Passenger(15)

What I make off with is nearly two dollars in change—seven quarters and a dime, to be exact.





SEVEN





There is a payphone inside Franelli Brothers’ Pizzeria; I stand with the receiver against my ear, one hand curled around it, while huddled in one corner. I try to make myself nonexistent. I’ve got the sheet of paper with the phone number of the apartment complex’s main office in one hand, and my eyes volley between the number and the phone as I punch the digits.

A woman with a rasping voice answers. I try to sound as cheerful as possible when I ask about their location. When she gives me the address, which I jot down on the sheet of paper below the phone number, I thank her and quickly hang up.

The office is located on Lombard Street. No money for cab fare, I spend the afternoon walking.

I walk past the office twice before realizing it is the narrow sliver of a building wedged between a bank and what looks like a defunct nightclub. Inside, there is just a waiting room and a small wooden desk where no one sits. The place is disguised as a travel agency, what with the various framed photographs of the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, and the Bahamas on the walls. There is faded, cruddy wallpaper peeling everywhere I look, tinged yellow by ancient cigarette smoke. A space heater shudders in one corner of the lobby.

Before I have a chance to sit in one of the waiting room chairs, a silver-haired woman with a pinched face and narrow reading glasses hobbles out of a door behind the desk. Upon seeing me, her pointy face becomes pointier. She holds her head up to examine me through her glasses. In the poor lighting and against the nicotine walls, her skin looks the pallor of cookie dough, the texture of a sun-swept desert landscape.

“He’p you?” the woman utters. It is the same rasping voice from the telephone.

“Yeah, hi, I’m a tenant in the St. Paul complex, apartment Three-B. I was hoping to get a copy of my lease for my files. I guess I must have lost it.”

The woman is already busy clacking away on computer. “Name?”

“Well, I’m not sure…”

The woman’s heavy-lidded eyes linger on me. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, I’m not sure whose name is on the lease. I can’t remember who signed the, uh, the paperwork—”

Exasperated, the woman says, “The apartment number again?”

“Three-B.”

The woman hunches close to her computer screen. I can see the reflection of the monitor in the lenses of her glasses. Then she rises with a grunt, requiring both hands to push off the armrests of her chair, and, rather shakily, shuffles to an immense filing cabinet that leans in a precarious fashion away from the wall. The woman pulls out one drawer, digs through a ream of paperwork and multicolored folders, and finally produces a manila folder. Opening it, scanning it, her pinched birdlike face nearly crumbles to dust.

Still scrutinizing the paperwork, she says, “You said Three-B?”

“Yes.”

“St. Paul complex?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry,” she says, and snaps the folder shut. “We don’t have your paperwork.”

Something like a lead weight crashes down through my stomach. “What do you mean?”

“Building went co-op last year. Three-B was sold. Don’t have no rental agreement.”

I swallow a lump of spit that feels like a hunk of granite. “Sold to whom?”

“If you’re living there,” says the woman, “then to you.”

“But there’s no paperwork, nothing with my name on it? Any information at all?”

“Not our job to maintain your personal records, sir.”

“But there must be something with some sort of documentation, some…I don’t know…some sort of…”

The woman’s eyebrows cock as she sets the folder down on her desk. With her brittle, yellowed fingernails, she peels a sheet of paper from the stack in the folder and hands it over to me.

“Have a look at it,” she says. “No name, no personal information. Three-B was sold in July. Paid in full.”

“Then maybe you’d have a copy of the check on record—”

“Cashier’s check.”

“Excuse me?”

“Paid in full by cashier’s check.” She snatches the sheet of paper back from me and buries it in the folder. “Three-B ain’t our responsibility.”

I take a step back from the counter, running my hands through the stubble of my hair.

“Can I get your name, sir?”

“I don’t…”

“There might be some paperwork in the back,” she says.

My eyes fall on the framed picture of St. Thomas, so that is the first thing that comes to me. I say, “Thomas. Last name’s Thomas.”

The woman’s suspicion is evident. She moves slowly to her computer terminal again, but her eyes linger on me. Her lips are pressed tightly together, a mere slit beneath her nose, and I can tell she is rolling her tongue over her teeth. She hammers out a few keys on the keyboard then stares hard at me.

“Thomas, eh?”

I rub at my face. “Yeah…”

“Let me see some I.D.”

My mouth dry, my hands shaking, I surprise myself by uttering a strangled laugh. “Please,” I say. “I’m sorry. Please. I have no I.D. I just need you to help me. Please help me.”