A Nose for Adventure Read online

  “How’d you like to see the Big Apple, hey, champ?” he asked me, his voice crackling with static interference. Champ is what he calls me when he’s being enthusiastic. “You can fly down when you get out of school. We’ll stay at a hotel for the week,” he said, “go to a baseball game, order room service, run around town together, have a great time. What do you say, champ?”

  I told him that sounded great. Especially the room service. Imagine picking up the phone and ordering a restaurant meal, and then eating it in front of the TV. Cooler than cool. I could hardly wait.

  Mom didn’t think it was great. She wanted Dad to fly with me. She and Dad had an argument when I got off the phone. I could hear them – Mom’s side of it, anyway. Dad’s side wasn’t hard to figure out.

  “You’re so irresponsible,” she said.

  He said something back to her. I don’t know what – something mean, probably. Her face tightened up.

  “Oh, yes?” she said. “Remember that time in Muskoka, when I left you alone with him for two hours? Just two hours….”

  I don’t like listening to my parents’ arguments, even if I’m only getting one side of them. I especially don’t like it when they drag up old grudges. I was a baby when we went to Muskoka.

  I suppose Dad must have made some excuse. Mom snorted. “Okay, then, what about that time when you left the car keys in the car?”

  I went upstairs at that point. I didn’t want to hear any more.

  I’m startled out of my daydream by a cry for help. I’m standing just inside the corridor. The door to the blue room is open.

  “Hey!” cries Frieda, from inside the room. “Hey, what are you doing? Help!”

  I hear a sound like someone clapping hands, then a deeper voice saying, “Police! What’s going on, here?”

  Unsure of what to do, I look for Veronica. She moves quickly towards the blue door, and throws it wide open. I stay close behind her.

  The inside of the room is painted the same deep blue as the door. There’s a table for checking baggage, a chair for sitting, and a desk for filling out forms. The lighting is harsh and unforgiving – kind of like the expression on Frieda’s face.

  She’s scowling at a slouchy middle-aged guy. His hair’s as red as mine, but he has dark eyebrows that don’t match it. Another government employee? He isn’t wearing a uniform. One cheek is covered in freckles. Across the other cheek is a vivid mark, about the size and shape of a human hand. Frieda’s hand, I bet. She’s strong enough to make a slap really hurt.

  I step past Veronica to stare. The policeman from the baggage pickup is in the middle of the room, scratching his head. The dog isn’t with him. “What’s the trouble?” he asks.

  “He wanted me to get out of the wheelchair,” says Frieda. “When I said no, he threatened to drag me out.”

  “Just doing my job, officer,” the slouchy guy says in a whiny voice. There’s a strong earthy smell in the room. Slouchy wears cologne. “Doing what I’m told, you know? They said to be thorough.”

  The policeman frowns. “You’re supposed to search the chair?”

  “I … I….” Slouchy looks confused now. He darts a glance at Veronica and me. “I don’t know,” he says.

  “Too bad Lucky’s not here,” says the policeman. “She’s on a kennel break now. Lucky’s trained to sniff out contraband. She’s a dog,” he explains, so we don’t think he’s talking about another police officer sniffing around. “You wouldn’t have to move anyone if Lucky were here. Mind you, if they tell you to look, you have to look. Sorry, miss,” he says to Frieda. “But rules are rules. If they say look in the chair, that’s what we’ll do. Maybe I can help. Where’s a good spot to start looking, now? There’s pockets here. And plastic caps on the handles. Is the metal hollow? Does the wheelchair come apart, do you know?”

  “No, no, no!” The slouchy guy sounds agitated. “It’s all right, officer. I’ve … changed my mind. I don’t want you to waste your time. Who knows what’ll happen if you find something. I’ve decided there’s no need to search the chair. Sorry. You’re free to go, Miss Miller.”

  “You sure?” says the policeman. “You don’t want to get in trouble with your boss. Back at the station I’m always getting in trouble with the sarge. She says Lucky has more sense than I do. Ha-ha-ha.”

  “Ha-ha.” The slouchy guy’s laugh is not very convincing.

  Frieda notices me for the first time. “What are you doing?” she says.

  And my own problems come back. “My dad’s not here,” I say. “He’s not waiting for me. I have to make a phone call. Veronica,” I say, turning to tell her. “I have to phone my dad’s work number to find out what happened –”

  I stop. Veronica has disappeared.

  I step to the door. Can’t see her. I run down the corridor. Can’t see her. Can’t see my dad, either. Frieda wheels herself out of the blue room towards me. The two men follow. The policeman is carrying her suitcase. The slouchy guy puts on a pair of sunglasses and slouches away. His cologne lingers a little uncomfortably, like the last guest to be picked up from your birthday party. Frieda stares after him. The policeman stares at an advertisement for pizza.

  I have to phone my dad. There’s a bank of pay phones on the wall nearby. I unbutton my pants pocket, reach in and pull out the piece of paper with my dad’s office phone number, and the American quarter. I take a step forward. Someone hurries past me, knocking me down. “Sorry,” I say, from the ground, but whoever knocked me down is gone. I get up carefully, and find that my American quarter is gone too. I look around for it, but all I see is litter and moving feet.

  Uh-oh.

  “What am I going to do?” I say loudly. “I need to make a phone call.”

  “So phone,” says Frieda.

  “I don’t have any money for a phone call. I just lost my only American quarter.”

  She sighs, and turns away to root around in the purse at her side.

  “Huh?” The policeman shakes his head. “You say something about a phone, kid?”

  “I have to make a call. I want to talk to my dad,” I say.

  He listens to me carefully, paying attention to my face. He looks concerned. “Phone call? Sure,” he says. “Use my phone.”

  “Oh, thank you. Thank you.”

  He reaches into his pocket. Frowns. Reaches into another pocket. “Shoot!” he says. “I must have left it at home. Sorry, kid,” he says. “You’ll have to find another phone.”

  “Use mine,” says Frieda. From her purse she pulls a genuine cell phone, with an aerial and flashing lights. Just another personal item, like a piece of gum, a tissue, or something. I wonder what else she carries around … a ray gun, maybe.

  I swallow, stammer my thanks, and punch the number written on the piece of paper. Nothing happens.

  “You have to press SEND,” she says.

  “Sure,” I say. I knew that, but I forgot.

  The signal is faint. I press the phone against my ear. Now I can make it out. Ring … Ring … Ring … Ring. Then a recorded voice cuts in and starts telling me about business hours. “No one’s there yet,” I say.

  I give her back the phone and put the paper back in my pocket. Maybe Dad’s just late picking me up. He’s often late. Everything could still be okay. I check the crowd again.

  No Dad.

  “Someone look after me!” That’s what I want to say, but I can’t. Not in front of Frieda. She may be annoying and bossy, but she sure looks like she’s got it all together. This is her city. She’s got somewhere to go. She’s got someone waiting for her.

  Or does she?

  She’s scanning the crowd. No one’s running forward to say welcome home, honey. No one has their arms stretched out to her.

  An old lady comes out of the corridor behind us, and is swept up almost at once by a beaming, shouting, hugging mob of people. Frieda and I have to get out of the way.

  “Who’s coming to pick you up?” I ask.

  “No one, I guess,” she says. �
�It was supposed to be Beatrice.”

  “Your mom?”

  “No.” She doesn’t elaborate.

  “Oh. Well, where do you think Beatrice is?”

  “Don’t know. At home, I guess.”

  “Where do you think Veronica is?”

  “Don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Do you think Beatrice is coming? Do you think Veronica’s coming back? What are you going to do?” I say. Of course what I really mean is, what am I going to do?

  She shrugs. She’s not in the least worried.

  A cart with shiny mirrored sides rolls by, selling lottery tickets, I think. As it passes us, I catch a glimpse of our reflections. What a contrast! There’s Frieda, rich city girl in a neat fitting pantsuit with zips and pockets all over the place. Her arms are tanned and muscular; her hair is sassy and combed. She could be on safari, or on her way to a party, and look fine. As the cart rolls past, she puts the phone back in her purse and pulls out a pair of sunglasses. Perfect.

  And there I am in my too-big soccer shirt, with a picture of a donut on the front because the team sponsor is a local donut shop. And shorts with button pockets. My arms and legs are skinny, and where they aren’t freckled, they’re almost as white as the sunblock Mom makes me wear all summer long. All in all, I look as confident and independent, as together, as a house of cards in a hurricane.

  I don’t know what to do. I stand and wait for someone to take care of me.

  I think about Mom, hiking with the kids she works with. They’ve got someone to look after them. I think about Dad. Has he really forgotten about me? When I was three, he left me playing under the seats at the ballpark while he went off to buy a hot dog. He was gone for two innings; I thought he’d never come back. To this day I hate peanuts in the shell. Gee, I sound like Mom, reopening old wounds.

  “Look, kids, I got a job to do,” says the policeman. “I can’t baby-sit, you know?” He holds out Frieda’s suitcase to me. I take it. “You guys got a place to go?” He thinks we’re together, Frieda and I.

  “I’ve got a place to go,” says Frieda.

  “I don’t,” I say.

  “Oh,” says the policeman.

  Frieda looks at me, looks away, doesn’t say anything.

  “Um,” says the policeman.

  Frieda slides her sunglasses up into her hair, hunts a compact mirror out of her purse, and checks her face. My mom does that too. “I’m going to get a cab,” she says.

  “Well,” says the policeman, rubbing his mustache. “I guess that’s okay. The street doors are … now, let’s see. Which way are they?” He frowns.

  “I know the way out,” says Frieda.

  “Right. Good. Okay, then.”

  The policeman turns to look at me. I open my mouth. I don’t know what I’m going to say, exactly, but I don’t think I’m going to be proud of it. Back home in Cobourg I’d been so sure of myself. “Of course I’ll be okay,” I told my mom. “I’m thirteen,” I told her. “I’m independent. I can manage. Don’t you worry.” Now, I’m the one worrying.

  Before any words leave my mouth, Frieda says, “He can come with me.”

  “Huh?” I say.

  “Great!” says the policeman. He’s relieved. “That’s fine. And if you kids run into trouble, don’t hesitate to, um….” He pauses. Neither of us says anything. “Well, you know where I am. Only I’ll be off duty soon.” He turns, and vanishes back into the corridor.

  “Did you mean it?” I say to Frieda. “About me coming with you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she says, over her shoulder. “Come on, kid, you won’t last a minute on your own. Come to my place. You can wait there.”

  “For the last time, my name’s Alan.”

  “Okay. Alan. Pleased to meet you. Won’t you come to my … to my hoos?” she says, with a snicker. She thinks that’s how Canadians say house. The way she says it sounds like howse.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “You can hang on to my suitcase,” she says, and sets off into the crowd. I take one last look for my father, then follow, laboring.

  Actually, there isn’t much labor. I carry my soccer bag over my shoulder, and her suitcase in my hand. Before Frieda has arm-pushed three times and I’ve taken twenty steps, we’re on a moving sidewalk. A perfect vehicle for the big city; you can go fast even when you’re standing still. I put down the bags and rest.

  “So, who’s Beatrice?” I ask. None of my business, I just want to make conversation. “An aunt or something?”

  “She’s my nanny.”

  “Oh.” I’ve never met a kid with a nanny. I started to read a book about one once. The kid was so polite and nice, I wanted to punch him. You know what they say on book covers: I couldn’t put it down! Well, I could put that book down all right. And I did.

  “Do you want to phone your nanny?” I say.

  “No,” she says.

  The voice that comes over the loudspeakers in airports and train stations – the voice no one can understand, even if it’s speaking in their own language – tells us about an incoming flight from … home, I think. Home is what I hear. Unless it’s Nome. Nome is in Alaska, isn’t it? I’m a long way from Nome. Home, too.

  This section of moving sidewalk ends. Two other sidewalks go off from it in two different directions. There’s a sign beside one of them: CLOSED TO PUBLIC – MOVIE EXTRAS THIS WAY. A man with uncombed hair stands beside the sign. His eyes are closed. He’s got a headset and a clipboard. He slurps coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

  “Hey, they’re shooting a movie,” I say to Frieda.

  “Yeah, so?” she says.

  “Right here in the airport. Cool.”

  “Cool? You say that, where you come from? Cool?”

  “I wonder who’s in the movie?”

  “I don’t care.”

  No one else seems to care either. I guess New York is used to movies. I’m not. They shot a made-for-TV movie in Cobourg a few years ago, and we’re still talking about it. My mom and her girlfriends spent an entire weekend walking up and down in front of the set, hoping to get a glimpse of a star who used to model underwear.

  “Watch it, kid!”

  Frieda reaches to push me – hard. Clutching our bags, I stumble out of the way of a motorized cart full of other people’s luggage. The stickers on the bags say LEONARDO DA VINCI AEROGARDE, ROMA, ITALIA. Rome, I guess. Probably what the loudspeaker voice was saying. Not Home, or Nome.

  “Thanks,” I say to Frieda, who doesn’t reply. I follow her onto the next section of moving sidewalk. The sign up ahead says WAY OUT – BUSES AND TAXIS. The sidewalk is moving us quickly towards it, as if it wants us to go this way.

  Frieda’s staring at something up ahead on the left. “Hey!” she says in a whisper. “Hey, Alan, look over there, behind the pillar. Who do you see?”

  I turn, and peer closely. “No one,” I say.

  “I thought I saw the guy with the dyed red hair and the cologne – you know, the guy I slapped,” she says.

  “Oh.” I stare, backwards now, because we’re still moving. “I don’t see him,” I say.

  “He was pretty creepy, wasn’t he? And the other guy – the skinny government guy – acted funny too.”

  “Do you really think that red hair was dyed?” I ask.

  She frowns up at me. “With those dark eyebrows? Of course.”

  “He’s not that old. I thought only old guys dyed their hair.”

  “This sounds crazy, Alan, but I think he was after … me. He was interested in me. So was the skinny guy.”

  “He was interested in your Horus the dentist earrings,” I say.

  She doesn’t smile. “There’s a lot of kidnapping going on these days,” she says. “We get taught about it in school. How to avoid it.”

  An amazing idea. What kind of school does she go to, I wonder? “We get taught about fire safety,” I say. “And to look both ways before crossing the street.�
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  “I wonder if they want to kidnap me.”

  Is she kidding? She’s got to be kidding. Kidnapping is like floods and earthquakes and civil war. It happens far away, to strangers.

  “One of my classmates got kidnapped last year, you know. Her parents had to pay a hundred thousand dollars to get her back.”

  She’s not kidding. I choke. Bad enough to be on my own in New York City. Now I’m thinking about being on my own with kidnappers.

  “Let’s go back,” I say. “We’ll go back to the policeman.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” There’s a sidewalk moving the other way. It’d be easy enough to hop across. I turn my head to see if anyone’s coming – looking both ways, like they teach us in school – and there he is! He’s well back of us, behind a bunch of people, but he’s on our moving sidewalk. I know it’s him. He sees me looking, and immediately ducks his dyed red head, as if he doesn’t want me to notice him.

  “Oh, no! He’s behind us!” I whisper. Not that he could hear me.

  “Who? The slouchy guy, with the dyed hair? You saw him?”

  “What’ll we do? What’ll we do?” I look around for a police officer. There isn’t one. “Help!” I call, to … well, I don’t know who. I look up, maybe for a sign from the heavens, but we’re still inside.

  “First, we’ll get a cab,” says Frieda.

  She pushes off. The wheelchair skitters forward on the moving sidewalk. I follow her as fast as I can. People get out of our way.

  “Do you have enough money?” I ask breathlessly.

  “I have a fifty-dollar bill in my purse,” says Frieda. “My dad says you should never travel without a fifty-dollar bill for emergencies.”

  An amazing idea. What kind of parents does she have? “My mom says you should never run with scissors,” I say.

  The moving sidewalk ends. The doors to the outside open automatically. There’s a crowd of people waiting for a line of yellow taxis. It’s a lovely clear morning, now, but a gang of dark clouds are chasing the sun across the sky. Sooner or later they’re going to catch it.