Tom Finder (9 page)

He found a trash can in an alley and threw up the four lemon drops. Then he went to his locker at the Greyhound station and deposited eight dollars. He kept fifty-one cents for spending money.

Tom had been hanging out at LRT stations for over a week when the space poet showed up.

“Hey,” she said, sitting down beside him. “Any luck finding Daniel?”

Tom shook his head. “How's the poetry?”

“That depends,” she said.

“On what?”

“On what color the paper is.”

She laughed. Tom cleared his throat. “So. Where's Pam?”

“New boyfriend.”

“Oh.” Tom looked down at the pile of cigarettes, thought maybe he should take up smoking, and then decided his parents were probably health-conscious and wouldn't approve.

“I came to tell you. She likes you. I bet you could get her away from him.”

Tom shrugged. “Hey, it's her life. I don't even know her.”

She didn't seem to hear him. “He's not a real boyfriend. He's a player, a seller. Used to hang out sometimes with my old boyfriend.”

Tom sat up straight. “Well, why does she—?”

“She doesn't know. The guy comes along—Cupid, you'd think the name would tell her something. He buys her some clothes, takes her out to a real restaurant for dinner, tells her she's gorgeous, special. She thinks he loves her, thinks he's gonna take care of her, buy her a duplex and a dog. She wants a fence with sweet peas growing on it. He says: Sure, baby, sure, me too.” Janice folded her arms over her chest. “Same old, same old.”

“Didn't you tell her?”

“I did. She says I've gone zoid. She doesn't believe me. But you watch. In a couple of months he's gonna say: Baby, money is so bad right now and can you just do this one favor for me and then we'll be fine and we'll make our dreams come true and we'll go to TO and have a good time. Just a couple of weeks. If you really love me, you will.”

“How do you know?”

“ 'Cause that's the way it went for me. I got out of the life when my daughter was born.” She was quiet a moment. She was looking into his eyes, even though he wasn't looking back. “You're not one of us,” she said soberly.

He looked away.

“Pam says yes you are, but I say no, you are not one of us, not yet.” She laughed and hit his arm. “But that's a good thing, right? Listen, are you really a Finder, Tom? Because if you are, could you look for my daughter? She looks like me, only cute.”

“You really have a daughter?” Tom asked. “How old are you anyway?” Her spooky eyes stopped looking into the backs of his eyes and started looking into the backs of her own eyes.

Her voice seemed to come from her stomach. “I was the baby mom. My social worker took her away from me. You want what's best for her, don't you, she said. She said my baby's father was fishy. Fishy. So I said, well, we'll go away to the sea.” Janice laughed too loudly. “I wanted to keep her, but they told me I shouldn't, if I loved her I wouldn't . . .” She rocked herself.

“Come on,” Tom said. “I'll take you back to the shelter.”

She got to her feet and walked beside him. She started hitting her left elbow with her right hand. She kept looking around, searching, as if she might see her daughter right there in the station.

“I told them I'd be good, I'd prove it to them, and then I'd come back for her. Now I'm being good. I just have to get a job or something. In the meantime, I look for her all the time, at all the babies I see, but none of them have fins.” She laughed again. “Let's go to the park and look.”

“Janice, come on. I'm taking you back to the shelter.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Why do people always say because?”

“Because.”

She laughed and followed him. “My social worker said no guy who loves you would turn you out.” She was quiet for a minute.

“It's good you got away from him,” Tom said.

They walked a long time in silence. Once she said, “Anyway, just thought I'd tell you about Pam. Maybe you could talk to her.” It was getting dark out. She sighed. “I'll tell you a secret, Tom. I saw my man once. In the river. I was standing on the bridge. He was underneath the water, staring up at me, asking me to jump to him. Jump, he said. The water's fine. Jump. I would have, if I hadn't remembered that I had to find my baby.”

They had arrived at the shelter.

The red-haired social worker opened the door. She touched Janice's arm as she walked in. To Tom she said, “Coming in?”

Tom shook his head.

“Tom, who are you?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out,” Tom said, and he said good-bye.

At the LRT station the wind blew over the platform. He sat heavily down on the bench and considered looking for Pam. He thought about her with Cupid and fought off an urge to break a window.

Maybe he had enough to look for. Daniel. His parents. A job. He picked up an old newspaper that had blown into a corner and turned to the personals section to see if anyone was looking for a boy named Tom. He'd picked up the obituary page. There was a picture of a young man, maybe sixteen, who looked familiar. Tom grabbed the paper with both fists to read it.
Sivorak, Peter.

That name didn't sound familiar. He looked at the picture again. He knew that face. Maybe he'd known him in school. Maybe he could find these Sivorak people, say sorry about your boy, and do you know who I am? He read on.

Peter died after a long struggle with substance abuse. He is survived by his loving parents . . .

Substance abuse. Tom looked at the picture again, and then he knew who it was.

“Pepsi,” he said aloud.

The train pulled in, silent on the rails, but Tom didn't pay attention. Gravity was trying to force him to put the paper down, but Tom wouldn't. He kept reading:
Peter was an avid Scouter as a youngster, and loved hockey . . .

The train whispered to him as it pulled out. Tom looked up. He looked up just in time to see a warrior leaving the train platform. He was tall, wide-shouldered, and lean as a lost dog. His hair was long but not braided.

“Hey!” Tom shouted.

“Hey!” the station echoed back.

Hey, hey, hey . . .

Except it wasn't his own echo, it was Train Cop yelling. He was walking toward Tom, yelling something about not being on the platform without a ticket and something about a seven-hundred-dollar fine, something about lazy, smelly, snotty kids. Tom ran, still clutching the obituary column.

The tall boy had disappeared. Tom kept running. Finally, he stopped under a streetlight and read the obituary again. Could you get so invisible you disappeared from life? Stay away from Forget, Pepsi had warned him. Once you forget, you're already dead.

Tom walked until he was across from police headquarters. This could all be over so quick. Stupid to save for a billboard. Zoid, when you could just walk into a police station.

Gravity.

Needing-Gravol-type gravity.

Tom took a deep breath. He could do it. Anyone who could fight and write and swim could walk into a police station. Maybe his dad was a cop. Maybe his mom was a cop. That'd be just like her, to go and do something risky like that.

He walked in, clutching the obituary, his skin crawling, but it was all right, all right, because no one looked at him.

He stood a long time at the desk, holding onto it for fear he was going to fall. He gasped, startled, when an officer finally noticed him.

“What can I do for you?” the officer said without coming close to the desk. He put his hand on his hip, which was hung with a holster.

“Is anyone looking for me?” Tom asked. He was breathing hard, like he'd just run a long way, and the knuckles on his hand were white where he gripped the counter top. “Maybe someone rich?”

“Why? Are you lost?”

“I was just wondering if anyone called in looking for me.”

“What's your name?”

“Tom.”

“Tom what?”

“I don't know.”

The officer studied him a minute, his fingers hooked on his gun belt. He went to a file on a desk. “I went through missing persons just this morning. I don't remember seeing a picture of you, but I'll check again.” He shuffled through papers for a long time, occasionally glancing up at Tom.
Soon it would be over,
Tom thought.
Not so bad. Not so bad.
He was doing this. He'd sleep in his own bed tonight.

The officer said, “Nope.”

Tom suddenly couldn't remember what that word meant.

“No one matching your description, kid, and no pictures of you.”

Tom rocked on his feet. His neck shot with pain, as if gravity had just sat on his head. He felt his spine compress. He couldn't speak, couldn't say, “That can't be right.”

“Listen, kid, I think you'd better come have a seat. Maybe we can help you.”

Tom reached into his backpack and took out his book.

“What have you got there?” the officer asked.

Tom read his notes. Someone had thought he was nice. Nice didn't come from parents that didn't look for you. There had to be some kind of explanation. For a moment he thought about trusting the officer. Maybe he could help.

Tom took a deep breath and asked, “Can you tell me what happened to that dog that was hit on Macleod and Seventh?”

“Sure, I heard about that . . . Oh, so you're the one . . . Yeah, I heard about that.”

“Where's the dog?”

“Put it out of its misery.”

“They couldn't fix him?”

The officer shrugged. “Would have cost a fortune in vet fees. The system isn't set up to take care of strays.”

Tom nodded slowly. “Makes sense,” he said. He turned to walk out the door.

“Hey, where are you going? Maybe if I had a last name . . . You know your own last name, don't you, kid?” the officer called after him.

Tom walked until he was back to his island. Along the way he found a twenty-dollar bill. When he reached the island, Tom got out his notebook and wrote in it, The streets love Tom. He curled up in his blanket, and in the last fading light he read once more Peter Pepsi Sivorak's obituary.

He stared at the page a long time until all he could see was the space, the loopy letters, zeroes on a string.

Chapter 6

Tell me, good friend!
Have you ever been so fortunate as to see
this goddess of the night?

– Act 1, scene 2

The streets loved him, but gave him only a little money at a time—mostly loonies and toonies and quarters, sometimes a five or a ten. He knew that at this rate he couldn't find enough money in a lifetime to rent a billboard. He couldn't think of what else to do. For a long time he thought about why his parents weren't looking for him. He figured they thought he'd run away over some typical teenage squabble and they were giving him his space. Maybe they thought he was visiting a relative. He probably had dozens of cousins, and an uncle who took him swimming.

He was looking for H
ELP
W
ANTED
signs and thinking of all this one morning when he walked into a bucket filled with water.

Someone snarled at him. “Hey, watch where you're going, or you'll kick the bucket all right.”

It was the kid from the shelter with the Betty Boop tattoo on his arm. He was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, and Tom could see that he had a lot of other tattoos as well.

“Hey, it's the lipstick licker. What are you doing here, girl?”

“Looking for a job,” Tom said. His legs twitched, ready to run.

“Yeah? Well, you're in my territory.”

Tom glanced around. “It looks like a regular street to me.” He told his legs to be still. He could fight if he had to, he reminded them.

Tom thought Betty Boop jiggled a bit. “Well, maybe you're not a girl after all, eh?” He pointed at himself. “Jamie.”

“Tom.”

Jamie spat. It lay there looking alive on the sidewalk. “Now, Tom, I'll explain to you. See, I'm a businessman. I provide a service—I clean windshields.” He gestured toward the bucket Tom had kicked. It had two squeegees in it. “This is my corner. All the cars that come here are mine.”

A businessman. That sounded good. His dad was probably one of those.

“How do I get a corner?” Tom asked.

“You got a work ethic?”

Tom thought he could probably find one.

“ 'Cause you gotta hustle, you know. You gotta love customer service.”

Tom nodded seriously.

Jamie sized him up. “I could probably arrange something for you. But first you've got to get yourself a little investment capital.”