CHAPTER TWO
“No, no, her name’s Cleo. Not Leo. I’m looking for a woman.”
The dark, clean-skinned bum two blocks from Parker’s house squinted at him in the street lights. “Leo ain’t been around here for a couple months. Went South or something.”
Parker yelled, “No, Cleo. Not Leo.”
“Not Leo? What about Leo? Have you seen him?” His eyes widened at Parker. “Are you his brother?”
The writer paused, then laughed. The bum rubbed his ears and grinned back at him. Parker said, “What can I offer you, uh...”
“Kindred’s my name. I like crunchy dollar bills.”
“How’s a twenty?”
“Hundred’s better.”
Parker stared at him.
“I know you got it. Probably how much your shoelace cost.”
Parker made sounds like a picky fly at a picnic feast. “I think I’ll go chat with one of your friends.”
Kindred laughed and winked, rubbing his gloved hands together. “What you want with Cleo anyway?”
“I want to talk to her.”
“She ain’t for sale, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
Kindred took off his hat and held it out. “Don’t make me beg.”
Parker pulled a twenty out of his pocket.
“Where’s your wallet?” Kindred asked.
“I don’t carry one. I’ve lived in cities all my life.”
He tilted his head back. “Ah ha.” He took the twenty and folded it up, sticking it in his left glove and propping the hat back on his head. “You can’t buy a piece of her for nothing. She ain’t like that.”
“I don’t want a piece of her. Where can I find her?”
He took off his right glove and held it open for Parker.
“First tell me where I can find her.”
“Ah, no sir. Don’t work that way.”
Parker sat down on the curb of 8th Street, and after a moment of looking around, Kindred joined him. Parker said, “I didn’t bring any more money.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
They sat in silence and watched cabs drive by. Behind them, people of all different sizes, sexes and colors passed, speaking in highs and lows and thicks and thins.
“Why do you live on the street, Kindred?”
“Who says I live on the street?”
“Well then, why did I find you sitting in a doorway shivering your ass off?”
“I like that doorway. Besides, shivering keeps me in shape.”
After a moment, Parker said, “I’m a writer.”
“Oh. And you want to write about Cleo. Poor little Cleo, living on the streets because nobody will take care of her.”
“Why are you making fun of me?”
“I’m working on another twenty.”
Parker chuckled. A cab whizzed by at a dangerous speed.
Kindred said, “So, will you write about me, too, if I help you out?”
“Not if you’re not homeless.”
“I am homeless. I just told you I wasn’t so you’d think I wasn’t.”
“You have to tell me why you live on the streets.”
Kindred rubbed his gloves together again and said, “I’m going to buy some smokes.” When he came back, he lit his cigarette with a sulfuric match, and blew out thick, gray smoke. “Okay, so I’m not homeless, but I hang out all the time. I know all the people. I like to be out here because my momma isn’t too much fun to be around.”
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
Parker looked away to hide his expression. He knew for sure that Kindred was older than him. He didn’t know how to respond. Kindred didn’t sound like he was making a joke or egging Parker on.
“You don’t believe me?” Kindred said.
“You look older.”
“I know. It’s how I get into bars. But, yeah, Momma’s just a mess, so I get out of the apartment and cruise around, trying to find something fun to do.”
Parker thought of how the man had been slumped in the doorway twenty minutes earlier with a spot of drool lingering on his lower lip.
“I ain’t seen Cleo in a couple weeks,” Kindred said.
“Tell me about her. Are you friends?”
“Oh, yeah. We get along great. She and I sit in the Knockout - that’s an alley we toast up at - and get warm by the fire. Last time I saw her, Ollie got us some marshmallows and we cooked ‘em on coat hangers. That was good eating. That’s what I’m talking about when I say I want to find the fun things to do. You like marshmallows?”
He didn’t know. He hadn’t had one since he was a child. “Sure.”
“Mmmm. Me too.” He puffed on his smoke, lighting up his face with orange.
“So what do you two talk about?”
“Oh, you know, the way things are. Art, music, other people.”
“What type of music do you like?”
“Me? Oh, I like the reggae music and all the good mellow tunes. Cleo, she likes the heavy punk rock, jazz, just about anything. She’s a wild one, Cleo.”
Parker looked out at the street. “Is she?”
“Oh, yeah. I thought that’s what you liked about her.”
“I don’t know her at all.”
“Oh, well, well, well. She parties all the time. Never stops talking. Likes to dance, too. She puts on this black skirt, and, well, you just have to see it. Always writing in a trance, and everybody wants her to write about them.”
Parker sighed and continued looking away.
“But me, I’m not a partier. I keep to myself. I have a philosophical mind, always at work. I—” He sat up straight and looked across the street. Parker tried to see what had Kindred’s gaze.
“Gotta go.” He was up and running before his cigarette could hit the pavement. Parker looked around but saw nothing. He stood and waited for a break in traffic, and walked toward the alley that had captured Kindred’s attention, and from which he had run in the opposite direction. He saw nothing but darkness and dirt.
Later that night, he picked up one of his lonely routines. “Hello, love. It’s me. What are you doing? Me? Oh, you know. Thinking about a story. Yeah, I’ve got the fire.” Parker was barely audible to the gray cat sitting outside his window on the sill. As a matter of fact, the writer had no idea there was an audience of one scrawny feline with his nose pressed against the open screen of his living room window. Parker was sitting with his back to the third story window, which, along with gray cat, displayed the alley and a wall of the building next to him. A breeze blew by and rattled the fire escape briefly, sounding like it shuddered from the chill. Parker enjoyed feeling the cold autumn night. He leaned back in the brown leather couch and stared at the only thing on his coffee table, which was a gold-framed photo of a woman.
The cat outside curled into a tighter ball, possibly wondering what type of human this was that would leave his window open on such a windy, chilly night. Perhaps the person was inviting him up.
Parker smiled at the gold-framed beauty. “Yeah, I had Thai food today, actually. Pretty good, you know, that place across from the office.” He paused. “You made brownies? I love your brownies. I remember the last time you made them for me.” He laughed. “Yes, I do. It was Christmas of last year, two weeks before you moved to London.” His lips relaxed and his eyes glazed, watching memories of her face rather than the picture resting on his table. “I’ll let you read it when I’m done. I’ll email it to you. I promise.” He focused his clear, gray eyes back on the portrait. “I’m sorry about that. I should have told you about that one before it went to press.” He looked at his hands folded in his lap. He hissed, “That was stupid,” and the cat jumped from the sound. Parker turned his head slightly when he heard paws hit the fire escape landing, wondering what the sound was, then forgot it. His hands were numb from cold. He turned around and reached out to the window, closing it and latching the lock. He sat back again and looked at the picture. “Missy, Missy, Missy, I miss you.” He ros
e, put the picture on his mantle, and walked with a shuffle to the kitchen. “Stupid,” he muttered, and poured whiskey, then soda into a short glass. He walked to his bedroom, claimed a novel about the Revolutionary War, and returned to the couch. It wasn’t the first time he wished he owned a computer in his home, but he didn’t want work to consume him.
“As if it doesn’t anyway.”
He rubbed the book’s spine and said, “If you’re so sure you know me, come and tell me yourself.”
The next morning Parker didn’t go to the office. He spent the daylight hours walking the streets and trying to pick up vibes from the people he saw who he thought might be homeless. He didn’t want to assume anything this time. He used his childhood trick of becoming seemingly invisible as he watched the happenings of others. He saw a little boy, about ten years old, wearing dirty jeans and a knit hat, pick-pocket an old woman who didn’t look like her purse had much to offer. Parker followed him from a distance, and watched him slide into an old apartment building. He thought the kid’s parents might be putting him up to it, seeing as he ran straight to a home. He also saw a white man with gray hair begging for money on Hickory Boulevard, but on closer investigation, he saw the man’s hair was sliding to the right, revealing underneath stragglers of red locks. A daytime street walker offered him goods, which he refused without emotion.
Parker asked a skinny woman peddling watches where the nearest shelter was. She said, “You’re looking for St. Anthony’s, up two streets.”
He found the shelter, which was in the basement of an ancient church. It wasn’t one of those fancy churches built by great artists in days of old, but rather a little stone square with a modern office built along side. It seemed to Parker that the only purpose this church ever had in any century was to aid the homeless.
He entered the basement from a door on the east side, with the smell of chicken pounding his nose. He opened the door at the bottom of a bright staircase, and was overwhelmed by the sound of at least fifty voices. Before he could take a good look around, a brown and white mutt came from behind the door and stuck a wet nose in his crotch. “Hey, hey, watch it.” He sent out a friendly laugh, though he wanted the owner to claim the pooch from its wanderings.
“Kenny, boy, you are so rude to the gentleman visitor.” A woman who looked as old as the church emerged from the noisy crowd of eaters and sleepers. She wore a dark rainbow-colored baja and spoke with an accent.
Parker said, “Hello, ma’am.”
Her voice rose higher. “Why, hello! You must be one of the generous souls who come to help us. Kenny likes you. You have a way with animals.”
“Thanks.” Parker had never owned a pet other than a toad he kept hidden under the bathroom sink when he was eight. “Where are you from? I noticed your accent.”
Her wrinkled hand rubbed one cheek. “I am from all over. Kenny and I have traveled all around the world.” She pointed a finger into the air. “So kind to be interested in an old parcel like me! I am guessing this second time that you do not work here after all.”
“Why is that?”
“You aren’t looking through me. Or at least, not yet. Maybe it’s your first day?”
He shook his head and rubbed Kenny’s floppy ears. He could feel dog grit settling into the lines on his fingertips. He grinned to hide his clenched teeth. “I’m here to ask about something. I thought I could find someone who would help me.”
Her black eyes widened and she inhaled like she was using albuterol. “I would be honored. Look no further. Interest you in lunch?”
He looked to the far wall at the food bar, where a few heavily clothed people picked over the contents. “I would love some lunch.”
As she led him to the food, she said, “Do you know it’s dinner time in Europe?”
“Actually, I do.”
She stopped walking and gazed up at him with respect. “A fellow world traveler. We should talk.” He smiled, but didn’t explain that he had never been to Europe.
They sat at a long cafeteria table. The chicken pot pie would have been tasty, had it not been for the salty crust. He sneezed from the overdose of pepper and wondered what it was masking.
The woman said, “You have always been a picky eater, right, young man?”
“Yes.”
A man next to him coughed so hard that he had to wipe phlegm off his face with his blue scarf.
She said, “Tell me about your dog. You must have one.”
“No dog. Right now, I don’t have time to take good enough care of one.”
“I see.” She stood up. “Be right back.” She picked up her yellow plastic cup and walked two tables over. She bent down and spoke to a man whose back was to Parker. The writer looked around the yellow room, thinking the homeless might cheer up if the walls had a few pictures on them. Actually, he realized as he watched, they didn’t look too miserable, except for the ones who were coughing or obviously sick. The man next to him hacked into the blue scarf without relief until the old woman returned. She took a deep sip from her cup and handed it to the coughing man. She said something in another language. He nodded at her and dropped the liquid into his mouth. He continued to cough after he put the cup down. Parker could smell vodka coming from him.
She sat down and leaned forward to Parker, whispering, “Whiskey’s better for the cough he has, but none around.”
Parker looked next to him as the man resumed eating between coughs. “Why don’t you get medicine?”
The man would not look at him or answer.
The woman said, “They don’t have enough, kind man. Don’t have enough.”
Parker nudged Kenny under the table with his knee as the mutt tried to make another move on his crotch. He hoped the woman hadn’t seen it. “What is your name, Ma’am?”
“You can call me Sylvia. It is the closest translation to my real name.”
“What is your real name?”
“Slyvesartaria Cannon Massodanie Kallse. And you?”
“I’m Parker.”
“Nice to meet you, Parker.” She held out a hand and smiled so that Parker could see she had three gold molars. She noticed his observation, and grinned with more sparkle.
He said, “And you.”
“Okay, now, you have been a nice, patient young man, so I will answer your question.”
He shifted and pecked at the nosy dog with his tennis shoe. “Sylvia, I am looking for an alley called Knockout.”
She smiled and looked at the table. “You don’t want to go to that dirty place. What else?” She gazed back at him, but her old eyelids were twitching.
“Yes, I do. Why wouldn’t I?”
Her eyes did not leave his face. “Oh, nothing but burned beggars there. Dangerous for a cute one like you, even if you are too skinny.”
“I’m looking for someone.”
She nodded and looked around the room. The man with the blue scarf coughed, sounding loud and juicy. He seemed not to ever run out of breath.
As though telling him about the amenities of the shelter, she said, “Kenny has a tight collar. Holds anything.”
Parker leaned back in his metal folding chair and looked down at the dog nudging his knees apart under the table. He shook his head at Kenny, and looked up at Sylvia as he put a twenty under the dog’s old, red collar, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Kenny slipped away.
“You go up to Little Point. There’s an old subway entrance that’s all boarded up. You have to go past it into the street behind. Looks like an alley, but a car can fit. Go in the third wood door on your left. Go down the hall and out the back door and you are in Knockout.” She reached under the table and petted Kenny, and then looked at Parker with her eyelids still twitching. “I think you’re a nice man. You were nice to my little dog, otherwise I’d tell you it was somewhere else and you’d end up with an ass kicking.”
Parker went home and opened three windows. He could hear cars humming by and the occasional squealing wheels. It amazed him that as many
times as he heard near-accidents, he never did hear the soft thuck-craaack of car metals meeting. He thought about Cleo, about what Kindred had said about her, and then wondered about Kindred. He wasn’t fourteen, Parker thought. What else had the man lied about?
He sighed, thinking that Knockout was his only lead, as weak as it was. He stretched out on his couch and looked up at the window behind the cushions. The sky was as blue as it was at the shore. He smiled, thinking of a white sun dress Missy had worn the last time they were at the beach together. Within minutes, he was asleep, and did not hear the mews of the gray cat that had joined him at the windowsill again. The small cat stuck its nails into the screen and pulled them out, as though stitching strings made of metal. He meowed again, ending with a touch of howl, but the person who opened his windows did not wake up.