Man Made Boy (13 page)

To kill some time, I sat out on a bench in the little park in Union Square and watched all the humans walking around. I had gotten used to Gauge, but it still felt a little strange being in a big group of them out in public like this. A few of them sat in a circle playing hand drums. I imagined they were providing a sound track for the rest of the people, all rushing to jobs, to lunch, or to some other part of their lives.

After a bit, I closed my eyes and leaned back on the bench, letting the sun warm my face. Then I opened my eyes and looked up into the deep blue sky. It scared me at first, all that emptiness. But I reminded myself that it couldn’t
hurt
me. And the longer I looked at it, the more I got used to it. That’s how it was out here in the city, I decided. Scary at first. Overwhelming. But I was already getting used to it. Soon I would have a job and be a full-fledged New Yorker just like all these humans around me. I would be one of them.

By the time my interview rolled around, I was so Zen from
soaking up the sun, drum music, and good vibes that I almost floated into the store. But that all changed when I got to the customer service desk.

“Hi, I have an interview appointment with Joe?” I said to the woman behind the counter.

She stared at me, her glossy pink lips open slightly.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She blinked her thick lashed eyes. “Uh, yeah.” She suddenly stared down at the desk. “No problem.” She continued to stare at the desk as she picked up the phone and pushed a button. “Joe, your one o’clock is here.” Her voice sounded strained. She listened for a moment, then said, “Okay,” and hung up. Her eyes flickered to me for a moment, but then went right back to the desk. “He’ll be here in just a sec.”

“Thanks,” I said, my good Zen vibe draining away. But I reminded myself that not everybody reacted to me like that. This woman clearly had issues.

There were a few uncomfortable minutes while I stood next to the counter, and she acted like I wasn’t there anymore. Then I heard an older guy’s voice behind me.

“Frank, thanks for coming in!”

His tone was so warm, so cheerful, that I relaxed a little.

But then I turned toward him and he stopped dead in his tracks. He had a smile on his face but it was so forced it looked like it hurt.

For a second, I thought about just running out of the store right then and there. But maybe I was being too self-conscious. I couldn’t bail this early. Plus, I really needed a job. So I smiled as gently as I could and offered my hand.

“Thanks for giving me this opportunity,” I said. That was something I’d read you were supposed to say at an interview.

His face was still pinched into a tight smile as he gave my hand a quick squeeze.

“Soooo,” he said. “You’re a friend of Neal’s?”

“Well, a friend of a friend, really,” I said.

“Gotcha,” he said. “Wellll, Catherine has your paperwork, right?” He looked at the woman behind the counter expectantly.

“Paperwork?” I asked.

“Oh, I completely forgot, Joe, I’m sorry,” said the woman, not looking thrilled to be brought back into the conversation. “I took one look at him and my mind went bla—I mean, I just…I’ll get it right now. Sorry.”

She pulled out a few sheets of paper and a clipboard and handed it to me without making eye contact.

“No problem,” said Joe, the eternal smile still in place. He turned back to me. “So I tell you what, Frank. Why don’t you fill out these forms and let Catherine make copies of your ID while I take care of a few things, and I’ll check back in about ten minutes, okay?”

“ID?” I asked. “I don’t…uh, have a driver’s license.”

“That’s fine, any state-issued photo ID or your passport will work.”

“I don’t have one of those, either.”

His smile started to fade. “I suppose if you only have a social security card and a birth certificate, we can accept that.”

“Um…” I didn’t even know if I had something like a social security number or birth certificate. Probably not, since I wasn’t born in a hospital. I was made in a laboratory from stitched-together body parts illegally stolen from the morgue. “I don’t…have those, either.”

“Really?” he asked, not even trying to hide his surprise now. “You don’t have
any
proof of identification?”

“No.”

He stared at me for a moment. Then his smile came back, but this time it was genuine and full of relief. “Oh, well, gosh. You know, Frank, I hate to say it, but it’s against company policy to interview someone without identification. I’m
so
sorry. You know how it is these days. I’m sure you’re completely legal and everything is on the up and up, but I just can’t break policy!”

“Oh.” I tried to smile again but now
I
was the one forcing it. “That’s, uh, okay. I get it.” I stood there for a second while he looked at me expectantly. Because he wanted me to leave his store. So I did.

I don’t know why people think big guys are not only stupid, but also hard of hearing. But as I walked toward the exit, I heard him say to the woman:

“Wow, dodged that bullet. Can you imagine having
him
out on the sales floor? Customers would run, screaming.”

Ruthven had said that, if anything, humans would
pity
me. But this didn’t look much like pity. It looked like something between fear and disgust. And as I walked through the park back to the subway—the same park I’d had my drum circle Zen moment less than an hour before—I saw what I hadn’t noticed before while I was people-watching. They were all watching me, too. It was difficult to tell because they wouldn’t look directly at me. But they were aware of me. I could tell because as they walked past, they moved just a little so they didn’t have to get too close to me. And the more I looked, the more I saw it. Everywhere I went, I made humans uncomfortable.

When I got back to the apartment, I found Gauge at his computer, playing some MMORPG game I didn’t recognize. I guess I was out of the loop.

“Gauge?”

“Yup.” He didn’t look up, but kept clicking the keyboard.

“If I asked you a question, would you be completely honest with me?”

Still not looking up, still clicking the keys. “Probably.”

“Okay, so, for real. Do you think I look scary?”

He stopped and turned toward me. He frowned.

“Not scary, exactly.”

“No? Then what?”

“You want the honest truth?”

“I asked for it.”

“Frank, you are the fucking ugliest person I’ve ever seen in my life.”

I stared at him for a moment. “Wow.”

“You asked for it.”

“I did. So…uh, I guess, thanks.”

“Sure, no problem,” he said, and went back to his game.

I flopped down on the couch, wondering if this day could possibly get any worse.

“Oh,” said Gauge. “You just had a job interview, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d it go?”

“I…didn’t get it.”

“That sucks.” He turned back to his computer again. “Rent’s due in two weeks.”

“I know. I’ll think of something.” I had no idea what that would be yet. The ID issue seemed pretty insurmountable.

He turned back to me, his eyes squinting and his high, pale forehead wrinkling.

“Why don’t you just sell some credit card numbers? Use some of that legendary ‘b0y’ hacking skill? I bet you could knock over a
small online business and get a couple thousand to sell in no time. If you need a fence, I know some people.”

I was about to give my usual response that there was a huge difference between the noble art of hacking and sleazy identity theft, but I stopped short. Maybe I didn’t have the luxury of being that judgmental anymore. Was that the only option left for me? Was I at the “steal or starve” point?

No. I couldn’t do that. I
wouldn’t
do it. No money, no friends, no girl, barely a real home. Right now, integrity seemed to be the only thing I still had. The only thing that couldn’t be taken away from me. So I wasn’t going to give it up willingly. Not without a real fight.

“I told you,” I said. “I’ll figure something out.”

I STOOD FACING the one corner of the restaurant kitchen that wasn’t caught on the security camera and shoved a big glob of rice in my mouth. The kitchen staff weren’t allowed to have our meal until our shift was over, but that was six hours from now and I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. I ate as fast as I could because even though Mr. Sing had cameras that covered 98 percent of the kitchen, he still made surprise appearances to see if we were goofing off. Because, you know, us illegals liked to goof off. Or so he told us.

As I shoved the last bit of food scraped from the customer’s plates into my mouth, I almost choked. I cleared my throat and wiped my watery eyes.

“Hey, Frankie, you okay?”

It was Ralphie, the other cook, a skinny little Dominican guy in his thirties.

“Yeah,” I said harshly, and cleared my throat. “Just went down the wrong pipe.”

“You need to eat slower.” He shook a big wooden spoon at me, then went back to stirring the massive boiling pot in front of him. “He never comes down right now. You’re not gonna get caught. And anyway, you really think he would fire you for that?”

“I don’t know.” I made my way back to the stoves and checked on the oxtail. “But I don’t want to take chances, you know? I need this job.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

Turns out, the only kind of work I could find without an ID or proof of citizenship was getting paid off the books at restaurants along with Ralphie and the other illegal immigrants in this city. It wasn’t a terrible job. The pay wasn’t much, but I got free food, and the other guys treated me okay. It was just the boss, Mr. Sing, who was mean. What a Chinese guy was doing running a West Indian restaurant, I had no idea.

The job wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but at least I was paying rent and eating. Once those basics were taken care of, I settled into life in the human world pretty quickly. Every day turned into the same thing. Get up, ride the subway for an hour, cook other people’s food for ten hours, ride another hour home, watch TV with Gauge, go to bed. Loop.

That was, until one cold night in February, with dirty gray snow piled high on the sidewalks, I saw Liel.

Ralphie and I were coming out of the restaurant after closing. I looked down the block, I don’t know why, and I saw her. She was wrapped up in an overcoat and a head scarf that covered up her white hair and angular, trollish features. But I could see her diamond eyes gleaming in the streetlight. I stopped and my heart almost did, too.

“Frankie,” said Ralphie. “You know that person?”

“Yeah.” I just stood there, hands at my sides. I didn’t know what to do.

“You want me to stick around?”

“Nah. You go ahead.”

He nodded and continued on toward the subway station. I
watched him until he turned the corner. Then I walked toward Liel. She stayed where she was until I got close. Then she suddenly lunged toward me, wrapping her long, strong arms around me and pressing her face against my chest.

“I did it!” she said, her face muffled through her scarf and my coat. “I left The Show!”

We stood there freezing on that street corner for a long time squeezing each other, both of us scared out of our minds, although maybe for different reasons.

“How did you find me?” I asked. “Does anyone else know?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Nobody knows. I just followed the directions in your email.”

“My email?”

“Yeah, the email. The one where you said all those nice things about…” Her eyes widened as she took in my expression. “You didn’t write the email.”

I shook my head.

“Oh, god.” She stepped away from me. “Oh god oh god oh god!” She turned one way, then the other, her face pinched with panic.

“Liel.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. What did the message say?”

“Okay?” She jerked away from my touch. “
Okay???
I’m totally fucked! I thought…I thought…
shit!!!
” She screamed, then she turned like she was about to split.

I couldn’t let her wander around a city she didn’t know this late at night in this crazy state of mind, so I grabbed her arm, harder this time.

“Let me go!” she yelled.

“No, just calm down. We can fix this. Whatever the problem is, we can fix it. Just tell me what the message said.”

She struggled against me for a moment. She was strong. But I was stronger. Finally, she stopped fighting and looked up at me. The scarf had fallen off her face and she was crying.

“It said you’d found a job. That you were doing okay. That you were making it outside. It said there was only one thing missing and that was me. It said…” She looked away, her lips pressed together so hard that her fangs pierced them and drew blood. “It said you loved me.” Then with one hard tug, she jerked free of my grip and started to run.

“I do!”

She stopped, but didn’t turn around.

“Look,” I said. “I didn’t send you any email message. I don’t know who did or how they knew where I was or anything else. But I
do
love you. I’ve always loved you.” That felt so good to finally admit.