“You really made him leave,” she said. “Hi Guy?”
“He wrapped one of our newspapers around a fifth of gin and sat there drinking it,” he said, “which was, you know, whatever, but then an hour later he pissed his pants and started falling all over the place. He crashed into a fancy lady drinking her fancy coffee. She got burned. Not burned-burned, but made uncomfortable, which for a power tool like her was as bad as getting burned.”
“Where’d he go?” she said.
“I steered him toward the train station but I doubt he made it. It’s cold out there tonight,” he added, downcast.
Then Lydia was standing up, listing to the left.
“I’m just gonna check real quick,” she said, as if she were just running to the bathroom, and the next thing she knew she was slamming her drink and wandering alone over the icy sidewalks of Lower Downtown. Someone said, “Lydia fucking rocks,” as she teetered out of the bar.
Her long rubbery legs seemed to drag a few feet behind her, and by the time they caught up she was scanning the rows of benches inside Union Station. She lifted blankets and newspapers off snoring faces—sorry, whoops, sorry—but none belonged to Hi Guy. Soon she was circling the streets and alleys around the station. Finally she found him, huddled against a low cement wall that bracketed the plaza of an office building.
“Hi Guy?”
“Hi.”
He groaned and rolled under a ripped gray blanket.
“You okay?”
“Hi—” he started to say, but his voice was interrupted by vomit. Lydia knelt next to him and wiped his cheek with her sleeve. She asked again if he was okay and he sighed hi and gently closed his eyes. She put her hand on his shoulder and looked out at the traffic lights bobbing on their wires, and then she heard herself talking about David’s collusion with her intrusive father and this lost city of her childhood, and how she’d spent more time hiding beneath sinks than anyone she knew, maybe anyone in history, and she vowed to read To the Lighthouse again and to give Gravity’s Rainbow another chance— “Don’t cry,” he said.
She stopped talking and only then realized her cheeks were wet with tears and freezing cold. Somehow Hi Guy made her feel safe, so she nodded and told him all about Joey, about finding him hanging and finding his books and his messages and his suit— “I’ll take that suit.”
She looked at him. “You want Joey’s suit?”
“His adoption suit.”
“Adoption suit?” she said, craning over him. “What does that mean?”
“That’s what he called it. He wore it to meet his mama.”
Lydia felt her enthusiasm fizz and with it a flash of sobriety. Hi Guy, with his days upon days of meditative sitting, would certainly have seen more happening between the bookstore’s cracks than anyone else. It wasn’t surprising that he knew Joey had been tracking down his foster mother.
“You’re talking about his foster mom? Mrs. Molina?”
“Not foster suit.” His eyes fought to stay open. He stretched his legs until they rustled a twiggy sleeping bush. “Adoption suit.”
“His biological mom?”
Hi Guy nodded.
“Did they meet?”
Hi Guy shook his head no.
“Broke the boy’s heart. Standing on Broadway in that badass suit. Like prom king. But. She. Did. Not. Show.”
Hi Guy closed his eyes until he’d stored enough energy to speak. “Kid had nothing,” he mumbled, then his eyes stayed closed and he fell into a coughing fit and didn’t say anything else. Soon he started snoring. His shopping cart was parked against the plaza wall, and inside it she found two right-handed mittens and a few wool blankets and a sleeping bag. She sunk Hi Guy’s hands into the mittens, triple-wrapped his body, and gently rolled him near a steaming sidewalk grate where he’d be warm.
Though Lydia was drunk and cold enough to contemplate spooning up to him, instead she wandered in the direction of home. Before long she found herself lost in a forgotten neighborhood north of downtown. The streetlights were mostly shot out and the storefronts trapped behind cages and chains. Awnings flapped in rags above her, looking like windblown pages. She rambled through the dark. When she saw a man standing in the middle of the sidewalk a block or so ahead, looking massive and menacing, she cut into a nearby alley. The man had been standing still and seemed to be staring right at her, though in truth she couldn’t tell if she was looking at his back or his front or if he was even a man at all.
She snugged her satchel closer. She listened for his footsteps but heard nothing. At the end of the alley she turned right, and this street seemed even darker, more desolate, than the last. She walked faster. She heard somewhere a percussive train. She smelled the horsey grind of the Purina factory. A block or two ahead she could see the red glow of a giant neon Benjamin Moore paint sign and she knew there was an old jazz joint nearby, so she sprinted toward the sign, feeling chased, hearing footsteps echo off the low brick and stucco buildings around her. She didn’t stop until she found the bar and made it inside and even then she rushed past all the people drinking and eating late-night burritos and, with no shortage of gumption, called David collect from a pay phone by the bathrooms.
“I’m coming,” he said as soon as he answered, but it was difficult to hear him over the jazz, so she shouted the name of the bar into the receiver as if casting a desperate spell: El Chapultepec!
“Got it!” he shouted. “What’s wrong, anyway? Lydia—what is it?”
“You knew.”
“I knew?”
She rested her forehead on the side of the pay phone, against layers of graffiti stickers.
“You knew, David. About me.”
“Just sit tight. I’m on my way.”
She ordered a beer and stood by the door, sipping and splitting her sight between the sidewalk outside and an old lady on a small stage playing a stand-up bass and wailing into the smoke.
When David’s sedan pulled up in front, Lydia slid into the passenger seat, still holding her bottle of beer. She took a slug and parked it between her thighs.
“You okay?” he said.
“I don’t want to do this,” she said, shaking her head.
“Do what, Lydia?” He flapped at the air between them. “This?”
She turned away. Outside, passing trees were skeletal with winter.
“You sounded scared on the phone,” he said. “Did something happen?”
“I’m fine. Just cold.”
He turned the heating vents toward her and steered through downtown.
“Listen,” he said after a while, “I have a few things I need to tell you.”
“Does it have to be tonight, David?”
“You don’t have to say anything, but it has to be tonight,” he said. “For starters, I just want to be clear that I’m not mad at you—”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“For hiding your childhood from me, Lydia.”
“Is that so?”
“You might be mad,” he said, “but I’m not. Just listen. I’m sure you have your reasons for keeping it to yourself.”