He dropped one knee to the wet pavement and unzipped the quilted bag. He was momentarily surprised to find cloth diapers instead of Pampers, then understood. The cloth ones could be used over and over. Maybe the woman wasn’t entirely hopeless.
“I see a bottle of Baby Magic, too. Do you want that?”
From inside the sleeping bag, where now only a tuft of her brownish hair showed: “Yes, please.”
He passed in the diaper and the lotion. The sleeping bag began to wiggle and bounce. At first the crying intensified. From one of the switchbacks farther down, lost in the thickening fog, someone said: “Can’t you shut that kid up?” Another voice added: “Someone ought to call Social Services.”
Augie waited, watching the sleeping bag. At last it stopped moving around and a hand emerged, holding a diaper. “Would you put it in the bag? There’s a plastic sack for the dirty ones.” She looked out at him like a mole from its hole. “Don’t worry, it’s not pooey, just wet.”
Augie took the diaper, put it in the plastic bag (COSTCO printed on the side), then zipped the diaper bag closed. The crying from inside the sleeping bag (so many bags, he thought) continued for another minute or so, then abruptly cut out as Patti began to nurse in the City Center parking lot. From above the ranked doors that wouldn’t open for another six hours, the banner gave a single lackadaisical flap. 1000 JOBS GUARENTEED!
Sure, Augie thought. Also, you can’t catch AIDS if you load up on vitamin C.
Twenty minutes passed. More cars came up the hill from Marlborough Street. More people joined the line. Augie estimated there already had to be four hundred people waiting. At that rate, there would be two thousand by the time the doors opened at nine, and that was a conservative estimate.
If someone offers me fry-cook at McDonald’s, will I take it?
Probably.
What about a greeter at Walmart?
Oh, mos def. Big smile and how’re you today? Augie thought he could wallop a greeter job right out of the park.
I’m a people person, he thought. And laughed.
From the bag: “What’s funny?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Cuddle that kid.”
“I am.” A smile in her voice.
• • •
At three-thirty he knelt, lifted the flap of the sleeping bag, and peered inside. Janice Cray was curled up, fast asleep, with the baby at her breast. This made him think of The Grapes of Wrath. What was the name of the girl who had been in it? The one who ended up nursing the man? A flower name, he thought. Lily? No. Pansy? Absolutely not. He thought of cupping his hands around his mouth, raising his voice, and asking the crowd, WHO HERE HAS READ THE GRAPES OF WRATH?
As he was standing up again (and smiling at this absurdity), the name came to him. Rose. That had been the name of the Grapes of Wrath girl. But not just Rose; Rose of Sharon. It sounded biblical, but he couldn’t say so with any certainty; he had never been a Bible reader.
He looked down at the sleeping bag, in which he had expected to spend the small hours of the night, and thought of Janice Cray saying she wanted to apologize for Columbine, and 9/11, and Barry Bonds. Probably she would cop to global warming as well. Maybe when this was over and they had secured jobs—or not; not was probably just as likely—he would treat her to breakfast. Not a date, nothing like that, just some scrambled eggs and bacon. After that they would never see each other again.
More people came. They reached the end of the posted switchbacks with the self-important DO NOT CROSS tape. Once that was used up, the line began to stretch into the parking lot. What surprised Augie—and made him uneasy—was how silent they were. As if they all knew this mission was a failure, and they were only waiting to get the official word.
The banner gave another lackadaisical flap.
The fog continued to thicken.
• • •
Shortly before five A.M., Augie roused from his own half-doze, stamped his feet to wake them up, and realized an unpleasant iron light had crept into the air. It was the furthest thing in the world from the rosy-fingered dawn of poetry and old Technicolor movies; this was an anti-dawn, damp and as pale as the cheek of a day-old corpse.
He could see the City Center auditorium slowly revealing itself in all its nineteen-seventies tacky architectural glory. He could see the two