As Tooly grew older, she witnessed other shortcuts: how one might vacation for nothing by befriending a shy local of the opposite sex, earning free room and board, even a tour guide for a few days. Another game involved posting reward signs for a lost key inside a tourist-jammed train station. She put on a hiker’s backpack (stuffed with Humphrey’s laundry) and sought out the smokers — always easiest to start a conversation with. Any mean-faced jerk was her preference, the more unpleasant the better. She borrowed his lighter, sparked a cigarette, and complained that she had to fly home early because her grandma had fallen ill in Florida. While stepping away to the vending machines, she entrusted her backpack to the guy, then returned with a look of astonishment and something in her palm: Hey, is this that key on the reward posters? At a phone booth, they called the posted number. Frantic with excitement, the key’s owner promised to drive over immediately with the generous cash reward; he’d arrive in an hour. Alas, Tooly couldn’t wait — she had her flight to catch. However, the man on the phone (Venn) demanded that she wait. Appearing befuddled, she thrust the phone at her new acquaintance. Venn told him that this girl had just agreed on five hundred dollars for the key — give her the money now and I’ll refund you as soon as I arrive. Hell, I’ll quadruple it, if you stay put: two thousand in cash, plus the five hundred you gave the girl. Her unpleasant new companion sprinted to the closest ATM (Tooly helpfully pointing it out), and withdrew as close to five hundred dollars as possible. She gave him the key and hastened to the cab stand — no time for the airport train now! When, after an hour or two, the guy was still waiting, he irritably tried the number on the reward posters. It rang and rang.
But such high jinks had dwindled away — Venn came to see them as cheap, as did she. And he was occupied with more legitimate endeavors now. Yet he looked after her all the same, arranging her travel to each new city, finding lodgings for her and Humphrey. Weeks might pass without word from Venn. Then he’d phone. His voice — grin audible — immediately erased her disappointment that he’d not been in touch.
He was maddening, he was unpredictable, he was late. But he always arrived in the end. So, she waited.
“Any brilliant new ideas?” she asked.
“Lots, duck. But what are yours?” He gazed across at the rooftops. “I brought you here to see these kids downstairs — your age, more or less — coming up with things. You don’t want to end up like Humph. Need to make your own propulsion.”
Humphrey sent those ridiculous letters on her behalf (“Attention New York Times: I have young lady you must be interest in….”) because he was certain of her quality. Venn was more measured, and that wounded Tooly. But he was correct: she had produced nothing. Humphrey always claimed that the tumult of the twentieth century had ruined his prospects, that he’d been “cornered by history.” But Tooly had grown up in an era of relative calm, after all the proper history had ended. She’d been too young to understand the hoopla of the Berlin Wall falling or the protests in Tiananmen Square, her awareness dawning around Operation Desert Storm and the L.A. riots, countries splitting up and ruining all the maps, then the O. J. Simpson trial, a computer that beat humankind at chess, the cloned sheep named Dolly, an English princess dying in a car crash, the most powerful man in the world fornicating with an intern. They were scattershot events, none relating to any other, and certainly not to her.
What, she wondered, would it have been like to live in an important era? How would she have acted during world wars? Humphrey had raised her with World War II and Soviet totalitarianism as the signal events—that history was her place and time, far from the banality of this peace. These days, it was as if the whole world, even New York City, aspired only to be Seattle. She wished the present would impose itself on her and determine her course.
“Come,” Venn said, leading her back downstairs.
As they strode along Canal Street, he said nothing. She wanted him to speak, so that she might learn his mood — Tooly hated this quiet (though traffic blared beside them). Hated being useless to him, offering nothing. She had achieved things in this city, slipping into a few homes. But to what end? For a few minutes’ company? To peek at how college kids lived? Quizzing that student on 115th Street had produced nothing. He’d been harmless, which was the problem: you meddled with bastards, not with some shy kid.
Venn scanned for a free taxi, his attention shifting to the next appointment. This encounter was about to end. A long wait till the next.
She’d hoped this would be a full day together, the beginning of a fresh adventure with him — at the very least, a long meal or a long walk. But it was over already. With a presentiment of her coming solitude, she watched him.
But hang on. Don’t disappear.
“I did do one thing,” she blurted.
Before intending to, Tooly found herself describing Duncan and mentioning Xavi and Emerson — even the guy downstairs with the pig. To make herself sound industrious, she inflated everything, sketching a setting that was fat with potential. “I realize they’re only in college,” she said, “but they must have parents.”
“Most people do, you’ll find.”
“I got tons of stuff on them.” She searched her coat pockets for the crumpled ball of newsprint where she’d jotted notes upon leaving that apartment. She read aloud her scribbled fragments, watching Venn for the detail that would snag him, sharpen his gaze.
None did.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Don’t apologize to me, duck. Never any need for that,” he said. “Look, if you want, keep digging around up there. Or give the boy lawyer a call sometime, see what comes of it.”
“I’m so stupid — I don’t even have his number.”
“How’d you manage that?” he asked, chuckling.
“You say I’m not supposed to write numbers down anymore!” Contrary to his preferences, Tooly had long kept a little phone book. She crossed out every number after they left a city, but he still preferred that they only memorize information — after all, the people they encountered were not necessarily types one wished to be connected to in writing.
“So you did get his number,” he asked, “but can’t recall it?”
“I didn’t even ask,” she admitted. “I hate getting numbers. They want mine back, and I never know what to say.”
“Say you’re moving and don’t have a new phone line installed yet.”
“Hey,” she exclaimed, nostrils flaring, “that’s what you always tell me!”
Grinning, he shut his eyes, lids flickering. Tooly frowned, meaning for him to see when he looked up. Instead, he walked on. She couldn’t stop herself hurrying after. “You idiot,” she said, threading her arm under his, inhaling the wet-wood scent of his sweater.
Venn was busy reviewing the scrap of scribbled notes about the students — how had he even taken that from her? “This paper smells like peanut butter.”