Made in the U.S.A. (12 page)

“Excuse me,” a woman said to Fate, who was blocking the door. When Fate followed her inside, he slid into one of the many empty desks at the back of the room and watched the movie, a documentary about a bicycle policeman on the streets of Seattle. The narrative was in English and Wolof, a language widely spoken in Senegal—a fact Fate would discover later when he returned to his books of trivia. But the title of the film, he found out when the movie had ended, was
Police Beat
.

He would have liked to stay while the credits rolled, but when the classroom lights came on, he left hurriedly, before being subjected to questioning by whoever was in charge of the class.

Not far away, on the northwest side of the campus, he discovered a recently constructed school. According to a sign over the entrance, this was the Paradise Elementary School, and from a note taped to the door, he found that classes for grades K through six would begin on September 5, just weeks away.

For the rest of the day, Fate imagined himself a student at Paradise Elementary School, a name that echoed in his head like the notes to a piece of well-loved music, one so familiar to him that he could sing it in his sleep.

In the Desert Garden, Fate found four teams of Scrabble players, their games set up on tables and benches shaded by a pergola thick with the smell of cape honeysuckle. He watched the play, strolling from one group to another. The players, mixed in ages, were quiet with concentration, but now and then one would look up and, smiling, ask if he played. When he answered that he did but admitted to being inexperienced, some acknowledged that they were new at the game themselves, then invariably gave him an invitation to join them any Tuesday or Friday at two.

They couldn’t have imagined what their kindness, an invitation of inclusion, meant to him then.

A few blocks away from the campus, Fate passed behind a Chinese restaurant as an employee, a man of indeterminate age and Asian features, came out the back door with several large plastic bags, which he carried to a Dumpster in a nearby alley. When he saw Fate watching, he said, “Hi.”

Fate nodded, then started walking away.

“Wait,” the man called. “I’ll be right back,” he said, his voice without accent.

Fate, sure he’d done nothing wrong, nothing for which the man might mean him harm, waited while the man went back into the restaurant, returning minutes later with a Chinese takeout box and a plastic-wrapped napkin with chopsticks and plastic utensils.

“Thought you might like to try our Singapore noodles with shrimp. Best in the city.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“We serve buffet every day until two when we close, reopen at five. Whatever is left on the lunch line, we throw out. And I believe you might like to try this.”

“Thank you,” Fate said, accepting the gift. “Thanks very much.”

“No problem.” Before he went back inside, the man said, “You come back tomorrow, and if you’re lucky, we might have some mushroom beef left. Or maybe kung pao chicken.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’ll be here. See—”

“I lived on the streets when I was your age. For three years.”

Before Fate could respond, the man turned his back and disappeared inside the restaurant.

By the time she’d filled out job applications at Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, and the Tropicana, Lutie knew the chances of her being hired as a cocktail waitress were next-to-nothing. Either her new ID failed to convince the people working in employment that she was twenty-two or the size of her boobs, even enhanced as they were with paper towels, made her an unlikely candidate for the profession.

She didn’t give up, not then, not until she’d tried at two more casinos, but at MGM, a hotel with over three thousand rooms, she applied for a job on the cleaning staff, the job of a hotel maid. If she was hired, she’d work for minimum wage plus tips, but she was told not to expect much. Gamblers checking out of the hotels, she heard, were not inclined to have more than change for the maids who cleaned their toilets, made their beds, and carried away their trash.

She agreed to a drug test, which involved nothing more than giving up a clipping of her hair. And she signed a form consenting to a background check, which, she trusted, would show no evidence of a felony conviction. Since “Belinda Ferguson,” the new name on her documents, had died at age three, there was a strong indication she’d had no criminal history.

Lutie didn’t know until the conclusion of the test, signing the consent, and the end of the interview that a job wasn’t available then, wouldn’t be available until at least the following month. And she and Fate couldn’t survive that long without money.

Their needs, including toothpaste and deodorant, products they could share, and tampons, soon to be an immediate necessity for her, could be provided by some quick maneuvers at a grocery or drugstore, but food was a different problem.

Lutie knew she could manage to slip a couple of candy bars into her purse or pockets, maybe even a banana or two, but they couldn’t get by for long on that kind of diet.

Then, sitting in “Central Park” at New York–New York, wondering what her next move would be, she saw two elderly women, both in polyester pantsuits, both with the same permed, short gray hair. Respectable-looking grandmother types.

“Excuse me, ladies.” Lutie lowered her gaze as if she couldn’t meet the eyes of these two strangers. “But . . . well, I was wondering, uh, hoping that . . . maybe you might, uh, be able to help me.”

Stammering and with her fingers fidgeting with the straps of her purse, she trusted that her gestures would convey her humiliation in asking for help.

The taller of the two women put both hands on her belly bag, a protective measure. “Help you with what?” she asked suspiciously.

“See, me and my little brother . . . well, we’re stranded here, but—”

“Stranded at this casino?”

“No. We’re stranded in Las Vegas.”

“Where are your parents?”

At this question, Lutie managed to work up a couple of tears. “They’re dead.”

“Oh, my,” the other woman said.

“And we don’t have any money for food or for a bus ticket to Sacramento, where our aunt lives.”

“Where is this little brother of yours?”

“He’s in a library. He loves books.”

The belly bag woman, who’d been conducting this interrogation, whispered to her partner, “Remember what Walter told us about Gypsy kids? He said they work in groups—little con artists, purse snatchers, quick-change artists.”

“Oh, give it up, Inez. You see a gang of Gypsies around here?”

“No, I’m not a Gypsy. Honest.” At that declaration of truthfulness, Lutie squeezed out a few more tears.

“No, honey, I don’t believe you are,” the short woman said as she pulled her billfold out of her purse.

“You’re so gullible, Molly.”

“Might as well give it to her as to those damn slot machines.”

“Okay, okay.” Inez wasn’t happy about this, but she unzipped her belly bag and took out three one-dollar bills.

“You’re going to give this girl three dollars? You know what three dollars will buy in this town?”

“No, but I’ve only got seven dollars left of my gambling money for the day, Molly. If I give her that, then I’ll have to start on the money I put aside for tomorrow and—”

“To hell with tomorrow’s money. You could be dead by tomorrow. Give the girl some
real
money.”

Minutes later, when Lutie walked away, she had forty dollars in her pocket and renewed confidence in her acting ability.

As she was passing a Denny’s, she saw a Help Wanted sign in the window, but inside she discovered she’d be required to have both a TB and an HIV test to work as a food handler. And though she felt certain she carried neither disease, nor did her three-year-old, long-dead cohort, Belinda Ferguson, she knew those tests would send her back to T. for more fake documents.

At the next shop she approached, a store that carried everything from lettuce to luggage, she momentarily gave up her newly created and only partially completed list of resolutions to be a better, more truthful person as she slid a box of tampons, a tube of toothpaste, and a package of Gummi Bears into her purse. But she bought, actually paid for, a denim backpack with a picture of Albert Einstein, a gift for Fate—$14.04 of Inez and Molly’s money.

A few blocks off the Strip, heading back to the car at the library, she saw the Las Vegas Blood Bank with a notice that said, “Immediate Payment for Your Donation of Blood.” But a Hispanic man working at a central desk in the lobby told Lutie she’d have to have a letter postmarked at least six months prior to today’s date in order to provide proof of residency in Vegas.

Lutie didn’t need a fortune cookie to tell her that she’d soon have another photography session with Philo . . . or worse.

As she gathered up the papers outlining the rules of the blood bank, she didn’t, at first, see the handprinted scrap of paper that had seemingly been tossed beside her purse. She recognized the penmanship, the same as what had been printed in the note left on the hood of Floy’s car, but the message she held in her hand now was different:

St. Vinsents Shelter, L.V. Bulvd. No.,

breakfast from 10½ to 11½ ever day

L.V. Reskue Misscion, W. Bonanza,

supper from 5 to 6 ever day

L.V. Salvacion Army, W. Owens No. L.V.,

free food ever day.

Just after they met back at the car, Lutie shared with Fate the odd note she’d gotten at the blood bank. And since it was nearing six, they agreed to go to the Salvation Army for supper to see if the meal was
really
free; and to look for the stranger who continued to connect to their lives.

Lutie followed the directions Fate read to her from the street map he’d copied at the library the day before, staying on Las Vegas Boulevard until it intersected with Owens on the north side of the city.

The shelter, they discovered, was only one of a number of buildings in the Salvation Army complex, but after parking, they simply followed the broken trail of the homeless heading in the same direction.

Funny, Lutie thought, how quickly she’d learned the look of the homeless. Regardless of how they were dressed, or how clean they were able to keep themselves, independent of the way they walked—sometimes bent by an unseen weight or sometimes moving with a pretended pride—their eyes betrayed them. Though they had no place to live, no place of their own to come home to, desperation and humiliation had come to live with them. And their eyes—dreamy, vacant, hopeless, lost, defeated—gave them away. Knowing this made Lutie wonder how long it would be before she and Fate, a boy of eleven, began to take on that look.

When they finally arrived at the shelter, they discovered that a meal was, indeed, being served, and no one who ate was asked to pay.

Their trays contained plates with a salad, baked chicken, pinto beans, and sliced white bread spread with butter. They had their choice of tea, water, or lemonade.

They ate at one of several long tables seating as many as ten, a table they shared with a family of three—the father and two especially quiet, small girls; an elderly man named Ray who kept up a constant conversation with a salt shaker, referring to himself in the third person; and a middle-aged woman wearing a soiled cotton hospital gown and a rather clean housecoat a size or two larger than she needed.

A man who appeared to be homeless himself delivered a blessing, interrupting the meal already half-finished by most. Even so, the majority stopped eating, then bowed their heads until “Amen” sounded from table to table.

The food was good and plentiful. Diners were invited for seconds; dessert was also available—one-layer chocolate cake served from a dozen cookie sheets.

Lutie, suffering from a reluctant appetite tonight, ate what she could. But Fate cleaned his plate, all the while describing the UNLV campus where he’d spent most of the day.

“And besides the museum, it has a recording studio, a café called the Book n’ Bean, a fitness room, computer lab, more classrooms than I’ve ever seen, libraries—a whole bunch of libraries—and a mall with a flashlight thirty-eight feet tall. It weighs seventy-four thousand pounds and—”

“A flashlight?”

“It’s called ‘the Beacon of Knowledge.’”

“That’s awesome,” she said without a trace of enthusiasm. “You gonna have cake?”

Afterward, with Fate still jabbering about the university, Lutie drove them back to the library, where they’d parked for five nights without incident. And though they hadn’t noticed anyone watching them at the shelter, Lutie had felt a presence she couldn’t describe.

“So, you think maybe I can go to school there?”

“Where?”

“Lutie, do you listen to me? Ever?”

“Help me get our stuff out of the trunk.”

“I told you, it’s called the Paradise Elementary School, and it’s right on the campus. An elementary school with a university all around it.”

As they converted their seats to beds, Lutie realized that Fate’s voice had an eagerness she hadn’t heard from him in days.

“You think I can go there, Lutie? Now, it might be that only the kids of university students and teachers can be admitted. I don’t know. And I suppose we’d have to have a real address to enroll, but—”

“We have one.” Lutie pulled out her driver’s license, showed it to Fate.

“Who is Belinda Ferguson?” he asked.

“That’s me now.”

“And you’re twenty-two?”

“Don’t I look it?”

“Where did you get this, Lutie?”

“Well, I traded some work for a guy who takes photos and makes documents like this. Whatever you need.”

“What kind of work?” Fate asked suspiciously.

“I cleaned his studio.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“Oh, it’s a long story. But he gave me an advance against my first paycheck, and I bought you something.” Lutie pulled a large sack from behind her seat and handed it to Fate.

“Gosh,” he said when he pulled out the backpack. “This is keen, Lutie. Really keen.”

“Fate, don’t use the words
gosh
and
keen
in Vegas.”

“Why not?”