A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [2]
Opening her eyes, she saw the plumber’s tool belt lying on the floor at her feet. It had a beautiful screwdriver in it, the orange translucent handle gleaming like a lollipop in its worn leather loop, the silvery shaft sculpted, sparkling. Sasha felt herself contract around the object in a single yawn of appetite; she needed to hold the screwdriver, just for a minute. She bent her knees and plucked it noiselessly from the belt. Not a bangle jangled; her bony hands were spastic at most things, but she was good at this—made for it, she often thought, in the first drifty moments after lifting something. And once the screwdriver was in her hand, she felt instant relief from the pain of having an old soft-backed man snuffling under her tub, and then something more than relief: a blessed indifference, as if the very idea of feeling pain over such a thing were baffling.
“And what about after he’d gone?” Coz had asked when Sasha told him the story. “How did the screwdriver look to you then?”
There was a pause. “Normal,” she said.
“Really. Not special anymore?”
“Like any screwdriver.”
Sasha had heard Coz shift behind her and felt something happen in the room: the screwdriver, which she’d placed on the table (recently supplemented with a second table) where she kept the things she’d lifted, and which she’d barely looked at since, seemed to hang in the air of Coz’s office. It floated between them: a symbol.
“And how did you feel?” Coz asked quietly. “About having taken it from the plumber you pitied?”
How did she feel? How did she feel? There was a right answer, of course. At times Sasha had to fight the urge to lie simply as a way of depriving Coz of it.
“Bad,” she said. “Okay? I felt bad. Shit, I’m bankrupting myself to pay for you—obviously I get that this isn’t a great way to live.”
More than once, Coz had tried to connect the plumber to Sasha’s father, who had disappeared when she was six. She was careful not to indulge this line of thinking. “I don’t remember him,” she told Coz. “I have nothing to say.” She did this for Coz’s protection and her own—they were writing a story of redemption, of fresh beginnings and second chances. But in that direction lay only sorrow.
Sasha and Alex crossed the lobby of the Lassimo Hotel in the direction of the street. Sasha hugged her purse to her shoulder, the warm ball of wallet snuggled in her armpit. As they passed the angular budded branches by the big glass doors to the street, a woman zigzagged into their path. “Wait,” she said. “You haven’t seen—I’m desperate.”
Sasha felt a twang of terror. It was the woman whose wallet she’d taken—she knew this instantly, although the person before her had nothing in common with the blithe, raven-haired wallet owner she’d pictured. This woman had vulnerable brown eyes and flat pointy shoes that clicked too loudly on the marble floor. There was plenty of gray in her frizzy brown hair.
Sasha took Alex’s arm, trying to steer him through the doors. She felt his pulse of surprise at her touch, but he stayed put. “Have we seen what?” he said.
“Someone stole my wallet. My ID is gone, and I have to catch a plane tomorrow morning. I’m just desperate!” She stared beseechingly at both of them. It was the sort of frank need that New Yorkers quickly learn how to hide,