A half hour later I’m shivering, standing at the corner of Fifty-seventh and Ellis. My hand is cramping up from holding the roll of money so tightly. I wait till the coast is clear and tuck the cash between my left arm and my rib cage, hidden by a layer of nonreflective flesh.
Alicia is late. I look at the bank clock and decide to give her until 11:22. Then I see her tapping toward me, and I start trotting the half block to meet her. It’s too crowded, so I can’t call out “Hey, Alicia!” or something.
I get close, and I’m about to say a quiet “Hi,” but there’s something about the look on Alicia’s face that stops me. I look behind her and I see the problem. The blind girl has a shadow. It’s her mom. Mrs. Van Dorn is about thirty feet back, holding a book open in one hand and glancing down at it every few steps so she won’t look odd for walking so slowly.
Falling in step alongside Alicia, I whisper, “Don’t stop, and don’t look toward my voice—your mom is behind you.”
Without breaking stride or turning her head, Alicia hisses, “I know! She can always tell when I’m lying, and it makes me crazy! And she’s so stupid that she thinks I can’t tell when she’s following me! Our front door makes this squeaking groan, and I can hear it half a block away.”
“So, what are you gonna to do?”
“Go to the library like I told her. And once I’m there, she’ll get bored and leave.”
We get to the library and Alicia goes in and up the elevator, and her mother just sits down on a bench out front, reading her book and glancing up at the doorway now and then.
The look on Mrs. Van Dorn’s face makes me feel sorry for her. She seems so sad and alone. She’s wearing the same look I keep seeing on Mom’s face. I’ll walk quietly into the den or the kitchen, and Mom will be in the middle of something, but stopped, not paying attention to the computer or the book she’s reading, and she’ll have that same kind of sad, distant look in her eyes. And I always have the feeling that she’s thinking about me. I think Alicia’s mom must do a lot of worrying too.
Ten minutes go by, and then Mrs. Van Dorn gets up, heaves a big sigh, puts her book under her arm, and starts walking slowly back toward her house. She can go be sad and lonely at home.
When I’m sure she’s really gone, I go up to the third floor of the library, find Alicia, and in five minutes we’re looking for a cab to take us to the Sears corporate headquarters in Hoffman Estates.
The first two cabs refuse the fare, and I don’t blame them. It’s about a forty-mile trip. The third cabby looks at Alicia and says, “For you, fifty-five dollars—one-way. Okay?” I whisper, “Okay,” Alicia nods to the driver, and we get inside. When we’re settled, I take her right hand and press my money into her palm.
Our driver heads straight for Lake Shore Drive north. There’s a thick metal-and-Plexiglas divider between the front and back seat, plus, the driver’s listening to some tinny music. Greek, I think. So Alicia and I talk softly about the plan. Which is pretty basic: I go snoop, she waits. I come back, we leave.
“But where should I wait? I can’t just hang around in some lobby for an hour.”
“Of course you can. Lobbies are made for loitering.”
“Great. I just love to loiter.”
So I say, “Fine. Here’s a better idea. When we get there, you can ask somebody where you go to get a job application.”
Alicia wrinkles her nose. “A job application? Me?”
“Sure. Companies love it when…um…people like you apply for jobs.”
The eyebrows go up. “People like me?” she says. “You mean people with disabilities, right? Go ahead and say what you mean, Bobby. I know I’ve got a disability, okay? I’m not a baby. Just say it—disability!”
The driver is craning his neck, looking at Alicia in his mirror, uneasy about this angry outburst from his lone passenger.
I whisper, “Shh, the driver. Okay, okay: people who have disabilities. They’ll be happy to interview you because they actually have to prove that they try to hire everyone. It’s a federal law or something.”
Alicia hisses, “It’s called the Americans with Disabilities Act, Mr. Smartguy, and I know all about it, okay?”
“Fine.” And I sit back and look out the window past the lakeside park to the choppy waters of Lake Michigan. A mile or so out to sea, a huge tanker is steaming north. I wish I were on it.
Once we’re on the Kennedy Expressway, we start talking again and work out the rest of the plan. Nothing much to it.
And then I look out the window and start counting the planes circling O’Hare Airport. I spot seven without even trying.
Then I start watching Alicia’s face. And it’s amazing to me, because I can look at everything—the whole overpopulated, overtraveled, overtrucked, overpaved, overbillboarded, full-color, three-dimensional world zipping by at seventy miles an hour—and I can get bored. And Alicia’s got nothing but her own thoughts and whatever she sees inside her head, and she’s not bored at all. She’s soaking up the trip. Completely alert. I watch, and she has a slight response to every little hum and thump of the tires, the jangling radio music, the flutter and rush of air in the window, the static and garbled bursts from the driver’s two-way, the rumble of a big Kenworth tractor, the whine of a jet on approach, an ambulance screaming past on the eastbound side. A constant flow, bright, fresh pictures with every second. As we sway and bounce and change lanes and brake and accelerate and feel our way along the highway, her nostrils flare like a wild pony sniffing the wind, and I know Alicia’s also processing the smells—the exhaust and kerosene, the accumulated scent of a thousand cab passengers, that half-eaten tin of salad on the seat by the driver—an ocean of airborne information to sift and sort.
And watching her, I’m not bored.
Still, it’s a long ride. When we finally arrive, I’m not prepared for the scale of things. The concrete and glass buildings are huge, not tall, but wide and deep and far apart. The place looks more like a college campus than the home of a retail giant. It’s like they took the whole huge, black Sears Tower, broke it up into short chunks, painted it with friendlier suburban colors, and then spread it out over two hundred acres of farmland. Bike paths, a fake pond or two, a basketball court, a huge day-care facility. Very pleasant. Unless you don’t know where you’re going.
The young woman at the reception desk inside the foyer of the main building looks at Alicia, takes in the whole picture, and then says, “Miss? May I help you find someone?”
Alicia goes to work. She faces the woman’s voice, smiles, and says, “Yes. I’d like to speak with someone in the employment office. I don’t have an appointment. I’m just looking for some information…about hiring practices for persons with disabilities.”
“Of course. May I have your name?”
“Alicia Van Dorn.”
“Please wait just a moment, Miss Van Dorn.”
While the lady punches out numbers on her phone, I scan the Sears Merchandise Group map and directory on the wall behind the desk. And I find what I need. Legal services is in a building about a quarter mile away.
I make a mental note of where the employment offices are, and now I can leave. That’s what Alicia and I planned. She’s going to do her thing, and I’m going to do mine. When I’m done, I find her. It was 11:45 when we got out of the cab. The deal is that if I don’t find her by 1:15, she has someone call her a cab, and she goes back to the library in Hyde Park.
But I don’t leave. I wait. And I can’t talk, but I tap lightly on Alicia’s cane, and she stiffens, then smiles slightly, and motions with her head and eyebrows, urging me to get going. But I wait anyway.
About two minutes pass, and a young man wearing chinos and a blue dress shirt with a loud tie comes out of a corridor and walks right over to Alicia. “Miss Van Dorn?”
Alicia turns and smiles. “Yes?”
“Hi. I’m John Freeman. I’m with personnel, and I’d be happy to try to answer your questions. Let’s head this way. Would you like to take my arm?” He turns and offers his left arm, elbow crooked just right. He’s helped blind people before. And he looks like a nice enough guy.
Alicia says, “Thanks,” lifts the end of her cane off the floor, and takes hold of his elbow. And they’re off.
And now I’ve got one hour and ten minutes to find the names of some unhappy customers.