Any Minute (8 page)

“Aren’t we going to eat here?” Mitchell adjusted the huge sleeves on the borrowed jacket he wore since he was going on the trading floor.

“I told you. I have to get to the office.”

“We’re eating cookies along the way?”

“Yes. That’s what it looks like to me,” Sarah snapped. The last thing she wanted to do was be impatient with Mitchell. After all, she had brought him to work with her to show how much she cared for him, but he would have to keep pace with her if he ever wanted to do it again.

He would have loved to sit at the table and nibble the cookie and watch everyone. He got tired of listening to people in his mom’s office because they all talked about the same thing. But wearing the jacket made things somewhat better; this jacket might be the greatest thing ever. “It swallows you,” his mom had said when he’d tried it on, which pleased him, the idea of something swallowing him. He liked the way it hung, wrinkly and large, green mesh with a smart white trim, and a plastic nametag on the collar. When he worried about borrowing it, his mom told him not to worry, that she had every intention of returning it to the closet after they’d finished. She said everyone had to wear a jacket like this when they visited the trading pit.

They’d almost made it outside when a lady carrying a computer case pointed at his borrowed nametag and said, “You’re not Harry Tippin.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m Mitchell Harper. I’m visiting.”

“But you’re wearing Harry Tippin’s jacket.”

Mitchell shrugged, feeling as if this wasn’t good, that somehow she’d caught him at something.

“Hello, Sarah. Heard you’ve been singled out for the Cornish account.” The woman extended a hand to his mom. “Congratulations. I’m happy for you.”

His mom didn’t return the gesture. “I’ll bet you are.”

“Well,” said computer lady, looking insulted. “No need to say it like that. I’m trying to be a good sport.”

Once they’d gotten out on the sidewalk, his mom shook her head. “So now you’ve met Lauren Davis. You mustn’t let her bother you. That woman would give up her own child if it meant she could get her hands on my accounts.”

Mitchell wasn’t sure what that meant. “Is she like Ryan Thompson in my class? He pushes me against the fence whenever I do better in Math Minute than he does.”

“Ryan Thompson pushes you against the fence? You never told me that.”

“He does.”

“Have you talked to Mrs. Georges about it?”

“Of
course
not, Mom.” What was she thinking? “If I did, they’d all know I
squealed
.”

“I see your point. You’re going to have to figure out a way to make him stop then. And, yes. It’s the same thing.”

His mom handed him his lemonade. Mitchell chewed his straw as they turned the corner. Suddenly he felt hemmed in by the giant buildings. The Chicago Board of Trade clock gawked down from the end of the street. As he watched, the clock’s minute hand jerked from Roman numeral III to Roman numeral IV.

“Mom. Did you see that? Another minute just went by.”

She’d been gulping her coffee in great mouthfuls, hardly stopping to swallow as they’d hurried along. Upon hearing his words, she picked up her pace.

“No, Mom,” he said. “I didn’t mean we were supposed to hurry up and catch it. I mean, we
missed
it.” At school, Mrs. Georges had been teaching them about space-time continuums. It wasn’t on the second-grade curriculum, she’d confessed as she drew some sort of chart that looked like a jumping spider on the blackboard, but her son was getting his doctorate in mathematical physics. She thought it only fair that she share with her class what she and her family often talked about around the dinner table.

“No, we didn’t miss that minute. We were right here. We were talking.”

“But I just saw it go by. And we didn’t
do
anything with it.”

“No, and we won’t do anything with the next one either if you don’t hurry up.”

Mitchell stopped short. Some charity had placed a used-clothing bin in the middle of the sidewalk. Mitchell took his mom’s hand as they made their way around it.

On the other side they almost ran into an old man who was digging inside a metal door marked Shoes Only! He clutched one scuffed wingtip oxford in his hand and apparently was searching to find its mate.

His mom didn’t approve, he could tell. “Don’t they realize they ought to put these in places where the homeless stay, not in the financial district?” She gave the man a wide berth. “No one wants these people to turn up here.”

The man found his other shoe. He dropped to the ground and positioned his backside on the edge of a windowsill to try them on. He rolled up frayed pants to reveal bare ankles. He wiggled his toes into the shoes and shoved them the rest of the way on. He yanked the shoelaces into neat loops and stood proudly to test them out, putting his weight first on one foot and then the other. The shoes were too big, but that didn’t seem to matter. He glanced up at Mitchell, wanting some opinion. Their eyes met.

Mitchell could tell the old man had been sleeping under a bridge or something. He wore ancient clothes that were very dirty, his sleeves rubbed thin at the elbows, and his shirt didn’t have much of a hem. He was missing a good number of teeth, and what teeth he
did
have protruded from his gums at slight angles. He walked with a slight stoop, and he smelled bad, and his scalp showed through a very small amount of gray, grease-caked hair. What hair he lacked on his head, he made up for in his bushy brows. Silver strands stuck straight out from the bony ridges over the man’s eyes, stiffer than kittens’ whiskers. Mitchell figured the man hadn’t had a bath for days. He would like going without one himself sometime, but being clean and looking proper at all times was very important to his mom. Mitchell thought perhaps that was why his mom seemed so irritated at the man’s presence. It probably just bothered her that he was dirty.

Something mysterious and familiar glowed in the man’s eyes. Mitchell got the strangest feeling that maybe he’d seen this man before, only he couldn’t figure out where. Mitchell couldn’t help wondering if there was some special reason why they were meeting this man at this particular time.

The odd feeling ended, however, almost before it began. “Hey, lady.” The owner of the oxfords held out a hand toward Mitchell’s mom. “You need help finding your way around? Show you to the closest ‘L’ stop if you got spare change.”

“I don’t need you to show me anywhere,” she said. “I’m not lost.”

“Hey, Mom,” Mitchell whispered. “I think he’s just saying that… well, I think he’s the one who needs help.”

His mom shouldered her large purse. “You mustn’t help people like this. They have to learn to help themselves.”

“What if he needs money because he’s hungry?”

“He isn’t hungry. He’ll only get as much as he can and then he’ll get drunk on it. You have no idea how much these people drink, living on the street like this. I work for my money, and I am not going to give it to somebody who doesn’t want to work.”

But Mitchell hung back. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

“You bet I’m hungry.” The interesting stranger shot him a broad, plaque-infested grin.

Mitchell’s mom gave him that look that said,
Mitchell Harper, if you don’t cut it out right now, there will be big consequences, young man.
He was just about to give up and follow her when he remembered the cookie he’d been carrying. He held out an arm with the sack caught between two fingers. “You want this?”

“Sure I want it,” the man said. He peered inside the bag and withdrew the cookie. “God bless you for this. I say, God bless you.” From the careful, reverent way he peeled off the paper and bit into the gift, you’d have thought he was biting into some fancy French pastry. “I say.” He pulled the small sweet out of his mouth and examined it after his first bite. “This is the
best
cookie I’ve ever eaten.” Then Mitchell heard for the third time, “God bless you.”

“Those are some nice shoes too,” Mitchell said, nodding toward the man’s feet. “I like those. You’re lucky.”

“Don’t got nothing to do with luck, I tell you.” The stranger stared down at his feet like he’d almost forgotten they belonged to him. “They sure are nice, aren’t they, though? They’ll clean up nice, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.”

Mitchell figured he was in deep trouble for not obeying his mom. “If you do not come with me
this minute,
young man,” she said, covering her mouthpiece with her hand because she’d answered her phone again, “you will be grounded from Cubs games for as long as I’m alive.”

He was just turning to follow her when the man in the wingtip shoes called, “Hey, kid.” He pointed to the collection bin. “You want me to dig you something out of here?”

Mitchell shrugged and called back, “Don’t need anything much.” But then he brightened. “I’d take it if you found a Cubs shirt.”

“Plenty of Cubs shirts in here,” he said. “You stop back by, I’ll have you one. Folks throw those out all the time. Now take White Sox shirts. Those are a whole lot harder to come by. Folks hang on to those.”

Mitchell did a double take as he got a closer look. Behind his glass lenses, his eyes went round as hickory nuts. “I saw you from the bleachers, didn’t I?”

It all started to make sense. The way the man leaned on the open bin and propped his arms into a wide D against the door. The way what was left of his hair sprang from his ears like the feathers of a half-plucked turkey.

Mitchell felt the awesome thrum of his pulse. His heart felt like it might thump clear out of his chest. “You were at the game, weren’t you? In the scoreboard?”

In spite of his disheveled appearance, the gentleman snapped to attention with military precision. “You recognize me, don’t you? Yes, I was there.” His gaze popped right, to his left, to his right again, hoping no one would overhear. “But maybe now’s not the best time to tell everybody about it.”

“Mom!” Mitchell called. “This man is our friend. I saw him at the Cubs game. He was keeping score. He was watching me and Dad!” Sarah kept getting phone calls and taking them; otherwise, they would have been long gone. She certainly wasn’t paying any attention to what he was saying right now; she just looked frustrated that she had a plan, and for some reason it kept being thwarted.

The fellow raised his bristly eyebrows and clamped his mouth shut tighter than a varmint trap.

Mitchell was unsettled now, but for completely different reasons than his mom. He fished inside his pocket. He had almost a dollar in there if you counted all the dimes he’d made carrying groceries for Mrs. Fogelman down the street. “If I had time and I was lost, you could show me the ‘L’ stop. Here’s all the money I got.”

“That’s not why I’m here, Mitchell.”

The little boy held out a sweaty palm with every coin to his name in it. “Here. Take it.”

“
Mitchell
,” his mom said, interrupting her latest cell-phone call and anticipating his move. “You may
not
do that.”

“How come you know my name?” Mitchell whispered, marveling and somewhat confused. “Until now, my mom never said it in front of you.”

His mom took his hand and pulled him after her. “Come away from him now.
Please
.”

“But, Mom.”

“I said
now
!”

For the entire length of the block, Mitchell couldn’t stop craning his neck, peering behind him.

Chapter Six