A small, thin shape detached itself from the shadows between the columns, shuffling forward.He wore a long coat, grimy, maybe two sizes too big, but his smell was relatively inoffensive.Cox wondered how he managed that.
“You’re back early,” he said.
The person he called Man Friday looked startled, displaying teeth too big for his mouth, teeth he might have stolen from someone else.“I thought we was meeting under the bridge.”
Cox gestured to the pew opposite.“I changed my mind.Sit.”
Friday sat, string bag on his lap.There was a dog-like eagerness in the way he obeyed, a gratitude that made Cox’s heart swell—not with affection, satisfaction.Here was proof that even among the lost, a man could be reborn if someone only gave him purpose.
“Got more names,” Friday said. He lisped it.Nameth.
“All from today?”
Friday nodded, rummaging in the bag.He produced a buff-colored notebook, its cover decorated with doodles, its pages curled.“All working today.Broke the Sabbath clean in two.”
Thabbath.The guy had a lisp, a twitch and a limp.Then there were the teeth.The Lord surely moved in mysterious ways.
Cox accepted the book, weighing it in his hands.The handwriting inside was clumsy but diligent, columns of names and numbers, little arrows connecting them to office towers or storefronts.A labour of devotion, in its way.
“How did you find them?”
Friday straightened, proud."As you told me, pretend I'm an undercover journalist."
Cox massaged the smile off his lips.It had been a singularly bad suggestion on his part.Man Friday bore as much resemblance to an undercover journalist as he did to Jennifer Lopez.On the other hand, if it worked...
“That I was digging into some big Wall Street scandal," Friday continued."Told the DoorDash guys I needed to know who they were delivering to.Gave them ten bucks a name.Easy as pie."
Cox nodded.“Resourceful.”
Friday beamed, a child praised for his drawing.
Cox turned another page.The neatness of the first few entries gave way to chaos—ink smears, doodles.And then he saw them: Mark Twain.Huckleberry Finn.Captain Ahab.Sherlock Holmes.A cluster of literary ghosts among the living.
He tore out the page irritably.
“Who is Huckleberry Finn?”
Friday frowned.“Works at that place. Big old silver grey building. Looks like a whale on its belly.It’s in the next column, wrote them all down like that.Name.Place of work.Lunch order.Like you said.”
“So you’re telling me that the Senior Consulting Analyst at Dietman Laroche is Huckleberry Finn?”
“Must do if I wrote it.”
Cox let the anger wash over him, accelerating its passage with a heavy sigh.He folded the torn out page and put it in his pocket, before passing the notebook back.
Cox glared at Friday.The silence that followed was heavy.Dust drifted through the light slanting from a broken pane high above.
“Half of those names do not exist.”
Friday blinked and repeated Cox's words silently."But the delivery guys, they…"
“You approached the delivery drivers on the corner, didn’t you, where they gather together?”
Friday nodded eagerly, then stopped.Cox could almost see the thoughts taking shape.
“When I told you to speak to them individually.Individually.Do you know the word?”
“One by one.”
