by A. Sparrow
When I get to the work site, they already have Brax and Mink hauling sheet rock into the center unit.
Wayne waves me over when he sees me arrive.
“Hey man, go check out unit #3. There’s a girl there who fell through some basement stairs.”
“Fell … through? Not down?”
“They were all rotted out. Andy’s in there right now replacing the treads.”
“She okay?”
“You’re the medical guy. You tell me. I was gonna call Doc Noreen but Myrna told me you were already on your way.”
So I mosey over to the end unit. There’s a bunch of kids hanging out on the steps smoking. Joyce comes out, her clothes dusted with plaster, dragging bags of construction waste.
“She’s in the kitchen,” says Joyce.
I go in. Our guys have been busy. All of the wall board in the living area is new and freshly painted. Even the light switches have been replaced.
The corner is stacked with crumpled comforters and sleeping bags. Looks like a dozen or so kids crash here on any given night. Myrna sees the place as a valuable resource, providing valuable shelter for the young people who filter in and out of this city. A source of warmth and food and social support at a time when unemployment rates for this age group are astronomical.
Yes, there are drugs here, but mostly recreational. Mushrooms and marijuana, mostly. No meth or angel dust or anything particularly nasty. The place is far from being a crack house.
In the kitchen, two girls sit eating ramen at a Formica table—a skinny African American chick in pigtails and this other Italian-looking girl with deep-set eyes and auburn hair. It’s a hell-hole of cockroaches and dirty dishes. Not exactly sterile. But a least there is hot, running water and dish soap.
“Did somebody here hurt their foot?”
“That would be me,” said the girl with the auburn hair. She looks way young. No more than sixteen. She carries a Hello Kitty backpack she’s probably owned since middle school. There is a lot of child left in her, but her eyes betray experience. I can tell she’s been through some bad shit.
The auburn-haired girl scrunches her nose at me. Something about her reminds me of Brianna. Her attitude. Her aura. It’s spooky. I feel something clench in my gut.
Scars on her wrists. She is a cutter. But they’re shallow wounds, the kind one inflicts when they’re flirting with suicide, not really serious. Physical pain eases emotional pain. They do it because it releases endorphins. Supposedly. Though, I can think of better ways to get them.
“You guys … runaways?”
“Not me,” says the black girl. “I’m just friends with Baron. I live next door with my momma.”
“I’m no runaway, either,” says the auburn-haired girl, scowling and defiant. “I quit home.”
Her leg is propped on a chair, ankle wrapped in a grungy dish towel spotted with blood.
“Quit?”
“Quit.”
“Let’s have a look at your boo-boo.”
“You … a doctor?”
“Paramedic. Well, EMT actually. Not quite licensed yet.”
“What’s the difference?”
“About a thousand hours of training.”
I untie the knot on the dishtowel and peel it away. Her ankle is all swollen and discolored, thicker than her calf. Splinters remain embedded under her skin.
“When did this happen?”
“Yesterday.”
I manipulate the ankle trying to determine if there’s a fracture, but it seems to be just a bad sprain.
The girl winces. Her friend covers her eyes with her hand. “Easy now!”
I disinfect the area with a little Betadine and start working on the splinters with some sterile forceps.
“Gotta get these out or it’ll get infected.”
“How much is this gonna cost me?”
“Nothing.”
“Good. Because I’m broke.”
“This is all free. Courtesy of Nanny Mouse. I’ll give you some extra ointment and dressings. You’re gonna need to stay off the ankle and keep it wrapped up tight if you want it to heal faster. Do you … work?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you have a job?”
“You offering?”
I pull out the last splinter and smear on some bacitracin.
“How long you been living here?”
“At Baron’s? A couple weeks. But I’ve been in the city since June.”
“Where you from?”
“Does it matter? What’s with all the questions?”
“Just curious,” I say, taping some sterile gauze over her contusions.
“Poughkeepsie.”
“So you came here … to do what?”
“Whatever. I just couldn’t take living at home anymore. My mom, she’s nutso. A real control freak.”
I’m on the last step now, wrapping her ankle with an ace bandage.
“So … got any plans?”
“My God, you’re nosey! I don’t know. Baron says I can stay … as long as I help with the bills … and chores. I’ve been looking for jobs. They’re not easy to get when you’ve never had one.”
I finish up her ankle and give her some extra gauze and bacitracin. “You take it easy on those stairs.”
“Thanks,” she says. Her eyes are somehow grateful and suspicious and sad. I can’t believe how much of Brianna I see in her. It’s almost unbearable. I have to leave the room.
I step outside. Myrna has just pulled up in her food truck. “Betty’s Burritos:” reads the placard over the serving window.
“Lunch is here!” shouts Brax, rushing out onto the stoop. He’s the first in line.
***
That night, I’m wandering through Central Park, thinking about that girl. Had Brianna been in that same situation when she passed? Out of money. Desperate. Ready to do anything for a little cash?
At least this girl has a roof for the time being, but how long would it be before she was out on the street again?
I decide to make her my own special project. Keep her off the streets. I can sense she’s at a crossroads. What happens next could make or break her life. I wish someone like me had tried to do the same for Brianna.
Cyrus texts me as I wander and ponder. “Mom sez get yr ass home. Pronto.”
“Shit.” I want to ask why, but we’re not allowed to respond to his messages. Something about security. One-way communications are harder to track.
I swipe my card and take the subway downtown. Cross the Brooklyn Bridge on foot, hoofing it all the rest of the way to Myrna’s. It’s rare she has any of us come by while we’re on duty. Must be something pretty important.
Like all of us, I wear a latch key on a lanyard around my neck. I take it off and go down the alley leading to the tiny patch of yard behind Myrna’s brownstone, letting myself in through the back door.
Myrna’s sitting at her desk in the living area.
“Shoes off,” she says. “Full decon, but first I’ve got something to tell you.”
Whenever we visit, Myrna has this whole decontamination process where we peel off our dingy clothes and shove them straight into a trash bin. We do a pre-rinse in the laundry room before heading into the shower. Only then, would she let us into her sitting room.
“What’s up?” say, kicking off my dirty boots.
“You were caught on camera striking a young man. Full face. The NYPD thinks you all are responsible for the recent spate of knockouts. All of them.”
“But that’s ridiculous.”
“Regardless. I need you off the street.”
“I’ve only been on duty two weeks!”
“Too bad. Christopher’s jetting home from Barcelona to take your place. Things are way too hot for you to go back out there. The city’s been looking for an excuse to put us out of business and now they have it. So we’re giving you a month off early. When you come back we’ll be giving you a new identity and territory restrictions until things go cold. You�
�re too valuable to us, Jerry. We can’t afford to lose you.”
“Hang on. I need a little more time. Just a couple days. How about I stay out of Manhattan? Limit myself to Brooklyn and Queens?”
Myrna huffed and rolled her eyes. “Okay. What’s this all about?”
“There’s this girl … at the work site. A runaway.”
“Amy Winter.”
“You know her name?”
“I make it my business to know all our clients’ names. What’s the deal? You sweet on her? Isn’t she a little young for you?”
“It’s not that. It’s just … she reminds me so much of Bri. I have this feeling … that things are about to go bad for her. I … I don’t want … something bad….”
Myrna touched his hand lightly. “Listen, Jerry. By helping Baron, we’re helping all those kids. Keeping that house will be a major boon. Let us do our job. Have faith. Things will work out.”
Faith? I barely had faith in a Supreme Being, never mind Nanny Mouse.
“Now go on. Shower up. There are clean clothes already laid out in the guest bedroom. Your suitcase is packed and ready to go. Your flight departs JFK at 11:55. The shuttle leaves at ten.”
***
I’m walking a white sand beach. It’s like eighty degrees. Puffy clouds in a pale blue sky. Green volcanoes rearing up behind me. Principe—a place I have long dreamed of visiting and now I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.
Walking through these ramshackle villages, tacked together with scraps of wood and tin, I wonder why Nanny Mouse wastes so much time and money helping folks in one of the richest cities on earth. A person living in a village here could have their whole life transformed by one day’s per diem out of my thirty. It was a billionaire’s prerogative, I suppose.
Visions of Amy Winter and my sister Brianna haunt my every waking minute. I feel just as helpless as I did when I got the news at my listening post in Afghanistan that Brianna was gone. She never called any of us. Never sent as much as a Christmas card, birthday card, Mother’s Day card. Nothing. It was as if she had disowned all of us. Pretended we never existed. Either that, or she had been abducted by aliens.
We got hints from time to time that she was still alive. Word filtered back about a brief visit she made to her second cousin in White Plains. And then, a chance encounter on a train with a couple of family acquaintances who had gone into Manhattan to see Wicked on Broadway.
The spring she died, I was back home on leave, giving secret motorcycle lessons to my twelve year old nephew Ben when mom came home early, shaking and weeping. She had gotten the call at work. Soon after, Dad came home in a panic, and then all sorts of people started showing up. Neighbors. Cousins. High school classmates of Bri’s. Nobody even noticed that a twelve year old was riding my motorcycle without a helmet.
I had been planning to use that bike to go looking for her. I had a few leads. The subway stop she had gotten off when my parents’ friends were on their way to the theater. A receipt from a fast food joint in Soho that cousin Emily found when Bri visited her in White Plains.
The frustration of never having the chance to go searching collapses over me like a tsunami as I walk that beach in Principe. And I can’t stop thinking of that girl Amy Winter and worry that the same shit will happen to her.
I am allowed no contact with Myrna or any of the gang. I have no way of knowing what happened to that girl. All I can do is obsess.
If I had stuck around I could have made Amy my special project. By now she is probably running Oxycodone up to Burlington on the Megabus, maybe sampling the merchandise while she’s at it.
If not that, she’s maybe walking the street doing tricks. It almost never fails with these suburban dropouts. God knows what makes them think they can make a living. That city chews them up and spits them out like sunflower husks.
I envy the planes that take off from the little airport every few hours, wishing I was on one of them, shuttling my way back to Sao Tome Island, and then Cape Verde, Lisbon and finally JFK. I couldn’t have picked a place any less remote and difficult to reach.
I am so sick of eating barracuda and langostino every day, never mind that I had dreamed about living this lifestyle every day I was on duty. I learned about Principe in some travel magazine I had fished out of a dumpster, gazing at the pictures while curled up in one of my cardboard nests. Now that I’m here, I can’t even enjoy a single minute of it knowing Amy Winter’s life is on the fast track to hell, just like what happened to my sister Bri.
Had Myrna allowed me that extra day or two, I could have made a difference. I dreaded what I would learn upon my return. I blamed Myrna. Nanny Mouse. Swore if something bad had happened to Amy, I was going to quit this whole operation and go find a legitimate job with some ambulance crew.
***
Finally, the calendar unfreezes. The day arrives that I get to go home. I show up at the airport hours early and loiter around the terminal.
It’s a great feeling, banking over the beaches where for weeks I had gazed longingly at all those planes leaving the island. I endure a two hour layover in Sao Tome, another two hour stop in Cape Verde, eight hours in Lisbon. There, I break discipline and try ringing Cyrus. He doesn’t take my call.
I almost can’t believe it when I finally land at JFK. As usual, Myrna has a car waiting. Coming back from R&R is the only time we get to go in through her front door.
Doc Noreen answers my knock, wearing that quizzical expression she greets everyone with, as if the whole world and everyone in it has been created for her personal amusement.
She runs a little clinic out of the dining room for special cases—folks who slip through the cracks of the medical system but need intensive care. Two of Myrna’s four bedrooms were used for that purpose. It’s illegal, of course, but when does that ever stop us?
“How was Africa?”
“Tropical as ever. So where’s Myrna?”
“She’s out running an errand, but she’ll be back soon. Want something to eat?”
“Listen. There was a flop house in Queens we were fixing up back when I got taken off-line. That place still around?”
“Yup. They passed inspection.”
“Cool! I want to pay them a visit.”
“Not so fast. Myrna’s going to want to brief you about your new identity and some new rules. And I need to go over your new medical kit. We’ve expanded the pharmaceutical section. Every drug in it is prescribed in your new name. That way, it’s more legal.”
“New … identity?”
“We had to change your name. Your old one showed up on a warrant. It’s nice you let your hair grow out. Myrna’s going to want you to leave it like that. Maybe even give you a dye job.”
“What the fuck?”
“Listen. The NYPD has it in for us. We’re going to have to keep Mink and Brax off the street for at least another month. Not that Brax is complaining. He’s down in Yucatan, living it up. Mink’s in Scotland of all places.”
“So there’s a whole new street crew?”
“Yup. And we’ve had to restrict some of our operations to be a little less pro-active.”
“Well … that sucks. That was the fun part.”
A key turns in the lock and Myrna walks in, hugging a sack of groceries.
“Hey! Welcome back … uh … George!”
“Oh God. Really? George is my new name?”
“Sorry. We didn’t get to pick it.”
I grab her arm.
“Myrna. That girl. The one from the flop house. Did she make it?”
“Make it? What do you mean?”
“She still around? Alive.”
“Of course.”
“How do you know? I mean, is she still at the flop house? Did she ever find a job?”
Myrna’s eyes bore in on me.
“We hired her. She’s Cyrus’ new understudy.”
“Whoa!”
I know better than to believe that Myrna, just by sheer chance, has hired some
random runaway who happens to remind me of my sister. I also know better than to believe that she will ever admit it.
“You did this … for me?”
“Beg your pardon. We did it for us. For Nanny Mouse. That girl has some aptitude. She kicks ass on Twitter. She’s devised for us a system that lets us avoid all the crypto, and message in both directions.”
“No shit?”
“Really. She’s letting Cyrus get some sleep at night. We’ve been needing an extra dispatcher for the longest time.”
“So she’s on the same rotation? Same pay? Everything.”
“Well, we’re paying her internship rates, but everything else, yeah. She’s one of us now.”
“Wow.” I sigh. “Guess I was worried over nothing. Thanks, Myrna.”
I make for the guest bedroom. My old shabby clothes will be laid out on the bed, stained and frayed but sterile. It is November now. I will need some extra gear.
“What’s the rush? Stick around a while. Have some pasta. Spend the night, if you want. We’re covered for medical on the street. Sally’s back from Fiji.”
I plop down on the sofa and lean back, feeling a bit antsy but relieved that I will soon be back out on the street. Give me a cold, dark alley over a tropical paradise. This city is where I belong.
“What about the knockouts?”
“What knockouts? Nobody pulls that crap anymore. Where’ve you been?” She grins slyly.
“Well, that’s … a relief.” I reach for some salted nuts from a dish on the glass coffee table. “We got enough to worry about in this city, don’t we?” Knots of sinew deep in my back that had tormented me for weeks finally begin to loosen. If only Bri had run into some folks like us.
*****
Shaper
Brenda Harrington swung around her chair to gaze out her corner window, taking a breather before seeing her last patient of the day. It had been a long week. She had hurt as many clients as she had helped. But that was par for the course. They had deserved it. Every last one of them.
In less than one hour, she would be unleashed to enjoy a sunny, unseasonably warm weekend. Forget the chores. A trip to the beach was in order. A brisk walk alone along some endless Atlantic strand would do wonders to improve her perspective. She needed to get back to thinking nice thoughts again.