him inside.
The man was the one we’d seen from outside. He hadn’t moved and didn’t now. He was turned away from us, sitting on a stool, still staring out the window. I didn’t get a sense that he was actually looking at anything.
He was wearing a dark blue sweatshirt, faded blue jeans with no belt, and some kind of slippers that looked like deck shoes. No hat, and what hair he still had was mostly grey. It hadn’t been combed in a long time. He was either the toughest person I’d ever met or he had two or three shirts under the sweatshirt. The room was the temperature of a meat locker.
It was also the cleanest we’d seen to that point, which isn’t saying a lot. And there was actual furniture — a worn armchair in one corner, a TV with rabbit ears adorned with scrunched up tinfoil at the tips in another corner, and a refrigerator with a cord that ran into the other room. I guessed if I followed the cord I’d find the other end hooked to the generator in the hall. A space heater was also plugged into the extension cord. Its effect was negligible. A second heater sat unplugged a couple of feet away. I wondered if it would be bad manners to go over there and plug it in, decided it probably was.
There was a kitchen table with two chairs sitting to our left, a dishpan with an inch or so of water in it perched on the heater that wasn’t heating. But what jumped out at me was a potted geranium, healthy and well-tended, sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. I wasn’t sure how the plant survived in the polar-like conditions, but maybe where it was — closer to the functioning space heater — the climate was somehow more tropical.
“Excuse me, sir,” Cobb said in a low voice, “my name is Mike Cobb and this is Adam Cullen. We don’t mean to disturb you but as I was saying —”
“Yeah, you’re looking for somebody.” The voice was sandpaper on mortar, rough but not very loud. And somehow not mean. Mostly he sounded tired, or maybe unwell.
“A young man, late teens,” Cobb continued. “We thought it possible he might stay here sometimes. We’re wondering if you might know of him.”
The man didn’t answer.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to come over there and show you a picture of him, see if it rings any bells.”
“Rings any bells,” the man said.
Cobb crossed the room, held the picture in front of the man on the stool. No reaction at first, but eventually the man moved in slow motion, his head pivoting just slightly to the right as he seemed to study the photo. Then nodded slowly.
“Forget his name, crackhead kid. He’s okay though. Borrowed some winter gloves from me … hasn’t brought ’em back yet. Ray or Clay or something.”
“Jay Blevins.”
The man nodded. “Borrowed some mitts from me.”
“When was the last time you saw him, Mr. … uh …”
“Morris. Not Norris. Last name, not first.”
“Right, Mr. Morris. When was the last time you saw Jay, do you remember?”
“Couple of days ago. Not here. On the street, out there.” He lifted his chin to indicate outside.
“Which street?”
A long pause. “I don’t remember.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Sure, said hey, asked him how he was doin’, stuff like that.”
“Does he stay here?”
For the first time Morris turned away from the window, swivelled slowly on the chair, and faced us. “Not enough room in here.”
The face was lined and creased and the nose was off-centre a little and bent. Thin lips, set back in a face that had gone unshaven for a few days. Looked like he still had most of his teeth. Morris was a man who might have been handsome once.
“Yeah, I meant in the building,” Cobb said.
“Down the hall … at the far end. But he hasn’t been here for a while.”
“How long since he was last here?”
“Don’t know … month maybe.”
“Think he’ll be coming back?”
Morris shrugged, turned his head a little more, and saw me for the first time. I could see him more clearly now and realized that we were talking to a man who looked, sounded, and moved like an old man, but who, I guessed, was maybe forty, not more than forty-five.
Cobb said, “When you saw Jay a couple of days ago, did he happen to say where he was staying?’
“Don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“And you don’t have any idea where we might find him? Where he sleeps at night when he’s not here, who he hangs out with?”
“Not enough room in here.”
“Yes, sir, I understand. Do you know where he sleeps when he’s not here?”
Pause.
“Nope.”
“Mr. Morris, it’s important that we find him. Jay could be in some danger, some bad people are looking for him. You have any idea at all where we might find him?”
Morris shook his head. No pause this time. Definite.
“Anyone else you can suggest we might talk to? Someone who might know where we might find Jay?”
“There’s always kids in and out of that place at the end of the hall. Maybe one of them.” He turned back to the window. The interview was over.
“Thank you, sir,” Cobb said. “We appreciate your time.”
Morris didn’t answer and we left him and stepped back into the hall. I closed the door gently behind us. Cobb didn’t say anything but led the way back down the hall.
Cobb held the flashlight out in front of us, allowing the light to illuminate the last door at this end. It was covered in graffiti art. Someone had talent. There were a few lines of poetry gracing the door’s surface — or maybe it was prose — that mostly seemed to be exploring creative ways to adapt the word fuck to different parts of speech.
Cobb knocked, got no answer. He didn’t bother to wait this time, pushed the door open, and let the beam of the flashlight work its way around the room. “Anybody home?”
Again there was no response so he stepped inside just far enough to let me move up beside him. We surveyed the main room. Stuff, a lot of it, covered most of the floor and a couple of makeshift tables that occupied the centre of the room. Two mattresses, clothes strewn in heaps on both of them; four chairs, none of them matching; several garbage bags, all of them crammed with something, garbage or possessions — it was hard to tell which.
There
