Garbage days we went on our treasure hunts. Shirley probably knew more about collection days than the city crews did themselves: when each borough had its pickup, what the best areas were depending on the time of year, when you had to make your rounds in certain areas to beat the flea market dealers on their own night runs. We had dozens of routes, from Foxville down into Crowsea, across the river to Ferryside and the Beaches, from Chinatown over to the East End.
We'd head out with our shopping carts, sensei baglady and her apprentice, on a kind of Grail quest. But what we found was never as important as the zen of our being out there in the first place. Each other's company. The conversation. The night's journey as we zigzagged from one block to another, checking out this alleyway, that bin, those Dumpsters.
We were like urban coyotes prowling the city's streets. At that time of night, nobody bothered us, not the cops, not muggers, not street toughs. We became invisible knights tilting against the remnants of other people's lives.
After Shirley died, it took me over a month to go out on my own and it was never quite the same again. Not bad, just not the same.
'I remember,' I tell her.
'Well, it's something like that,' she says, 'only it's not entirely happenstance.'
I shake my head, confused. 'What are you trying to tell me, Shirley?'
'Nothing you don't already know.'
Back of me, something knocks a bottle off a heap of trash— I don't know what it is. A cat, maybe. A dog. A rat. I can't help myself. I have to have a look. When I turn back to Shirley— you probably saw this coming— she's gone.
2
Pride goes before a fall, I read somewhere, and I guess whoever thought up that little homily had her finger on the pulse of how it all works.
There was a time when I wouldn't have had far to fall; by most people's standards, at seventeen, I was already on the bottom rung of the ladder, and all the rungs going up were broken as far as I'd ever be able to reach. I lived in a squat. I made my living picking garbage and selling the better stuff off to junk shops and the fancy antique places— only through the back door, if you would, yes it's a lovely piece but terribly worn, sorry that's my best offer, many thanks and do come again. I had a family that consisted of a bunch of old dogs so worn out that nobody wanted them, not to mention Tommy who's— what's the current euphemism? I lose track. Mentally handicapped, I guess you'd call him. I just call him Tommy and it doesn't matter how dim the bulb is burning in behind his eyes; like the dogs, he became family when I took him in and I love him.
I never thought much about pride back in those days, though I guess I had my share. Maybe I was just white trash to whoever passed me on the street, but I kept myself cleaner than a lot of those paying taxes and what I had then sure beat the hell hole I grew up in.
I hit the road when I was twelve and never looked back because up until then family was just another word for pain. Physical pain, and worse, the kind that just leaves your heart feeling like some dead thing is caught inside your chest. You know what pigeons look like once the traffic's been running over them for a couple of weeks and there's not much left except for a flat bundle of dried feathers that hasn't even got flies buzzing around it anymore?
That's like what I had in my chest until I ran away.
I was one of the lucky ones. I survived. I didn't get done in by drugs or selling my body. Shirley took me in under her wing before the lean men with the flashy suits and too much jewelry could get their hands on me. Don't know why she helped me— maybe when she saw me she was remembering the day she was just a kid stepping off a bus in some big city herself. Maybe, just looking at me, she could tell I'd make a good apprentice.
And then, after five years, I got luckier still— with a little help from the Grasso Street Angel and my own determination.
I was so proud of myself for doing the right thing: I got the family off the street. I was straightening out my life. I rejoined society— not that society seemed to care all that much, but I wasn't doing it for them anyway. I was doing it for Tommy and the dogs, for myself, and so that one day maybe I could be in position to help somebody else, the way that Angel does out of her little storefront office on Grasso, the way that Shirley helped me.
I should've known better.
We've got a real place to live in— a tenement on Flood Street just before it heads on into the Tombs, instead of a squat. I had a job as a messenger for the QMS— the Quicksilver Messenger Service, run by a bunch of old hippies who got the job done, but lived in a tie-dyed past. Evenings, four times a week; I was going to night school to get my high school diploma.
But I just didn't see it as being better than what we'd had before. Paying for rent and utilities, food and for someone to come in to look after Tommy, sucked away every cent I made. Maybe I could've handled that, but all my time was gone too. I never really saw Tommy anymore, except on the weekends and even then I'd have to be studying half the time. I had it a little easier than a lot of the other people in my class because I always read a lot. It was my way of escaping— even before I came here to live on the streets.
Before I ran away I was a regular at the local library— it was both a source of books and refuge from what was happening at home. Once I got here, Shirley told me about how the bookstores strip the covers off paperbacks and just throw the rest of the book away, so I always made sure I stopped by the alleys in back of their stores on garbage days.
I hadn't read a book in months. The dogs were pining— little Rexy taking it the worst. He's just a cat-sized wiry-haired mutt with a major insecurity problem. I think someone used to beat on him, which made me feel close to him, because I knew what that was all about. Used to be Rexy was like my shadow; nervous, sure, but so long as I was around, he was okay. These days, he's just a wreck, because he can't come on my bike when I'm working and they won't let me bring him into the school.
The way things stand, Tommy's depressed, the other dogs are depressed, Rexy's almost suicidal, and I'm not in any great shape myself. Always tired, impatient, unhappy.
So I really needed to meet a ghost in the Tombs right about now. It's doing wonders for my sense of sanity— or rather lack thereof, because I know I wasn't dreaming that night, or at least I wasn't asleep.
3
Everybody's worried about me when I finally get home— Rexy, the other dogs, Tommy, my landlady, Aunt Hilary, who looks after Tommy— and I appreciate it, but I don't talk about where I've been or what I've seen. What's the point? I'm kind of embarrassed about anybody knowing that I'm feeling nostalgic for the old squat and I'm not quite sure I believe who I saw there anyway, so what's to tell?
I make nice with Aunt Hilary, calm down the dogs, put Tommy to bed, then I've got homework to do for tomorrow night's class and work in the morning, so by the time I finally get to bed myself, Shirley's maybe-ghost is pretty well out of my mind. I'm so tired that I'm out like a light as soon as my head hits the pillow.
Where do they get these expressions we all use, anyway? Why out like a light and not on like one? Why do we hit the pillow when we go to sleep? Logs don't have a waking/sleeping cycle, so how can we sleep like one?
Sometimes I think about what this stuff must sound like when it gets literally translated into some other language. Yeah, I know. It's not exactly Advanced Philosophy 101 or anything, but it sure beats thinking about ghosts, which is what I'm trying not to think about as I walk home from the subway that night after my classes. I'm doing a pretty good job, too, until I get to my landlady's front steps.
Aunt Hilary is like the classic tenement landlady. She's a widow, a small but robust grey-haired woman with more energy than half the messengers at QMS. She's got lace hanging in her windows, potted geraniums on the steps going down to the pavement, an old black-and-white tabby named Frank that she walks on a leash. Rexy and Tommy are the only ones in my family that Frank'll tolerate.
Anyway, I come walking down the street, literally dragging my feet I'm so tired, and there's Frank sitting by one of the geranium pots giving me the evil eye— which is not so unusual— while sitting one step up is Shirley— which up until last night I would have thought was damned well impossible. Tonight I don't even question her presence.
'How's it going, Shirl?' I say as I collapse beside her on the steps.
Frank arches his back when I go by him, but deigns to give my shoulder bag a sniff before he realizes it's
