by Malcom, Anne
Up close, his face, was, as always, more beautiful. But also it was harder. Crueler.
And then he turned on his boot and all but stormed into the shelter.
I stared after him.
He wasn’t waiting.
He didn’t leave the door open for me.
I didn’t want to follow him. In fact, if there were a choice between eating a New York ribeye, medium rare or following him, I’d be cutting into a steak.
And I’d been a vegetarian for eight years.
But I had to follow him.
And not just because that dark and self-deprecating part of me was whispering in my ear, urging me to do so just so I could experience a little more pain. But because people inside that building relied on me. I made a commitment to them. And though people would be quick to say that I broke commitments like I broke hearts, it wasn’t true. Not to these people, who had nothing but a hope to rely on strangers to keep their bellies full and their heads dry.
And I knew there was an opinion on why they were in that position and the fact that they should be helping themselves. I knew both Rosie and Lucy’s thoughts on it. But it didn’t matter how they got to this hopeless spot. Not to me. It just mattered that they needed help and I could try to give them some.
In someone’s life, I could be the one saving them—even if it just came in the form of volunteering here and giving them things I strictly wasn’t allowed to give. Like deposits on apartments, second-hand cars that a friend of mine didn’t need anymore. New identities for battered women, courtesy of my friend Wire, who also organized new homes out of state. It was small. Minuscule compared to the things Rosie and Lucy had done—brought down drug dealers, did something I wasn’t quite sure about with international drug traffickers, but something as terrifying as it was amazing.
It wasn’t anything compared to that.
But it was something.
It was mine. It was all I had left to make me feel like I could do something for someone that was about making their life easier and not harder.
I walked through the doors.
* * *
I got to the kitchen to see my bags unceremoniously dumped on the stainless-steel counter, and Heath prowling around the industrial-sized kitchen like a caged animal.
I debated addressing his presence again, or more accurately, questioning it when he seemed like he’d be anywhere but here, but with his general demeanor, I didn’t know how well that would go. I didn’t know how well I would be able to survive it.
Plus, the whole point of this shelter was peace.
It was my favorite in the city.
I had volunteered at three before this one. All were run badly, crammed in people, treated them like cattle at some kind of feeding trough, didn’t clean the facilities and didn’t offer any kind of help.
It wasn’t the fault of the people running them—well, not entirely. Our system was not designed to help these people. The undesirables. We ignored them on the street, shook our heads without making eye contact if they approached us, held our collective breath in the hopes they wouldn’t interrupt our lives.
Which was pretty much what the country as a whole did. Because homeless people were at fault for their own situations. Drug abuse. Alcohol abuse. Bad behavior.
It was not because they were in abusive relationships, or because they had mental health issues left untreated, or they were kicked out of a bad home environment, or because they lost relatively high paying jobs and the economy meant they couldn’t get another one and they burned through savings and loans until they had nothing left.
No, that couldn’t be right. Because that could happen to anyone when the circumstances lined up just so. And we couldn’t believe that these people had one day been one of the collective mass walking past them on the street. So we made assumptions in order to keep ourselves sane, to lie to ourselves about how easy it would be to become the one begging for help instead of the one ignoring the pleas.
This place was different. Largely because Jay, the man who ran it, had lived on the streets for seven years before someone took a chance on him. He was now the CEO of some multi-million dollar company. Well, more than one. All very serious and businesslike hence me not ever remembering the specifics.
He could’ve easily left the streets behind. Especially because of the scars he’d left on his soul. Scars I only knew about because of one night with a lot of tequila. And because people seemed to talk to me.
I invited confessions.
Maybe because I never judged anyone. Maybe because it seemed like I lived life so honestly. So chaotically.
When in reality, I was the biggest fraud of them all.
Jay didn’t know that.
So he told me the horrors he’d endured. The horrors that made him seem cold, cruel, and intimidating in ten thousand-dollar suits, five hundred-dollar haircuts, a handsome face. He wasn’t warm. Didn’t smile. He wasn’t the face of the shelter. No, he was barely ever here.
We’d met on chance.
When he’d been at another shelter, looking about buying the space out for some kind of commercial project. I hadn’t taken to this well, because no matter how poorly this place operated, it still operated. It still fed hungry people, it still gave beds to those without them.
And when I’d tried to speak to him, he’d turned on the ice.
I hadn’t cowered away from him like I’d guessed a lot of people did. I smiled in the face of his grimace. I didn’t let him scare me off with clipped answers and a cold stare. And I eventually somehow gave him the idea to convert another building he owned into a shelter if I helped pick the staff and gave him input.
He’d tried to pay me.
I’d refused.
“I don’t do this for money.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Everyone does everything for money. Or image. Which is the currency in L.A.”
I smiled. “I guess you’re right. But I’m not everyone and taking money for doing this would go against everything I stand for. Helping human beings in need isn’t something I should charge for. It’s something everyone should do without expecting a paycheck.”
“You might be the only one in L.A. of that opinion, present company included,” he said, pointing to his own chest.
I raised my brow in disbelief. If he didn’t care about helping people, he could’ve shut me down, ignored me when I started lecturing him about the residents of the building he was converting into some condo space.
He wouldn’t have offered another building and to provide staff and renovations.
I didn’t say this because most people didn’t want to hear the truth about their worst personality traits. Others, like Jay, who’d convinced themselves that they were some kind of cold and bad person, did not want to hear about their good ones.
So I stayed silent on that score.
And I’d taken him up on his offer.
We found a handful more people who didn’t expect to be paid for helping others. I made sure they weren’t people looking for something on their resume or their social media account. A lot of them were friends from the loft or at least people I knew ran in similar circles.
Jay was impressed.
Impressed enough to buy fancy tequila and get drunk enough on it to open up to me.
So we were as close to friends as someone like that could be. And he took my opinions, he let me contribute to the shelter. Now there were people that came in to help the residents get ready for job interviews, we partnered with charities to give donated clothes for these interviews. I ran a meditation class once every fortnight. There were separate dorms for women and children. Therapists for battered women. Drug and addiction meetings. Classes on things like how to get good credit, apply for an apartment. All the stuff high school never taught you. What parents were supposed to teach you.
Jay paid for it all out of his own pocket.
It was a deep pocket to be fair, but he didn’t cut costs. The shelter felt more like a high-end
dorm room than a homeless shelter. It was the most sought after in the city.
It was a warm and welcoming place, offered as much peace as these broken souls were able to grasp. It was that for me. When I finally found it. When I found I could help people even when I couldn’t help myself.
And now Heath was here.
Dripping his hate and anger all over the place. Knowing him like I did, and all the men that had surrounded me since birth, I knew speaking to him, asking him to leave wasn’t going to do any good. So I decided just to pretend he didn’t exist.
A laughable concept when someone like Heath took the very oxygen from the room, from my bones.
But I managed to do so by unpacking the food, lining up what I needed, mentally thinking of a recipe since I didn’t ‘do’ recipe books. I didn’t like to follow rules.
Luckily more volunteers filtered in, offered me a bright hello and a questioning glance toward Heath, who offered them a slightly subdued glare.
“That’s Heath, he’s security for the day,” I said with a faux bright tone, as if he wasn’t glaring and my heart wasn’t breaking.
Chester, the youngest volunteer, still in high school, who wore all black down to his eyeliner and nail polish, raised his brows. “Since when did we need security? We barely have stabbings anymore now that you’ve instituted that no weapons rule.”
Heath’s eyes bulged.
My smile didn’t fail, but it did tighten. “Oh, Jay was just trialing this new company, I don’t think it’s going to stick, though. They’re very busy with high profile celebrity clients.”
“Celebrities?” Chester asked. He might eschew a lot of traditional teenage past times, which led him to find solace here but wasn’t exempt to being seduced by the celebrity culture.
“You don’t know Unquiet Mind, do you?” he asked, enthusiasm leaking into his normally monotone voice. “For a mainstream band, they actually don’t totally blow.”
My grin turned real.
We did know the world-famous rock band, considering the lead singer was the daughter of one of Lucy’s good friends, Mia, who was married to another one of Lucy’s biker friends, Bull. But I wasn’t one to name drop.
“How about you help me chop these carrots and we just treat Heath like part of the furniture?” I asked, cutting this off before Heath could be rude to a kind kid I respected and felt protective over. “He’s not really a people person,” I added, looking in Heath’s direction, but not at him.
Chester sighed but didn’t hesitate to do what I’d asked.
He was a good kid. A really good kid. His parents didn’t know that because they took his outward persona to be his inside one. And they didn’t understand quite how making oneself look black and dark on the outside might be a way to chase it from the inside. Plus, they lived in a gated community, belonged to a country club and drove a Range Rover. They were about image. And having a son like Chester, no matter how much they loved him, was a blow to them. So they tried to change him. Gently, of course. But trying to change a teenager from something they consider their solace, their identity was not a gentle process. One of the reasons Chester landed here. Not because his parents put him here, or because he wanted something for a college transcript.
He wasn’t even going to college.
He just wanted to help.
“I figured a lot of these people are misunderstood. Misunderstood at first and then it turns into something else. And something else. And that’s how they get here,” he said on his second day.
I fell in love with that kid a little more every day. If I ever had a son, I wished for someone with Chester’s soul.
I wished I could’ve said the rest of the prep passed in a blur. But it didn’t. It was as if everything was in slow motion. The seconds dragged pieces of me through broken glass with Heath’s stare. With the power of the distance in it. The lack of emotion. I forced myself to smile. Laugh. Make jokes.
I was Polly, after all. Chester made his persona dark and black so he could have something to cling onto. It was the same with me, only I was light and happy. I had to cling to it, because I was nothing without it. Nothing I was proud of, at least.
When it was time to open the doors, Heath pulled me aside.
My body reacted with his hand on mine, he seemed to notice this and immediately let me go. With his hand, at least.
“Stabbings?” he hissed.
I blinked.
Then I realized he’d held onto Chester’s offhand comment from before, and of course he was Heath, so he wasn’t letting it go.
“This is a homeless shelter, Heath. These are troubled people. They might come here to find peace, but they don’t always bring it with them,” I said, voice low.
He stared at me and I imagined that I saw something spark in those eyes. Something that wasn’t indifference or anger or hatred.
“Greenstone is now handling the security for this place,” he said in an indifferent but firm tone.
I sucked in a breath, mindful of the eyes on us and the fact I couldn’t cause a scene. I had a no violence rule, after all. And I wasn’t a violent person.
At all.
But Heath making decisions in the last place I had that wasn’t tattooed in sorrow was awakening a rage inside of me I didn’t recognize. “We don’t need security.”
“Stabbings,” he repeated, folding his arms. “Plural.”
I hated the way he talked to me. And not just with that cold and indifferent tone. No, in that way that was full of frustration and certainty that I needed protecting, my ignorance of the horrors of the world needed educating.
“Stabbings as in past tense,” I said, slowly, purposefully enunciating. “As in we haven’t had one since we’ve found a way to relate to our residents that doesn’t require the presence of a scowling man wearing a weapon and exuding violence hovering around.” I was surprised to hear my voice had a bite to it. Something flickered in Heath’s eyes, something that told me he was surprised too.
But I wasn’t done.
“These people come here from streets where they get stared at with indifference, hatred, cruelty on a daily basis,” I hissed. “You want to look at me like that, fine, I can take it,” I lied. I pointed out the doors from the kitchen where the sounds of plates and voices were carrying. “But you do not look at them like that. This is the one place they’re treated like human beings, not trash on the streets, not criminals. I’ll not have you changing that. I may not know why you’re here, I may not be able to make you leave, but if you’re going to be here, you’re going to contribute.”
I stomped over to the counter and snatched a plate of salad. Then I stomped back to him and thrust it at him.
He took it.
“So make yourself useful.”
I then snatched a handful of plates and stormed out.
Heath did make himself useful.
He treated the people with kindness and respect. His version wasn’t full of smiles and laughter because that wasn’t Heath. It had never been him. Not even before the war had put shadows in his eyes.
So I focused on helping people find peace while he chipped away at the last of mine.
* * *
An afternoon of doing something that normally had me feeling as centered as someone like me could feel was finishing with me stopping at my car after Heath had said he was walking me to it.
This was communicated as “You got your shit?” No, wait for a response. “Let’s go.”
And the entire journey to the car was silent. He didn’t even fricking walk beside me. He was two steps behind. Trailing me physically just like he had mentally throughout Europe.
It might’ve been funny if it wasn’t so fricking tragic.
And I was done with tragic.
So I gathered my strength and turned to face him as we arrived at my car.
“This is the point where you tell me what’s going on,” I said. “As in, why are you here?”
Heath didn’t move his expression. “W
hat’s going on is you’re workin’ in a fuckin’ place that’s had stabbings,” he seethed.
I gaped at him. “You’re still on that?”
He folded his arms and his veins were bulging. It was hard not to get distracted by how hot that was. His fury was pretty demanding of my attention. “Yeah, Sunshine, I’m still fucking on that.”
I flinched at the name.
That gave him pause.
It almost looked like his face softened. That the corners of his mouth turned down slightly.
But I was beyond that, grasping at emotional straws, trying to feed off the scraps I pretended he was giving me.
“This is my life, Heath,” I snapped. “I’m not going to stop helping people because there are others out there who want to hurt people. I’m not going to do that in spite of that. I’m doing that because of it. Because that’s who I am. A lot of things may have changed since I was eighteen years old. But that hasn’t. I could get stabbed right here, on the street.” I pointed downward. “And you know what? My sister did.” My voice broke. “So don’t try to come and make me feel bad for something that brings me happiness. And how about you educate me on why you’re here in the first place since it’s glaringly freaking obvious you’d rather be anywhere but here.”
I was breathing heavily after my final sentence. It felt like I’d run an emotional marathon.
“Your ex-husband accosted you in a bar while you were on a date,” Heath hissed.
I managed to hide my flinch at his harsh tone this time. I was getting good at it.
Hiding things.
“Yes, I am aware, I was there,” I said mildly. “And I was also there when you accosted me in my apartment about the incident so you being here is not to repeat the performance.”
“No, it’s not,” he agreed.
Another hidden flinch.
“But he’s unpredictable,” he continued. “And he obviously has no problem trying to get physical with you. Shit is obviously going down with him. And it’s lookin’ like there’s gonna be blowback on you because he’s an asshole with a bruised ego. And he lost you.” Something moved in his eyes. “Losing a woman like you makes a man dangerous.”