Slob - Ellen Potter [20]
“Our apartment building faces the roof of the Fuji Towers too.”
Nima nodded. He was trying not to look confused.
“The thing is, I want . . . I need to see a particular thing that happened in the past,” I explained to him. “Something that happened almost two years ago.”
“At Black Baron Pub?” he asked, still confused.
“No, no. Somewhere else.”
“So your machine Nemesis,” Nima said slowly, “she will show a moment that have already passed?”
“With the help of the Fuji Towers roof, yes.”
There was a pause during which I waited, not breathing, for him to ask the question that I desperately didn’t want him to ask:
What was that moment?
A slow smile twisted up one side of his mouth.
“What?” I asked nervously.
“Maybe Nemesis can show me at Pema’s cousin’s house last week, looking most depressed. Looking like so.” He cupped his chin in his hand and looked most depressed.
I smiled. “And we’ll show it to Pema.”
“And she will weep with happiness.”
7
After I left Nima, I was in a much better mood. My stomach had lost that empty feeling, and the sound of Mr. Boscana’s voice was no longer ringing in my ears. I decided to go to visit the demolition site after all. It was a big one. You could tell it was a brand new site because the plywood fence around it was still a pale yellowish color and there were no posters taped to it or things scrawled on it. I walked around it once, scoping it out casually. Then I walked to the end of the block, turned around, and walked by it again slowly, this time letting my hand drag along the wooden fence. I put pressure on the boards at every seam to see if there was any give. There wasn’t. In a way I was relieved. I’d never scavenged without Jeremy before. I wasn’t entirely sure I had the guts to do it alone.
Just as I had satisfied myself that that there was no way in and had passed by the final board, I noticed something off to my right. Next to the demolition site was a community garden with a six-foot chain-link fence around it. The high wooden slabs of the demolition fence butted up against the chain-link fence, all except for one spot toward the back. The wooden fence hadn’t quite been long enough to reach the length of the site, and since there was already a chain-link fence right there, they hadn’t bothered to close off the foot-wide section.
I hesitated. It would mean scaling the chain-link fence, then trying to squeeze through the opening. I had images of myself being wedged between the wooden board and the adjacent building and of firefighters arriving to pry me free. Or worse, if someone called 911 and Mom found out about it. I started to walk past, then stopped again, stared at the opening. I could fit. I’d have to suck in my stomach and do some wiggling, but I was fairly sure I could get in there. What if there was an amplifier just sitting there? I had to try. I would be ashamed of myself if I didn’t.
I opened the gate to the community garden and walked in. There wasn’t much of anything growing at this time of year, just some odds-and-ends flowers and weeds. There was garbage too, probably tossed into it from the tenement building next door. People can be such pigs when they think no one’s looking.
I walked to the back of the garden, and I took one quick look around. No one. Then I glanced up at the tenement building, but the way the sun was hitting its