Any Minute: A Novel Read online

  Chapter Five

  Tom Roscoe stepped from the downtown health-club shower and reached for the pristine towel hanging beside him. He dried his face with one swipe of his big hand and shook the loose water from his hair with a vigorous, satisfying shake. Droplets splattered on the mirror.

  “Ah.” Tom’s exclamation of pleasure came from way down in his gut. Nothing like a strenuous lunchtime workout to clear the head for the rigors of the afternoon.

  The dull thud of music sounded through the wall, the repetitive chorus that the trainer kept playing to motivate his clients to keep their pulses pounding and their feet moving. The beat of the music hammered the walls as Tom yanked up his trousers, unzipped his athletic bag, and rummaged through his shaving kit for his razor. He angled his chin toward the mirror and surveyed it on both the port and starboard sides, searching for renegade whiskers. Even though he didn’t find any haphazard hairs, he pumped a giant dollop of lather into his palm, gave his jaw a bracing slap, and shaved anyway.

  Tom, now smooth-skinned and smelling of Kiehl’s Ultimate Man scrub bar, pictured his sweaty colleagues still laboring over barbells and bench presses on the other side of the wall. This gave him much pleasure as he fastened cuff links at his wrists and wrestled his feet into his loafers. He liked the feeling of everyone else running behind him. Never mind how disappointed he’d been when he’d found out his son Jonas wasn’t interested in the internship he kept offering and that his other son had just dropped out of college for the third time.

  He flung his suit coat over one elbow and hit the door, already late for his one o’clock. The street overflowed with people wearing computer backpacks or carrying briefcases, everyone scrambling back to their desks or frantically running errands or inhaling street-vendor pizza before they returned to the pits. Tom narrowly dodged a lady with a Nathan’s hot dog that, should he have sidestepped two seconds later, would have ended up as ketchup, pickle relish, and onions plastered against his lapel.

  Far ahead up the street he glimpsed a flash of red in the crowd. He thought he recognized the clothing. Tom hesitated for a moment, wanting to make sure. In only seconds, he was rewarded. She stepped off the curb to get around someone, and he caught the full view.

  He could pick Sarah out anywhere.

  Tom shouldered his way past a woman who’d stepped from her shop with a bucketful of bundled chrysanthemums. He shoved past a man who’d halted midstream to sort through his change and buy a Tribune. He wove his way between two cops arguing about the time left on a parking meter.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Sarah.” And suddenly Tom wasn’t quite sure what he’d say when he caught up with his employee. It was just that the past two nights had been extraordinary, both dinner at the Everest Room with their new clients and the strategy meeting at The Drake. In these days of financial insecurity, his firm had just roped in a large account. A moment of subtle appreciation surged through him. He couldn’t have done it without Sarah Harper.

  His one o’clock would have to wait.

  Adrenaline surged through his veins; Tom still hadn’t come down from his exercise high. He could see Sarah up ahead, the rear of her red jacket slightly rumpled, her skirt seams swaying to her steps. He quickened his pace to catch up with her, surprised to see her off the trading floor so early.

  The sun glinted off Sarah’s hair in squiggles of light. He’d long been thinking he’d like to get her alone and let her know how much he appreciated all she’d been doing for him. Tom didn’t stop to consider, as he chased his associate along the street, that this pursuit might be of some concern to his wife. He and Maribeth had been far too busy lately, he with the pursuit of new clients and she with all her volunteer fund-raising at the club. Tom liked spending time with the people who shared his victories, and Maribeth hadn’t been doing much of that.

  He rehearsed the conversation in his mind as he followed her. Tell me the truth. Have you ever had a meal like the other night? Quite the strategy Nathan Cornish was presenting last night at The Drake. What do you think, Sarah? Do you agree with his stance on metal futures?

  Just as he was about to call out to her again, she winced, grabbed onto a light post, lifted her foot, and ran her finger along the inside of her left heel. She never should have walked this far in those shoes. Why did women insist on wearing such ineffectual footwear? She could blame herself for getting a blister.

  He saw her glance toward the shop window. Just as he expected her to start walking again, just as he was about to catch up with her and engage her in a conversation that would both exalt his company and remind her how much she owed him, he saw her lean from the waist and whisper something to a child. A boy. One with a shock of straw-colored hair.

  From this distance, the kid could have been Jonas.

  She spoke with a slight grin, her eyes probing the kid’s face, the boy nodding and gesturing toward the sky. Tom realized then. For the entire length of the city block, the boy had been trotting at her side.

  Tom stopped so fast that someone bumped him from behind. The lady apologized, and he answered without looking, “Oh yeah. Right. How about watching where you’re going?”

  Tom shouldered his athletic bag as people darted around and jostled to fill the empty space on the sidewalk. One man struck him with a computer case. Still, Tom didn’t move. His feet might as well have been embedded in the concrete.

  Seeing these two together left him feeling deeply angered and betrayed. What was Sarah doing with Mitchell in the middle of a workday? Didn’t she know this was no time to be distracted from her work? The kid galloped ahead, with Sarah smiling after him as if she’d never before noticed a kid’s legs pumping as he ran or a boy’s way of hitching up the seat of his pants. He didn’t want his employee thinking about her family during these dire times; he wanted her thinking about what she could do for his company. And Tom wasn’t watching Sarah anymore; he was watching himself with his own two sons, Jonas first and then Richard, seeing the days he’d missed bringing them along to show them the city or the days he’d missed their baseball games or missed watching them leaping along the lakeshore ahead of him, back when they’d been delighted to be in his presence, back when they’d both wanted something to do with him.

  In Tom’s experience, boys never did anything except turn against you when it mattered.

  “Why should you care what happens to me?” Jonas had snarled when Tom reminded him for the hundredth time how much he stood to gain by working for Tom’s company. “You never want me around any other time, so why now?”

  And Richard, listless and without direction, whose hangdog expression seemed to imply, Yeah, you’re right. I’m good for nothing. Richard, with his head buried so deep in video games that he’d forgotten how to formulate a sentence. Richard, who had gotten picked up twice for shoplifting cigarettes and Pepsi. The shoplifting made no sense at all to Tom because he gave Richard money anytime he wanted it. Tom didn’t realize that Richard’s stealing was a rebellious act, a desperate attempt to get some kind of genuine attention from him.

  Tom saw Sarah glance behind her as if she sensed she was being followed. He didn’t want to talk to her anymore. Tom stared at a black spot of discarded chewing gum imbedded in the sidewalk. He held his breath, as if that would make him invisible to her.

  She must not have noticed him. Otherwise, why had she kept going without even speaking to him?

  What did Sarah Harper think this was? Take-Your-Kid-to-Work Day or something?

  He detoured at the next corner, cut through an alley with its stench of garbage, and beat her to the office while his agitation gnawed on him like a dog gnaws on a particularly knotty bone.

  Tom always got unreasonably upset when he didn’t get exactly what he wanted. He had imagined an afternoon stroll with Sarah telling him how grateful she was for all he had done for her. Instead, she was so busy entertaining her son that she could not even find the time to speak to him!

  She would have to answer to him for this,
Tom decided. He wasn’t paying her to bond with her kid on company time.

  The line began beside the brilliantly lit case of croissants and cupcakes, stretched the length of the counter, and jutted past the shelves of mugs and CDs and fancy coffeemakers. Behind the counter, the girl released bursts of steam from spouts in a rhythm that, to Mitchell’s ears, sounded like something in a hip-hop song. Mitchell pressed his nose to the glass and surveyed the many rows of baked goods, the lemon-knot cookies, the chocolate-covered granola bars, the pumpkin muffins made in the shape of tiny Bundt cakes.

  “We don’t have all day, Mitchell,” said his mother. “I’ve got to get to the office. People behind us are waiting their turn.”

  The clerk stood with her finger over the cash register button, waiting for him to make a selection. Wouldn’t you know? There wasn’t anything with sprinkles and icing here. He glanced up at his mom and pointed toward the first thing on the tray. “I’ll have that one.”

  “Macadamia nut, cranberry, or white chocolate?” the clerk asked.

  He nodded without really caring. He’d had his heart set on Dunkin’ Donuts instead, and then they’d gotten here and there hadn’t been much to choose from. Add to that, his mom never gave him enough time to think. She was always in a hurry no matter what she was doing.

  Beside him, she dug into her purse, paid the bill, and loaded their to-go cups in the cardboard carrier. She was already headed for the door when the lady at the counter reminded her she hadn’t taken her bag.

  “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.”