“Nope. I came to see Josie and her mom. And realized you’ve been sleeping here. It’s not a great idea, for lots of reasons, one of which is I don’t want Josie having a baby.”
“I—we wouldn’t, we don’t, I respect her. I belong to True Love Waits.”
“Yeah, but teenagers in a bedroom all night, respect only carries you so far for so long. Besides that, they don’t have any money. Ms. Dorrado lost her job—it’s a burden for her to have an extra person there.”
“I wasn’t taking food from them. But you’re right: I should buy some groceries for them.” He flushed. “Only, I’ve never been grocery shopping, I mean for a family, of course I’ve been in a store sometimes. I don’t know what you buy if you want to cook a meal. There are so many ordinary things that I don’t know.”
He was touching in his earnestness. “Why don’t you want to go home?”
“I need to figure some things out. Some things about my family.” He shut his mouth tightly.
“What did you mean by that message to your father, about you calling the shareholders if he kept looking for you? I gather it’s upset both him and your grandfather.”
“That’s one of the things I need to figure out.”
“Were you threatening to call your major shareholders to say that By-Smart was going to allow union activity?”
His soft face hardened in indignation. “That would be a lie: I don’t tell lies, especially not one like that, that would hurt my grandfather.”
“What, then?” I tried to smile engagingly. “I’d be glad to lend an ear, if it would help to have someone to talk them over with.”
He shook his head, his mouth shut in a thin line. “You may mean well, Ms. War-sha-sky. But right now, I don’t know. I don’t know who I can trust, besides Pastor Andrés, and he is really helping me, so thank you, but I think I’ll be all right.”
“If you change your mind, call me; I’ll be glad to talk to you. And I really wouldn’t betray you to your family.” I handed him a card. “But do Josie a favor: find somewhere else to stay. Even if you don’t sleep with her, your grandfather is bound to find you here, especially with a car that stands out like yours. People in this neighborhood notice everything, and plenty of them will be willing to tell your dad or your grandfather they’ve seen you here. Buffalo Bill’s—your grandfather’s—angry; I know you know he threatened the pastor with deportation just because you and Josie had a Coke together. He could cause Rose Dorrado a lot of trouble, and she needs a job right now, not more trouble.”
“Oh. Now that Fly the Flag is gone—I didn’t even think.” He sighed. “All I thought was, What difference does it make?, and, of course, it makes a terrible difference to the people who worked there. Thank you for reminding me, Ms. War-sha-sky.”
“All you thought was ‘What difference does it make?’” I repeated sharply. “What do you mean by that?”
He waved his arms in a vague gesture that seemed to mean the South Side around him, or maybe the world around him, and shook his head unhappily.
I turned on my heel to cross the street, then remembered the frog soap dish. I pulled out the baggie again from my bag and showed the frog to him.
He shook his head again. “What is it?”
“To me, it looks like a soap dish in the shape of a frog. Julia Dorrado says she bought it, or one like it, at By-Smart last Christmas.”
“We carry so much stuff, I don’t know our whole inventory. And I only met Josie this summer, when my church did the exchange. Where did you find it? I hope you aren’t trying to say we sell things that are this dirty.”
He was so serious all the time that it took me a moment to realize he was trying to make a joke. The license plate, and now a joke: maybe there were depths in the Kid that I was overlooking. I smiled dutifully, and explained where I’d picked it up.
He hunched a shoulder. “Maybe someone dropped it there. There’s always a lot of garbage around these old buildings.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. “But judging from where it was lying when I picked it up, I think it came shooting out when the windows in the drying room blew. So I think it was inside the factory.”
He turned the baggie over in his hands several times. “Maybe someone wanted it, like, as an ornament on a flagpole. Or maybe one of the ladies who worked there used it as a mascot. I see that a lot down here, people have funny things as mascots.”
“Don’t be a wet blanket,” I said. “It’s my only clue; I have to pursue it enthusiastically.”
“And then what? What if it leads you to some poor person down here who’s already spent their whole life being harassed by the police?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Do you know who put this in the factory, or why?”