Trade

Jacob started coughing before he even lit his cigarette, leaning heavily on the rusted railing of the stoop to his apartment building. The mariachi music blaring from a third floor window muted his rasping coughs. A string of curses ran through his mind as he heaved in lungfuls of the foul Bronx air. Just a walk, someplace quiet to sketch, was that so much to ask? But what did he expect? Lately, it seemed the whole world was against him.
But the episode passed like they always did, and Jacob took one of the three rationed cigarettes from his wallet and flicked his fifty-four cent lighter at its end. Money was tight, forcing him to censor his expensive habit. He wondered fleetingly if a spark would set the exhaust in the alley on fire and consume him. He wondered if he really cared.
The nicotine gradually did its work, and the warm summer air enticed him to persevere with his original intention. He scuffled slowly down the disheveled road, dodging old newspapers and husks of Chinese food canisters as he surrendered to his artistic instincts. He noticed the contrast between the deep shadows of the trashed alleys, and the blinding shine of the windows as they caught the sunlight. The pale rays of the noonday sun reflected off of the shattered beer bottles and miscellaneous glass, projecting light shows onto nearby dumpsters. Everything from the abandoned window boxes and strings of "clean" laundry to the mud-covered children playing in cardboard boxes were smeared with gloomy greys and browns.
Jacob had grown up with these in-between hues: the honey brown of his mother's medicinal tea, the salt-and-pepper grey of his father's hair that matched the speckled hospital tile, clouds reflected on an ebony hearse he, his brother, and his father followed to Sedalia City Cemetery in their tan oldsmobile. These pigments felt like home and embodied his life experiences, causing him to latch onto these neutral colors as a young artist. His dedication to such unappreciated colors earned him positive critical attention and jump-started his artistic career, but as the years progressed, his uncompromising color palette caused fewer galleries and private collectors to commission his work. With no contacts or friends to aid him, he eventually fell into impoverished unemployment.
Jacob was jerked from his melancholy when he turned a corner and a splash of bright color caught his eye. Squeezed between six-story buildings sat a one-story clinic with a sloped roof, white window sills, and pale blue siding that rivaled the summer sky. An ornate wooden sign on the door read Mercy Pediatric Care Center. The encroaching hostels loomed over the hospital, a lone sheep amongst a pack of wolves. The contrast dazzled him.
Jacob extinguished his spent cigarette with his worn high top's heel and, perching across the street on a concrete banister, began to sketch feverishly.
"And they criticized me for 'overusing' dark, neutral colors," he muttered, pressing a stick of charcoal into dark, hard lines on the paper. "Art imitates life, and this-- this is life! Dark consuming the light, colors mixing into brown, black and white blurring to grey--" he smudged a line with his thumb to create a deep shadow "-- While they sit in their bright, padded living rooms like psych ward patients in their cells. What do they know about real life--?"
"Whatcha drawing?"
Jacob jumped, the inspiration snapping like the brittle charcoal between his tense, blackened fingers. He opened his mouth to curse at the insolent intruder, but his tongue turned to lead when he saw a girl of about eight or nine with a bloody bandage over one eye standing before him.
The girl, who had clasped her hands behind her back and tilted her head to better see his drawing, gasped with delight. One of her front teeth was missing.
"Oh! That's Mrs. Murphy's clinic, isn't it?" she beamed up at him, tucking her chin-length black hair behind her ear. "Wow, you're really good. You even got the OPEN sign. Though it isn't black, it's brown, see?" She pointed at the sign with a grubby finger.
She continued to make comments, and every time he opened his mouth to make a witty reply, he would catch a glimpse of her bloody eye and be silenced.
"You like it?" she asked, noticing his discomfort. She raised her hand to the bandage, but stopped short of touching it. "It only hurts a little-- OK, it hurts a lot, but it makes me look like a buc-- a bucca-- a pirate, right? Argh!"
"How did it happen?" Jacob felt obliged to ask. He crushed the remaining charcoal between his fingers uncomfortably.
She shrugged. "I traded for it."
"Excuse me?" Jacob raised an eyebrow in disbelief. Did she think this was some sort of game? She was permanently crippled, for Christ's sake.
She blinked at him with her good eye. "I traded for it. With Mr. Simmons down the street. He got into a fight, and a guy stabbed his eye out!" She made a jabbing motion with one hand. "Mr. Simmons was real upset, cuz he's is a pilot and he needs both eyes to do his job! So I traded him a broken arm for the eye."
Jacob frowned, curious if she was actually serious. "So-- where did you get the broken arm from?" She wore a long-sleeved shirt, but from what he could see her arms appeared  completely whole.
"I traded a basketball player a busted lip for it," she replied with pride.
Jacob tried again, morbidly fascinated by her tall tale. "And the busted lip?"
"Traded a pretty lady in red for it for a bad app-- appa--"
"Not an appendix?"
"Yeah, that!" she nodded, giving him a thumb's up. "Good guess!"
Jacob held up both his hands in surrender. "OK, OK. Enough. What really happened, squirt?"
"My name is Harriet, not squirt, and I'm telling the truth!" she insisted, wagging a finger at him. "I'll prove it to you. Tomorrow, if I come back here with a different ing--in-- hurt in a different spot and have both my eyes, you have to draw me a picture."
Jacob instantly visualized a macabre scene of a battered girl, holding her errant eyeball in her palm. "No way, I--"
But she had already taken off down the block, yelling over her shoulder, "It's a deal!"
*****
After finishing his sketching, Jacob went to his favorite bar, DR Restaurant, for dinner. He squinted as he entered, the heavy cloud of smoke stinging his eyes. The bar and grill looked like New York in a fog, the patrons in the tall booths only completely visible from the chest up.
He raised a finger to catch the bartender's attention. "The usual," he said as he took his normal stool.
He was flipping through his sketchbook and drinking his after dinner beer when a brunette woman sat in the bar stool next to his, swiveling the stool so her bare knees bumped his. Jacob ignored her, but watched out of the corner of his eye as she fidgeted, looking over to a table full of sniggering women for help. Ah, so it had been a dare, then.
He knew it had to be something devious; no one, in the two months he'd been a patron at this bar, had ever talked to him. His drab appearance and slouched posture, coupled with his unkempt black hair and sunken, stubbled cheeks didn't do much to encourage conversation, and he preferred it that way.
The woman opened her mouth to talk several times before blurting out, "I-- I'll tell you my name if you buy me a drink."
Jacob flipped the page in his sketchbook and took another sip of his beer. "Can't. Already drinking through this month's rent."
She bit her bright red lower lip, then tried again. "Did you draw that?" she asked, pointing to the picture of the children's clinic. "It's really good."
The artist acknowledged her for the first time. He nodded once.
"Really?" she asked, relief flushing her face. "Would you draw a picture of me?"
"No, but--" since she wanted so badly to talk to him, he might as well oblige. "I do have a question. If you were approached by a little girl who had just lost an eye, what would you do?" When she only stared at him, Jacob sighed and stood, slapping the money for the beer on the dark, scratched wood of the bar. She continued to stare at him, mortified, and he exhaled heavily through his nose.
"Here, as compensation," he said, the hoarseness in his voice made worse by his nervousness as he tore the sketch of the clinic out of his notebook and handed it to her. Her shocked face softened slightly at the gesture, and she was about to say thank you when the bell above the door announced his exit.
He returned to his apartment around eight, coughing horribly as he turned the key in the chipped lock, and when the door still wouldn't open, forced it through the threshold by bruising his shoulder.
Jacob stumbled through one-bedroom apartment in the dark, set his sketchbook on the empty easel in one corner, and tripped over his open suitcase before falling on his back onto his king-sized mattress. The four-post bed was a sentimental keepsake; the head- and footboards were antique cherrywood, with reliefs of oversized grapes and curling designs carved into them. His mother had been in the process of restoring it when she died, and even though the varnish was half-applied, he couldn't bring himself to finish it. The bed was the only luxury he'd kept from his former life, and it nearly filled the small room.
As he stared up at the popcorn ceiling, connecting the nubs of paint in his mind like constellations, Harriet and her challenge regained his attention. Where is her mother? he wondered. No sane parent would be able to ignore a gaping wound in their child's face, yey she claimed to be injured often. So were her parents outrageously neglectful, or-- he ran her socked feet over the smooth footboard-- was she parentless, like him? Newly depressed, he turned on his side and pulled a pillow over his head, begging the darkness to take over his mind.
******
Jacob squinted through stringy, black bangs in the noonday sunlight, gritting his teeth against the persistent gnawing at the back of his mind. He'd gone through his second cig two hours ago, and the craving returned almost as soon as he had tossed the butt into a gutter. But he was betting he'd need that last fix after an encounter with the kid.
So he sat restlessly on the cement bench opposite Mercy Pediatric Care Center, sketchbook on his jostling legs and his hands in his pockets, one turning his lighter over and over and the other gripping his wallet like a vice.
He was about to give in and light his final cigarette when Harriet came bounding down the alley, and Jacob's eyes widened when she slid to a stop in front of him, her bandage gone and both eyes in tact. In fact, though her skin was almost completely covered by baggy jeans and a Spongebob Squarepants long-sleeved shirt, she appeared wholly unharmed.
"I thought you traded bodily afflictions," he said, his face not betraying his confusion.
"I do," she shrugged. "I traded the baker on one-eightieth for ce-- seal-- a wheat allergy!"
"Celiac disease?"
"Yeah, that's the one!"
"The baker--" he chuckled without a smile "-- well, that would make sense."
She sat beside him on the bench, swinging her legs back in forth, staring at him as he came to grips with his new acquaintance. Finally, he remembered his end of the deal.
"Right, right," he grumbled. He turned to a blank sheet in his sketchbook and pulled an HB pencil from behind his ear. "What do you want me to draw?" he asked, but he already knew the answer.
Harriet retrieved a photo out from her pocket and handed to him almost reverentially. "Here."
Baffled, Jacob took the worn photo. Its edges were tattered, and there were a few creases from where it had been folded. But amidst the spider webs of crinkled resin, a Filipino woman, hair blowing in the wind and her face turned away a tropic sun, smiled out at him. He'd thought Harriet would ask him to draw herself like everyone else did, but instead--
"Who's this?" he asked, turning the paper over in his yellowed fingers. He didn't have to ask, but he pretended he didn't know the answer, on the off-chance he would be surprised.
Harriet smiled again, but it wasn't her normal carefree, toothy grin. This smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, but didn't reach her eyes. "It's my mom."
He opened his mouth to speak, to tell her that he had lost his mom too, and knew how she felt, but she had turned away, blinking at her shoes as they swung back and forth.
Jacob finished a rough sketch that afternoon. When he asked to take the photo home to continue the project, she refused.
"But you'll-- come back tomorrow?" She asked, her head tilted downward so she could look up at him pensively. He exhaled and rolled his eyes and she inclined her head to grin at him, knowing she had won.
He didn't go to the bar that night, but sat on his bed and stared at the half-finished portrait on the easel across the room, trying to come up with a color scheme, before turning in early.
Two days passed before Harriet could watch him draw the portrait without tearing up, and in that time she went through a twisted ankle and the chicken pox. On the third day, Jacob brought his easel and weathered, plastic art bag so he could begin painting. Harriet exited the clinic at her normal time, around 12:30, this time with a cast on her leg.
"OK, how does this happen?" he asked finally, tired of her sorrowful silence. "Did you fall in a vat of chemicals? Get bitten by a radioactive doctor? What?"
Harriet pursed her lips and swung her good leg. "It's a long story."
Jacob dipped his brush in the chestnut watercolor paint, twisting the stem for a consistent coating. "We've got about four hours, and I like to listen while I paint."
Encouraged by his monotone promptings, Harriet splayed her hands out in front of her like a mime, her eyes staring into the middle distance. "It happened a year ago," she began.
"My mom and I were coming home from the zoo on Labor Day. We always went on Labor Day, because it was cheap and a lot of weird people went to the zoo. My mom used to say we were going to the 'people men-- meana--'"
"Menagerie?" Jacob offered, shading a cheekbone with brown pastel.
"-- the 'people menagerie, because the people were funner to watch than the animals. Mom had to work another shift that day, so we left early." Harriet stared at the photo paper-clipped to the developing painting. "We were late, and it began to rain. Mom wouldn't slow down even when the roads were full of water. We were going really fast when our car turned wrong, and another car hit us."
Jacob had stopped painting, but Harriet didn't notice, still staring at the photo.
"I couldn't go to her funeral because I was in the hospital. The doctors told me they had to bring me back from the dead four times before I was OK to be put into a room. I don't remember any of that. I just remember seeing my mom from far away. I remember yelling for her, but she wouldn't turn around and look at me." The girl rubbed her sweater sleeve against her nose and eyes before sniffing hard and continuing.
"They put me in a room with a girl named Tasha, who was also in an accident, to wait on surgery. I was really scared, so Tasha--" Tears ran down the girl's face, and Jacob's eyes narrowed. "Tasha held my hand. She died that night. It wasn't till the next morning that the doctors figured out that I had traded injuries with her, and she had died from the wounds that I would have had." Harriet gazed down at her hands now, and Jacob bit his lower lip. He hadn't felt strongly about anything in a long time, but the child's story grabbed at his heart.
"My Aunt Linda didn't let them do tests on me, so I don't know how I do it," she said, so softly he had to strain to hear her, "but I know I have this gift for a reason, so I try to help people with it whenever I can." She rubbed her arms as if she felt a chill. "But nothing can make up for what I took from Tasha."
Jacob lit his second cigarette and didn't speak until he'd take a few long drags.
"I-- lost my mom, too," he said, squinting up at the too-bright July sky. "She passed away ten years ago, of a rare heart disease. I still don't understand all that was wrong with her."
She looked up at her shoes to watch his face. "Who did you live with?" she asked.
"My dad was still alive then. We never really got along-- he was a masculine, conservative construction worker, I am an artist-- we butted heads all the time."
"Like rams?" she asked, crooking her pointer fingers to make little horns.
He chuckled. "Yeah, like rams. He drank, too, and it got worse after Mom died. I was in college when he-- anyway, it's just me and my brother, now."
"So you're an orphan, like me," the girl said somberly, resting her head against his arm. "I live with my Aunt Linda. She's nice, I guess. Her kids like me, even though they don't play with me that much." She inspected the ends of her braids as she talked. "She lets me go to private school and play with other kids if I don't cause trouble, and lets me do whatever I want in the summer. When I'm sick-- like, real sick-- she takes care of me herself."
"She sounds like a great aunt," he said, nudging her off of his arm so he could continue painting.
"I guess," she shrugged. "But she doesn't look at me like Mom did, you know? Like, I dunno, like-- she wanted me there. Really really wanted me."
His hand paused over the paper, his mouth turning up in a smile as he remembered the admiration on his mother's face when he showed her his first real painting. Then he recalled the gallery patrons, who smiled broadly as they haggled down the price of his hard work.
"Yeah," he said as the brush made contact with the paper again. "I get that."
Jacob returned from the bar at nine that night to find the lock he'd been hindered by a few days before had been ripped from its moorings. He paused, leaning forward with his head tilted toward the open door to divine if the intruders were still inside. When he heard nothing, he pushed the door toward the wall with a finger and peered into the room. Only his bed's pillows and comforter were stolen, since nothing else of value was portable. They'd used some of his acrylics, untouched for months, to write "YOU SUCK" on the wall in large, red letters, along with other crude pictures and sayings. He thought it complemented the wallpaper perfectly.
Nevertheless, the next morning he retrieved a handgun from his family's storage unit on the other side of town. He looked both ways before turning his key in the lock, though he knew none of his family members would be there. His father had died four years ago from alcoholism, and he'd been avoiding his brother, Jeff, since he'd become unemployed a few months before. It was Officer Jeff who'd given him the firearm on his twenty-first birthday. He hated guns, though, and hadn't had any use for one, but now he figured it wouldn't hurt to have one around, for protection. He loaded the weapon and hid it in the back of his pants like he'd seen gangsters do in movies before taking the subway back to the Bronx in time to meet Harriet at the clinic. Harriet had not yet arrived and Jacob was setting up his easel on the uneven sidewalk when a short, Hispanic woman about six months pregnant wearing Minnie Mouse scrubs walked across the street from the clinic.
"Are you Jacob?" she asked, the stern tone in her voice cowing the antisocial artist.
"You must be Mrs. Murphy," he said, hunching his shoulders further.
"Doctor," she replied, "and you're the artist Harriet can't stop talking about."
Jacob closed his black hoodie over his chest. "Well, I--"
"What are your intentions towards her?" Dr. Murphy asked bluntly.
"I don't have any intentions!" he insisted in a mild panic. "The only time I see her is here, and I wouldn't try to see her any other time."
The doctor narrowed her blue eyes at him, then, satisfied that he was telling the truth, sighed. "No, I don't suppose so." She patted him on the shoulder, as if to tell him he was forgiven for worrying her. "I just worry about her. My husband worked with her mother before she passed. I'd take her in as my own if--" she ran her small hands over her distended stomach "--well, if we had the space."
"You fix her up," he offered tentatively. "That's a lot in itself."
"Yes, but one of these days she's going to come in the front door with a ruptured lung or skin cancer," the woman fretted, "and I'll have no choice but take her to a hospital, where they'll want to keep her for testing--" she looked at a sterling silver watch on her wrist "--but she's gathering a reputation around her. Sooner or later someone will come around trying to exploit her."
"You make it sound like she has only the two choices, to die or to be trapped," Jacob said, though his boldness was offset by the way he stared at his shoes.
"Well, she can't have a normal life," the doctor said with a furrowed brow. "She exchanges infirmities with a single touch, whether she means to or not. She's not even allowed in the same room as her cousins-- where is she?" Jacob was silent, but he was worried, too.
Across the street, a little band of black boys were looking in the barred windows of the clinic, two of them supporting a limp child.
"I have to go," Dr. Murphy said. "Tell Harriet to come see me after you're done here?"
He agreed, and the doctor waddled across the street as fast as she could, waving to her waiting patients.
Another hour passed, and Jacob considered looking for Harriet, but he didn't know where to start. He was about to go ask the doctor when Harriet burst out of a side alley, her face flushed and her legs shaking from running.
"Harriet, what's wrong?" he asked as she dashed behind him, balling her small hands in the back of his jacket. His question was answered when two men tumbled from the same alley.
"Little brat!" a tattooed black man wearing a beanie growled when he spotted them. "Just come with us quietly! We won't-- we can't hurt you."
"Our bosh ish real hurt you shee," the other man, shorter than his partner and Caucasian, spat through a fake gold grill. "And word on the shtreet ish the little mishy here can trade illneshesh with people."
"Well, uh, you heard wrong," Jacob said, standing as the gangsters encroached upon them. "As-- as you can see, she'sh-- uh, she's not hurt at all."
"Our beef ishn't with you, shweetie," the second man sneered at the skinny artist.
The first man held up to large hands. "Look man," he addressed Jacob, "we know what you're thinking. Two big dudes, chasing a defenseless little girl. But we got our own families to think on, so hand her over before things get ugly."
Jacob's heart was about to beat out of his chest and his legs might as well have been jelly, but when Harriet pressed her forehead against his back and whimpered, he knew he couldn't back away from this situation. He shook his head.
"Fine," the black man took a threatening step forward, and Jacob awkwardly jerked his handgun from his jeans and pointed it at their attacker's broad chest. Though his arms shook horribly, the man was only five feet away, and he couldn't miss. The man raised his arms in surrender instantly.
"Alright now, let's not do something we'll regret," he said. "I've got a little girl at home. She starts kindergarten this year."
"What?" Jacob blinked several times, trying to process the situation. He'd seen cops talk down crazed murderers this way. What in this situation made him the bad guy? He disabled the gun's safety with a click, and both men took a step back.
"Look man, the girl-- she'sh all we want!" the short man whined. "What doya think will happen to uth if we come back without her?"
"I don't care, just leave," the artist said, his arms steadying. "I'll only say it once."
Both men backed away from them with their hands in the air, then ducked into an adjacent alley, maneuvering the dumpsters and debris with ease.
Jacob fell to the bench with a heavy sigh, which brought on another coughing fit. Harriet, still quivering, held onto his arm till the coughs subsided.
"I could-- take care of that for you-- you know?" she offered with a weak smile. "How do you feel about high-- chol-- cholera-- cholesterol?"
"No thanks," he took one of the cigarettes from his wallet and lit it, exhaling in relief as the nicotine calmed his tangled nerves. "Besides, it would only come back."
He worked on the painting longer than usual that day.
"I should be able to finish it tomorrow," he said, their long shadows stretching ahead of them as they trod down the littered sidewalk. After the incident with the thugs, he'd insisted on walking her home. Harriet looked at the drying painting he allowed her to carry, chewing on her lower lip with such apparent worry that he smirked and asked what was wrong.
"It's just--" she shrugged, but the weight on her back was not lifted "-- after you're done with my painting, we won't have a reason to hang out anymore."
He tilted his head back, stroking his stubbled chin in thought.
"To be honest, it isn't great for a young girl to be close buddies with a guy my age, anyway," he said. "I understand the dangers of having friends in your-- condition, but I still think you should try, and I'd really like it if you didn't have to visit Dr. Murphy's clinic everyday, too."
Harriet hunched over the painting at this response, and he realized with a frantic grimace that she was about to cry.
"But I suppose--" he said hastily "--you could use someone to walk you home at night. I know you've done well so far on your own, but after those guys came today-- I'll need to ask your aunt if that's OK, though."
She brightened instantly. "Great! You can ask her right now! That's my house, there!" she pointed to a townhouse with a tricycle on the front step and muddy handprints all over the door.
"Ahh--" Jacob flushed, nervous now that he was put on the spot. "Tomorrow, OK squirt? I'll talk to her tomorrow." Harriet nodded so excitedly she looked like a bobble-head and bounded off. He watched as she skipped over steps to reach the front door, and it opened immediately for her. A Filipino woman about thirty years old, whom he assumed was her aunt, grabbed her by the shoulders and appeared to scold her, then nudged her into the house. As she closed the door, the dark-haired woman glared down the street and him, and he pivoted on his heel and walked briskly away.
Jacob didn't go to the bar that night, but stayed in his apartment to touch up Harriet's painting and devise what he would say to her aunt. Should he tell her about the thugs? After spending a week with Harriet, he felt like an older brother to her, like he had an obligation to keep her secrets. Then again, her guardian had a right to know the dangers Harriet faced because of her abilities. After fretting about this for half an hour, Jacob gave in and pulled a fourth cigarette from the pack in his sock drawer and stepped out onto the stoop to smoke.
He didn't get through two drags before the coughs racked his chest, but this time they hurt much worse than before. Jacob doubled over on the sidewalk in agony as he hacked, and when he finally managed to calm the heaving in his chest, he noticed his blood, splattered across the pavement.
Jacob stumbled down the crumbling stairs to the basement level where the building super lived, next to the laundry room. When she opened the door, the forty-something white woman looked a bit miffed to have someone bang on her door so loudly at suppertime, then shrieked when she found her newest tenant leaning heavily on the threshold, blood dripping from his sharp chin. Jacob heard her scream "Call 9-1-1!" at her six children before the world tilted and his eyelids fluttered shut.
******
Jacob never arrived at the clinic the next day. Harriet sat in their usual spot after being treated at for a case of athlete's foot, and continued to wait for him until Dr. Murphy closed up the clinic early to walk her home.
"Something horr--terr-- really bad happened to him," Harriet said, fighting back tears. "I know it." Dr. Murphy consoled her the best she could, saying perhaps he had a previous appointment, or he caught the flu.
"No," Harriet whimpered, "he would have come anyway." She gripped the photo in both hands as the tears fell. "He's in trouble. I can feel it."
Dr. Murphy looked up at the storm clouds gathering and pulled the crying girl closer to her, fearing that she was right.
******
The next day, Jacob was sitting on the concrete bench as if nothing had ever happened. Harriet spotted him as soon as she opened the hospital door. Squealing of delight, she sprinted across the rain-washed road and tackle-hugged him, nearly toppling them both over.
"Where were you yesterday?" she asked, her previous anxieties evaporating like the puddles that had accumulated after last night's storm.
Jacob's grey eyes were overcast for a second, then he smiled. "I had a doctor's appointment yesterday I'd forgotten about. Sorry." Harriet grinned wider, grabbing his folded easel to help him set up his painting supplies.
"Hey," He stood, taking the easel from her and tucking it under his arm. "This place is too gloomy; let's go to the park today."
Harriet didn't question this sudden change of scenery, and skipped ahead of him as they walked the ten blocks to Tremont Park. They set up his supplies by a wooden bench next to a small garden. The artist hadn't spoken the whole walk over, and the longer he remained silent, the more antsy Harriet became.
"Jacob," she said hesitantly. "You haven't talked or smiled or even smoked today. Are you sick? Did the doctor give you medicine?" When he didn't reply, she pulled her lower lip between her teeth, then reached out and tugged on his coat sleeve. "If you're hurt, I can--"
"No!" Jacob said abruptly, and she released him immediately, her eyes wide at his sudden outburst. He kneaded his brows with his thumb and forefinger. "No, don't-- do that."
He sighed, placing his paintbrush behind his ear. After all she'd lost, he'd hoped to be able to spare her this. He gazed at the flowers in the garden-- tiger lilies and tulips in fierce oranges and reds, colors he had never used-- he promised himself he would use them sometime soon.
"I-- did go to the doctor yesterday," he began, still staring at the flowers. "I was in the hospital, actually. In the intensive care wing. But they let me out because there is nothing they can do. Nothing anyone can do." He turned and looked his young friend in the eye. "Harriet, I-- have lung cancer. It's very common for smokers like me." She opened her mouth to speak, but he raised a hand to silence her. "If you try to trade with me, I'll only trade back," he said sternly. "So don't get any funny ideas."
Harriet stared at him a moment, then pulled her knees to her chest on the bench and began to cry. Jacob patted her on the back occasionally and made mental notes on the bright hues of the flower garden.
"You know I used to paint flowers?" he said when he back stopped shaking. "My mom loved flowers, especially calla lilies, they were her favorite. But when she got sick, it was winter and those flowers were out of season. I painted twenty pictures of calla lilies that year, and she died. I haven't painted a flower since." He swiped a finger under his nose. "I think I'll start up again, though. Life's too short to only paint with three colors." She wasn't looking at him, so he elbowed her shoulder. "But I probably wouldn't be this positive about all this if it weren't for you." She glanced up at him then, and he smiled in a way he hoped was encouraging.
"I used to think that no one was truly happy, but that happiness and kindness were masks to hide the cruelty of the world. You've shown me that happiness is possible in spite of the pain, that kindness is present amidst the cruelty. You're an inspiration, squirt. To me, to Mrs. Murphy-- and for as long as I can, I want to be like you."
"I'm not all that special," she mumbled into her shirt sleeves. "And I don't give a lot, either. I trade, and everyone I trade with runs away after I touch them, like they're afraid I'll give it back. I can't touch people, so I can't play with my cousins and the kids at school think I'm weird." She fisted her hands against her eyes to stop the tears. "You're my only friend, Jacob, my only friend. Why do all the people I love die?"
Jacob raised a hand to place it on her shoulder, but she latched onto his coat sleeve and pressed her face against it, smearing snot and tears into the cotton. "You can't die, Jacob. Tell me you won't!" She squeezed his arm so hard he thought she might pull it off. "Promise!"
"Fine, fine," he said, shaking his captured arm half-heartedly, his throat tight at her distress. "I-- I promise."
"You're not lying?" She looked up at him, her large eyes wide as she searched his face.
He shook his head. "No," he lied.
"Good." She released him and folded her arms, scowling like a guard dog to keep herself from crying again.
Jacob finished the painting around four, tore it out of his sketchbook that had so long been its home, and gave it to Harriet. She didn't want to leave yet, though, so he lent her a piece of paper and a pencil and they both sketched flowers for a couple hours before packing up and heading back to her aunt's house.
They walked back at Harriet's pace, since she had grabbed ahold of his sleeve and wouldn't let go. She didn't say anything, and Jacob sighed heavily. He shouldn't have told her he was sick just yet, but he wasn't sure how often he would miss their meetings because of the cancer, and didn't want her to worry. Now, though, it seemed like she was falling apart.
"Look, I'll come see you every day from now on, OK?" he said, poking her on the forehead. "And I'll draw you as many pictures as you want. As long as I'm here, you won't be lonely." Her brow smoothed at this, and her shoes stopped skidding against the broken pavement. He raised a hand as she waved to him in the golden glow of her aunt's porch light, trying not to wonder how long it would be before she'd race to their rendezvous point, only to realize he would never be sitting there again.
A couple days later, Harriet's mood improved considerably.
"I'm going to the zoo with Aunt Linda and my cousins tomorrow!" she squealed when he asked. She bounced almost uncontrollably as they made their way back to the park. "It's the first time I've gone since-- in a long time, and I can't wait!"
"Yeah, I can tell," he smiled in the way he'd taken to lately, a close-lipped curve that didn't quite reach his half-lidded eyes. It heartened him that her family was beginning to accept her, and that the prospect of going to the zoo kept her talking so he didn't have to. She went through twelve sheets of sketch paper that day, drawing all the animals she wanted to see.

So he was surprised when she ran up to him the next day, scratched and panting, tears streaming down her face. She said nothing upon seeing him, but instead threw her arms around his shoulders and began to cry.
"What is it, squirt, what's wrong?" he asked. She mumbled something into his shirt. "What about elephants? Sit up, let's talk."
After a few more minutes of desperate crying, Harriet had calmed down enough to relate her story. She told him about how she had traded a hot dog salesmen for a severe peanut allergy so that she wouldn't be a danger to anyone while at the zoo. However, when her cousin Sean started eating the peanuts meant for the elephants, she called him out on it, and he thought he'd share the blame by making her eat some, too. In the scuffle she touched Sean, who still had a mouth full peanuts, causing him to have a fit. She immediately traded him back, but the damage was done and an ambulance was called.
"Aunt Linda-- she told me I was too dangerous to have around anymore, that I need to be nera--neutra-- fixed," she stammered. "She was gonna send me to a fack-- a fassa-- a place where they would lock me up and do tests on me." She hunched over, grabbing at her hair. "I don't wanna be sent away!"
"OK, OK," he crooned, though he knew he was in too deep. "She doesn't know where you are. I'm sure--"
"Since a week ago, I've had to tell her where I'm going all the time," the girl said, and he remembered the look the woman had given him the first night he walked Harriet home. "She knows we come here."
"Then we go back to my place, we take you to Mrs. Murphy--" but the more he talked, the more Jacob knew it was hopeless. From the look on her face, she knew it too.
"No," he said sternly, and her eyebrows pulled together in confusion. "You're not going to give up like this. We're going back to my place to get some supplies, and then we'll run, alright?" He ran a hand through his hair and laughed to cover up his uncertainty. "What can they do to us, anyway? They were going to test on you, and I'm going to die soon, anyway. We just have to find a safe place for you before I do. Just." Throwing his art supplies into his bag, he grabbed his easel with one hand and Harriet's hand with the other, and they ran.

The sirens became audible four blocks from Jacob's apartment.
"They're coming," Harriet murmured, clutching at his sweater.
He pursed his lips as he thought. "We need to hide."
"Mrs. Murphy's clinic is only a block from here," she said, jogging ahead. Harriet made it to the corner before she realized he wasn't following her, and she turned to see her friend doubled over on the sidewalk, his paints and brushes scattered around him. She started to run to his aid, but he held up a shaky hand before she reached him.
"No," he wheezed. "They're not after me. I'll be fine-- go to Mrs. Murphy's. Hide."
"I'll go get help," she decided instead, running back toward the clinic. The pounding in his ears drowned out the sirens, and the blood dripping from his bottom lip kept him from protesting.
He was struggling to stand when he heard the screech and the scream. The decrepit artist stumbled to the crosswalk, falling against a lamppost from the exertion so soon after a coughing episode. Two doors down from the clinic, a black 2005 mustang was parked in the middle of the street and its occupants, two teenagers in letter jackets, stood in front of it, looking down at something.
"Dude, are you serious?" one of them said, running a hand through his blond hair.
"Whaddo we do?"
"Hey!" Jacob hailed, regaining his composure. Before he could utter another word, the second boy grabbed the shoulder of the first, pulling him with him as they both sprinted down the bleached blacktop. The artist almost called for them a second time, then he realized what they  had been looking at.
Harriet, half hidden by the grill of the car, lolled her head toward the sound of his voice.
"Ja--Jacob--" she whimpered as he crouched next to her, wishing he could hold her hand.
"Stay still, stay very still," he commanded, rolling his sweater into a pillow and trying not to vomit at the blood leaking through her iCarly long-sleeved shirt.
"It came-- so fast--"
"I know." He rubbed the tears from his eyes before she saw them. "But the police will be here soon. They'll get you help."
Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks, and he couldn't tell if they were caused by fear or pain. "I don't want to go," she choked. "I'll never see you again."
"I'm sure they'll let you see me," he said, keeping his eyes on her face. This was all too much, too much red, angry and hot, matting in her dark hair and pooling in the cracks in the asphalt.
"No. Jacob--" her voice broke over the word, "If you die, I'll never see you again. I don't want you to die."
Before he could register what was happening, she reached out and took his hand. He yelped as pain speared through his ribcage, flashing red across his vision, then all was black.
******
"Jake. Jakey, are you awake? Sorry doc, I thought I saw his eyes twitching."
Jacob's brows knitted together, trying to place the familiar voice. "Jeff?" he attempted to say, but it came out a croak. The dull thudding in his head increased to a pound when his brother shouted exultantly.
"See? I told you he woke up!" He felt strong, warm hands encase his. "But you might want to go back to sleep, buddy. Fat load of trouble you've gotten yourself into this time."
He squinted his eyes at the officer, but before he could ask him what he meant, the doctor escorted the older brother out of the room so he could debrief his patient.
"You've been in a hit-and-run," the balding Dr. Pennyworth explained. "You have a couple broken ribs, road rash on your arms, and bruising on your face and legs. One of the ribs punctured through the skin, but its all been taken care of. From now on, its nothing some painkillers and a few days' bed rest won't cure." He frowned down his nose through his bifocals at Jacob's chart. "In fact, you'd have your prescription by now, if there wasn't this bizarre mix-up with your medical file. It says here you were dying from severe small cell lung cancer, but I ordered for the tests to be redone, and your tests came back completely cancer free! Also, you have a peanut allergy that wasn't in any of your previous records. Strange, am I right?"
The doctor requested for a therapist to be on call when his patient began to cry at the news of his near-perfect health.
After the doctor left, the artist realized what his brother had meant by trouble. Apparently Harriet was still missing, and the police were close to arresting him for kidnapping. However, after a full sweep of his apartment, and testimonies from two youths who were convinced they'd hit a girl with the car, he was acquitted under strict orders that he contact them if he ever heard from Harriet.
"The girl's aunt would like a word with you as well," Jeff said, tucking his notepad into his uniform's front pocket. "Do you want to see her? I can stay in here too, if you want."
He shook his head so his hair fell over his eyes. "No, no I'll be fine. I'm always fine."
The older man guffawed and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "No, you're not. Send her in!"
Aunt Linda side-stepped into the white hospital room, her eyes on the speckled floor that seemed to be in all hospitals, and her hands gripping a large, zebra-print purse. She was much younger than he'd first supposed, no older than twenty-five.
"You probably think I'm horrible," she said, her gaze fixed on the tile. "But please don't think I was being selfish when I decided to send her away. She was alone and a danger to everyone around her. My seven-year-old son is still in a room two halls over."
"What does it matter what I think?" he sniffed. He began to fold his arms, but pressure on his chest hurt, and he reconsidered.
"Because you mattered to her," she replied, "so if she comes back, you'll be the first person she'll go to, and I want you to tell her that-- that I do care."
Jacob studied the young mother with suspicion. She looked guilty, but not in distress over her niece's disappearance. Still, he knew that Harriet needed to be found more than ever since she had traded him for his deadly disease. The creases in his forehead smoothed and he sighed.
"I'll tell her. If I see her, anyway."
"Right." She pulled a tube of thick paper from her purse and handed it to him with a tight-lipped red smile. "I found this in her room. It's really good; looks, just like her, but I thought you'd want it back. That's your signature at the bottom, right?"
With tears already burning his eyes, he unrolled the painting of Harriet's mother. "Thanks," he mumbled, biting his lower lip to control his emotions. He curled the watercolor paper back up as she closed the door silently behind her. When the lock clicked, the tears fell in earnest, fearful for his young friend, and convinced if any harm befell her, it would be his fault.

For the next three months, as soon as he could get around by himself Jacob worked with the police and on his own to find Harriet. However, when the authorities gave up after week ten, he had more difficulty finding hope. Jeff, who was determined not to let his brother disappear again, aided him in his search until the artist decided she didn't want to be found.
"If she was dead, we would have found her, right?" he asked while sitting in Tremont Park one day. Jeff had said yes of course, but they both knew he didn't mean it.

During the week he had spent bedridden in his brother's home, Jacob produced three acrylic paintings of flowers and Jeff showed them to the mayor, whose wife loved gardening. They promptly agreed to sponsor a private showing of Jacob's work in a gallery downtown, and suddenly he found himself thrown into the art scene again. He remained somewhat of a recluse, though. Clients often asked Jeff how this sullen person could produce such joyful paintings.
Though his art once again provided him with enough money to upgrade his living conditions, he stayed on at his East Tremont apartment. The Bronx had become apart of him; it was where he found himself, and it carried a certain nostalgia for him. In his free time he volunteered at Mrs. Murphy's clinic, and became good friends with her and her husband. He also made a name for himself in the Bronx as the artist who would paint anyone's house for free. Harriet's picture was the only piece of his own art he kept in his apartment.
A couple years later, Jacob returned home late from an auction one night to find that his door had been jimmied. Cursing the low security of the building under his breath, he pulled a switchblade from his pocket and tip-toed into the small unit. When he had confirmed that no one still hid in his closet or behind the doors, he pocketed the knife and turned on the lights. What he saw made his knees buckle and he braced himself against new pinstripe wallpaper, laughing in hugh bellows with his healthy lungs, and didn't care if the neighbors complained.
Harriet's painting had been removed from the wall, and a torn- ragged photograph of a woman turned away from the tropic sun was pinned in its place. On the back of the photo, a simple message was transcribed;
"Trade"