After the fire tore through the boarding house, administrators laid out what survived on the sidewalk: a pair of greasy motorcycle boots, a stained coffee machine, and two gold teeth in a black ashtray. None of the residents, standing in winter cold, claimed these items.
I’d been renting the smallest room on the second floor, the one with the window that refused to shut properly, and the hot plate that always kicked off the power. I had a desk lamp shaped like an eagle, a single bed, and three shirts that smelled faintly of gas from my time offshore pumping rigs. None of these items survived and there would be no insurance payout.
For weeks after the blaze, I kept feeling like I was missing an essential item—my wallet, parts of my face, my entire body at times—but I couldn’t name what it was. It seemed ridiculous because I was holding my wallet, could see my reflected face, and as far as I could tell, was still fairly alive. Still, some days I wasn’t sure.
For months, I’d wake up on buses I didn’t remember boarding, riding toward cities I didn’t recognize, visiting people I didn’t know. A confused purgatory between the living and the dead, reality and daydreams. In this space I noticed people leaving items everywhere.
I saw a child’s mitten on a railing in Times Square, a photograph in the gutter in Newark, a ring perched near a storm drain after a stop off in Philly. Once, at a gas station, I found a single work glove on the pump handle, stiff with dried red paint.
I kept it in my jacket pocket, its red flakes scattering as I walked through various bus terminals. I told myself I’d give it back if anyone asked, letting it hang visibly.
Nobody did.
One night I met a woman with yellow eyes who said she used to collect things like that too, until she realized they weren’t lost. Instead, they’d been abandoned.
“What’s the difference?” I asked her.
“Difference is nobody’s coming for them.”
We were in a 24-hour diner at 3 a.m., somewhere outside Delaware, near another bus stop. We were both drinking coffee that would make sleep impossible. I remember her eyes catching the humming light above us, like she’d already left the rest of herself somewhere else, but she kept on about collecting and something she called claim tickets.
“Claim tickets?” I asked, taking another sip of jet fuel coffee.
“Everyone is claiming to be something when they’re just people, not the things. Everyone has their own version of a claim ticket. A job, a trophy, a car.”
As she talked, I envisioned a warehouse full of claim tickets, full of people with fake names, holding onto other people’s items. I saw myself sitting on a pile of clothes, and unwanted gifts. I saw someone coming in and taking me off the pile and bringing me home.
