Being Henry David - By Cal Armistead Page 0,14
get it. Absolutely nothing in my life is familiar, and it’s like standing on the edge of a cliff every damn minute, rocks crumbling under my feet.
A guarded, suspicious look crosses Jack’s face like a shadow. “I thought you said you didn’t have any money, Hank.”
“I don’t.”
“Then you’re a fucking liar. How are you going to buy yourself a train ticket if you don’t have money?”
My heart sinks. What am I thinking? Exhausted, I sink down on the floor of the terminal against the wall, and crack my head against the tile as self-punishment. It makes the lump on my head throb but I don’t even care.
“You think just because you’re wearing a nice outfit and look like a J.Crew model, they’re going to just give you a seat for free?” Jack shakes his head, like he actually feels sorry for me. “You must be used to your nice, rich daddy paying for everything so you don’t even have to think about it.”
Wow. Is that it? Do I have a rich father who buys me things so that in real life I take money for granted? I try to create an image of this wealthy, generous father, but nothing comes.
“Maybe,” is all I can manage around the lump in my throat. “I don’t remember.”
Jack sits down on the floor next to me and stares into my face for a long time. “Look,” he finally says. “Nessa and me, we can’t go home. But maybe where you’re from is worth going back to.” He reaches into his back pocket and takes out a brown leather wallet. Simon’s wallet.
“Take this.”
My mind’s eye flashes to blood, Simon’s body twitching in the alley. You’d think the thing was on fire the way I jerked my hand away.
“Take it,” Jack says, fiercer this time. “You saved my life. Plus, there’s this other thing.” He bites his cheek and stares over my shoulder, like there’s something really interesting there. “You were right. I recruited you, or whatever. Brought you to Magpie on purpose. And he gave me money for it.”
I stare at him.
“What, like a bonus or something?”
“Yeah, exactly like that.” Jack won’t meet my eyes. “So, come on, take it.”
My fingers tingle at the touch of the soft, worn leather, but I accept the wallet. It’s old and cracked, and there are initials on the front, SJG. Simon must have been a real person before he was a junkie. Someone with initials, who was proud enough to have them engraved on his wallet. I peek inside. There’s a paper social security card with the name Simon James Grady. A library card from Dubuque, Iowa. And money. At least two hundred dollars.
“Hey.” There’s a gruff voice beside us and I smell unwashed body, a familiar odor like onion soup gone bad. “You gonna eat that?”
Jack rolls his eyes. “Frankie, get the hell away from us.”
Frankie’s bloodshot eyes are lasered in on the wallet.
“Dammit,” Jack says.
We try to move to a different corner of the terminal, but Frankie lumbers after us. We ignore him. We don’t have much time.
“Jack, you need to leave too. Seriously. Go find Nessa, and get away from here.”
Jack shakes his head and nervously scans the terminal. “Don’t worry about us. I’ll think of something to tell Magpie. You didn’t get to see it, but I think he really likes us. He says we’re more special to him than any of the other kids, and I believe him. We’ll be okay, I promise.”
I bite my lip, and my eyeballs sting. I don’t want to leave Jack and Nessa behind in this place. But I can’t stay either.
Jack rubs his nose with the heel of his hand. “So where you going, Hank?”
I clutch the book. “I’m going to go to the woods to live deliberately,” I say. “To front only the essential facts of life, and see if I can learn what it has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived.”
“You’re going to what?”
I pause. The words are Thoreau’s, from the book. I saw them like a photograph in my brain and just blurted them out. “Never mind,” I say to Jack.
“You. Gonna. Eat. That?”
We look up in exasperation at Frankie, who is still hovering near us. He won’t stop staring at my back pocket, where I stuffed the wallet. “Frankie, stop staring at my ass,” I say. He ignores me and keeps his eyes locked. Jack peers over Frankie’s shoulder and freezes. “Shit,” he says.