FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #7

She's a local.

I wished I had a dollar for every time I’d had someone with a different face come up to me with the same flyer of the same woman who had gone missing one day longer than the day before. At first, I had wanted to do everything in his power to find the woman; to put the minds of the people with the flyers to rest. But as the days faded into weeks, the weeks to months, and the month eventually into a year, every day I would board the subway to get to my photography studio in downtown New York, and every day a different person with the same exact flyer would walk up to me. You’d think there weren’t 366 people looking for her, (for the day I’m recollecting was the day after the year anniversary of these strangers walking up to me and my anniversary of being in New York,) but there were. In fact, I suspected that another would come the next day. I wondered who the woman was. I had looked at the flyer and studied her features every day for the past year, and so as the man in the torn jeans and gray t-shirt held the flyer out for me to look at I went into my normal routine of looking at the flyer and studying the young woman’s features. She reminded me faintly of my daughter, who lived back in my hometown with her grandmother because, by blood, she was not mine. As I looked into the steely blue eyes of the woman, lit up with the excitement of whatever had sparked a giggle to come flying out of her, I ached for my daughter; her eyes lit up in the same exact way. She did not have my little girl’s long, raven locks; this young woman had blonde hair, bland in color as is straw, but I thought it suited the woman’s tan complexion well enough.

            “She’s been missing for a long time now.” This man was actually talking to me. I was stunned; normally, I was asked if I knew who she was, where to find her, and things of that general nature. And every time I told the newest person that I had no idea as to who she was and her whereabouts, and they would sometimes tell me that she was a local and that I must have seen her around somewhere. And every time, I would say no, and give my blessings to the search, and then I would walk away. But this man, this short man with the ripped jeans and the baggy t-shirt and the chestnut-colored hair that curled on the top of his head stopped to have a conversation with me. I was, for lack of a better word, in awe.

            “So I understand.” I nodded softly, staring into the woman’s happy eyes. I wondered why this man had come searching for her. So, I asked: “Why are you looking for her?”

            He smiled sadly at me. I held the flyer back out and he took it, looking sadly at her picture. “Do you have time?” He looked up at me for only a second before he looked back down at the flyer. I looked at my watch. No, I didn’t have time; I had a photo shoot for an important clothing line that day. Then I thought about the sad look on the man’s face. The three-hundred-and-sixty-six days that had gone by where I had been given little to no information on this woman who reminded me so much of my little Eleanor. Someone else, I thought, can take this photo shoot. I’ve been behind the camera every day since I got this job. One sick day will be fine. I need to know. And it was true. I did need to know, for the sake of my sanity. If Eleanor was ever permitted to live with me, I needed to know if I would ever have to spend three-hundred-and-sixty-six days searching for my little girl. Surely, this young woman was someone else’s little girl. And so I told the man to give me one second, and I pulled out my cell phone. I opened it and sent my assistant a text, telling her that I would not be able to go to work. I told her to beg my indulgence from the company; that we could reschedule, but I had “family matters” to attend to. I could recite the text word-for-word, but that would be useless. I sent the insignificant text to my sheepish assistant, who would have me for weeks for putting such a heavy burden on her shoulders, and then I turned my attention to the man.

            “I’ve got time now.” I said it as simply as I could.

            “We should go for coffee.” He scratched the back of his head. I noticed the wrinkles that creased his face, as if something terrible had etched away at his mortality. He was handsome other than that, or maybe that was what made him attractive. He didn’t seem old, despite the wrinkles; the way he rubbed the back of his head and leaned on one foot, and the childish manner in which his jeans sagged at his hips.

            “I don’t drink coffee.” It rolled off of the tip of my tongue; a natural defense from outsiders that I had created back in California. He looked down at the ground and uttered a small, “oh”. I bit my lip for a moment. “We could go for coffee.” I stated simply. “I’ll get water or something.” And then I remembered myself, and I extended my hand toward this stranger. “Elliot,” I introduced myself as I have since I was young, “Elliot O’Hara.”

            “Max.” He didn’t give me his last name, but he looked up and he smiled and he shook my hand. He turned and led the way, and we walked to the nearest coffee shop in the city from the subway station. My only hope was to follow; one year of walking these streets and the only things that I knew were which restaurants in which I liked, the sidewalk that took me directly to the studio, and the bee line that I could make from my apartment to the animal shelter, where sometimes I would photograph the animals and post them on my blog with their name and story to ease my soul. As I followed Max, I remembered how I would occasionally receive photographs of some of my loyal followers with the very pets that I had posted pictures of, and they would be thanking me for suggesting the animal to them. I felt like I owed it to my fellow lost souls and, as I followed Max, I felt that I owed this woman what I owed those animals. If she was a lost soul, then I needed to do whatever I could. I was three-hundred-and-sixty-six days late, possibly more, but if there was anything that I could do I felt that – now that the opportunity to learn more had been presented – I had to do something.

            Max held a door open for me, and I walked into the quaint little pastry shop. Ironically, it was called, “A Quaint Little Pastry Shop”. I thought it was cute, and I looked out of the giant windows at the front. I would have to memorize the way there as I walked back to my apartment. Then I looked over at Max, who was talking to the man behind the counter with the silly chef hat mounted on his head, (which I had always figured chefs only wore in children’s books and movies or in sexual romantic comedies, but I suppose some still hold on to that old tradition,) and I forced a smile when Max pointed to me. The chef’s let his eyes dance over me, and I knew automatically that he was gay, so all I did was offer him a polite smile. I couldn’t judge him; he and I were the same in that aspect, but since the both of us were effeminate men from what I could gather, I did not allow myself to worry about being undressed in some man’s mind as I was most places. The man turned, dismissing the eye contact that he and I had made, and Max signaled for me to walk up to him. I did so.

            “Do you want anything?” He asked. “It’s my treat.”

            My eyes danced the rows of pastries and petite cakes. As much as I adored anything sweet, my sweet tooth would have to sit tight. “No, thank you.” I looked at this Max character and I smiled. I’m sure it was an awkward smile; I didn’t know this man, and it was only natural that I wanted to take nothing from him. He must have sensed it. The gay man in the chef hat came back and was holding a cup of coffee in his hand. He handed it to Max, a warm smile on his face. Then he looked at me.

            “Daniel.” He extended his hand, and I shook it.

            “Elliot.” This time, I didn’t offer my last name.

            I followed Max to a table with two chairs across from each other. I waited for him to sit down before settling myself in the other one. I realized that I had my laptop and camera cases with me and I set them in my lap, not wanting them too far from me. He asked me about them, and I told him that I needed them for work, explaining that I was a fashion photographer in so many words. He nodded and he traced the edges of his cup. Then he brought it to his lips black, or, I assumed it was black because he put none of the sugars or creams that I saw sitting on the table in his coffee. He took a short sip, peering at me over his cup.

            “So,” he stated, “you wanted to know Angela?”

            “Is that her name?” I cocked my head to one side, “To be honest, the only thing that I’ve ever looked at on that poster is her face. She’s got my daughter’s eyes.” I mentioned Eleanor; she was a hot topic when I first talked to people in New York. If I mentioned Eleanor, it broke the ice and people warmed up to me.

            “You have a daughter?” He furrowed his brow, and the wrinkles in his face seemed to multiply. “You seem young.”

            “She’s not mine by blood,” I worded myself carefully, “A friend of mine was pregnant when we were in High School, and she wanted me to sign the birth certificate because the dad wasn’t there.” He knew the next question, and so he answered it. “She killed herself shortly after my daughter was born, and so I’ve made her my responsibility. My friend would have wanted me to.” I laughed lightly, picking up a packet of sugar and fiddling with it absent-mindedly.

            Max’s suspicious brows melted away, and he placed his mug gingerly on the table. “That’s similar to my story with Angela, actually.” He laughed lightly, rubbing the back of his head, “Only, Angela was my sister. And my mother was the one who committed suicide.” He went on to explain that he was five years older than his sister, and that he was twenty years old now. “If she’s still alive, today is her fifteenth birthday.” He paused at that sentence, and I knew that, when I had been approached three-hundred-and-sixty-five days ago, I would have never imagined that I would be in “A Quaint Little Pastry Shop” with a stranger named Max talking about the girl who shared my Eleanor’s eyes. “Our father,” He went back to tracing the rim of his mug with his index finger, “was abusive, and so when I turned eighteen I took Angela and I flew up here to New York. We lived for about a year in peace. My sister started to shine like I’ve never seen her shine. She was always shy when we lived with my father; he would hit her if she spoke out of turn, and no one would do anything about it. So when she lived with me, where no one could hurt her again, she was suddenly smiling. She started taking ballet lessons, and she wanted to be a ballerina. She suddenly had dreams again.” Max looked out of the window and his eyes faded, as if he could picture his little sister dancing. I had moments where I could picture Eleanor with the Barbie digital camera that I had bought her when she was three, pretending that she was “just as good as daddy”, in her own words. But I knew that my daughter was safe. This man, only a year younger than I was, had no idea where his little sister was, and I pitied him. “And then one day she never came home. I suspected it was my father, but I didn’t know where to find him. So the police gave up. But I’ve never given up. I found everyone that I knew and everyone that they knew, and I gave them flyers. I asked them to give them out, and when they only had one left to simply ask around until they found someone who had seen her. Every single day, one more person quit. My last person just quit looking yesterday, and so now I’m all alone. Well,” Max glanced fondly towards the man in the chef hat, “Daniel has his poster in the window. So he hasn’t given up on me. But everyone else has.” He sighed. “A year and a day, and we still haven’t found her. I’ve almost given up hope.” He sighed and took a large swig of his coffee.

            “Max,” Daniel called out from behind his counter, “the next subway is about to come in. You should probably go and see if anyone…” He didn’t finish his sentence.

            “I should.” Max said in a daze, “It was nice talking to you, Elliot.” He stood up. I asked him if the pastry shop offered Wi-Fi. He said yes, and then I thank him and he thanks me again before rushing out of the door, leaving his coffee cup behind. I stood up, leaving my laptop and taking my camera out of its case. I walked outside, held my camera up, and flashed a photograph of the flyer that Daniel had hung up when everyone but the teenager’s brother had given up on ever finding her. I walked back inside, settled myself, and opened my laptop. I plugged my memory card into the small computer and I opened the internet. While I waited for my blog, the homepage, to open up, Daniel brought me a bottle of water.

            “I don’t have any money with me.” I admitted, holding it up for him to take.

            “It’s on the house.” Daniel pat me on the shoulder, “Max really needed someone to listen.” And then he walked back to his counter, smiling at me from behind the counter. He knew what I was going to do as well as I knew it, and so as I added the picture of the poster to my blog and double spaced, I stared into space. I wondered what I would want to say if Eleanor was missing. Instead of something as heartfelt as that, I started the best I could:

 

            “This woman is a local…” 

back to Contest #7