Valiant (3 page)

Trying their wings once more in hopeless flight:

Blind moths against the wires of window screens.

Anything. Anything for a fix of light.

X. J. K
ENNEDY
, “S
TREET
M
OTHS
,”
T
HE
L
ORDS OF
M
ISRULE

Val dozed off again, her head pillowed on an almost-empty backpack, the rest of her spread across the cold floor tiles under the subway map. She’d picked out a place to nap near the token booth, figuring no one would try to rob her or stab her right in front of people.

She had spent most of the night in the hazy state between sleep and wakefulness, nodding off for a moment, then jolting awake. Sometimes she’d woken from a dream and not known where she was. The station stank of rancid trash and mold, even without the heat to make scents bloom. Above the cracked paint and mildew, a sculptural border of curling tulips was a remnant of another Spring Street station, one that must have been old and grand. She tried to imagine that station as she slipped back to sleep.

The strangest thing was that she wasn’t scared. She felt removed from everything, a sleepwalker who had stepped off the path of normal life and into the forest where anything could happen. Her anger and hurt had cooled into a lethargy that left her limbs heavy as lead.

The next time she blearily opened her eyes, people stood over her. She sat up, the fingers on one hand digging into her backpack, the other hand coming up as if to ward off a blow. Two cops stared down at her.

“Morning,” one of them said. He had short gray hair and a ruddy face, as if he’d been standing too long in the wind.

“Yeah.” Val wiped jagged bits of sleep from the corners of her eyes with the heel of her hand. Her head hurt.

“This is a pretty shitty crash spot,” he said. Commuters passed them, but only a few bothered to look her way.

Val narrowed her eyes. “So?”

“How old are you?” asked his partner. He was younger, slim, with dark eyes and breath that smelled like cigarettes.

“Nineteen,” Val lied.

“Got any I.D.?”

“No,” Val said, hoping that they wouldn’t search her backpack. She had a permit, no license since she had failed her driving test, but the card was enough to prove she was only seventeen.

He sighed. “You can’t sleep here. You want us to bring you someplace you can get a little rest?”

Val stood up, slinging her pack over one shoulder. “I’m fine. I was just waiting for morning.”

“Where are you going?” the older cop asked, blocking her way with his body.

“Home,” Val said because she thought that would sound good. She ducked under his arm and darted up the steps. Her heart hammered as she raced up Crosby Street, through the crowds of people, past the groggy early-morning workers dragging around their backpacks and briefcases, past the bike messengers and taxis, stepping through the gusts of steam that billowed up from the grates. She slowed and looked back, but no one seemed to be following her. As she crossed to Bleecker, she saw a couple of punks drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. One had a rainbow mohawk, slightly dented at the top. Val stepped around their art carefully and kept going.

For Val, New York was always the place that made Val’s mother hold her hand tight, the glittering grid of glass-paned skyscrapers, the steaming Cup O’ Noodles threatening to pour boiling broth on kids waiting in line for TRL just blocks away from where
Les Misérables
played to matinees of high school French students bused in from the suburbs. But now, crossing onto Macdougal, New York seemed so much more and less than her idea of it. She passed restaurants sleepily stirring with activity, their doors still shut; a chain-link fence decorated with more than a dozen locks, each one decoupaged with a baby’s face; and a shop that sold only robot toys. Small, interesting places that suggested the vastness of the city and the strangeness of its inhabitants.

She ducked into a dimly lit coffeehouse called Café Diablo. The inside was wallpapered in red velvet. A wooden devil stood by the counter, holding out a silver tray nailed to his hand. Val bought a large coffee, nearly choking it with cinnamon, sugar, and cream. The heat of the cup felt good against her cold fingers, but it made her aware of the stiffness of her limbs, the knots in her back. She stretched, arching up and twisting her neck until she heard something pop.

She headed for a spot in the back, picking a threadbare armchair near a table where a boy with tiny dreads and a girl with tangles of faded blue hair and knee-high white boots whispered together. The boy ripped and poured sugar packet after sugar packet into his cup.

The girl moved slightly and Val could see that she had a butterscotch kitten on her lap. It stretched one paw to bat at the zipper on the girl’s patchy rabbit-fur coat.

Val smiled reflexively. The girl saw her looking, grinned back, and put the cat on the table. It mewed pitifully, sniffed the air, stumbled.

“Hold on,” Val said. Popping off the lid of her coffee, she went up to the front, filled it with cream, and set it down in front of the cat.

“Brilliant,” the blue-haired girl said. Val could see that her nose stud was infected, the skin around the glittering stone swollen tight and red.

“What’s its name?” Val asked.

“No name yet. We’ve been discussing it. If you have any ideas let me know. Dave doesn’t think we should keep her.”

Val took a swig of her coffee. She couldn’t think of anything. Her brain felt swollen, pressing against her skull, and she was so tired that her eyes didn’t focus right away when she blinked. “Where’d she come from? Is she a stray?”

The girl opened her mouth, but the boy put his hand on her arm. “Lolli.” He squeezed warningly, and the two shared an intense glance.

“I stole her,” Lolli said.

“Why do you tell people things like that?” Dave asked.

“I tell people everything. People only believe what they can handle. That’s how I know who to trust.”

“You shoplifted her?” Val asked, looking at the kitten’s tiny body, the curling pink tongue.

Lolli shook her head, clearly delighted with herself. “I threw a rock through the window. At night.”

“Why?” Val slipped easily into the role of appreciative audience, making the right noises, like she did with Ruth or Tom or her mother, asking the questions the speaker wanted asked, but under that familiar habit was real fascination. Lolli was exactly what Ruth wanted to be with all her posturing.

“The woman who owned the pet store smoked. Right in the store. Can you believe that? She didn’t deserve to take care of animals.”

“You smoke.” Dave shook his head.

“I don’t own a pet shop.” Lolli turned to Val. “Your head looks cool. Can I touch it?”

Val shrugged and bent her head forward. It felt strange to be touched there—not uncomfortable, just weird, as though someone were stroking the soles of her feet.

“I’m Lollipop,” the girl said. She turned to the boy with the dreads. He was thin and pretty looking, with Asian eyes. “This is Sketchy Dave.”

“Just Dave,” Dave said.

“I’m just Val.” Val sat up. It was a relief to talk to people after so many hours of silence. It was even more of a relief to talk to people that didn’t know anything about her, Tom, her mother, or any of her past.

“Not short for Valentine?” Lollipop asked, still smiling. Val wasn’t sure if the girl was making fun of her or not, but since her name was
Lollipop,
how funny could Val’s name be? She just shook her head.

Dave snorted and ripped open another sugar packet, pouring the grains onto the table and cutting them into long lines that he ate with a coffee-wetted finger.

“Do you go to school around here?” Val asked.

“We don’t go to school anymore, but we live here. We live wherever we want to.”

Val took another sip of coffee. “What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t mean anything,” Dave interrupted. “How about you?”

“Jersey.” Val looked at the milky gray liquid in her cup. Sugar crunched between her teeth. “I guess. If I go back.” She got up, feeling stupid, wondering if they were making fun of her. “’Scuse me.”

Val went to the bathroom and washed up, which made her feel less disgusting. She gargled tap water, but when she spat, she saw herself in the mirror too clearly: splotches of freckles across her cheeks and mouth, including one just below her left eye, all of them looking like ground-in dirt against the patchy tan she had from outdoor sports. Her newly shaved head looked weirdly pale and the skin around her blue eyes was bloodshot and puffy. She scrubbed her hand over her face, but it didn’t help. When she came back out, Lolli and Dave were gone.

Val finished her coffee. She thought about napping in the armchair, but the café had grown crowded and loud, making her headache worse. She walked out to the street.

A drag queen with a beehive wig hanging at a lopsided angle chased a cab, one Lucite shoe in her hand. As the cabbie sped away, she threw it hard enough that it banged into his rear window. “Fucking fucker!” she screamed as she limped toward her shoe.

Val darted out into the street, picked it up, and returned it to its owner.

“Thanks, lambchop.”

Up close, Val could see her fake eyelashes were threaded with silver, and glitter sparkled along her cheekbone.

“You make a darling prince. Nice hair. Why don’t we pretend I’m Cinderella and you can put that shoe right on my foot?”

“Um, okay,” Val said, squatting down and buckling the plastic strap, while the drag queen tried not to hop as she swayed to keep her balance.

“Perfect, doll.” She righted her wig.

As Val stood up, she saw Sketchy Dave laughing as he sat on the metal railing on the other side of the narrow street. Lolli was stretched out on one side of a batiked blue sheet that contained books, candleholders, and clothing. In the sunlight, the blue of Lolli’s hair glowed brighter than the sky. The kitten was stretched out beside her, one paw batting a cigarette over the ground.

“Hey,
Prince Valiant,
” Dave called, grinning like they were old friends. Lolli waved. Val shoved her hands in her pockets and walked over to them.

“Pop a squat,” Lolli said. “I thought we scared you off.”

“Headed somewhere?” Dave asked.

“Not really.” Val sat down on the cold concrete. The coffee had finally started racing through her veins and she felt almost awake. “What about you?”

“Selling off some stuff Dave scrounged. Hang out with us. We’ll make some money and then we’ll party.”

“Okay.” Val wasn’t sure she wanted to party, but she didn’t mind sitting on the sidewalk for a while. She picked up the sleeve of a red velvet jacket. “Where did all this stuff come from?”

“Dumpster-diving mostly,” Dave said, unsmiling. Val wondered if she looked surprised. She wanted to seem cool and unfazed. “You’d be amazed what people will pay for what they throw out in the first place.”

“I believe it,” Val said. “I was thinking how nice that jacket is.”

That must have been the right response, because Dave grinned widely, showing a chipped front tooth. “You’re okay,” he said. “So, what, you said ‘
if
you go back’? What’s that about? You on the street?”

Val patted the concrete. “I am right now.”

They both laughed at that. As Val sat beside them, people passed by her, but they only saw a girl with dirty jeans and a shaved head. Anyone from school could have walked past her, Tom could have stopped to buy a necktie, her mother could have tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, and none of them would have recognized her.

Looking back, Val knew she had a habit of trusting too much, being too passive, too willing to believe the best of others and the worst of herself. And yet, here she was, falling in with more people, getting swept along with them.

But there was something different about what she was doing now, something that filled her with a strange pleasure. It was like looking down from a high building, the way the adrenaline hit you as you swayed forward. It was powerful and terrible and utterly new.

Val spent the day there with Lolli and Dave, sitting on the sidewalk, talking about nothing. Dave told them a story about a guy he knew who got so drunk that he ate a cockroach on a dare. “One of those New York cockroaches, ones that are the size of goldfish. The thing was halfway out of his mouth and still squirming as he bit down on it. Finally, after chewing and chewing he actually swallows. And my brother is there—Luis is some kind of crazy smart, like he read the encyclopedia when he was home with chicken pox smart—and he says, ‘You know that roaches lay eggs even after they’re dead.’ Well, this guy can’t believe it, but then he starts yelling how we are trying to kill him and holding his stomach, saying he can already feel them eating him from the inside.”

“That is nasty,” Val said, but she was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. “So deeply nasty.”

“No, but it gets better,” said Lolli.

“Yeah,” Sketchy Dave said. “Because he pukes on his shoes. And the roach is right there, all chopped up, but clearly pieces of a big black bug. And here’s the thing—one of the legs moves.”

Val shrieked with disgust and told them about the time that she and Ruth smoked catnip thinking it would get them high.

When they had sold a faux crocodile-skin clutch, two T-shirts, and a sequined jacket from the blanket, Dave bought them all hot dogs off a street cart, fished out of the dirty water and slathered with sauerkraut, relish, and mustard.