twentieth store, the man behind the counter said brusquely that he didn’t sell canaries.

At the twenty-first store, a dirty white dog lay in a cage in the window, scratching at patches of raw skin. Inside, Miranda found two women cleaning hamster cages. One of them, a skinny
red-haired woman, held a wriggling hamster in her hand. The other woman was short and stout and wore a stained and dirty apron. Miranda asked them her question. The woman with the hamster simply
laughed at her, rolled her eyes, and said, “Unbelievable!” The short stout woman stared at her from under heavily drawn black eyebrows.

Miranda felt her face get hot and her heart speed up, but she kept her voice calm. “And I’d also like to tell you something,” she said. “The dog in your front window
isn’t well. It needs to see a vet.”

“Don’t you tell us our business,” said the red-haired woman.

This is a horrible place, thought Miranda but, even so, she wrote down her name and number before she left.

At the final store, a tidy shop called Zoo for You, a red-and-white striped awning shaded the front window. Everything inside was colorful and shiny. The neat blonde woman behind the counter
listened to Miranda’s question and shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “I don’t remember. So many people buy canaries, you know. To sort of cheer things up.”

Miranda left her name and number, and the search of the pet stores came to an end. I will never see that boy again, she thought. I have to forget him. She got on the 93 train and headed home to
write up her list of bad pet stores to send off to Ferris Slocum.

•  •  •

Owen’s new job at Station 212 kept him busy because the platform was always scattered with things to be swept up—candy wrappers, paper cups, cigarette butts, bits of
popcorn and pretzels, and the grime and dust left by millions of shoes. He swept the floors and swabbed the walls as people passed on all sides of him as if he were a stone in a river.

He had been there two months now, but he hadn’t been able to save money as fast as he’d hoped. His mother was too disorganized by sadness to manage the household finances. Owen had
to step in. He paid the electricity bill when his mother forgot to. He paid for her cigarettes when she said she would die without them. He paid for extra books and pencils for Emma, because his
mother never thought of buying them herself. By the end of the month, he had less than half of what he needed to buy another bird.

He was tired of working two jobs and thought he should probably quit his job at Twisto Snax. He’d given up hope of seeing the girl at station 47 but he liked selling pretzels better than
pushing brooms. And he liked Clement. Maybe he should quit his sweeping job and double his hours at the pretzel stand. Yes, that’s what he would do. He decided this on a Thursday afternoon,
at the beginning of the rush hour. When his sweeping shift was over, he’d go to the supervisor and say he was leaving.

At the very moment he’d made this decision, he heard a shout above the general clamor. Then many shouts, loud and urgent. “Help! Quick! Man on the tracks!”

Owen broke through the crowd to the edge of the platform and saw him, five feet straight down—a gray-haired man in a business suit, lying on his back with one leg bent under him, his arms
flailing, his face twisted in terror, trying to get himself up. People on the platform stood gaping and shouting, but the train was due in seconds, and no one had jumped down to help.

It was easy for Owen. He lowered his long-handled broom and yelled, “Grab on!” The man took hold of the broom handle, Owen pulled with all his strength, and the man rose and stood on
one leg. The other hung useless. “Get him, someone! Hurry up!” Owen yelled. He had to yell it twice, scream it, before a couple of beefy guys stepped forward. They stretched out on
their stomachs, reached down, and grabbed the man’s free hand. They pulled, Owen pulled, and the gray-haired man was hoisted up out of the trench and dragged onto the concrete platform,
groaning and gasping.

The train arrived twelve seconds later.

The rescued man looked up at Owen and tried to speak. “Saved my life,” he managed to say. “Tha-tha-tha-”

“You’re welcome,” said Owen.

As Owen learned later, the man’s name was Ernest Bonovik, and he was a vice president of the Long-Term Pavement Company. He insisted on giving Owen a generous reward, far more than enough
to buy the bird for Emma.

•  •  •

Though she had given up on pet stores, Miranda wasn’t quite ready to give up her quest. All she could think of to do was keep going to station 47 where she’d seen
the boy the first time. She began to sit on a bench near the ticket machines but even though she didn’t see him, she liked sitting there, doing nothing but watching swarms of people and being
quiet in her mind in the midst of the rushing throngs. It was a relief not to have to talk or listen to anyone—not her harried parents, not her rambunctious brothers and sisters, not the
ever-blasting TV or radio, not her grandmother’s cracked, sad voice, and not her uncle’s friend’s cousin Clement, who was still staying at their house until he could make enough
at his job selling pretzels to afford his own place. Here at station 47, she had a little bit of time and space she could call her own.

•  •  •

Sometimes a girl with spiky blond hair bought a pretzel from Twisto Snax. She had a sweet smile and red-painted fingernails, and she always said a few words to Owen as she made
her purchase. He could get to know her. He could ask her out. She could make him forget about his quest.

But as he was riding the subway to work, or in the moments before he went to sleep at night, it was the girl in the red scarf he thought about. He wondered if she were looking for him.

With his reward money, he finally went to get the second bird for his sister. He took the 93 train, just as he had when he saw the girl in the red scarf for the first time. Of course he
wouldn’t see her again, he told himself.