Karl is a thief who runs in circles. Not clean, round circles but still precise and rigid. Like math or daybreak, something you can rely on. He has worn a quick narrow path that passes through stores, darts across streets, stretches at two corner newspaper stands and paces along blocks of cracked concrete and sullen townhouses. The steps are so familiar he could follow them blind while I imagine him moving, deliberate and casual, behind my eyes. But neither he nor I will get caught even though you might expect that it would be easy to catch him since he is a predictable thief, always treading over the same ground. There is no mystery to his movement; both his approach and escape are predetermined. Anyone might discover his pattern, watch for it like me. But Karl is too clever to be discovered, and time is not part of his routine. He may take all day to wander lazily through his loop, or he may run it four times in a single morning. He does not make the mistake of always stealing from the same place. For Karl, only the path is laid out. Not even he knows what will disappear behind his hands. Sometimes I watch Karl circling through the city, sliding through the crowds. He's told me he doesn't like me to follow or even to look out for him, but you can't really stop a person from watching. Most of the time I don't even think he even knows that I am there, and if he does, he just ignores me. I always watch from a pretty safe distance because I don't want people to see me staring at him. That can just draw attention and will ruin everything. I wouldn't want him to get caught so when I am watching I look up quietly, like I am just checking out the street, the smell of the air, the people walking past. Every now and then I glance over at Karl. I'm sure he doesn't see me because he's told me that stealing is a very consuming affair and requires a person's complete attention. So it's not like he would notice me anyway.
Karl is real smooth. He's got this loose dopey grin and wide, startled eyes. The colored part of his eyes are small, tight round balls, sharp against milky white. You look at him and think he couldn't hide a damn thing behind those eyes since you can see them clear and whole as your own hands. You don't realize that his big open eyes are taking you all in, seeing how you softly bite your lower lip, how your hand brushes your pants to feel the quiet bulge of your house keys, and how you didn't look both ways when you crossed the street. Maybe a person looks at Karl once, but that's it. Karl is the type of kid who you only have to look at once. He's not beautiful to make you stop and stare, he's not mean or sly to make you hink he's out to hurt you, and he's not going to remind you of anyone you would want to remember. Karl is a good thief because he's always watching a person's eyes. Since he knows exactly what they are looking at, he gets to see all the things they can't. So when a mother turns to find a trash can, Karl swipes the purse she left hanging on her chair. Or as a salesman glares over a crowd looking for a taxi, Karl eases his fingers into his standing jacket pocket to find a pair of gloves or a fountain pen. It hardly takes more than the pause of a breath or the time required to shift your weight from one tired leg to another, and Karl is just there waiting. He's not waiting to steal your treasures because he's already done that, and he's not waiting to run away because that makes too much noise, and anyway I think he likes to be close to you for a little while. He's waiting and daring you to notice the lanky, white-eyed kid still standing right beside you, waiting for his crooked nose or downy cheeks to trigger something inside you. Maybe he's even touching you. But you just walk away. And Karl continues on his predictable path. Who knows when you'll even notice that something is missing, and you've been robbed? Of course Karl would be empty-handed if people weren't so careless. People are always watching for something else, never really looking close at themselves. I notice that a lot, how people will look at the person they're with, or if they're alone they'll stare at some invisible point five feet or so out in front of them. People are always looking off into empty space even when they're crowded fist to fist on a subway, even when they're surrounded by people and noises and odors and walls. They still find the bit of empty space to claim and possess as their own, forgetting everything else around them. I think that empty point is anticipation. It's like they're all searching or waiting for something to appear. As if some promise or dream is about to materialize right before their very eyes, or at least turn the corner and start walking their way. Me, I watch Karl weaving between them, making patterns only I can see.
After Karl has collected a few things, we sort through them together on the brown slab of basement floor. This time it's a blue backpack, a pair of eyeglasses, a ball point pen without a cap, a woman's hair clip, a rosary, a silver watch with a broken clasp, and a blank notebook that has been touched and held by many hands. I like the smooth feel of worn things, used and soft from worried sweat, things that have been held, things that are warm even lying in the gray dawn of a November sidewalk or fallen on the cold concrete floor. We puzzle over the treasures. We dig through the scraps of paper and stiff orange rinds at the bottom of the backpack. We try on the glasses, press our ears up against the watch to hear the gentle ticking, slip the beads through our fingers. We hold all these things and imagine the people from which they came. I proclaim that the watch is a family heirloom passed from generation to generation, that it was made in Germany but carried in the pockets of a series of anxious Americans who made their fortune in textiles. Karl nods, and still wearing the glasses with the flimsy gold frames, he tells me that yesterday a woman cut off her long red hair, but she couldn't bear to part with the comfort of her hair clip. We giggle and add to our stories, believing that our telling makes them real. The watch always reads the precise time of a deserted alleyway in Moscow. Karl stumbles over to the suitcase standing neatly behind the cold radiator; inside we store all of our findings and keep the memories of our treasures safe. The glasses blur his eyes, but he grabs hold of the suitcase and pulls it towards me. There are so many prayers on this string, I tell him, prayers to get well, be patient, find a place to live, hold on to love, buy a car, get away. Karl trips on nothing, then looks up at me through the distorted lenses. His eyes reflect many colors. Prayers to ace a test, have a safe journey, avoid the flu, get pregnant, have a day off. He opens the suitcase and drops the glasses inside. Prayers for more time and less worry, prayers to the living and the dead, prayers for a phone call or a letter, prayers for vision and direction. I gather the rest of our things, fold them tightly into one another and close the suitcase. Once Karl stole a shopping bag full of brand new clothes. He must have been distracted as he reached for it, just grabbed it without really looking. And when he realized what he had, it was too late to return it. He held onto the bag because he doesn't like to leave things behind. But the clothes smelled like a department store, and we couldn't make much out of them since they were crisp and machine fresh. The receipt was tucked in the bag, so Karl returned them all and slipped the cash into his pocket. Then he spent all the money on books, the one thing he doesn't mind having new. Karl and I read to each other quite a bit, fiction mostly, but we'll settle for anything with a good story and images that curl up inside your mind. We both get worked up over a story so that the person reading sometimes has to go real fast and even skip over a few words to satisfy the open eyes and ears of the listener. Of the two of us, I am the faster reader. But sometimes when Karl is sitting too close and staring at my lips like the sounds and the words were themselves pictures, I trip over the syllables and the sentences crash. That happens when I look up and Karl's wide startled eyes are boring into me so hard that I have to lean back just to breathe. That's when I look up and realize that staring straight at my mouth, he doesn't see me at all.
Karl's been sitting in the laundromat on the corner the whole morning. He's been watching people sort through their dirty clothes, some just throwing their old jeans and socks into the washer like they were taking out the trash and others carefully sorting through every piece of wrinkled fabric. When someone shakes loose a quarter onto the ratty floor, Karl doesn't follow it with his eyes. He sits there, bouncing his knee and looking up towards the clock like he is just as impatient as the rest of them, like he would rather be someplace else. Only I know that he is just passing through and that the circle around the washers, past the dryers, the store front windows and the folding counters is part of his path. Only I know that he lives in his gray hooded sweatshirt and hardly ever changes his socks.
The guy sitting three chairs to the left of Karl has his clothes in the far right dryer on the bottom. I can see his clothes falling and rising again like ghosts. While his clothes move and pass over each other, the guy stares tightly into a book. Every once in a while he turns a page, but he always does it quickly, like he absolutely needs to be completely still again.
Karl has been steadily watching him since he first dumped his laundry into the washer. He is less than middle aged, clear-eyed and big. His thick neck is made of clay and heavy flesh, his wide fingers hide the title of the book he clutches and his feet rest like square trunks on the floor. His size alone obliterates Karl.
It's a little dangerous because there's no way Karl can catch his eyes. The man is completely absorbed in his book. But maybe Karl is thinking that this makes it easy. Karl can assume that the man sees only his book and everything else is invisible except for perhaps the quiet hum of the washers and dryers, and the familiar tread of pacing footsteps. Karl rises and walks over to the far right dryer. Without looking back, he bends over and opens the small glass door. The man continues to stare into his hands. I cannot see the clothes which have now fallen, limp and empty, I cannot see Karl's hands sifting through the colored garments. Are they still a little damp? But definitely warm. I glance back over to the man, but he is still like a statue and as blind. Karl closes the door and passes his hand over a button. Movement returns behind the glass, clothes rising and falling. Karl reaches out his arms, and stretches his muscles tight against the air. He is as quiet and harmless as a cat. Turning past the store front windows, he runs his fingers along the folding counters delicately. Then he pushes open the door and walks on.
That evening Karl showed me the hat he stole. I treaded my hands across the thick and shapeless gray, matted and warm like the hair of a dog. It didn't feel handmade, but there was no tag either. We each tried it on, snatching it off once it had settled on the other's head. Together we spoke of snowstorms and the tops of windy hills in February. The hat smelled familiar, maybe like a home. I pulled the hat down, covering my ears and hiding my head. Karl laughed at me, but I could not hear him. The hat absorbed all sound. "I can't hear you," I started to say, but as I spoke I wasn't sure who I was talking to anymore -- Karl or myself. I couldn't hear either one of us. After a day or so, our treasures lose their novelty and we pack them in the suitcase. Every once in a while we spend an afternoon sorting through our entire collection, but those times are rare. There's no need to keep pawing over the old things because Karl is always bringing back fresh novelties. Still we don't forget what is there, sometimes we even match pieces together. A sock finds its shoe, a map united with a compass, paper clips for the love letters, secret diary entries and kitchen notes. Sometimes I think that these things have always wanted each other and it is simply our responsibility to bring them together, to order them into familiar packages so they are not left lost and alone. But more than anything else, a hat wants a head and I didn't want to give the hat over to the suitcase. It would find no partners there. And I liked walking about with the dark softness pulled down over my ears. It made everything silent and pushed the world around me into a distant kind of stillness. At first I marveled at the quiet, passing through now muted streets and puzzling over moving lips. I savored the warmth of unhurried silence and believed that the absence of sound was my secret alone. Not even Karl could imagine this deafness.
Yet I did not dwell in silence. I filled the muffled space with my own chatter, inventing conversations for the people who passed before me. Sometimes they spoke to one another although they hardly glanced in one another's direction. They exchanged useful pieces of information: "Mind that mud puddle," "Those apples are cheaper a block from here." They speak but I am not sure if the advice is heeded. I do not stay long enough to find out. Most often they just mutter to themselves. For example, that couple walking arm in arm. He looks up and comments on the color of the sky, she glances at the curb and mentions her cousin's birthday party. They talk endlessly, politely, one at a time, but their words never converge, that they might hear and respond to another. They'll agree to go to the party tonight and he'll tell her that her eyes are the color of the tide. They wander along down the street facing straight ahead like they live in only two dimensions. They pass without looking at me. I talk on but no one hears my eloquent speeches or my biting one liners. And it's a shame because my words are for them, are theirs, and I am just the one patient enough to listen.
It's pretty easy to manage while deaf. Most of the sounds in the street are there, but are not for you. Car motors, doors opening, chairs scrapping the floor, shoes against concrete, jingling keys. These are not sounds for you. You have to hear them, but they are not for you. If you are alone, sound is not necessary. I easily drifted deep into my own silence where voices spoke, confessed and screamed in perfect harmony.
So imagine my surprise when I suddenly feel a weight rest upon my shoulder. A hand, something fallen? I turn, startled, my neck already tight, my skin alert. I've forgotten the touch of another body. In front of me is a large man, smiling, and me helpless in my silence. I look past for Karl. He is about to turn the corner. Would he hear me if I called out? But then he would have to turn back, and he can't do that, he is bound to cross over to the far sidewalk, then head straight for two blocks, then, then, then. Then he wasn't going to help me, wasn't coming back. He wouldn't find me until he completed his circle at least one more time. And the hand reaches out for me again, palm to shoulder, like it's holding me out in front of him, for him. The wide, fleshy neck, the large body. I recognize the man from the laundromat and he is moving his lips. I don't hear him, but I already know what he is going to say.
"Where did you get that hat?"
I pull off the hat and in doing so release myself from his muddy grip. The sounds of the city invade me, a car honks its horn, tires screech, voices loud without words, anxious footsteps. I look up and see his eyes, the eyes that before saw only the words of his magnificent book. Now they are focused on me, and I don't want to be his book. I want to dissolve into the cement, to hide in our suitcase among our familiar treasures.
"Where did you get that hat?" Karl. Karl is gone, and isn't this his fault? Why must I be caught? Why must I be the one found out?
"I found it," I say.
"Where?" he asks. I look everywhere but into those eyes. I don't even know what color they are. I want to shove the hat into his face, down his throat, silence him. Karl, Karl, Karl is walking and he is not going to come back for me, he never does. By now he's probably stolen something else, a new treasure. Even if he notices that I am not there watching him, it won't matter. All I can do is shrug my shoulders, holding the hat between me and this menace.
"Here," I say, "I found it here." Finally he looks at the hat instead of at me, and I suddenly remember that his voice was not harsh or angry, but curious.
"I had one just like it, but I lost it. Full of lots of memories you know, and I meant to always keep it, but then one day it was gone, and I've been looking for it ever since." His voice is softer than I expect and when he finishes talking he doesn't close his mouth all the way.
"Here," I say, "maybe this one is yours." I push the hat into his hands. They are big, strong but not hardened with calluses. If he takes it, I can go and be gone, no mark of mine left behind. But he just touches the hat, strokes the thick gray like it was a pet while it still touches my hand which I have forgotten to hide in my pocket. He doesn't look at it closely, doesn't need to. Of course it is his. "Maybe this one is yours," I repeat, holding it out before him. I cannot give it to him. He pets it slowly, and I wonder what his fingers are remembering, they must be glad.
"No," he begins, "no." Is he saying no to me? That I am wrong, wrong to have done this, to steal and pretend, then lie to him and offer him what is already his and never could be my own. "No, I don't think this is mine." Startled, I look up and he catches me dead in the eye. His eyes are brown, brown like dirt and run down houses. "No," he says, "this is not my hat." Not your hat? Not your hat? But that's impossible. I feel my forehead wrinkle, my eyes suddenly open with confusion and righteous truth. "It's yours of course. Your hat. Mine is still lost somewhere in this city." He speaks without blinking and it is only when I look down at my hands, still holding the soft gray hat that I realize that he is lying to me.
He smiles. The liar smiles, and I am both relieved and insulted. "I'll just have to keep looking for my own." I nod, and suddenly I want to hide the hat far away, but the gray bulges obscenely between my greedy fingers. Quietly, I meet his gaze. "It may take awhile but I think I'll find it. And it gives me something to look for."
He'll look for something he's never going to find. What will he see then, I wonder, just searching and searching.
I nod again, feeling sheepish and stupid, but at least I can notice the brown of his eyes, homey and warm. It's all right now that we are both liars. I start to walk away, back from where I came and straight down the street so he can watch me go, and the hand that once held me against an invisible wall now waves at me. I raise my hand in response, then turn and quicken my pace. I head down the street, in and out of the crowds, hearing me saying, "Good bye. See ya. Maybe I'll catch you later."
I wonder how far he'll watch me, and then I pull on the hat, leaving my ears exposed. He'll be searching for me, even though he'll never find me. He'll remember to keep looking for the hat, he'll remember me. I turn again to look for him, but there is a family behind me, blocking my view. I move around them and he is there, still waving. Can he still see me? Flooded with warmth, I smile. I'm a long ways off. I wave back anyway.