The Office of Historical Corrections(33)
For the time being, William seemed like less trouble than anything else she’d gotten herself into. He was quiet, he was happy, and he imposed a certain order on her life. Meals had to be eaten at set times. There was bedtime, and time for waking up. Vera rented a U-Haul and picked up furniture around the city. When she went to buy a baby bed from a woman in Park Slope, the woman cooed over William and threw in a stroller for fifty bucks. By the end of the week, the apartment was in order and the money was half gone.
Vera had intended all along to look for a job once she got here, but now there was the problem of having William. She couldn’t very well take him along for interviews, or even to drop off résumés, because what if they wanted to talk to her then and there? Formal day care seemed likely to involve more paperwork than she currently possessed, which meant she’d need a babysitter, which meant she’d need to spend some time figuring out whom to trust with him. She felt a pang of guilt at her nervousness about leaving him with a stranger. After all, what was she? She googled “William,” “missing child,” and “New Jersey,” setting the dates within the past month, and found no evidence that anyone was looking for him.
On Sunday, Vera took William for a walk in Prospect Park. She bought him an ice pop from one of the street vendors. While she sat in the grass with him, feeding him ice and singing, to the best of her abilities, “Little Bunny Foo Foo,” she heard a voice call her name. She turned around to see the man with the short dreads approaching her.
“Vera, right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Vera. “Derek?”
He nodded. “So you’re sticking around?”
“Hopefully for good. I was just doing a favor on my way out here.”
“Expensive favor.”
Vera shrugged.
“So what’s your son’s name?”
“William,” Vera answered without hesitation, though she had not yet used the word son in reference to him. Derek sat down and began to play peekaboo with him.
“His dad around?”
“You see anyone but me around?”
“OK then,” said Derek. William uncovered his face and looked disappointed that Derek had stopped playing with him. Derek reached out and tickled William’s belly until he laughed his high-pitched baby giggle.
“You know anyone who’s good with kids?” Vera asked.
“I’m not good enough?” Derek laughed. “I thought little man and I were getting along fine.”
“I need someone to watch him,” said Vera. “I need to find a job.”
“What do you do?”
“I used to be a cashier.”
“Just a cashier, or you kept records?”
“I kept records.”
“You ever answer phones?”
“When they ring.”
“Look,” said Derek. “Our receptionist just quit. She’s moving to LA. You interested? You answer phones, you file papers, you schedule pickups and deliveries, and ninety-five percent of what we do is legal.”
“And the other five percent?”
“Is why you’d be making twenty dollars an hour instead of eleven. We try not to get in the middle of the messy stuff. We get everything in small quantities here and there and then we overcharge for it because there’s a market of kids who want their drugs but are too lazy or scared to find their own dealer. We’re middlemen, basically. Not even middlemen, because we don’t even do that much buying straight from the source. We mostly stay under the radar.”
“What about William?”
“As long as he doesn’t fuss, you can bring him until you find someone to watch him.”
William grinned, and then covered his mouth with his grape ice–stained fingers, as if to show how unfussy he could be.
* * *
—
So just like that, Vera’s life fell into place, or out of it. She worked seven to four at the office, answering phones, filing papers, keeping two sets of books. She learned the last receptionist’s filing system—the bike messengers without a C next to their names were only to carry documents and other innocuous packages for businesses that needed to get something from one part of the city to another before the end of the business day. The ones with a C could make both regular deliveries and irregular deliveries. She liked the messengers—they came in and out of the office to pick up assignments, packages, schedules, checks. They consulted with each other about the fastest routes and the best bike locks. They called her, sometimes, sheepish and lost in a city that some of them knew in their blood and others were perpetually perplexed by, even as they pretended that no address daunted them. They were her age, or even younger, and they all had something urgent to be doing with their lives, only it hadn’t happened yet.
They competed against one another and their own personal bests to set records for transit time. They were paid by the number of deliveries they made. She could identify some of them by their scars—the accident scrapes and scratches or, in one case, the thin jagged line left by a bike thief’s knife. Most of the messengers were oblivious to William’s presence, but a few gave him candy if they had it or sat down on the floor and played with him while they waited for Vera to finish doing what they needed done. Since no one seemed fazed by William’s presence in the office, least of all William, the idea of finding him a babysitter gradually faded away. One day she came into the office and found a playpen behind the desk, with a note on it from Adam and Derek, and the matter seemed settled.