“Yeah, sure. Down at the precinct two blocks away, dickwad,” the guy said.
“We are losers.” I grabbed Jean’s sleeve and yanked him out of the store. “We are totally incapable of being shady or discreet.”
Gordie treated us to Chinese food with his American Express card because we had spent all our cash on pretzels and water.
“If I had that card, I’d so be at Bloomingdale’s right now,” Val said.
“I doubt it,” Gordie said.
Alice obsessively scrolled through Izzy’s phone. “I’m texting Ahmed again.” We had been scanning the street for the sumo wrestler, but so far, no sign. I’m on St. Mark’s. U still here?
No response.
“I wonder who Molly is,” Val said.
“Molly, like the drug, Val,” Alice said.
“Oh.”
We sat on the steps of the naked doll store, keeping our eyes peeled for Ahmed and trying to figure out the next stop on our fruitless journey.
“I need a nap.” Jean said what we were all thinking. We agreed to rest a little and resume our search after dark. Part of me hoped we wouldn’t resume our search at all, because I wasn’t sure I was ready to wander around at night, when the lizards came out of the shadows.
When we got to Gordie’s brownstone, I took a shower and dabbed the monster tail and put on my leprechaun T-shirt and soccer shorts. I drew the hunter-green paisley drapes and crawled under the supersoft sheets of the corner guest bed, just before Gordie slipped in. He closed and locked the door and pulled off his T-shirt and khaki shorts. He stood for a second in his polka-dotted boxers, and suddenly I no longer needed a nap.
A while later, I left Gordie curled up like a wombat and tiptoed down to the den, where Jean was sitting at the window, drawing a black-and-white cityscape.
“That is so good, Jean. I’m jealous of your brilliance.”
He wiped a clump of residue off the page and stared out the window. “I don’t know if it’s brilliance. It’s more like lunacy. I get ornery when I’m not doing art.”
I watched him add line after line to make the outlines of buildings, then bring the buildings to life.
“Do you think we’ll find her?” he said, pausing to look at me.
“I don’t know. But honestly, I don’t want to go inside another trap house ever again. I still think about the scabby arm of this guy who was lying on a mattress in that disgusting living room.”
He nodded. “Isn’t it bizarre what your mind decides to latch onto?”
“Yeah. It is.” I thought of his face flat against the shards of honey jar and gravel.
Jean turned the page of the sketch pad. “See this?” It was a black arm, reaching out of a block of ice surrounded by penguins and fish jumping out of the sea.
“Whoa. That’s amazing.”
“It’s kind of messed up, actually.”
He turned the page and showed me the same black arm, reaching out of a tree trunk. A giant butterfly with the face of a girl rested on the palm of the hand.
“I was nine when we had the earthquake. People ran around looking for family. I left the house and wandered toward my school. There was one section where everything was just leveled.” He smiled. But it was one of those This is so awful I don’t know how to say it smiles. “I saw something sticking out from under a windowsill that had sunk into the rubble. I realized it was a man’s arm. I wanted to help him, so I pulled and pulled with both hands.”
“Oh, Jean.”
“Yeah. It took me years to convince myself that it hadn’t been my father’s arm I was pulling.”
I didn’t move. I wanted him to feel like he could talk if he wanted to talk. He flipped the page to another arm, reaching up to a waterfall dropping from the sky.
“I decided this will probably end up being my college portfolio. This is who I am, part of me, at least.”
“It’s incredible.”
“There are hundreds of these. I’m hoping someday I’ll feel like I can stop.”
I sat quietly as he finished the beginnings of his cityscape and nearly gasped when he held it up. “Jean, it’s beautiful. And I thought you were all about the smiling masks.”
The sounds of the city were amplified at night. So, it seemed, were the garbage pile smells and the aroma of rich spices coming out of the Indian restaurants. I was careful to check in every few hours, to make sure Mom and Dad had a perfectly false sense of security. The last text sealed it: All the crew tuckered out. I think the Central Park Zoo was enough excitement. Going to bed. Love you guys. Ugh. Bad. Bad. Bad.
Dad texted back a picture of Grandma Sullivan with a milk mustache.
We made our way back down to St. Mark’s Place and loitered in front of a hookah shop, pretending to be deep in conversation. Ahmed still hadn’t texted back, so our only hope was the asshole homeless kids with the asshole homeless dogs the Walt Whitman guy had told us about.
At some point, I decided it would be a good time to tell everyone about Ella’s mom. Since that first night when she had gone out in the limo, she had posted photos of herself buying an ATV for her new boyfriend, more expensive tequila, and a road trip to some Louisiana casino.
“Now we know why nobody dropped money into her NeighborCare fund,” Alice said.
“I feel awful that we sent that canary, and that Ella has two lizard parents. It just sucks.”
“Sadie, we didn’t know. And how could we have not tried, after what you went through with that baby?” Val said. “I don’t regret it at all.”
“I do think we need to reconsider our strategy,” Gordie said. “The care package model might be too risky.”
We all agreed.
“Damn, you’d think it would be easier to dole out a bucket of diamonds.” Jean nodded toward a man pushing a stroller full of empty cans. “I mean, there’s no shortage of need.”
“Street urchins, nine o’clock.” Val pointed to a group of seven or eight chain-wearing, cigarette-smoking, biker-booted kids bouncing down the street with their leather-collared dogs and their Bob Marley rainbow hats in the ninety-degree heat.
“Come on. I’m done sitting on my ass,” Alice said. She wove through a line of cars waiting at the red light.
The “street urchins” congregated on the steps of the naked doll store. They eyed us suspiciously as we approached. I didn’t blame them. We didn’t make sense. I had foolishly changed into my Taylor Swift concert T-shirt Dad said I would wear until it died because it cost him fifty-five dollars. I hadn’t even considered wearing something tougher.
“Dude, we’re looking for a smack house near Fourteenth,” Alice said to a skinny guy with thick black eyeliner and divots the size of quarters in both ears.