Interlaced Pathways

Wong’s Lost and Found Emporium-2

I had checked the spot often, and when I had found the door, I had phoned in immediately for a week off, begging an emergency. It had taken some arguing, but I had managed. The presence of the restaurant had allowed me to stay so long, since I sneaked food out when night fell in New York. Naturally, the shop had a few misplaced refrigerators and other appliances; a few even worked.

Once I left this place, I might not find the door again for years—if ever.

I kicked in annoyance at a random bit of crud on the floor. It unfolded five legs and scurried away under a nearby shelf. Well, I had left a mark; the doors all bore my handmade signs, minor amusement though they were.

At least my stay had been eventful. My first customer, after I had figured out how the place worked, had been a tall slender Chinese guy from the San Francisco corridor. The door there was in the back of a porno shop. He had been in his fifties and wore a suit that had been in style in 1961, when it was last pressed. Something about him suggested Taiwan.

He had come looking for the respect of his children, which he had of course lost. I found him a box with five frantic mice in it; what he had to do was pet them until they calmed down. However, while he was gingerly poking at them, a boa constrictor glided silently out of the shadows unnoticed. It ate all the mice and then quietly slithered away. The guy got hysterical. I almost pointed out that snakes have to eat, too, but actually I didn’t care about the snake, either. I’m strictly neutral.

My youngest visitor had been a little boy, maybe about ten, who came in through the boarded-up gas station in Bosworth, Missouri. It was a one-stoplight town that didn’t send me much company. The kid wore jeans and a blue Royals baseball cap. He was looking for a dog whistle he had lost. I found it for him. Nothing happened to him or it. That was okay with me, too.

I sighed and stood up. No one else would be coming in. As I rose, I saw a large shadow out of the corner of my eye and glanced toward it, expecting it to slide away among the shelves as usual. Instead, it stayed where it was. I was looking at a young woman of Asian descent, wrapped up in a long white crocheted shawl. She also wore a denim skirt and striped knee socks.

“You’re sickening.” She spoke with elegant disgust, in a New York accent.

I knew that, but I didn’t like hearing it. “You’ve been here a while, haven’t you?”

“I think about two days.” She brushed back her hair with one hand. It was cut short and blunt. “You were asleep when I came in.”

That was a relief. She didn’t belong here any more than I did. On the other hand, she had apparently been watching me.

“Where’ve you been sleeping?” I asked out of curiosity. On my first day, I had spent several hours locating a sleeping bag.

“I found an air mattress,” she said, still angrily. “I just meant to sleep until you woke up, but you had a—a client when I got up. After I saw the way you treated him—and all the rest of them—I decided not to approach you at all. Don’t you have any feelings for them? When something goes wrong? You could at least try to help them.”

“I don’t sabotage anybody. Whatever happens, happens—good or bad or indifferent.”

She tossed her short hair, probably less to move it than for the disdain it conveyed. “I can’t stand it. Why are you so callous?”

I shrugged. “What do you care? Anyhow, some go away happy.”

“What?” She looked astonished. “Can’t you even understand simple—” She stopped and shook her head. “Maybe you’ll understand selfishness. Suppose I want what I came for. I can’t get any help from you if I have trouble.”

“Well, I guess that’s logi—”

I stopped when she reached for a big stoppered metal bottle, on the shelf next to her. She heaved it at me, and I only had time to spin around. It hit my shoulder blade, hard, and bounced unharmed to the floor.

I whirled back toward her, ready to grab it and throw it back at her, but she was already striding quickly toward me.

“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “I want to know! Why are you so callous?” She snatched up the metal container from the floor in front of me and held it wrapped in her shawl. “Tell me now!” she screamed, right in front of me.

I leaned forward and spoke, glaring into her eyes. “I came in here looking for my compassion. I lost it years ago, bit by bit. I lost it when I was eight, and other kids chased me around the playground for no visible reason—and they weren’t playing. When I started junior high and got beat up in gym class because the rest of the school was white, like my grade school. When I ran for student congress and had my posters covered with swastikas and KKK symbols. And that was before I got out into the world on my own. You want to hear about my adult life?”

I paused to catch my breath. She backed away from me.

“I’ve lost more of my compassion every year of my life for every year I can remember, until I don’t have any more. Well, it’s here, but I can’t find it.”

She stood speechless in front of me. Letting her have it all at once accomplished that much, at least.

“Maybe you were in the wrong town,” she muttered.

“You think I like being like this? Hating the memories of my life and not caring what happens to anybody? I said I’ve lost my compassion, not my conscience.”

She walked back and put the metal bottle back in its place on the shelf. “I can find it,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“I’ve been watching you. When you get something for someone, you follow the little white light that appears.”

“You can see that?”

“Of course I can—anybody can. You think you’re special? We just can’t see our own. I figured that out.”

“Well…so did I,” I said lamely.

“So, I could get your compassion for you.”

“Yeah?” I didn’t think she would, considering all she’d said.

“Only you have to get what I want, first.”

“You don’t trust me, remember?”

She smiled smugly. It looked grotesque, as though she hadn’t smiled in ages. “I can trust you. Because you know that if you don’t give me what I want, I won’t give you your compassion. Besides, if all goes well, your lack of compassion won’t make any difference.”

“Well, yeah. I guess so.” I hadn’t considered a deal with another customer before. Until now, I had just been waiting for the no-show proprietor, and then had given up even on that.

“Well?” she demanded, still with that weird forced smile.

“Uh—yeah, okay.” It was my last chance. I glanced around and found her spot of white light behind me on a lower shelf. “This way.”

She walked next to me, watching me carefully as the white light led us down the crowded aisle. A large porcelain vase emitted guttural mutterings on an upper shelf as we passed. Two small lizards from the Florida corridor and something resembling a T-bone steak with legs were drinking at a pool of shiny liquid in the middle of the floor. The viscous liquid was oozing slowly out of a cracked green bottle. We stepped over it and kept going.

The light finally stopped on the cork of a long-necked blue bottle at the back of a bottom shelf. I stopped and looked down at it, wondering if this deal had an angle I hadn’t figured.

“Well?” She forced herself to smile again. It gave her a sort of tortured visage.

“What is it, anyway?” I tried to sound casual.

“You don’t need to know. I know that, too.”

“Suppose I don’t get it till you tell me.”

“I won’t tell you. And you won’t get what you want.”

She couldn’t have known I had to leave soon, but she was still my last chance. I would be getting home late as it was. Besides, she was the sort who might really want more compassion in the world.

“Hurry up,” she said.

I knelt down and looked at the bottle. She might have guessed what I had focused on, but with all the other junk jammed around it, she couldn’t be sure. Well, I knew she had compassion herself, already. She wouldn’t want to regain any lost tendencies that were nasty, like cruelty or vengefulness, so I was not in personal danger.

I took the bottle by the long neck and stood up. “It’s in here, whatever it is. If it’s a material object, you just open the bottle and spill it out. If it’s a chance, or a personal trait, you have to uncork the bottle and inhale the fumes as they come out.”

She was already taking the bottle from me, carefully in both hands. I backed away as she sank her teeth into the cork and yanked it out with a pop. White vapor issued from the bottle. She started taking deep breaths in through her nose, with her eyes closed.

I backed away, smelling something like rotten lettuce mixed with wet gerbil fur.

She kept on breathing until the vapors ran out. Then she re-corked the bottle and smiled at me, looking relaxed and natural. “Well! You’re still sickening, but that was it, all right.” She laughed gently. “Wow, that stuff stunk. Smelled like rotting cabbage and wet cat fur, didn’t it?”

“Wha—?” I laughed, surprised at her sudden good humor. “It sure did.”

“Okay, brown eyes. I see your little spot of light. Follow the swaying rear.” She sashayed past me and walked casually down another dark aisle, humming to herself.

At one point, something on a shelf caught her eye and she stopped to giggle at it. It was a large brown and white snake, shoved into a jar of some kind of clear solution. She paused to make a face, imitating the snake’s motionless expression. Here, of course, one never knew if a pickled snake was really a pickled snake or something else temporarily in that guise. Anyway, she made a funny face and then laughed delightedly. After that, we pushed on.

When she stopped again, she was looking up at a shelf just within her reach. “There it is.” She chuckled, without moving to take anything.

“Yeah?” I was suddenly afraid of that laugh.

She looked at me and laughed again.

“What’s so funny?”

She shook her head and reached up on tiptoe with both hands. When she came down, she was cradling four sealed containers in her arms. One was a short-necked brown bottle encrusted with dry sand. Two were sealed jars of smoky glass and the last was a locked wooden box engraved with smile faces. She squatted on the floor Asian style and set them down.

“One of these holds your lost compassion.” She looked up and laughed. “Guess which one.”

My stomach tightened. I could not be sure of getting my compassion back this way. After my general insensitivity to people here, I didn’t think I would ever be allowed back in, either.

“We had a deal,” I said weakly. “You were going to give it to me.”

“I have; it’s right here. Besides, you should talk. And remember—if you inhale someone else’s lost chance to wrestle an alligator or something, you’ll wrestle it.” She clapped her hands and laughed.

I stared at her. Maybe I deserved it, but I couldn’t figure out what had happened to her. She had been concerned and compassionate before I had given her the long-necked bottle, and she certainly didn’t seem angry or self-righteous now. I wondered what she had regained.