Angela Hamilton

Rusted Nails

It was a fine Wednesday, my only day off that week. I decided to splurge on a cab up to Seventh Avenue. I thought that since it was probably going to be the last warm day of the year, I'd take my Great Aunt Joanie with me (maybe a cheap lunch at Carol's Branch on Tree Street and a quick look at those statues of important men in front of the fountain).

Aunt Joanie turned eighty-two last spring. She was a beautiful salt and pepper haired woman. I had to search my soul for this beauty, though. I basically grew up with the lady. Well, from seven on anyway. At eighty-two, she looked it, she acted it, and complained like it all the time. But I loved her. And the shopping excursions, where we never actually bought anything, neither of us having the money, became fairly regular in the last couple of years.

On my twentieth birthday, Aunt Joanie said that she finally considered me an adult. It could be a coincidence that this was right after I dropped out of the "college rigmarole," as she called it. Aunt Joanie thought that sitting in lectures and studying was a waste of energy. But then, she also told me to find a man that I could bear to have sex with for the rest of my life and marry him, fast.

"No spark," she motioned to her eyes, "no sizzle," and acted like she was going to pinch my nipple. I hated that.

But she knew what she was talking about. Aunt Joanie was married for fifty-two years before Uncle Joe died. He was the love of her life. They gardened together, smoked together, they even sunbathed together in the Botanical Garden - two turtled heads on a park bench with the chrome-looking face tanners.

A couple of months ago I'd taken Isaac, my last boyfriend, over to her house. She'd called and had some old books she wanted to unload on me.

"I want this shit cleared out before I die," she said.

I could hear the phlegm in her lungs from smoking a pipe for sixty years or more. I was surprised she'd hung on so long.

So, I took Isaac for some help. We took the bus over and planned on taking a cab back to my place with the boxes. I had built-in bookshelves and not a lot on them besides burnt down candles and old newspapers. Books would be nice and titles didn't matter so much. I'd probably never read them anyway.

The three of us sat talking for a while at her dining room table with a cocktail or two. When Isaac went to the bathroom, Aunt Joanie got up to go to the kitchen. She motioned for me to follow.

When the kitchen door swung shut, Aunt Joanie turned to me. "Elly, you can't date a man like that." She pinched up her mouth, her eyes looked like raisins, salt-dried.

I rolled my eyes at her. Of course she had to get me in the kitchen to tell me this.

"Christ, Aunt Joanie. Give him a chance."

"Oh, Eleanor, please." She waved her hand in the air, waved me off. She opened the freezer door and I waited for her reasons. I listened to the ice cubes clink in the empty glass that smelled of vodka. I could only see her sagging stomach down to her Kathie Lee Gifford shoes, labeled neatly on the side. The enormous mouth of the freezer door swallowed her head.

"Aunt Joanie, hello?"

She shut the freezer door. "Don't waste my time, or yours, with that boy."

I forgot about the books, making an excuse to Isaac that I felt light headed, that maybe we should get some food. He didn't ask. We got our coats. On Aunt Joanie's stoop, Isaac told me he didn't like Aunt Joanie's mouth and he didn't like that I drank with an eighty-two year old woman.

Aunt Joanie opened her window and started banging her Gifford shoes together.

"Aunt Joanie, go back in. Shut that window."

"Go home," she said, looking straight down at Isaac.

"Yeah, go home," echoed Mrs. Giunta from her steadfast position at the first floor window.

Isaac walked away, ending our conversation and three week relationship with a quick catch of the number fifty-two headed west.

I waited for the number eight for forty-seven minutes. Forty-seven minutes. All I'd wanted to do was stop by to get some old books. I looked up from the bus stop to the warm glow of Aunt Joanie's living room. I thought better of going back up. I thought I might yell at her, or say something mean like, "Why did you wash my Mickey Mouse ears when I was seven?" or maybe, "You should shove that pipe up your ass." I suppose I was protecting her from me. She knew that Isaac was wasting my time anyway, just looking for a window to climb out of quickly - a clean break, a swift end to something he really didn't want. I suppose I did want more than that from a man.

At Pop's Blue Room later that week, I saw Isaac's friend, Harry. Harry's a good guy, very nice. I trust him. The point of this? Harry'd had a few, becoming a little loose lipped. Isaac had a girlfriend the whole time. And I felt like I was getting too old for this. Maybe Aunt Joanie knew what she was talking about, even if she didn't know what the hell she was talking about.

So Aunt Joanie and I were on our way to Barney's New York at one in the afternoon. We always tried to look our best on such occasions. We cheaply copied outfits we saw other, financially capable women wearing. We'd keep quiet until we reached the door of Saks, Macy's or any smaller independently owned boutique, then we talked about the couture.

"Did you see that lady's scarf? She didn't even have to dress up, the scarf did it all. I could pull that off," I said, as we walked by other shops on our way home.

"Yes, Elly, I think you could. Jeans, nice fitting t-shirt, scarf, maybe some Kathie Lee Gifford shoes. Her shoes are the best copies I've seen. You could fake it with those for sure. In fact, you should get some, they have good arch supports."

My Aunt Joanie was the biggest Kathie Lee Gifford fan. If Kathie Lee told her to buy the side of Mount Rainier she would, as long as she could afford it on a fixed income.

So we were a couple of blocks from Barney's that afternoon and a button, the button on my orange organza blouse, popped off. Aunt Joanie saw it happen. She stooped over and shuffled down the sidewalk like she'd lost a contact or something. She swore she'd watched its trail.

"It's okay," I said, rummaging through my purse for a safety pin.

"No, look at you, Eleanor. We can't go anywhere like this."

I kept rummaging while she held my blouse closed right where my breasts ended and my stomach began - like her stomach, pooched and sagging from too many frozen dinners.

"Look, I found a safety pin."

"We still can't go in anywhere fancy, Eleanor. We can't go in Barney's now."

I started walking again in the direction of Barney's, holding the pin in my mouth, arranging my blouse just so.

"Eleanor."

"What?" I turned and faced Aunt Joanie on the sidewalk again.

"Your button." She held it up to me, her hand shaking slightly from pipe withdrawals.

She died one week later, old age. Attached to her will was what the attorney called an admissible addendum. To me, a scrap of paper clipped on. It claimed that I was the new owner of her 1976 General Electric piece of junk sewing machine and seventeen hundred dollars of her fifty-four hundred net worth. She'd given the rest of it to PAWS in Brooklyn, an AIDS pet charity. At the bottom of the admissible scrap was written, "For all the days of shopping with the old lady."

I wore the organza blouse, fixed, to her wake. She looked peaceful finally. I had her in a Gifford dress, a nice warm one. Mrs. Giunta and the other neighbors were there. They even let me bring Mitzi, Aunt Joanie's Bichon Frise, who was being adopted by old man Garrison on the fourth floor.

I didn't mind getting docked a day's pay to go see the attorney for the reading of the will. I sat alone in the office with the untouched books waiting for him. I wondered who Carl was working with since I didn't show.

I work in between 43^rd and 102^nd most of the time. I fill the newspaper boxes in Manhattan. Carl drives, I load. Carl says that if I did nine months in 'Nam, I could drive the truck. For now, he was head of that domain. He drove well, I had to admit. I suppose when you've been doing it as long as he had (since 'Nam), with the same truck (since '83), you have your say. Carl, I swear, could steer that truck like a thread through the eye of a needle. When he parallel parked, he'd back up quickly and snake it right in, one hand on the wheel and the other flipping off the cars that would honk behind him.

"Elly, jump at the next light and look in Garner's store window!" Carl called this from the cab while he was driving.

"What for? I'm busy!" I said, re-lacing my new winter boots.

"Look at the ring, seventh from the left, I'm gonna buy that sucker for Etta. It's called an anniversary band. Take a look, tell me what you think."

I sighed heavily, hoping he could hear my tired bitterness.

"Oh, is the non-driver gettin' tired?"

I grabbed a bundle and jumped off before succumbing to the desire of giving Carl the ol' one-two on the back of his head. The sidewalk by Garner's Jewelers smelled like piss and curry. As usual.

I looked in the window and kept my eyes pinned on the ring selection the whole way by, feigning interest for Carl's amusement. Then I focused on the black newspaper box at the corner. Some days I didn't see one person even though I saw thousands. Other days I saw thousands, but I never really saw anyone.

A fleece-lined shoulder bumped me hard.

"Watch it," I said, even though I never got a response from anyone.

I loaded up the Times and jumped back on the truck.

"Beautiful, huh?"

"Yeah, almost made me cry." I faked a wipe at the corner of my eye.

"You're just jealous."

When I got home that night, I told myself I was going to the store. I was going to buy some veggie burgers, maybe some of those blue corn low-fat tortilla chips to go with it. I'd seen the vegetarian highlights on the cooking show on channel eight. I felt I was ready to make the move, the move away from frozen beef burritos and chicken a la king every night.

But instead, at six p.m. I fell asleep to the news on my couch. I woke up two hours later and went to my bed. I heard Marion's heels on the hardwood floor above me. I stirred, then looked at the ceiling wondering, why? Why heels on in the house all the time when a newspaper girl lives below? I heard her bed squeak. Then it was quiet for five or so minutes. I was almost back asleep. Then her bed squeaked again and Marion moaned, or was that her boyfriend from 3B?

I tossed around, then thought about going back to the couch until I had to get up at three a.m. The moans got louder, sounding fake, rehearsed. I'd seen the boyfriend from 3B. He was a film geek. I'd assumed he was gay until he started fucking Marion. But who knew? He probably still was.

I moved into Chelsea two years ago when I got this job. That first day, I met Marion on the stairs and asked if I could use her phone. We went up together talking about the cool breeze in the hallway and the nice looking tomatoes she'd just bought down the street at Joe's. Her apartment was exactly like mine - same layout, same amount of space. She gave me a tour and showed me where to put things in a habitat big enough for a small family of rats.

"Watch these guys." Marion slammed her checkbook down on a roach crawling across the counter. I watched her cigarette dangle from her lip, stuck with spit.

I took her ideas and set up my bedroom and living room just like hers, for optimal space. I thought it worked well. I thought it was the only way it could work. Then I realized that Marion was a thirty-year-old single woman who had sex, a lot. During the first year, I thought maybe it was her job. Now I know she just likes it that way.

So her bed is exactly above mine, shoved into the northeast corner like a kid gone wrong. 8:07 p.m. - Marion's getting her brains fucked out. 8:10 - I become disgusted when I realize that if I just lie still on my back and remove Marion, her bed, the floorboards and cockroaches, take away the air in between us (keeping Mr. 3B) and there he'd be, fucking me (assuming we were all in missionary position).

I got up and fumbled my way to the bathroom. I blocked my eyes with my hand, flipped the light on and stood staring at the floor to adjust. Two cockroaches scattered for cover like vampires. I sighed. In New York, it wasn't even worth the effort. Most cockroaches puckered up and kissed the plastic nozzle of the Borax bottle. Too strong for anything but an iron shoe.

I thought I'd brush my teeth, then bed down on the couch. I opened the mirrored cabinet and the facial scrub dropped into the sink. So I gave myself a scrub instead. After rinsing, coming back up for air, I looked into the mirror as the drops of water dove down my young face. I saw an eyelash on my cheek. I picked it off and thought of blowing it from my fingertip with a wish in mind. Instead, I settled on the fact that my finger was wet, and I was alone. And wishes like that, the ones with the eyelashes, are only in movies and the main character is never, ever alone.

*****

It works like this: The New York Times wants every driver and pusher to know each route like the back of God's hand. Our normal route in the east part of Manhattan, nine square blocks, is what driver Carl DiMiglio and pusher Eleanor Dugan, get three to four days a week. It varies. The other days, Carl and I get an alternate route. Carl's favorite alternate route is by the East River - Old Slip down past Vietnam Veterans Plaza. He takes his hat off every time we round that first curve, no matter what. If we get stopped in traffic, his hat lays limp in his grasp until we drive off and the memorial is out of sight.

I appreciate the Battery Park rounds in the lowest of the low of Manhattan. Then we get to see the Franciscan Sisters of Mary. In nice weather you can see them out doing crafts at a picnic table or yoga on the lawn in full habit. Just seeing a craftfully inept nun-in-habit trying to do macramé for homeless people brings Carl and I into fits of laughter.

"Hey, Elly," Carl calls over the seat in the cab, "check out the old nun sitting Indian-style. Maybe we should stick around and watch her try to get up."

All of this in front of the huge crucifix that was displayed at the top of a stack of boulders behind the chain link fence, and always on spotlight. The old J.C. himself, staring down, looking disappointed and ashamed, probably wondering if Carl and I were really the pathetic reason why those nails were in his feet.

Neither of us talks about religion outside of the usual comments of, "Jesus H. Christ" and, "Holy shit!" Most of the jokes Carl tells have more to do with the various origins of people who live in his apartment building in the Bronx. Carl has a thing for Armenian jokes about his loud, dark neighbors who, he says, cook rotten cabbage every night for dinner. And where, he asks, did I get off finding cheap rent in Chelsea - a rich, predominantly gay neighborhood?

"I'd still take the Armenians, though," he always says. "At least I don't have to live with a bunch of faggots and artists."

"Don't forget the nymph upstairs." I easily provoke him.

"Yeah, and that hooker. Faggots, artists, and a hooker, all the same."

I never let him see that any of his ponderings jarred me. I'd only been on the job two years, nine months of it assigned as Carl's pusher - as long as he'd been in Vietnam. I hadn't yet developed a thick skin with him. Some guys never did and just refused to ride with Carl anymore. Most of the time I ignored him or turned my back to him and sat on the stacks watching the street spill away from the back window.

When I got the check from Aunt Joanie's estate in the mail, I truly realized that I had seventeen hundred dollars that I'd never had before. I always made rent okay, but I afforded myself no luxuries outside of a well made coat every two years and good boots for winter. Seventeen hundred dollars could have bought the "real deal" dress at Barney's or some silk pajamas at Henri Bedel's on Fifth Avenue.

I decided there was probably a better way to make both Aunt Joanie and me proud. On my next day off, I took a train to Welland, Connecticut to see an old friend, Jacob, the only college friend that I'd hung on to. I hadn't seen him since three Christmases ago. Of course, he finished the obligations of NYU, and I took off after only two years, surprised that I'd had the patience to get that far. I just knew that it wasn't in me. I was salutatorian of my class in high school, which is basically the consolation prize for second place. I got myself a little burnt out on the books, but a full scholarship and the principal from my high school in the Bronx told me I should suck it up and do it.

I'd probably hung on to Jacob because he was easy. We'd slept together a few times while we casually dated, or hung out, as we called it. He'd always been sort of a loner at school. We lived down the hall from each other and had the same hours every semester. When the dorms were cleared out at noon and everyone was in class, Jacob and I would cook lunch in the community kitchen. Engineer hours, we called it, both of us studying the same major. Now he was living in Welland, designing Contour chairs, which were making a comeback in senior citizen homes, while I was engineering a hotheaded, Italian driver through rush hour with the daily.

I never pulled punches with Jacob. That would never change. The attraction dissipated after I left school and our paths split, but the commonality of two years of lunch in the kitchen together would always leave a comfortable feeling between us.

I knew Jacob was an individual trader, heavy in the online stock market. He worked out of his house most of the time, and he made more money trading stocks and secrets than designing the lumbar cushion that vibrated just right.

I laid the check in my name on the table. I told him to invest it. With no hesitation, Jacob picked up the check, then laid it back down and picked up the newspaper. He spread it out before me.

"What do you want to invest in? Risky, aggressive, passive, no losses?"

I scanned the columns of letters and numbers - hieroglyphics to me. Then it caught my eye, right there in the bottom corner about to fall off the page - Kathie Lee Gifford, Inc. I put my finger on it. Jacob grabbed a pen and handed it to me as he stamped out his cigarette.

"Circle it plainly. Get this check in your account. You can pay me. I'll buy it in the morning. The whole thing?"

"The whole thing."

I didn't stay for the late dinner of fish and macaroni & cheese he offered. He kissed me on my forehead and said, "Maybe I'll come up for a visit sometime."

I thought of Aunt Joanie on the train ride home. She would have been so proud of me. I would earn money with the gift she gave me and I would support Kathie Lee's business - the leading maker of quality clothing at affordable prices.

For two weeks I didn't think too much about the money. I felt the release of socking it away, saving up on a memory of Aunt Joanie. I didn't know how to check the stocks. I knew it opened at twenty-four the day I bought. I didn't even really know what that meant.

I went to the store and stocked up on the healthy items in the first two aisles of Benton's Grocery. I bought St. John's Wort shake mix, organically grown mushrooms, spinach lasagna, black bean burritos, and raspberry nectar. I was on my way up.

Carl seemed like he was in a good mood, too. He bought the anniversary ring for Etta and all seemed right with him and the world. He confessed that it was the ring that had given him sex on a daily basis for the entire week and three home-cooked meals.

"Last night meatloaf and mashed potatoes and a little snooky after the national news." Carl rubbed his belly. I thought he might be slightly blushing from the images he was giving me.

"When you gonna settle down, Elly?"

"When I settle."

"Yeah, yeah. You women, you think we're all bad."

I was stooping over in the back of the truck sorting for 38^th. I glanced at Carl who still had his hand on his belly, savoring the feast from the night before. He noticed, and casually moved his hand back to the steering wheel.

"I don't need a man to support me."

"No, you're right," Carl said, in a serious tone. "You need money."

We both smiled at each other. Then Carl pulled out of the lot so fast that I rocked against the side of the truck. I grabbed the leather grip hanging from the ceiling to stop my fall.

"Jeez, Carl. Watch it."

"Someday, Elly, you'll really know what it's like to be knocked on your ass."

"Yeah, if I win the lottery or something."

"Nah, the man who'll give you good lovin' after the seven o'clock news."

He just never gave up.

When I got home my answering machine was blinking in that good news sort of way.

It was my boss calling to tell me our route was switched for the next day. The second message was Jacob. He wanted to talk to me, something about going all the way. I wasn't sure what he meant.

When I called him back I got his answering machine.

"Jacob, it's Elly. I'm returning your phone call, something about going all the way-"

"Elly?"

He sounded out of breath. Did he just discover the perfect coil for the heating system of the lounger?

"What's up?"

"I gotta tell you, kiddo. uh, well things aren't too good over here in Welland."

How do you really tell someone like me (whom he calls "kiddo") that the money is, well, gone?

Something about sweatshops, something about a news announcement a couple of days ago. Kathie Lee Gifford, down eighteen points, crash and burn. Aunt Joanie, in the loving memory of. yada yada, crash and burn. No more Barney's. No more seventeen hundred dollars.

He made apologies, profuse ones, as they say. I heard them - didn't keep his eye on it closely, just heard about the news coverage that day, a day too late, but I wasn't really listening. I thought I might strike gold with this one. But Elly Dugan never really struck gold. Self-pity kicked in hard. I grabbed my coat and got the blue line down to Battery Park. It was six thirty p.m., December 20, 1996.

On the way down I tried my best to sit alone. At commuter's hours it was hard. A bum came and sat down next to me. He fell asleep almost immediately. His knee knocked against mine. I moved closer to the blackened window but somehow his knee kept finding me, like he was running in his dream.

I thought about Aunt Joanie's asparagus mushroom casserole, her hateful looks, her gut. Her money, her memory. What was she thinking with giving me that money? Did she know I was going to fuck up? Was she giving me the chance to show myself how badly I could fuck up? It was all pinpointed now. What had I done right? I thought that I was abiding by Aunt Joanie's floating carefree mentality, that of - Do what makes you happy. Don't like school? Quit. Don't like that guy? Don't date him.

For two weeks I had known what I wanted - a monetary return on a gift, a chance to buy something at Barney's besides a votive candle or a coffee mug. And Jacob, he was sorry, but what happened? This guy knew what he was doing. He'd funded all of his college expenses on buying and selling. I didn't get it. Sweatshops in Honduras? What did that have to do with anything?

He told me he'd take the train up the next morning to try and fix things. He asked me if I'd be around. I told him not to bother. What could he fix? It was gone. It was a fluke. It was just me, not striking gold again. For the millionth time.

A shot of electric blue came through the window and woke me up. An ad for a new men's fragrance, available only in fine stores. Fine stores.

"Battery Park, exit to your left."

I stepped over the bum's legs. My coat knocked his hat off. I looked back at him when I was getting off. The man that was sitting behind us picked up the hat and laid it precariously on top of the old man's head.

I walked past Maury's Pub where Carl and I always got lunch when we were on the sisters' route. There was a biting cold wind that night, the kind that would chap my nose and cheeks. It wouldn't let up, it would keep on me, push me until I worked my way back to the subway. I walked past the faded picnic tables on the sisters' lawn and up to J.C., who was still looking down.

I stared at him through the diamond-shaped pattern of the fence. The lines of worry were in his forehead, just like Aunt Joanie's when I stopped confession at twelve and mass at thirteen. She'd put her hat on, grab her coat, and never say goodbye. Just out the door. We never talked about it. There was no hidden agenda. I just didn't want to go. I didn't have this strong faith in what I considered to be the unseen. I wanted to sleep late and watch the Sunday afternoon movie in my nightshirt.

I rode home on an empty subway car. I read the latest edition of the Times, which I swiped from the seat in front of me. The travel section told me I'd find hidden treasures in Costa Rica. I could barely afford a cab once a week and these people thought I'd go to Costa Rica? Who wrote this crap anyway? This is what I was delivering to people like me? Or were these readers not really like me, Elly Dugan, at all?

I walked the couple of blocks to my building and went around back to the fire escape to avoid the always-bustling lobby, full of people with cell phones and dogs. I got into bed with all of my clothes on, even my coat. It was ten p.m. I fell asleep before I could think about the money anymore.

We had the sisters' route the next morning. Carl and I were on the road by four. He'd brought a steaming cup of hot coffee just for me.

"You didn't have to do that, Carl." I sipped the coffee - on the burner too long, my sentiments exactly.

"Well, just this once," he said. "You'll probably score big with this inheritance thing you got going on, then you'll leave me or something. Become a supermodel or something. Move up in the world, live with the supermodels instead of the faggot artists."

"I doubt it." I looked at Carl whose face seemed worried. Not about me, or the workday. Just an overall life's worry, right there in his face. Like my father who died twenty years ago, a bad liver.

"Carl, I lost it."

He didn't look at me. There was no surprised gasp, or a gaping mouth, or a "Why, Elly, why?" He just kept looking at our old truck, like I'd simply said, "I need to buy some new boots this winter" or "this job is gonna be the death of me yet."

We loaded up and pulled out. I warmed up in the cab with Carl until the first string of stops. Then he made me stay in back so that he wouldn't have to feel the cold gust of December air which made his arthritis worse. I didn't mind. I was glad I was young and didn't have these worries.

I was feeling nauseous. The five hours of fitful sleep the night before didn't do it for me. The coffee sat in my stomach, acidic and bitter. Cold beads of nervous sweat prickled my forehead.

That money, that stupid money, was gone. Kathie Lee Gifford and her sweatshops.

I thought about the tired limp arms of the shirts hanging in my closet. Cheap fakes, all of them. Right down to the orange organza blouse with the re-sewn button.

We hit some slow traffic at the west end of Battery Park by the sisters' place. We slowed to a stop across the street from J.C.

"Elly, it's gonna be awhile. I can feel it. No progress in this city. One accident and the whole place shuts down. Who ever heard of traffic at this time of the morning anyway?"

I nodded, then looked over at the crucifix and moved closer to the back window to get a better view. It was still dark and the spotlights were shining on his forehead, his chest, his feet.

"Oh, wait a minute. I see it Elly. It's a main break and a fender bender."

I opened the back door and jumped down. I surveyed the situation: endless lines of cars, the unified blare of variously pitched horns, and the ugly loud mouth of an old cop on beat who was trying to clear one lane. I walked in between the stopped cars to the chain link fence. Tiny flakes of snow dusted J.C.'s head. The sky was a muted gray, carrying the burden of a heavy, wet snow.

There were no nuns around. I opened the gate and walked up to the rock formation. I chose a jutting stronghold and made my way up quickly, as if it were built for climbing.

I was right in front of him before I knew it. His eyes, which were always on his feet, were now looking down at me. I was right. He was ashamed, but hopeful.

I climbed up closer, all of the honking and yelling swelled into white noise, white angry noise.

I reached up and touched his foot. I always wondered what it felt like. The perfect gray stone he was carved from, the rusted nails hammered into his feet. Who took that hammer and nailed those into the stone feet? Was it hard to do? Was it out of love and artistry, or the simple task of a maintenance man hammering away?

"HEY!"

I looked up and saw a sister come out of the door approaching me, approaching J.C. I looked down at Carl in the truck. He sat there in the warm cab staring at me in disbelief.

"Get down now. I'm calling the police."

She ran back to the door and called to someone inside, then came running out to us.

"Don't touch Him!" She was now at the bottom looking up at me.

"I'm getting down!" I looked for a foothold. Why was getting down always so much harder? The color rose in my face. I avoided her eyes. Her arms were crossed over her chest.

"Can you help me down?"

"I have half a mind to make you stay there for the police." She looked out to the street and suddenly noticed the traffic, which was slowly snaking out with one lane now cleared.

So I jumped. It was about an eight-foot fall to the ground. I landed on my feet, stumbled, then ran through the gate.

"Young girl!"

She didn't attempt to follow me. I didn't want her to see me getting in the truck. She'd report me for sure and I would lose my job. The only thing I had.

I ran around the truck to the driver's side and Carl opened the door.

"What the hell were you doing, Elly? Trying to get yourself arrested?"

I put my hand on his arm and gently pushed it. I looked up at him, into his eyes. "Carl, move over."

And then I was driving the 1983 Ford down through the one-lane traffic of Battery Park. Carl didn't say a word until we were out of sight. Then he started to laugh.

"For a minute, I thought you were up there trying to find God or something."

I didn't say anything. At the next box I pulled over and went to the back for my bundles.

We ate at Maury's that afternoon. Baked cod sandwiches. They were the best in town, by far. Carl sat across from me in the old wooden booth, breathing through the bread in his mouth. He kept smiling and looking out the window. Once, I heard him mutter, "Finding God."

When I got home that afternoon, Jacob sat with the late light of the December sun.

"I took the train up. The 1:57. I gotta get back home soon. Here's your money." He handed me a personal check made out to me, seventeen hundred dollars.

I stared at it.

Jacob threw his cigarette against the wall of the building and got up to leave. He hugged me tightly. "Buy a Certificate of Deposit or something." He stepped down two stairs and stopped. "Or," he said, raising his finger, "spend it on yourself."

I stood there watching him. He turned around to go.

"But how did you get this back? Where did you get this from?"

Jacob kept walking and waved goodbye to me over his shoulder.

"Jacob!"

"It's all the same!" He called up to me as he approached the street, heading for the cover of the subway stairwell.

I ran to the railing and caught my last glimpse of him in the dying light.

"It's not the same!" I yelled.

I sat down on the fire escape stairs and thought about how I'd never been given back anything I'd lost. Was this my moment of striking gold? Then I thought about the speed of that sister - running out to her savior, the feet of ol' J.C. and the perfect wrinkles in his loincloth. He was looking at me from way up there. All those times passing right by J.C., he was looking at me with those rusted-through nails, still in his hands, still in his feet.