The Matchmaker's Medium

He instantly got serious. “Marcus. Yeah, my brother’s been missing for a couple of days, now. He’s only seven, and I’m worried about him.”

“Seven? Wow; that is young.”

“I know. He’s never gone missing before, never even wandered off at the store or anything. Trevor’s one of those good kids, almost a mama’s boy, but not a punk or anything. If he gets hurt he doesn’t act like a pussy—I mean, uh, a sissy.”

I tilted my head to the side, like I was trying to figure him out, but I was really waiting for Jamal to lean over and say something. He had back up, away from the recliner, tilting his head back one way, then the other, looking at Marcus with his eyebrows furrowed.

Not getting any help from Jamal, I asked, “Where was he the last time you saw him?”

“Mama saw him two days ago; he was watchin’ cartoons on Nickelodeon while she went to the shower. She wasn’t gone but ten, fifteen minutes, same as damn near every day. She hates to take a shower at night cuz then her hair stays wet in the pillow, and—“

“Okay, I got it. So, what time of day was it?”

“Let’s see, I just left for school, I’m a senior this year, so I have a late start class three days a week. Would’ve been around 10.”

“And there was no sign of anyone coming in? Nothing knocked over?”

“Nope. Like he just disappeared right out of the living room, vanished. Didn’t even take his boots or coat or anything.”

“And what did your mother do when she got out of the shower?”

“She freaked. I mean, I guess she looked around for a few minutes and all, but she said when she saw his coat was still there and the TV was on and the door was unlocked—“

“The door was unlocked?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. We taught him to keep it locked and chained from the inside, and not to answer the door unless a grown up is around,” he put his head down, started fidgeting with his hands. “Guess that didn’t sink in too good, huh.”

“So she saw the TV still on, the winter clothes still there, and the door was unlocked. Anything else?” I snuck a peek at Jamal, who had his eyes closed, his hands up to his temples, like one of those commercials where the guy has a “really bad migraine, right across here”.

“That’s about it. The phone never rang, she didn’t hear any loud noises, nothing was knocked over or stolen, Trevor just—up and disappeared.”

He raised his head, looking at me with big, shining, brown eyes, looking like an overgrown, scared little kid, instead of the almost-man colossus he really was.

“That’s not a lot of information to go on,” I said, turning to Jamal and clearing my throat. Finally, he seemed to snap out of it, rushing over to my side and whispering frantically into my ear. As he spoke, I repeated what he said, nearly word for word:

‘Your brother is still alive. But someone took him out of the house. Someone stronger than him. A stranger to you.’

I stopped, pulled my head back and asked Jamal, “Are you sure? That’s what you want me to say? ‘A stranger to you’?”

Jamal didn’t even answer, just pointed at Marcus, as if to say, Tell him!

“All right, all right,” I said, shaking my head at his strangely cryptic words.

“Who are you talking to?” Marcus asked, looking at me like I was an escaped mental patient.

“Didn’t your friend tell you how things work?” I asked, feeling annoyed.

“Sort of. He said you know stuff that other people don’t know. Like, how to find missing things and people.”

“That’s part of it. The other part is where I get the information from. To put it bluntly: I get it from a ghost. My ghost. Marcus, meet Jamal.” I gestured from Marcus to Jamal, like they were finally being properly introduced. Marcus lifted his eyebrows and looked like he might want to run outside without bothering to find his boots and coat. Jamal did a formal little bow, smiled, and turned to see how I would handle this one.

“Just trust me. Jamal here is from D.C. and he’s pretty good at figuring things out for people.”

“Oh, well, okay, then. As long as he’s one of them good ghosts, not the kind that want to steal your soul or anything.”

Jamal grimaced, shrugged, and threw his hands up in disgust, “Too many of those stupid horror flicks! They never get it right!”

Well, they almost never get right, I thought, eyeing my pimp-ghost friend as he paced around the living room, totally annoyed by the inability of ‘the living’ to understand ‘the dead’. Actually, from what I had seen, a lot of the ‘horror flicks’ had gotten it right on the money, in a lot of different ways. I mean, here I was, watching a pretty ticked-off ghost who couldn’t be seen by anyone else—so far—ranting about how stupid ‘living’ people were. I giggled at that, trying to cover it up with a little cough.

“No, he doesn’t want to steal anything. But let me see if I can figure out what else he knows.” I motioned towards Jamal, who refused at first, stubbornly shaking his head with his arms crossed in front of his chest. Luckily, he gave in after only a few seconds, leaning over to whisper in my ear again:

“Trevor is in a basement, with the stronger one. He won’t let Trevor out. He’s crying and scared; he thinks no one will find him. He’s calling for his mama—“

“That’s enough.”

I nodded, aware that they had touched a raw nerve in the young man. Jamal stepped away, turned his back and disappeared through the wall, to the outside. Not for the first time—or the last—I desperately wished I could disappear, too.

Marcus’ tears ran freely, spilling down his soft-skinned cheeks, stopping at his neatly-trimmed, barely- peach-fuzz moustache, then detouring down his chin and neck. He swiped at them with the heel of his hands, like he was angry that he couldn’t stop such an embarrassing and inconvenient thing.

“I gotta go tell the police all this stuff, so they can rescue him.”

“Okay,” I said, rising to help him gather his winter gear.

“No, it’s okay, I got it,” he said, waving off my help.

“I’m sorry, Marcus, I know it’s got to be devastating to—“

“Look, no offense, lady, but you don’t know anything about how I feel. My little brother barely knows how to ride a bike, cuz I taught him a few months ago. Now he’s in some basement, crying and scared, thinks no one’s comin’ for him.”

I hung my head, shamed into silence.

He finished dressing, pulling his stocking cap over his head, as I reached around him to the doorknob. But he touched my hand and asked, “You don’t know where he is?”

I felt tears filling my own eyes, and I bit my lip, trying to will them away. “No, Jamal didn’t tell me, which means even he doesn’t know.”

“All right, then,” he said, moving my hand away, turning the knob easily in his huge hand, and popping the stuck door open like it was a piece of paper. “I’ll call you when we find him.”

“Okay,” I said, watching him walk away, his huge frame bent as he carried the weight of the universe with him, down the crumbled-splotchy concrete walk.

He didn’t call me.

* * *

About a week later, I was watching the news on a huge flat-screen monitor in the bank, as I waited in line to get a money order for my rent. Stupid landlord, stuck in the damn 20^th century, asking for money orders to pay rent. Every month I had to do it, I complained and bitched about it. But, as I stood there in line with four or five other people, wondering the same old thing I always wondered when I was in a situation like this—What the hell happened to ‘customer service’? It’s like no one cares if the customer is happy anymore, even when we’re the only reason they have a job at all— something familiar caught my eye.

As usual, the TV volume was on ‘mute’ and I had to read the subtitles for closed captioning—which I always