The Office of Historical Corrections(32)

Beneath the renovated downtown lofts that nobody had moved into were boarded-up windows that were supposed to be art galleries. The stoners who hung around the record shop were positively comforting in comparison to the kids who hung out in the downtown parking lots tweaking, flashing her the singed remainders of their teeth. Josh had refinanced the shop and then blew the money on a bad investment and had trouble paying the mortgage. Vera worked there for two years and made minimum wage the whole time. She had no savings and Josh knew it; he had more than once spotted her a twenty for lunch and dinner when it was close to payday and he saw she wasn’t eating anything. Through someone he knew he’d gotten ahold of this drug, which was not meth, which was not heroin, which was a flittery thing, a onetime thing. He wasn’t going to chance selling it in his own backyard—the cops had let him slide on the weed, but they were getting antsy. He knew a guy in New York though, and all she had to do was get it there and she could take a fee. Josh would get out of hot water with the lender, and she could get the hell out of Missouri and not look back.

When William had finished eating, Vera took his hand again and went outside to a pay phone. She called the phone number she had seen on the side of a city bus, and made an anonymous tip that a woman and a little girl may have been hurt near exit 9 of the Jersey Turnpike. No, she didn’t know their names. No, she didn’t know where they were coming from or where they were going. No, she couldn’t say why she thought they might be in danger. No, she couldn’t stay on the line. She caught a cab, checked into a hotel, put the baby to bed, and called her mother to tell her everything was fine.



* * *



—

In the morning, she took the train to the address Josh had given her. She took William with her because she wasn’t sure what else to do with him. The building was unspectacular from the outside, a grim brownstone. She rang the buzzer twice. On the second buzz, a female voice answered and asked who it was.

“I’m Vera,” she said. “Josh sent me.”

The door buzzed open. Vera walked up the narrow stairwell and opened the door in front of her. She thought at first she must have written the number down wrong. She was in an office—polished hardwood floors, bright accent colors on the walls, sunlight coming in through the loft windows, a sleek red couch, and a waiting area near a front desk. A woman with a blond-streaked ponytail sat behind it. A sign on the wall behind her read brooklyn delivers.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I need to talk to Derek. My name’s Vera.”

The woman hit a button on the phone. A few seconds later, a man with short dreads and a T-shirt featuring a band she’d never heard of came out to greet her, a perplexed look on his face.

“I’m Vera,” she said again.

Derek stared at William, who Vera had propped up on her hip.

“You brought a baby?” he asked.

“He’s two,” Vera said, as if this were an adequate explanation.

“Hold on.” Derek disappeared into the back room, but before the door shut behind him, Vera could hear him say, “Who the fuck are we dealing with? He sent a girl with a kid.”

A second man, this one with scruffy blond hair and thick black-framed glasses, came out of the room.

“I’m Adam,” he said. “Josh sent you?”

“Yes,” said Vera. She gestured toward William. “I’m sorry about him. I didn’t know where else to leave him. I just got here yesterday.”

“It’s cool. You want to leave him out here for a minute? Liz can keep an eye on him.”

Vera eyed the woman behind the desk. She hadn’t looked up from the computer screen. Vera deposited William on the floor and followed Adam to the back room, which looked like a more posh version of the front room—hardwood floors, plush couches, walls of file cabinets.

“This is not what I was expecting,” she said to Adam.

“We’re a courier service,” said Adam. “We deliver things. Mostly documents and packages for small businesses. Sometimes not.”

“Oh,” said Vera.

“You’re not what we were expecting either,” said Derek.

“Sorry,” said Vera.

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing. Just, Adam met Josh a while back on a road trip. From what he described, you don’t really seem like the kind of girl he’d be hanging around with. That his kid?”

“No,” said Vera.

“A woman of few words,” said Adam. “It’s a good instinct.”

They finished their transaction quickly, without any of the sinister fanfare Vera had anticipated. Josh’s money was wired. She put her cash in the bag where the drugs had been. She walked out to find William safely where she’d left him, and exited the building feeling an anticlimactic sense of relief.



* * *



—

    Vera opened a bank account and deposited two thousand dollars. She sat in a coffee shop with William, calling through the rentals section on Craigslist. A few hours later, a Russian woman in Red Hook rented her an attic apartment. Vera had a list of friends willing to serve as fake landlord references, but the woman asked few questions once it became clear to her that Vera planned to pay both the first month’s rent and the security deposit in cash. The first night in the apartment, they slept on the floor. She watched the rise and fall of William’s chest, the delicate flaring of his tiny nostrils. He’ll need a bed, she thought, and as soon as she thought it, she realized that the idea of giving him back had gone out the window. He would be hers unless and until someone took him away.