Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands (31 page)

But if someone lived here now who wasn’t a total loser like Poacher, why was the door unlocked? I couldn’t figure that out. But then I heard footsteps on the stairs below us, and so I grabbed Cameron by the hand and pulled him with me back into the entry-way. I saw a heavyset guy in his late fifties or early sixties trudging up the steps with an empty plastic wastebasket in each hand. He was wearing a blue denim shirt with the sleeves cut away, and he had some serious tats on his arms and his neck: An eagle. Some eagle wings. A motorcycle made out of flames. But he was also wearing tortoiseshell eyeglasses, which made him look kind of like an overweight science teacher from the chin up.

By the time he got to us, he was puffing a bit.

“Can I help you two?” he asked, and then he pushed past us into the apartment.

“We used to live here,” I said.

He put down the wastebaskets in his front hallway and rubbed the back of his neck. “I hope not with that drug dealer who lived here before me.”

“No. It was a couple years ago,” I lied. I had to restrain myself from asking him exactly what had happened to
that drug dealer
, because I really wanted to know. I really wanted to know where everyone was.

“I moved in two days ago. I wanted to scrub the place with Purell—floor to ceiling. You’d think the landlord would have done that. Nope.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what it was like when you lived here, but it was a pit when I moved in. Only good thing about this place is the rent, which isn’t much, and the view, which is actually pretty nice.”

“And it’s light,” I said.

“Yup. It’s light.” He put out his hand. “My name’s Andy.”

“Abby,” I said. His fingers were kind of moist and clammy, but it had been a long time since anyone had wanted to shake my hand. “This is Cameron—my brother.”

He leaned over a little bit and shook Cameron’s hand, too. “Hello, little man.”

Then the three of us stood there awkwardly for a long moment. He was eyeing our massive backpacks and Cameron’s mummy bag. Finally I said, “Well, I guess the place is still here. Thank you.”

“I’d invite you in, but somehow I don’t think my parole officer would approve.”

“Gotcha,” I said.

“I kind of figured you would.”

I wasn’t sure whether I should be insulted or flattered that he figured I was so street-smart I knew the drill about parole officers. But given how Cameron and I must have looked and all the stuff we had with us, it was sort of ridiculous to feel one way or the other. Our deal—who we were, what we were—was pretty clear.

“You need a job?” he asked.

Instantly I took a little step away from him. Looking back, I think it’s hilarious that a guy tells me he’s a felon and I only say, “Gotcha,” like
I understand
. But a guy tells me he has a job for me and immediately I assume he’s going to unzip his pants. God, I’m fucked up.

“No.”

“Okay. But if you decide you do, stop by Henry’s. You know Henry’s?”

I did. It was a diner on Bank Street.

“My brother’s the manager there. Been there forever. Started as a cook, like, twenty years ago. Now I’m one of his dishwashers. He got me the gig. They always seem to need waitresses there.”

Ever since Camille had spotted me at the food court in the mall, it had crossed my mind that maybe, somehow, I could get a real job. A waitress, maybe. Or maybe I could score some hours at a Burger King or Taco Bell. But I had no experience and no references and no ID. Who was going to hire me? And I knew from my days in the posse there was no way in hell that a person could live alone anywhere in Burlington on minimum wage. Rents were crazy. You either needed a good job or you needed subsidies or you had to have roommates.

But now I had Cameron and I’d promised him I’d find us a Plan B.

“If I change my mind, who do I talk to?” I asked.

“Well, you’re talking to me for starters. Drop off a résumé at the diner. I’ll tell my brother to keep an eye out for it. He does most of the hiring.”

“A résumé.” Mostly I was just thinking out loud.

“Yup. Piece of paper. Has your experience. Jobs. Where you live.” His sentence had started out kind of light and sarcastic, but he’d emphasized the last three words in a way I didn’t really like.

“Got it,” I said simply. I think it was self-preservation that made me polite. My instinct was to show him just how mental I could be and say something snotty, but I was able to dial it down. “Thank you,” I even added.

“Not a biggie,” he said. “You gonna be okay?”

“Oh, we’re cool,” I reassured him. “Maybe I will drop off a résumé.” I put my hand on Cameron’s back and we hoisted our backpacks off the floor. He cradled his mummy bag the way he
liked and I took his skateboard. Then I guided him to the stairs. “Thanks,” I said again, and Andy gave me this small salute.

When Cameron and I were outside Andy’s place and a block and a half away from the building, I realized I had put my hand once again on Cameron’s back. It dawned on me that this was precisely the way my dad would guide me through crowds, and the realization made me at once both happy and sad. Suddenly my mind was filled with images that raced past like a Tumblr feed, me at different ages but my dad always looking pretty much the same, and in all of them my dad had his hand on my back and I was feeling either happy or safe or both. There we were in front of Snow White’s Scary Adventures smack-dab in the middle of the Magic Kingdom in Disney World, the sky almost the same blue as the Dorothy Gale gingham dress I was wearing. (You know they’ve closed that Snow White ride now, right? Why would they do that? Crazy and cruel, it seems to me. I get that it was kind of dated, but how could a kid not love that witch? I was terrified of her. I loved it!) That day was the first time I was allowed to go to a ladies’ room alone. I was five. My mom couldn’t take me because she was standing in line at some other part of the park at some other ride, getting the three of us Fast Passes. My dad later told me that he had waited outside that ladies’ room door scared to death that I’d been abducted. Maybe there were two entrances, and some madman was stealing me away and disappearing into the crowds through that other exit. My mom always thought my dad’s panic was kind of sweet when he told her about it. Other images I saw behind my eyes of my dad and me with his hand on my back? Walking to the school bus from the edge of our driveway the first day of kindergarten. (Once again, my backpack was way too big for my body.) Walking to a Brownie jamboree. Walking across our backyard with Maggie the puppy in my arms, her leash dangling behind her like her tail.

Genetics, I thought. Genetics. We really can’t escape them, can we?

I looked down at Cameron and wondered about the way he would just reach up and take my hand. I didn’t imagine a lot of nine-year-old boys would do that. So I asked him, “Did your mom like it when you held her hand?”

I could literally feel him becoming self-conscious and realized this might have been a horrible question to ask him.

And, of course, it turned out it was. We didn’t hold hands like that ever again until we were together in the emergency room.

Chapter 17

We went to Leunig’s
, where Camille had told me she worked. Cameron stood just outside with our stuff while I went in. The place was between lunch and dinner, so except for the bar it was pretty quiet. And even at the bar everyone was drinking cappuccinos and espressos and super-expensive hot chocolates. It really was a very nice restaurant. The bartender said Camille wasn’t due for another hour, so I asked if I could leave her a note.

“Yes, sure. But do you mind writing it over there?” he said, and he pointed at the dark corner of the bar near the curtains that went to the bathrooms. I guess I was kind of a check minus in the Project Runway department. I hadn’t been able to scare up passes for the Y in two days, and it must have showed. I nodded this was fine and kind of shrunk as much as I could.

“You need a pen?” he asked. He was a pretty handsome dude with a Johnny Depp Vandyke on his chin. Maybe thirty years old and very tall and trim. The uniform at Leunig’s was a tight white shirt and a black tie.

“That would be great,” I said. “And maybe something to write on.”

He nodded and handed me a pen and one of the blank slips they used for bills.

“Need something else?” This was the bartender again. I realized I hadn’t written a word yet because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. If Camille had been there, I was going to ask if Cameron and I could crash on the floor of her and her roommate’s place for
a night. That’s all I was hoping for: a night. Suddenly I just needed to sleep and to be inside.

“You know what?” I said to the bartender. He raised his eyebrows and waited. “I’ll come back in a couple of hours.”

“Cool,” he said, and he nodded his head in the direction of the front door.

Next we trudged two blocks to the Kinko’s on South Winooski. It was right by the day station for the homeless, so I knew it well. I had passed it dozens of times. And there I used six bucks from the little cash I had left and created a résumé for Andy’s brother at the diner. It was all made up, of course. If the dude chose to call any of my references, I was fucked. But I hadn’t much of a choice. I dug around inside my backpack, hoping I still had that little pink Post-it with Camille’s number, and fortunately I did. That was the phone number I was going to have to use as a contact.

When I looked at the résumé after printing it out, I decided it didn’t look half bad. There was a diner I made up in Briarcliff and a few years babysitting and even an autumn as an after-school tutor. I mean, I would have hired me. I knew waitressing would be hard, but I have a good memory for everything but the periodic table. And I’d eaten at enough diners in my life and seen enough waitresses “slinging hash” on TV and in the movies that I was pretty sure I could figure it out. (I’ve always gotten a charge out of the expression “slinging hash.” It always makes me imagine a food fight.)

Then the two of us walked back to Leunig’s. I considered dropping off the résumé at Henry’s Diner first, but given the way the bartender had viewed me as a sort of stinky mongrel dog, I figured I should wait a day. I still believed that I—to use another phrase that always gives me the grins—cleaned up nice. Either I would shower at Camille’s or I would be able to cadge a day pass for
the Y. But I’d be sure I was seriously presentable when I met Andy’s brother. After all, I had to for Cameron.

Camille was amazing and said of course we could crash at her place for a night—even two or three if we needed to. She said her roommate would be cool. To this day I don’t know if Camille changed because she felt guilty for stealing my earrings and sort of running me out of the teen shelter or whether she just grew up and became a really good person—whether the counselors at the shelter got through to her and worked their magic. But she gave me the address and her key because her roommate would be working at Macy’s when we got there, and so we walked to the apartment and I went straight to the shower, where I could cut myself senseless and wash my hair. I felt almost human when I got out of the bathroom.