“Tooly.” He gaped at her, absently putting down his briefcase. “Tooly.”
She held still.
Paul reached out, and she extended her hand to shake his. He’d only meant to touch her arm.
“Did Sarah bring you?”
Tooly shook her head.
“Are you okay? You look so thin. Are you hungry?”
As they ate, he asked if she wanted to stay with him and that she could — he’d figure it out somehow. They could leave right now, move again. Did she want that? But these questions were too direct coming from Paul — she expected him to be otherwise, so didn’t know how to answer.
All fell quiet, like their meals of old. Just the tremors of his desire to speak. So strange after days of free discussion with Humphrey and everyone there, after all she’d done — drinking coffee each morning! cheating at chess! debating one of the Great Thinkers!
She asked to get down from the table, and went to her room. She hadn’t had a door for so long, and was unsure whether to use it now, if it would be rude. From the other room, he cleared his throat, as if to call her back. She knew where he’d be: seated stiffly on a chair, work folder in his lap, willing her to join him.
However, she found him otherwise than imagined. He lay on the couch, arm draped over his eyes. She stood beside him, looking at his shielded face. He reached over to draw his daughter nearer. But she turned, spiraling away.
On her balcony, Tooly gazed down at the lit swimming pool in the courtyard, a pane of blue glass. The shacks on the other side of the wall were dark. Lights from distant skyscrapers dotted the night.
She slipped out, ran down the stairs, passed under the jacaranda trees, beyond the saluting porter, up toward Sukhumvit Road, into the first tuk-tuk.
The destination she gave was Khlong Toey Market — she and Sarah had passed it that first night. Upon arrival, she handed the driver all her money, the tips from helping tend bar. She was on her own in a swirl of strangers, and looked for the alley. She tried one, but it was wrong. She walked up the next. All grew darker as she went. She closed her eyes, the better to listen for music and crowd noise. She heard only traffic, far behind her now. Tooly turned a blind corner. And there it was: the house. She crossed the concrete patio and tried the front door, which opened immediately.
All three of them stood there, their conversation interrupted. The way they regarded her — Venn smiling slowly, Sarah reaching for her cigarettes, Humphrey compressing his lips — it seemed that the discussion might have been about Tooly herself.
“I figured you’d make it back, little duck.”
“Thank God, thank God, thank God — thought I’d lost you,” Sarah said, though she was looking at Venn.
“Look what I got,” Tooly said, taking out her passport.
Venn lifted it from her hand, flipped through, and handed it to Sarah, from whom Humphrey grabbed the document. He appeared uneasy about the girl’s return, lips parting as if to object, though he had no power to dissuade anybody. He had tried. But people didn’t listen to him.
“See,” Sarah told Venn, eyes wide. “She wants to come with.”
“You’re being unrealistic.”
“It’ll arrive in my account every month; he promised. It’ll come to me and I’ll share it with you. I don’t mind.”
“Who’s looking after her?”
“I will,” Sarah said.
“Me, you, and her going around together?”
“We’ll be company for you,” Sarah told Venn. “You can do what you like. With whoever you like. I’m not trying to make some claim on you. You won’t get sick of me. I promise.”
Humphrey addressed Tooly: “They’re not staying here. You know that? They’ll be going some other place. You might not like it. I won’t be there. There won’t be school, probably. It might not be safe.”
Tooly nodded her assent.
He appealed to Sarah and Venn: “You can’t take her.”
“How much are we talking about?” Venn asked Sarah. “And monthly, right?”
Humphrey shook his head unhappily. “Look, look.”
“What?”
“If you do this,” he said, “I come.”
Venn smirked. “What do you have to do with anything?”
“I keep eye on her.”
“Sorry, but I don’t travel like that,” Venn said.
“We don’t need to all go together,” Sarah argued. “Just tell me where you’re headed. I’ll get there on my own. Me and Tooly will join you.”
“And Humph comes along and babysits whenever you wander off?” Venn said.
“I’m not wandering off. It’ll be a decent amount, Venn. It’s yours as far as I’m concerned.”
“Do what you like, Sarah. You, too, Humph. Makes no difference to me.” Venn winked at Tooly, who grinned back.
Sarah lit a shaky cigarette, blew a smoke cloud, and patted her thigh to call the girl nearer, hugging her tightly, kissing her cheek so hard that Tooly’s neck bent from the pressure. “What have you done?” Sarah whispered. “What have you done to your poor, poor father?”
2000: The Middle
AFTER WAITING AT THE CAFÉ nearly an hour, Tooly acknowledged that Venn was not returning. She walked once around the block, knowing it to be fruitless, then proceeded north. At 115th Street, she stood across from Duncan’s building, uncertain if she wished to be spotted. She studied the building’s façade, the vertiginous fire escape, and distinguished windows at whose other sides she’d stood, the rickety iron balcony where she’d sat, her legs curled beneath her, sharing a damp filtered cigarette, wondering if the bolts in the brickwork would hold.
She walked through Morningside Park, past a guy rolling a joint, his lizardy tongue sliding across the cigarette paper as he watched her. Through East Harlem, she continued, skirting the concrete projects, past adolescents in camouflage and skewed NY baseball caps, stuffing junk food and catcalling. She kept going for hours, crossing the footbridge to Randall’s Island, on to Queens, wending her way south to Brooklyn, reaching her street after midnight, traffic grumbling along the Gowanus Expressway. She entered the building, climbed to their floor, put her key in the front door, but didn’t turn it. She listened to the sound inside: a page crinkling as it turned.
“Tooly?” Humphrey asked through the closed door, then opened it. “Hello, darlink. You are asleep?”
“What do you mean?” she said, puzzled. “I’m standing up.”
“Certain animals sleep standing.”
“I’m not one of them.”
He made for his customary seat at the end of the couch, expecting conversation. But Tooly continued into her bedroom.
Awakening the next morning, she remained under the covers, wishing to escape herself in sleep. She reached for her watch on the floor, opened one eye to read it, daylight streaming around the edges of her bent blinds. A few minutes after noon.
In the shower, she pressed her forehead against the tiles, water whispering down her back, skin goosebumped. A strand of her hair remained stuck to the wall, a black S on the white tile. She wanted nothing for breakfast, took only a few gulps of water from the faucet. She microwaved yesterday’s coffee, hands shivering from caffeine and fatigue, which angered her obscurely. She abandoned her mug in the sink.
“He went,” Humphrey said, meaning Venn. “This is better.”
“We’re meeting up.”
“Where?”
“Haven’t decided,” she said. To avoid his gaze, she looked into her cupped hands.
So much of what Tooly thought, said, her mannerisms, attitudes, and humor, had come from Venn. There was no meaning to “Tooly” without him inside it. The two were akin: living among others but estranged from everyone, recognizing the pretense, forsaking a place of their own for the right, as Venn put it, “to relieve citizens of their transitory property.” He and she had no interest in riches, only in remaining free of the fools who reigned, and always would.