There's No Place Like Here (23 page)

He introduced me proudly to his receptionist, Carol, and brought me into his office. It smelled of him, it looked like him, everything about it was Mr. Burton, Mr. Burton, oh, Mr. Burton. I felt like I was wrapped in a gigantic hug, embraced in his arms as soon as I stepped in and sat on his couch.

“It’s a bit better than the one we used to have, isn’t it?” He smiled, retrieving something from a desk drawer and bringing it over.

“It’s beautiful.” I looked around and breathed in his scent.

Suddenly he was nervous. He sat opposite me. “I was supposed to give this to you last month when I called round, for your birthday. I hope you like it.” He slid the box across the veneer cherry table. The box was long, red, and velvet. I took it in my hands as though it were the most fragile thing I’d ever held, and I rubbed my fingers along the soft furry velvet. I looked at him; he was nervously eyeing the box. I opened it slowly and held my breath. A silver watch glistened inside.

“Oh, Mr. Bur—” I started to say, and he grabbed my hand, stopping me.

“
Please
, Sandy. It’s Gregory now, OK?”

It’s Gregory now. It’s
Gregory
now. It’s Gregory
now
. A choir of cherubs sang in my ear.

I nodded, smiling. I took the watch from the box and wrapped it around my left wrist, fiddling with the clasp, still stunned by the unexpected gift.

“If you look at the back, you’ll see your name is engraved.” With shaking hands, he helped me turn it over. There it was, SANDY SHORTT. “May it never go missing.”

We smiled.

“Don’t force it,” he warned, watching me trying to close it. “Here, let me help you,” he said just as the clasp made a snapping sound between my fingers.

I froze. “Did I break it?”

He moved to the couch beside me, all fingers and thumbs as he tried to fix it, his skin brushing against mine and everything,
everything,
melting inside of me.

“It’s not broken but the clasp is loosened. I’ll have to take it back and get it fixed.” He tried to keep the disappointment from his voice but failed miserably.

“No!” I stopped him from taking it off me. “I love it, I want to keep it on.”

“It’s too loose, Sandy. It may open and fall off.”

“No, I’ll keep my eye on it. I won’t lose it.”

He looked unsure.

“Just for today at least, let me wear it.”

“OK.” He stopped fiddling with it and we both finally stayed still and looked at one another.

“I’m really giving you this to help you with your timekeeping. Three years without contact are not allowed to pass again.”

I looked down and twisted the watch around my wrist, admiring the links of the wristband, the mother-of-pearl face. “Thank you, Gregory.” I smiled, loving how the word felt in my mouth, on my tongue as I said it. “Gregory, Gregory,” I repeated a few more times as he laughed, loving every moment of it.

I let him take me out for lunch and we saw where we were.

Lunch was as close to a disaster as it could possibly have been. We consumed enough food for thought to last us our lifetimes. If either of us had any ridiculous notions that this could be the beginning of something special—and we most certainly did—we were brought to earth by the realization that we were right back where we finished off. Or very possibly right back to Gregory having to walk over razor-sharp grass blades. I was Scathach and my heart was on Scathach’s island in all her and its fierce extremities. I had worsened by the years.

Yet I didn’t ever, not for one day, take my watch off. There were times when it fell, but we all do that. It was put back where it belonged, where I felt and knew it to belong. That watch symbolized an awful lot. The positive side to our learning lunch was that it confirmed that we felt inextricably linked to each other, as if there was an invisible umbilical cord joining us both, allowing us to feed off one another, helping us to grow and give one another life.

Inevitably there was the flip side: that we could tug on the cord whenever we liked, twisting it and knotting it, not caring enough that our twisting and knotting had the ability to choke and suffocate each other slowly.

From a distance everything was great; close up, things were completely different. We couldn’t fight the effects of time; how it alters us, how with each year an extra layer is glazed upon us, how every day we are something more than we were. Unfortunately for me and for Gregory, it was glaringly obvious that I was something and somebody far less than who I once was.

32

B
obby closed the door of Lost and Found quietly behind us, as though the sound would bring the stall owners outside to a stunned silence. I wasn’t sure if this behavior was just another part of his dramatics but I sensed with a mild panic that it wasn’t. Bobby let go of my clammy hand and scuttled off into an adjoining room without a word, closing the door behind him. Through the slit I could see his shadow flickering as he darted by the light, furiously rooting around; moving boxes, scraping furniture across the floor, clinking glasses, making every possible sound, each sound introducing a new conspiracy theory in my suspicious mind. Finally I averted my eyes from the doorway and looked around the room.

I was faced with walnut shelves floor to ceiling high, like in the old grocery stores of decades ago. Baskets were filled to the brim with knickknacks, tape, gloves, pens, markers, and lighters. Others were filled with socks with a handwritten sign excitedly announcing the sale of actual
pairs
. There were dozens of clothes racks lining the center of the shop, the men’s and women’s sections separated, everything color-coordinated, styles, eras labeled with dates from the fifties, sixties, seventies, and up. There were costumes, traditional clothing, and wedding dresses. (Who loses a wedding dress?) On the opposite wall there was a selection of books, and before that there was a counter displaying jewelry: backs of earrings, single earrings, some pairs Bobby had matched up despite the difference in their appearances.

There was a musty smell in the shop; everything was secondhand, used, had a history. Thin T-shirts had depth, had layers glazed upon them. There wasn’t the same atmosphere as in a shop of shiny new things. Nothing was squeaky clean and young and innocently ready to learn. There were no books unread, no hats not yet worn, no pens not yet held. The gloves had held the hand of an owner’s loved one, the shoes had walked distances, scarves had wrapped, umbrellas had protected. These objects knew things, knew what they were supposed to do. They had experience of life and lay in baskets, folded on shelves, and hung on racks ready to teach those who wore them. Like most of the people here, these objects had tasted life and then saw it slip away. And like most people here, they waited until they could taste it again.

I couldn’t help but wonder about who was looking for them now, who was tearing their hair out to find their favorite earrings. Who was grumbling and searching in the bottom of their bag for another lost pen? Who was on their cigarette break only to find their lighter was missing? Who was already late for work and couldn’t find their car keys that morning? Who was trying to hide from their spouse the fact that their wedding ring had disappeared? They could look and look till their eyes were sore, but they would never find. What a time for me to have such an epiphany. Here in Aladdin’s cave of lost possessions far away from home.
There’s no place like home
…the phrase taunted me again.

“Bobby,” I called, inching closer to the doorway and shutting out the voice in my head.

“Just a minute,” came his muffled reply, followed by a bang, followed by a profanity.

Despite my nerves, I smiled. I ran my finger along a walnut dish cabinet, like the kind you’d expect to contain the good silverware and crockery. Here it contained hundreds of photographs of smiling faces from all over the world, over the decades. I picked up one of a couple standing in front of Niagara Falls and studied it. It looked like it was taken in the seventies; it had the yellowy tint that could be obtained only by being dipped in time. Two fortysomethings in wide flares and raincoats, one second caught and contained among a lifetime of seconds. If they were alive now, they too would be in their seventies with grandchildren looking on and waiting patiently as they leafed through their photo albums, looking for the picture to recall their trip to Niagara. Secretly wondering if they had imagined it all, whether that second among a lifetime of seconds had been true at all, while grumbling to themselves, “I know I have it here somewhere…”

“Nice idea, isn’t it?”

I looked up to see Bobby watching me from the doorway. After all his rummaging in the next room, he had nothing in his hands.

“Last week, Mrs. Harper found a wedding photo of her cousin Nadine, whom she hadn’t seen for five years. You wouldn’t believe her reaction when she came across the photo. She sat there all day just staring at it. It was a group photo of everyone at the wedding, you see; her entire family was there. Imagine not seeing your family for five years and then suddenly coming across a recent photo of them? She only came in looking for socks,” he said with a shrug. “It’s times like that when I feel useful around here.”

I put the frame of the couple down. “You said you were expecting me.” I said it more harshly than I meant to, but I was scared.

He unfolded his arms and placed his hands in his pockets. I thought he was finally going to take something out of them and give it to me but instead he left them there. “I’ve been here for three years now.” He had the same haunted face as everyone else had when they recalled the memory of arriving here. “I was sixteen years old. Two years to go till I finished school, ten years to go till I planned on growing up. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I figured I’d still be at home annoying Mum until she forced me out and made me get a proper job. In the meantime I was happy being the joker at school and having my boxers washed and ironed. I didn’t take many things seriously.” He shrugged and then repeated, “I was only sixteen.”

I nodded, not knowing where this was going. Wondering why on earth he said he’d been expecting me.

“I didn’t know what to do when I first arrived here. I spent most of the time on the other side of the woods trying to find a way out. But there’s none.” He took his hands out of his pockets and made a clear signal. “I’ll tell you that now, Sandy, there’s
no
way out of here and I’ve seen people drive themselves demented trying to find a way.” He shook his head. “I soon realized I had to start life here. I had to, for once in my life, take something seriously.” He shifted uncomfortably in his stance. “It happened when I was looking for some clothes to wear. I was rummaging through all the gear outside, feeling like a homeless man at a junkyard. I came across a sock that was bright orange, glowing from under a business file I imagine someone was fired that morning for losing. It was so bright I couldn’t help but wonder how on earth someone had managed to lose something so luminous, something that so clearly stood out from the crowd. But the more I looked at it, the better it made me feel about myself turning up here, because before, I thought it was my fault. I thought it was my complacency that led me to wind up here. I thought that if I’d paid more attention in school and had stopped messing around so much, that I could have prevented myself from coming here.”

I nodded. I knew that very same feeling.

“The sock made me feel better because it was the brightest thing I’d ever seen.” He laughed. “It was even
labeled
for Christ’s sake, and I just knew that it was bad luck and
only
bad luck on both our parts for ending up here! There was nothing I could have done to avoid ending up here, no more than the sock could have done. I felt sorry for the person who’d labeled it, put their address on it, who’d basically done everything to prevent it from going missing. So I kept it to remind myself of that feeling, of that day I stopped blaming myself and everybody else. A
sock
made me feel better.” He smiled. “Follow me.” He went back into the adjoining room.

The next room was much the same as the shop, with walls lined with shelving units, though it was much smaller and was piled high with cardboard boxes, by the looks of it, used for storage.

“Here’s the sock.” He gave it to me and I held it in my hands. It was small, that of a child, and was of towel material. If Bobby thought the sock was going to have the same effect on me as it did on him, he was wrong. I still wanted out of here and blamed myself and everybody else for putting me here.

“After a few weeks of being here, I found myself helping newcomers to find clothes and anything else they needed when they arrived. So I eventually opened this place up. Mine is the only store in this village where you can get everything all under one roof,” he said proudly. My lack of enthusiasm caused his smile to disappear and he continued his story. “Anyway, as part of owning and running this place, I have to go out every day and collect as many useful things as possible. I pride myself on being the only place that sells actual pairs of shoes and socks, matching outfits, and such like. Other people just gather what they find and display them. I search for the other half—kind of like a matchmaker,” he added with a grin.

“Go on,” I urged, sitting on an old torn chair that reminded me of my first sessions with Mr. Burton.

“Anyway, the orange sock wasn’t much of a big deal at all until I found this.” He leaned over and took a T-shirt from a box beside him. Again, it appeared to be that of a child. “And
that
wasn’t even a big deal until I found this.” He placed another odd sock on the floor before me and studied my face.

“I don’t get it.” I shrugged, throwing the orange sock down to the floor.

He continued to take out the contents of the cardboard box in silence and laid them out on the floor before me while my mind worked overtime trying to decipher the code.

“I thought there was more in this one, but anyway, that’s the lot,” Bobby said finally.