Харлан Кобен: Run Away

Part of Simon — a part he could never give voice to or even admit existed — had wanted to give up on finding her. Life had, if not improved, certainly calmed since Paige ran away. Sam, who had graduated from Horace Mann in the spring, barely mentioned his older sister. His focus had been on friends and graduation and parties — and now his sole obsession was preparing for his first year at Amherst College. Anya, well, Simon didn’t know how she felt about things. She wouldn’t talk to him about Paige — or pretty much anything else. Her answers to his attempts at conversation consisted of one word, and rarely more than one syllable. She was “fine” or “good” or “’k.”

Then Simon got a strange lead.

His upstairs neighbor Charlie Crowley, an ophthalmologist downtown, got into the elevator with Simon one morning three weeks back. After exchanging the usual neighborly pleasantries, Charlie, facing the elevator door as everyone does, watching the floors tick down, shyly and with true regret, told Simon that he “thought” he had seen Paige.

Simon, also staring up at the floor numbers, asked as nonchalantly as possible for details.

“I might have seen her, uh, in the park,” Charlie said.

“What, you mean like walking through?”

“No, not exactly.” They reached the ground floor. The doors slid open. Charlie took a deep breath. “Paige... was playing music in Strawberry Fields.”

Charlie must have seen the bewildered look on Simon’s face.

“You know, um, like for tips.”

Simon felt something inside him rip. “Tips? Like a—”

“I was going to give her money, but...”

Simon nodded that it was okay, to please continue.

“...but Paige was so out of it, she didn’t know who I was. I worried it would just go...”

Charlie didn’t have to finish the thought.

“I’m sorry, Simon. Truly.”

That was it.

Simon debated telling Ingrid about the encounter, but he didn’t want to deal with that particular fallout. Instead he started hanging around Strawberry Fields in his spare time.

He never saw Paige.

He asked a few of the vagrants who played if they recognized her, showing a photo off his phone right before he tossed a couple of bills into their guitar case. A few said yes and would offer more details if Simon made that contribution to the cause somewhat more substantial. He did so and got nothing in return. The majority admitted that they didn’t recognize her, but now, seeing Paige in the flesh, Simon understood why. There was almost no physical overlap between his once-lovely daughter and this strung-out bag of bones.

But as Simon sat in Strawberry Fields — usually in front of an almost-humorously ignored sign that read:

— he had noticed something odd. The musicians, all of whom leaned heavily on the grungy-transient-squalid side, never played at the same time or over one another. The transitions between one street guitarist and the next were remarkably smooth. The players changed on the hour pretty much every hour in an orderly fashion.

Like there was a schedule.

It took Simon fifty dollars to meet a man name Dave, one of the seedier street musicians with a huge helmet of gray hair, facial hair that had rubber bands in it, and a braided ponytail stretching down the middle of his back. Dave, who looked to be either a badly weathered midfifties or an easier-lived seventy, explained how it all worked.

“So in the old days, a guy named Gary dos Santos... you know him?”

“The name is familiar,” Simon said.

“Yeah, if you walked through here back in the day, boy, you’d remember him. Gary was the self-appointed Mayor of Strawberry Fields. Big guy. Spent, what, twenty years here keeping the peace. And by keeping the peace, I mean scaring the shit out of people. Dude was crazy, you know what I’m saying?”

Simon nodded.

“Then in, what, 2013, Gary dies. Leukemia. Only forty-nine. This place” — Dave gestured with his fingerless gloves — “goes crazy. Total anarchy without our fascist. You read Machiavelli? Like that. Musicians start getting in fights every day. Territory, you know what I’m saying?”

“I know what you’re saying.”

“They’d try to police themselves, but come on — half these guys can barely dress themselves. See, one asshole would play too long, then another asshole would start playing over him, they’d start screaming, cursing, even in front of the little kids. Sometimes they’d throw punches, and then the cops would come, you get the deal, right?”

Simon nodded that he did.

“It was hurting our image, not to mention our wallets. So we all came up with a solution.”

“What’s that?”

“A schedule. An hour-to-hour rotation from ten a.m. to seven p.m.”

“For real?”

“Yes.”

“And that works?”

“It ain’t perfect, but it’s pretty close.”

Economic self-interest, thought Simon the financial analyst. One of life’s constants. “How do you sign up for a slot?”

“Via text. We got five regular guys. They get the prime times. Then other people can fill in.”

“And you run the schedule?”

“I do.” Dave puffed out his chest in pride. “See, I know how to make it work, you know what I’m saying? Like I never put Hal’s slot next to Jules because those two hate each other more than my exes hate me. I also try to make it what you might call diverse.”

“Diverse?”

“Black guys, chicks, spics, fairies, even a couple of Orientals.” He spread his hands. “We don’t want everyone thinking all bums are white guys. It’s a bad stereotype, you know what I’m saying?”

Simon knew what he was saying. He also knew that if he gave Dave two one-hundred-dollar bills torn in half and promised to give him the other halves when Dave told him when his daughter signed up again, he would probably make progress.

This morning, Dave had texted him:

11AM today. I never told you. I ain’t a snitch.

Then:

But bring my money at 10AM. I got yoga at 11.

So here he was.

Simon sat across from Paige and wondered whether she would spot him and what to do if she bolted. He wasn’t sure. He’d figured that his best bet was to let her finish up, pack up her measly tips and guitar, make his approach.

He checked his watch. 11:58 a.m. Paige’s hour was coming to an end.

Simon had rehearsed all kinds of lines in his head. He had already called the Solemani clinic upstate and booked Paige a room. That was his plan: Say whatever; promise whatever; cajole, beg, use whatever means necessary to get her to go with him.

Another street musician in faded jeans and ripped flannel shirt entered from the east and sat next to Paige. His guitar case was a black plastic garbage bag. He tapped Paige’s knee and pointed to an imaginary watch on his wrist. Paige nodded as she finished “I Am the Walrus” with an extended “goo goo g’joob,” lifted both arms in the air, and shouted, “Thank you!” to a crowd that was not even paying attention, let alone applauding. She scooped the few pathetic wrinkled singles and coins up and then lowered her guitar into the case with surprising care. That simple move — lowering that guitar into the case — hit him hard. Simon had bought that Takamine G-Series guitar for her at the Sam Ash on West Forty-Eighth Street for her sixteenth birthday. He tried to conjure up the feelings to go with the memory — Paige’s smile when she plucked it off the wall, the way she closed her eyes as she tested it out, how she threw her arms around his neck and shouted, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” when he told her it was hers.

But the feelings, if they were real, wouldn’t come.