When I Found You (20 page)

“Oh. No. I didn’t know it was so late. I don’t usually sleep so late. I guess it’s just that in Juvie they don’t let you. They get you up every morning and make you work or take classes. Even on the weekends. Seven days a week. So I guess I just got carried away. You know. Because it’s been so long since I could.”

He stopped himself. Heard the echo of his own words. Thought, no. I will not have a repeat of last night. I will shut up. Right now. I will not babble like that, like a damn fool, not ever again.

He watched in silence as she poured four big puddles of pancake batter on to the hot griddle. Watched her lift the edges with her spatula to test them. To look at the brownness of their bottoms.

She flipped them carefully. Took down a plate from the cupboard.

“Oh,” she said. “I just remembered. Nathan asked me to tell you something. If you find a job today … or any day while he’s at work … he said to tell you that they’ll give you a tax form to fill out. He told me the number of it, but I’ve forgotten now. I think it’s a W-4, but I might be mistaken. But I think they only give you one. It has some decision about payroll withholding on it. He says you should bring it home. Not fill it out on the spot. He wants to give you some advice about it.”

“OK.” Silence. During which a beautiful steaming stack of pancakes appeared on the table in front of him.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Nat.”

“Do you happen to know where Nathan keeps the dogs’ leashes?”

“Hanging inside the garage door.”

“Oh. OK. Thanks. I thought I’d take Feathers downtown with me.”

“
On job interviews?
”

“Oh. Well. No. Not on
interviews
,” he said quickly. Back-pedaling fast. “I just thought I’d start by seeing who has a ‘help wanted’ sign. You know. If anybody’s taking applications. If I’m going to go in and fill out an application I’ll leave Feathers tied up outside.”

“Oh. I guess that would be OK. Would you like some homemade raspberry syrup to go with those?”

“Well, yeah,” Nat said. “Who wouldn’t?”

•  •  •

Nat could hear Maggie howling her displeasure as he ran down the driveway with Feathers bounding ahead at the end of the leash.

It was nearly a two-mile walk to downtown. But Nat intended to run it. Though maybe “intended” was the wrong word. It wasn’t a premeditated decision he’d formed in his head. He just needed to run. He just naturally started. And, once he started, he just couldn’t seem to stop.

His head felt strangely clear as he ran. No thoughts seemed to cluster there, as they normally did, jostling for position. Instead they seemed to be driven out by the wind that blew into his eyes and nose, and by the slapping of his sneakers on the pavement.

This is freedom.

Those words broke through.

Yesterday, driving home with Nathan, that had not been freedom. It was only going with someone, just as they dictated you should. Dinner sure had not been freedom. And lying in the bed Nathan gave him was a damn sight better than lying in a cot at Juvie listening to Rico snore unevenly and staring at the bars in the dim half-light. But it was not free.

This was free.

No one watching. No one telling him what to do.

His chest ached, and he began to develop a stitch in his side. But he just kept running.

•  •  •

Somewhere along Main Street, a girl sitting on a bus bench smiled shyly at him as he ran by. He smiled back.

Then he stopped. Backtracked a quarter of a block.

Sat down on the bench beside her.

She had scads of long brown hair, thick, with a trace of red highlights where the sun hit it. It reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t think who. She had freckles across her nose and cheekbones.

She looked over at him, a little bit defensive.

“Hi,” he said, so out of breath he was barely able to speak.

She said nothing. Just purposely looked away.

“Just needed to rest a minute.” His breathing would surely back him up on that.

Feathers padded over to the girl and licked one of her hands.

“I like your dog,” she said. Her eyes were a rich color of brown, not too dark, like really good-quality honey.

“Thanks. I like him, too.”

“What’s his name?”

“Feathers.”

She laughed. A girl laugh. Shy. Like a giggle. “No, really.”

“Really. That’s his name. Feathers.”

“Now why would you go and name your dog an odd name like that? He’s not a bird.”

“No. He’s a dog.” Nat’s breathing was a bit more under control now. He felt more like he could make himself understood.

“Don’t you think that’s an odd name for a dog?”

“I named him after the only other pet I ever had.”

“And
he
was a bird? Your other pet?”

“Right. He was.”

“So
he
had the feathers.”

“Well, actually … no. He didn’t have feathers, either.”

“So, let me get this straight. Your only other pet was a bird with no feathers.”

“Right.”

“But you named him Feathers anyway.”

“Right.”

“And then you named your next pet Feathers, even though he was a dog.”

“Right.”

“You’re a very strange boy. Did anybody ever tell you that?” She smiled right into his eyes, but then quickly looked away. As though she had embarrassed herself by doing so.

Nat laughed. “Oh, yeah. Everybody tells me that.”

“Oh. Here comes my bus.”

“No, wait. Don’t go yet,” Nat said. Not a very well-thought-out comment, he decided.

“Why not?”

“Well, we were having such a nice time talking …”

“I have to go to work.”

“Oh. Can I have your phone number?”

“You certainly may not.”

“Why not?”

Nat watched the bus from the corner of his eye. It was bearing down fast. He would need to hurry.

“Because I’m not that kind of girl.”

The stoplight at the corner turned red, halting the bus on the other side of the intersection. Nat breathed relief.

“What kind of girl is that? You mean you’re not the kind of girl who has a phone? You’re not the kind of girl who remembers her own phone number?”

“No, silly. I’m not the kind of girl who meets strange boys on the street.”

“Where do you meet strange boys?”

“I don’t know. Hopefully I don’t meet the strange ones at all. If I met a boy at my junior college. Or at work. Or church. That would be different, I guess.”

The light changed and the bus swooped down.

“Where do you work?”

She stood. Moved a couple of steps closer to the curb. Nat watched and waited without breathing. She seemed to be deciding whether or not to answer him.

The bus pulled level with her, stopped with a sigh of brakes.

“At the Frosty Freeze,” she said, throwing it over her shoulder as the doors squeaked open. Then she climbed on to the bus.

“Wait. You didn’t even tell me your name.” But it was too late. The doors had closed. She was gone.

•  •  •

Nat tied Feathers’s leash to a newspaper dispenser on the street outside the gym. Then he stood a moment, looking at the old place. Jack must be doing better for money, he thought. He had really fixed it up nice.

He opened the door, and froze. Didn’t even go in. Just stood there in the open doorway, the wide, cold handle of the door in his hand. Just staring.

No speed bags. No heavy bags. No ratty gloves hanging on the wall. No sparring ring. No Little Manny. No Jack.

Instead Nat saw a man, who surely must have been on steroids, bench-pressing weights with no one to spot or supervise him, and three women in colorful spandex tights working out on stair-climbers and treadmills. Towels around their necks. The woman on the treadmill was reading a magazine positioned on a rack in front of her.

“Excuse me. May I help you?”

Nat glanced over at a young woman behind the counter. The counter that had never been there before. The counter that wasn’t supposed to be there now. He stared at it briefly, then back at the women in spandex.

“Excuse me. You’re letting the cold in. May I help you?”

“Oh. Sorry.” Nat stepped inside and let the door swing closed behind him. He stepped up to the counter as if in a dream. “Where’s Jack?”

“Jack who?”

“You know. Jack. The guy who …” Owned the place? Did he own the place? Nat realized he had no idea. He had never asked. There was a lot he had never really known. “You know. Jack. The boxer. The guy who trains people to spar.”

“There’s no Jack here,” she said. She was blonde, with a turned-up nose, and Nat felt she was looking down on him. And it was beginning to irritate him. And she seemed to know.

“Well, there
was
. I mean, there used to be. There always was before. And I need to know where he is now.”

“I’ll get the manager,” she said.

Nat purposely did not look around while he waited. He knew he wouldn’t be able to take it. He was right on the edge as it stood. So he just stared down at the counter, and squeezed his eyes shut, intermittently.

In a few moments a big man with a waist-length blond ponytail came out from behind the curtain. A body-builder. “Can I help you?” he asked.

Nat wished he hadn’t been forced to start over from the beginning.

“I’m looking for Jack.”

“Jack Trudell?”

“Um. Yeah. I think so.”

“The gentleman who used to lease this place?”

“Yeah. That’s him.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Trudell is deceased.”

Nat stood stupidly, mutely, measuring how much confidence he felt in knowing the meaning of that word. Not enough. He thought he probably knew. But he wasn’t sure. The old man found it intelligent to ask if you didn’t know. Or so he said. Nat was not at all sure this Mr. Muscles would agree.

“As in dead?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“What did he die of?”

“I wouldn’t know that.”

“He wasn’t a very old guy.”

“No, from what I heard he wasn’t. Anything else we can do for you?”

“Um. No. Thanks.”

Nat walked out with his head down.

Even seeing Feathers waiting for him at the curb, wagging his tail as if he really were Nat’s dog — even that couldn’t make him feel better.

•  •  •

Nat sat on the freezing concrete in the alley behind the gym. Feathers sat beside him, staring into Nat’s face. Cocking his wiry head slightly, as if trying to ask what the trouble might be. Nat scratched him behind the ear, and he straightened out his head and sighed.

“I guess I should go on down the street and look for a help wanted sign,” Nat said out loud to the dog.

Feathers cocked his head again. Nat watched their clouds of frozen breath puffing out and mixing together.

“But I don’t think I’m going to.”

Nat had been trying to lift the idea in his head all morning. But it weighed millions of pounds. It was heavier than the world in which he’d have to accept such a job. It would have been impossible enough to imagine, even if Nat had been sure that job applications didn’t ask if you’d ever been arrested. But Nat was not sure of that at all. In fact, he figured they probably did ask.

“I wonder if they ask you if you’ve ever been arrested? You think there’s a space for that on a job application?” Nat asked Feathers. “I bet there is. Maybe I just won’t tell them. You think they check?”

A long silence.

His rear end was getting numb from the cold of the pavement, and he could feel the cold seep through his jacket where his back pressed against the brick of the next building. The back wall of the dry cleaners. Nat could smell the chemicals they used. They were making him a little bit queasy.

Well. Something was.

“Maybe I should just go down to the Frosty Freeze instead. That sounds like a better idea. Doesn’t it?”

But in the silence that followed, he knew it was not a good idea. Not at all.

Because he had no money in his pocket. Not a dime.

How could he show up at the Frosty Freeze and not even have the money to order a milkshake? Or even a Coke? What kind of a statement would that make about him? And how could he even pretend he had just come in as a customer, like everyone else, like anyone had a perfect right to do? What would he answer, when she asked him why he was even there? Which she obviously would. If he couldn’t say, “Oh, I was just in the mood for a chocolate milkshake,” then what on earth would he say?

“No,” he told Feathers. “First I have to get a job. Then we can go down to the Frosty Freeze.”

But the instant he said it, the millions of pounds descended on him again. Nat felt that his thoughts had just dragged him on the world’s most depressing neverending loop, dumping him right back at the impossible spot where he’d started.

A voice startled him. “I know you. You’re that kid Jack was gonna train.”

Nat looked up.

“Little Manny!”

“Yup. That’s still me, all right. Whatever happened to you, kid? Jack was just starting to like you. Then you up and disappeared.”

“Got myself thrown in Juvie Hall for three years.”

“Oh. That explains it.” Little Manny squatted beside Nat, his back against the brick of the dry cleaners. Patted Feathers on the head. “Funny-looking dog,” he said, not making it sound like much of an insult.

He’d stopped coloring his hair, Nat noticed. It was now shot through with gray. And much shaggier. No hair cream and neat comb-marks. As if he hadn’t the time or the patience any more. Maybe he had just stopped caring.

“Little Manny. What are you doing here?”

“Same thing I always did. Mopping the floor at closing time. Spraying bleach in the showers. Wiping sweat off the machines.”

“So you still work here.”

“Well, they still needed somebody to clean. And I just live right up there. So why not me?” He pointed to a window on the second floor above the gym, and Nat looked up. “That’s how I knew you were down here. I heard you talking. I had my window open. I like the cold. People think I’m crazy, but I like it. Colder it is, the more I like it. So I looked out the window, ‘cause I heard you talking. And all I saw was some kid and a dog. So I come all the way down here to see what kind of a kid talks to his dog. And it was you.”