Enough, she says, softly, and though Bird can hear it, it’s clear she’s speaking to herself. As if she’s telling herself to let go. Giving herself permission to stop, or to move on, neither of them will ever be quite sure which.
With one hand she sweeps the pile of bottle caps from the table and into a plastic bag. Then she hesitates.
Do you want to come with me, she asks. Just this one last time.
* * *
? ? ?
For almost four weeks she’s been making and planting them, over a hundred a day, in plain sight. No one paid any attention to the old women who wandered the streets, gathering bottles and cans to sell; if anything, people edged back or turned away, embarrassed or disgusted or both. She’d seen them for years: of all things the Crisis had not changed, of all things that had survived, somehow these women were one of them. Dogged, unproud, patiently sifting the trash for what could be salvaged—and many of them, even before the Crisis, Asian. Their faces reminded her of her grandmother’s, her mother’s, her own, and she thought of them each time she pulled her straw hat lower over her eyes and shuffled down the sidewalk, bending over garbage bins or at the roots of trees. Dressed like one of them, she could go anywhere, if she was careful.
Still, there were close calls. Sometimes the police came: she never saw those who’d called, only looked up to see them peeking from behind the curtains as the patrol car pulled up beside her. When the officer approached, she would tuck a twenty into his back pocket, but once that wasn’t enough. He’d clutched her elbow with tight fingers, his breath hot on the side of her neck, until she followed him into an alley and undid his zipper, slipped her hand beneath his waistband. As he writhed and groaned, she’d fixed her gaze on the badge on his chest until he’d arched backward and scrabbled at her hair and let out one last strangled yelp, and at last she was free to go on her way. When she’d straightened herself and emerged back onto the street, the patrol car was pulling away, and in the windows above she saw the lights on, the people behind it going about their delicate lives, the ragged woman below already forgotten.
Today, she must be extra careful. With Bird in tow, she can’t afford a mistake. They will be quick. The last few places she hasn’t been.
Stay a few steps behind and pretend you don’t know me, she says, pulling on her hat. And wear your sunglasses.
They emerge from the subway at West Seventy-Second Street: the territory of wealthy women with rhinestoned phone cases, of small white dogs on taut leashes. Everywhere the sidewalks are a damp silvery gray, the car windows streaked with rain. On the corners, the bodegas still have umbrellas hooked over their door handles, ready for sale.
Margaret slips the first of the bottle caps from the bag on her wrist, palms it in one curled fist. After a few minutes of searching, they find a spot: a trash can, half overflowing. Crushed beer cans and plastic wrappers spilling onto the wet pavement.
Stand there, Margaret murmurs. Behind the screen of Bird’s body, she stoops as if to rummage in the bin, then sticks the bottle cap under the can’s lip, against a handy wad of gum. There, she says. That ought to hold it.
Bird takes a step back from the trash can and eyes it warily. To anyone else it would still look innocuous and ordinary; your eyes would glide right past it. Just another of the city’s uglinesses you’d do your best to ignore. But to him, now, the place is marked—with menace or promise, he isn’t sure which—and he can’t seem to turn away.
What will it do, he asks, though Margaret can see what he’s already imagining: flash, flames, a mushroom of smoke. She doesn’t answer. Already she’s pulled the next cap from her pocket.
Come on, she says. We’ve got to hustle.
For weeks Margaret has done this daily, and her eyes zero in on likely spots: wedged into a sewer grate, buried in a finger-wide crack in a building’s foundation. She pokes one cap neatly into the belly of a squirrel half crushed by a truck.
I don’t know, she says, wiping blood from her fingertips as she rises from the curb. They might come sweep it away.
She surveys the purpling mash of fur and flesh, the crust of flies beginning to gather.
But probably not, she says. I don’t think they’ll bother. Not by tomorrow, anyway.
They tuck them everywhere, these little capsules, and soon Bird begins to help, eyes adjusting to see hiding places everywhere, the way your sight adjusts to the dark. Some of the spots Margaret dismisses as too obvious, too neat. Somewhere messy, she says. Somewhere no one will want to touch. Bird runs a half step ahead, then two, then three, finding places for them all. Inside dumpsters reeking sweetly of rotting fruit; in corners where homeless men took their morning piss. At the feet of trees, nestled between bullets of dog shit. He forgets to question, for a moment, what they are for. It is a reverse treasure hunt, a game he and his mother are playing. Bottle cap by bottle cap, the bag on Margaret’s arm lightens, and Bird feels a swirl of glee at the clever places they’ve found, a sense of power and awe when he thinks how many of these caps are hiding out there. He calculates: a hundred a day, for a whole month.