“Aw shit, Magda, no. You can’t come with me. No,” I say, untangling my arm. “Sorry. No.”
She edges her lower lip forward, eyes even wider.
“Sorry, Magda. Goodbye.” I turn around. Don’t look back, Chris, keep walking. But I hear the clattering of her rollerblades as she follows along behind me.
“No friends, Chris,” she says. “No house.”
I turn around. “Why did you take the train, then?”
“Go with you!”
I turn and keep walking, but I only manage two steps before looking back. She’s got her hand on her head, face crinkled up in panic. I feel like such a prick.
“Fine!” I shout to her. “Okay? Fine. My house.”
“Yes,” she says, “Please, yes. Thank you!”
“But anything funny and I call the police, all right? You know, police?” Yeah, call the police and say what, exactly?
Magda nods, wipes her face, and pushes her hair behind her ears. We set off. As we exit the parking lot and turn onto the sidewalk, a red minivan leads the pack. It inches by, then speeds up and turns a corner.
Magda keeps her mouth shut, probably sensing that I’m pissed off. I’d already done my bit. Now she’s on her way to my house? We turn down the nondescript drive that leads to my condo. I enter the punch code, unlock the lobby door, and hold it open while Magda wriggles past. She waits for me at the elevator. We don’t meet anyone in the corridor. I’m glad. With an average age of seventy-five-plus, Magda’s outfit could set off a string of heart attacks on my floor.
I leave her standing in my living room and go to the bathroom, locking myself in. Just calm down, I think, this isn’t a crisis. All you have to do is feed her, put her to bed, and then find some charity hole on the Internet you can deliver her to in the morning. She’s just a kid. It’s one night. Whoever she’s running away from, she probably just needs to think things over before going back. I take a few deep breaths; watch my face in the mirror. My skin looks tough, wrinkled. How the hell did I get to be thirty-eight?
I’ve calmed down and am up to my elbows in the freezer, trying to decide between salmon steaks or lemon sole, when the switchboard buzzer rings. I pick up the line. I can hear the shower going — Magda must be getting clean.
“Hello?”
“Hello, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m wondering if you could help me?”
“That depends.”
“Look, my car won’t start, and wouldntchaknowit, my cell phone’s dead too. I need to borrow someone’s phone to call my wife and the CAA. I’ve rung a whole bunch of buzzers. Would you mind coming down to help me out? Bring your cell phone, if you’ve got one, and we can make this quick.”
“Has anyone else picked up yet? I’m sort of in the middle of cooking and—”
“Thanks, I’d really appreciate it. You won’t believe the kind of day I’m having.”
Click.
Well thanks a lot, buddy; you wouldn’t believe the sonofabitchofaday I’m having too.
I wash my hands, grab my cell, and call the elevator. I don’t bother to tell Magda — she’s still in the shower, and at this point I don’t want to see any more of her than I have to. The elevator picks up two college students from the second floor, and Carl and Jenny are already in the lobby downstairs. Geez, this guy really did push all the buzzers.
I see Mrs. Fitzgerald from 3G outside, babbling beside a red minivan. She waves and I go to join her, but my hand freezes on the door release. It’s the comb-over man from the train platform, coming around the minivan. He points at me and smiles, saying something to old lady Fitzgerald that I can’t hear. The sweet thing laughs with one hand over her mouth, looks back at me, and then continues muttering away.
Comb-over waves at me to come outside. I raise my hand to decline, and back away. I tell Carl and Jenny that I’ve left something cooking on the stove. This is too weird. I take the stairs to the second floor. I can see the red van from the stairwell window. Comb-over has climbed into the driver’s seat. He tries the ignition and, when the van starts up, raises his hands in a dumbfounded expression. Fitzgerald laughs. Comb-over shakes his head for a minute, then waves goodbye. He gives the building a final once-over, and drives away.
I’m pretty shaken up. Could this guy have followed us all the way from Union? He would have had to go to every station and watch the passengers unload. And why the broken-down car — if he were looking for Magda, couldn’t he just ring all the buzzers and ask if she were home?
Not if Magda didn’t want to be found.
When I get back upstairs, Magda’s changed into one of my old T-shirts: a smiley face with a bullet hole through the forehead. She must have rooted through the bathroom chest of drawers. She smiles and slides onto one of the stools by the breakfast bar. She’s beautiful without makeup, a real Barbie doll. Damn. I clear my throat and leave the room, fish my old bathrobe out of the closet, and hand it over. If I’m going to figure this out, I need to be able to concentrate. She puts the robe on and I start getting down to the business of cooking dinner. I always think best when my hands are busy.
Okay, so if this comb-over guy showing up here is just a random coincidence, then there’s nothing to worry about, right? But if he followed us from Union and saw Magda come in here with me, and if, let’s say, he’s used this prank to find out my name, he’ll be back. Either way, I’ve got to figure out what’s going on, and fast.
Sorting this out would be easy enough if Magda could actually talk to me, but with her English...?
“Magda, are you in trouble?”
“Thank you, Chris,” she says, indicating the bathrobe.
“Where are you from?”
She shakes her head. She doesn’t understand.
“Polish? Hungarian?... Romanian? Russian?” Nothing.
I go into the bedroom, find my laptop, and bring it to the kitchen. I connect to the wireless and search for free online Polish translation.
“Magda, Polski?”
She laughs, nods her head. “Yes, Polski.”
Oh god, lucky break.
I start typing. There was a man here looking for you. I click on Translate and show her the screen. Her smile dies on her face.
“Type,” I say to her. “Type in Polski.”
I gesture at the keyboard. She two-finger types and pushes it back at me. I click Translate.
— He (it) is a bad man.
I take a deep breath.
— Why is he a bad man? I write.
— He (it) produce I make bad thing with people.
— Why did you get on the train?
— It ran away from bad person.
— Should we phone the police?
— If I call police, he (it) will kill me. He (it) will kill my family. He (it) say that owe money. I must pay. If sufficient amount pay him (it) money; he (it) will leave me sole. I make bad thing with people to produce sufficient money.
— How much money does he want?
She shrugs her shoulders. She’s hugging her knees up on the stool, rocking back and forth.
— What should we do? I type.
She shakes her head. “Don’t know,” she says out loud. She types something and clicks the mouse.
— Hide away?
Oh crap.
I get up and turn off the rice burner and pull the fish out of the oven. It looks and smells like fish, so it’ll do. I empty a bag of pre-washed mixed greens into a bowl with some cherry tomatoes and pour out a half-finished bottle of white wine into two glasses. Liquid courage. We might even be able to manage a little dinner conversation.