cameras in the window display case he had been idly dusting since the time drew near for her daily arrival at the stop, he limped closer to the door so he could see her step up into the bus.
"Damn! Trissa, hold that bus!" he heard someone shriek. The girl he'd been watching turned her head sharply, nodded, and waved in his direction. His breath caught for an instant until he realized it was not him she greeted but a girl darting across the sidewalk from the drugstore next door. The girl clutched two packs of cigarettes in one hand and her wallet in the other while her dangling purse hung open, spilling some of its contents in her dash to catch the bus.
The blue and white vehicle swallowed both girls and they were gone before he had gathered his wits enough to seize this chance to meet her by rescuing the scattered contents of her friend's handbag. Disappointed in himself, he left the camera store and collected the lost bits and scraps from the sidewalk. A comb, a handkerchief, lipstick, and a few folded papers, there was probably nothing here that the girl would miss. They would think it peculiar if he went out of his way to return them on Monday. He shrugged and shuffled back to the store.
Trissa. At least he had learned that her name was Trissa. It was a gem of knowledge that offered the first glimmer of hope he had felt in months. Trissa.
The name sounded sweet to him, sweeter even than the rumble of the salt truck on that lonely road in Michigan last November. He had climbed out of the blackness to hail it and it had carried him to help. By the time he was released from the hospital with two toes on his left foot lost to frostbite, the highway department had impounded his abandoned car. He had had the devil of a time proving it was his, and that he was Nicholas Brewer, its registered owner.
"May I see your identification, please," the clerk had said. They were the words he most dreaded hearing.
"Well, that's the problem, you see. I seem to have brought the wrong wallet."
"Then I suggest you come back when you have the right one. We can't release a car to just anyone."
"But I'll pay the fines. I swear I am Nicholas Brewer." Nicholas sorted through the useless papers in his wallet, hoping to find some shred of evidence to prove it. The driver's license fell out to the countertop and the clerk snatched it up.
"What about this? Who is this Cole Baker?"
"Damned if I know," Nicholas answered with the truth. Though it was a name he was not unfamiliar with, he had never met the man and it confounded him to be forever finding his possessions cluttering up and complicating his life. Sometimes he thought Cole Baker did these things deliberately, but that sounded too paranoid to admit.
"Hair blond, eyes brown, height five-eleven, weight one sixty. Matches you," said the clerk, glancing back and forth between the photo and Nicholas, eying him narrowly.
"Yeah, me and a million others."
"Say, hey, is that you, Nick?" bellowed a voice from the hall and the mammoth figure of the salt truck driver filled the doorway. "Hey, good to see you all thawed out! I wasn't too sure you would." The man reached out his huge hand to engulf Nicholas' own and pump it vigorously.
"You know this guy, Roy?"
"Know him? Hell, I saved his life, as I don't mind braggin' on. This is Nick Brewer, that guy I found half dead during the Thanksgiving blow. You remember that, don'tcha?"
"How could I forget?" The clerk began stamping papers and shoving them through the grating. "We thought we'd never hear the end of it around here," he muttered to Nicholas. "Take these papers to the garage on Beaumont Street. They'll give you your car. Any valuables we found are listed on the voucher. Get them from Police Claims at the Fifth Street Station. Sorry for the delay, Mr. Brewer. You're in luck. The fines have been waived."
But that luck was the last of it until now. He'd had difficulty picking up the traces of his life again. Cole Baker's identification led him back to an unremembered apartment in Grand Rapids. The ring that held his car keys had a key that opened the apartment's door as well. He'd poked around assembling the clothing and belongings he recognized in the closets as his own.