What I Loved

He waved a small hand in my direction. "Uncle Leo, I presume," he whined in a falsetto, and then giggled. His lips looked blue, and I noticed that his hands were shaking as he spoke. The man's eyes, however, were sharp, even vigilant, and they didn't leave mine. I forced myself to meet his gaze. After a couple of seconds, he looked down, and I turned my eyes to the third person, who was sitting on the steps. This boy looked very young. Had he not been with the other two, I would have guessed his age as not more than eleven or twelve. A delicate, feminine person with very long eyelashes and a small pink mouth, he was clutching a green purse on his knees. The clasp had come open, and inside I saw a jumble of tiny cubes—red, white, yellow, and blue. The boy was carrying around Lego blocks. He yawned loudly.
    A girl's voice came from above me, "Poor guy, you're tired." I looked up and saw Teenie Gold at the top of the stairs.
    She was wearing wings made of ostrich feathers that shook as she came down the stairs, one wobbly foot at a time. She held out her skinny arms like a high-wire walker, seemingly oblivious to the railing within inches of her hand. She stared down, her chin tucked onto her chest.
    "Do you need help, Teenie?" I said, and stepped into the hallway.
    The pale man backed away from me nervously, and I saw him finger something in his pants pocket. I turned to Mark again, who looked at me with wide eyes. "Everything's okay, Leo," he said. "Sorry we woke you." Mark's voice sounded different—lower, or perhaps it was just his inflection that had changed.
    "I think we should talk, Mark."
    "I can't. We're on our way out. Gotta go." He stepped away from the wall and I glimpsed his T-shirt for half a second before he turned away.
    Something was written on  it—ROHYP…      
    He started down the stairs.
    The white man and the child loitered after him. Teenie was still making her way down the stairs toward me. I pulled the door shut, locked it, and hooked the chain, something I rarely bothered with. And then I did something I'd never done. I clicked off the light and moved my feet as if I were returning to bed. How authentic this ruse was I have no idea, but I put my ear to the door and heard the pale man say loudly, "No K tonight, huh, M&M?"
    The irony wasn't lost on me. I had turned myself into a spy, had listened through a door only to discover that I was eavesdropping on a language I didn't understand. The name M&M turned me cold, however. I knew full well that it might have been a nickname for one of them, taken from the candy by the same name, but Bill's two childish figures from O's Journey had also been M's, and the possible reference made me uneasy. Then I heard a rumble, followed by a gasp from the stairs, and I rushed into the hallway to see what had happened.
    Teenie was lying on the landing below me. I walked down the steps and helped her to her feet. She didn't look at me once while I took her by the arm and led her down the stairs. Ridiculous shoes seemed to be an adolescent requirement. Teenie was wearing black patent-leather Mary Janes with absurdly high heels, shoes that would have been a challenge to walk in stone-cold sober, and Teenie was three sheets to the wind. As I held her arm, she swayed from her hips, first in one direction, then the other. At the bottom of the steps I opened the door for her. I had no key and was wearing my pajamas, which prevented me from going any farther. When I looked up toward Grand Street, I saw Mark and his two cohorts standing at the end of the block.
    "Are you going to be okay, Teenie?" I said, looking down at her.
    She nodded at the sidewalk.
    "You don't have to go with them," I said suddenly. "You can come back in with me, and I'll call you a car."
    Without looking up, she shook her head no. Then she started to walk toward them. I remained standing in the doorway to watch her. She reeled first to the right and then to the left, zigzagging her way down the block toward her three friends—a small winged creature with buckling ankles who would never fly.
     
     
    The following morning, I called Bill. I hesitated before I did it, but the incident had left me uneasy. For a sixteen-year-old, Mark seemed to have unbridled freedom, and I began to think that Bill and Violet were overly permissive. But it turned out that Bill hadn't known that Mark was in the city. He thought that he was arriving on the train from his mother's early that afternoon. Lucille