She closes her eyes. “Right now, I’m really feeling you.”
When she opens her eyes, she lets go of my hands, reaches into one of the bowls, and presses a stone against my palm, closing her fingers around it. The stone has a curious heat.
“Lapis lazuli,” she tells me. “They have such an amazingly strong healing ability, do you know? Their power is to carve a deep path through confusion and emotional turmoil. Really helps me work through shit sometimes. You into stones at all?”
“I don’t know anything about them,” I say. My voice feels small. How can a little stone have so much power? I close my fingers around it. “Do you, like, pray to it, or something?” Talking to rocks. Blue would have a field day with that one.
“If you want.” Julie smiles. “Or you can just hold it, and close your eyes, and let yourself really feel its energy, and trust that the stone’s energy will feel you.”
She starts writing on a pad of paper. “It’s some really beautiful knowledge, stones. You should think about it. Tomorrow I’ll bring some aloe vera for that scar on your head. Keep the stone. It’s yours.”
She slides some forms across the table. “Here. You need to fill these out for taxes and payroll. Bring them back tomorrow along with your ID and we’ll get you on the books.” I take the papers and fold them, putting them in the pocket of my overalls.
She hands me a piece of paper, with days and hours written down. Four days a week, seven a.m. to three p.m. “That’s your schedule, Charlie. My brother can be a real prick, but he’s my brother. He falls down, I pick him up, he shoves me away, he falls down, I pick him up, et cetera, et cetera.”
The phone rings, and she swivels away to answer it.
I stand there for a moment before I realize it’s my signal to go. I walk down the hallway slowly, the stone still in my hand. When I see Riley in the dish area, wiping the counter, I look away quickly, slipping the stone into my pocket.
I start unloading coffee mugs from bus tubs, trashing the soggy napkins and bent stirrers. Riley comes over and picks up a mug, tilting it so I can see inside.
“You’ll want to soak these, see the coffee stains? Soak them once a week or so, with a couple capfuls of bleach in hot water. Just fill up one of the sinks or an empty pickle bucket. Whenever you notice, really. Julie likes them nice and clean.”
I nod without looking at him.
Riley whispers, “I’m a lousy person. But you’ve learned that already.”
When I don’t say anything, he presses a finger against my sleeve, just above my wrist. He leans closer to me. “You didn’t have to lie to me about a cat. I’m no stranger to fucking up.”
“Riley!” the tattooed guy yells from the wait station. “Tell us about the time you threw up on Adam Levine’s shoes!”
“Oh, that’s a good one.” Linus laughs hard, like a cartoon horse. I turn around and she winks at me.
Riley lights a cigarette and inhales deeply, smoke sidling from his nostrils as he walks back to the dish area. “Now, now. Vomiting is not uncommon in rock and roll. It’s kind of a staple, actually. I was not the first and I am sure I will not be the last to vomit on Mr. Levine. But I’d like to remind you, it was not just his shoes, it was Mr. Levine himself that was the unsuspecting target of my sudden digestive vulgarity. The story begins like this….”
I go back to the dishes, still listening to Riley spin his story, following the lilts and cadences of his cigarette-gravelly voice, but I’m also thinking about what he said: I’m no stranger to fucking up.
Even though I don’t want it to, what he said kind of touches me. What he said: I should have it printed on a fucking T-shirt, because it’s the motto of my life, too. Which means that however horrible he was this morning, and however kind he’s being to me right now, and very funny, with this story, he and I are closer than I’d like to admit.
My face flushes. I slip a hand into my pocket and wrap it around the stone, will it to tell me to stop thinking what I’m thinking, but the stone stays silent.
After work, I take some of the cash Riley gave me and buy a bag of chips and an iced tea at the co-op. I’m so hungry that I rip into them right away, stuffing my face while looking at the FOR RENTs on the community board outside.
It doesn’t look promising. My heart kind of sinks. Most of them ask for first, last, and security. Even for a one-bedroom for six hundred dollars, that’s eighteen hundred dollars up front, plus utilities. How do I get utilities? Do I have to pay up front for those, too? I do some math in my head: with what True Grit will pay, I’ll hardly have anything left over for rent anywhere, not to mention any extras like food or gas or electric.
I ride around downtown for a while until I find the library. I head to the bathroom first, and wait until a woman leaves before I take one of Mikey’s empty water bottles from my backpack and fill it with lemony hand soap from the dispenser. I can use this for the shower, but I’m going to need to find a toothbrush and toothpaste. I bundle toilet paper around my fist and stuff it in the pack. There aren’t any more rolls left at Mikey’s.
Downstairs, I find out you have to sign in to use the public computers, and that they time you. The young librarian looks at me warily when I write my name on the sign-in sheet, but I figure it must be because of the scar on my forehead, because I know I don’t stink, and my arms are covered.
I sit in front of the computer and pull out the sheet of paper Casper gave me. Her email address is typed, but in neat, round handwriting next to it she wrote Charlie, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I am thinking of you. She even signed her real name. Bethany. I ignore the information about the halfway house and support group, because that was for Minnesota, and I’m far from there now.
I log in to the email account I set up at Creeley during my ALTERNA-LEARN studies. I don’t really know what to say, so I just start typing.
Hi—I’m not where you think I am and I’m sorry. It wasn’t going to work out with my mom and she knew it. My friend Mikey lives in Tucson and I’m down here now. I have a little money and I’m staying at Mikey’s place. It’s not the greatest, but at least it isn’t outside. I found a job, too, washing dishes. I guess that’s what I’m good for. I’ve been drawing in my book a lot. I don’t think I’m scared, but maybe I am. It’s weird. Everything is just weird. Like, I don’t actually know how to live. I mean, I managed to live on the street and everything, but that was different than normal living—that was kind of just about not getting killed. I don’t know anything about utilities, or rent, or “security deposits” or what food to buy. I’ve hardly talked at all to anyone, but I’m already tired of talking. Tell everyone I say hey and tell Louisa I miss her.—Charlie
When I’m about to log off, I notice another message, buried in alerts from the online education center asking me when I will resume classes and from people in Nigeria asking for money.
The subject line is Bloody Cupcakes. My heart drops. I hesitate for a moment, then click on it.
Hey soul sister—Sasha snuck around on GhostDoc’s desk and found your file. Had some emails from that online school thing you were doing—found your email addy in there. GhostDoc’s got a whole FILE on yooooo. Talk about dramarama—you never said anything about some weird sex house. You with your mom now? How’s THAT working out? Tsk tsk on GhostDoc for leaving your file out, too, but how the hell are you? Francie’s out—she never came back from Pass one day. Louisa is still up to the same old same old, writin writin writin, blah blah blah. So whats it like outside, Charlie? Ive still got so much time ahead of me baby, I have no hope. Give me some hope! Isis will be sprung in three wks and she is freaking OUT. C U Cupcake, write back soon. BLUE
The sound of the timer startles the mouse from my grip. A large woman with meaty arms nudges me from the chair, barely giving me time to log out.
I make my way out of the library to the plaza. The sun is starting to go down, the sky turning pretty shades of pink and lilac.
Why did Blue want to find me? She d
idn’t even like me at Creeley. At least, it didn’t seem like it.
I want that world to stay hidden. I want that world to stay sixteen hundred miles away. I want a fresh start.
Three grubby guys on the library lawn catch my eye. They’re rolling cigarettes, sitting against their dark backpacks. I grit my teeth. I don’t want to talk to them, but I’m going to, because they’ll have information I need.
Two of them grunt when I ask where the food bank is, but the third man points down the street and tells me the name of the place. One of the other men says, “Yah, but you won’t get in, girl. Got to get in line for dinner practically at the crack of fuckin’ dawn and lately, it’s all babies and they mamas. Can’t take a plate of food might be for a baby, girl.”
I say thanks and unlock my bicycle. Riding home, I snag a damp plaid blanket from a fence. Someone must have left it out to dry. Next up on my list of fresh start items is a place to live. The blanket will come in handy.
The next morning, I’m up before the sun rises, drawing in the half-light, eating a piece of bread with peanut butter. I’m drawing Ellis, what I remember of her. She liked me to talk to her when she took a bath, her skin wet and shiny. I loved her skin, the smoothness of it, rich and unscarred.
At work, Riley is on time, but he looks terrible, his face ashen and his eyes dark. He gets a little color back after he sneaks some beer from the fridge. I pretend like I don’t see, but I think he knows I know. Mostly, I just stay quiet and so does he. I get the feeling you have to tiptoe around him a lot.
After work, I ride my bike back downtown. I find the shelter and the kitchen; the men were right. Lines of resigned-looking women and jittery-eyed kids are camped out under tarps hiding from the sun, waiting for the kitchen to open for dinner. Around the back of the building are bins of clothing and household goods under a long gray tent. A shelter worker reads a magazine while I rifle through the bins, taking some plates and coffee-stained cups, utensils, a chipped pink bowl. I find a tub filled with bags of sanitary napkins, boxes of tampons. The shelter worker hands me two rolls of toilet paper, tells me that’s the limit. She gives me a Baggie with a toothbrush, floss, two condoms, a tube of toothpaste, a flyer with directions to a food shelf that looks miles and miles away, and a pile of pamphlets about STDs and food stamps. I tell her thanks and she smiles a little. I don’t feel weird about coming here. Evan called places like this godsends. It is what it is. I take my meager supplies back to Mikey’s and draw until it gets solidly dark.
It’s after ten o’clock when I ride over to Fourth Avenue and head down the alley behind the Food Conspiracy. I’ve been thinking about this ever since I came to the co-op that first time—that this would be the ideal place for vegetables and fruit in the Dumpster. I’m still against using any of the money Ellis and I made. If I spend that, it should be for a place to live, and the money I get from Grit isn’t much. My stomach is starting to hurt from all the peanut butter sandwiches. I need something else.
I work quickly, filling my backpack with bruised apples, dented peaches, too-soft celery. Just as I’m zipping it up, I notice a figure at the end of the alley, watching and swaying slightly.
At the shelter, I snagged a fork for protection and wedged it into my pocket. My fingers curl around it now as I stare down the alley at the weaving figure. But then I let my breath out and my fingers loosen.
Riley takes a drag from his cigarette. Before I can stop myself, my words are out, tentative, unfurling down the alley to him.
“Riley,” I say. “Hey. Hi.”
I want him to talk to me, but he only takes a drag from his cigarette and keeps walking. “Bye,” I call out, but he doesn’t look back.
I wait for him to mention it the next morning at work, but he doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t say much of anything all day.
But when I go to punch out, he appears with a brown bag. There are circles underneath his eyes.
“If you’re hungry,” he says, “ask. I don’t want to see you in dark alleys anymore, Strange Girl. Okay?”
He walks back to the cook station without waiting for my answer.
I’m sitting outside on my break, next to the Go players, when I realize that the kind of place that will rent to me, the kind of place I could probably just barely afford, isn’t the kind of place that even advertises in something like the Tucson Weekly or on the Food Conspiracy co-op board. Credit checks, first and last, security deposits, and, as one Go player helpfully tells me as he looks over my shoulder at the ads, “If you ain’t lived in Tucson before and never had no utilities in your name? You have to pay fucking two hundred and forty dollars just to get your gas turned on. They call it a deposit.”
Another player says, “Seventy-five dollars to turn on the electric.”
They all start grumbling about rents and the economy. I wonder where they live and what they do, because they don’t seem to have jobs. They just come here every day, all day, and drink coffee and eat bagels and then go home, leaving their coffee mugs filled with cigarettes. For me to clean out.
Evan.
Evan liked to cruise restaurants and bars that had outside seating, snatching half-spent cigarettes from ashtrays. He would lead us through the narrower parts of St. Paul, where people looked out the windows of high, stuffy-looking apartments with listless eyes, or slumped inside three-season porches. If we could work up the money, sometimes we were able to find a room for all three of us for just a week or so in some crappy house, barricading a shoddy door against the druggies who came looking for late-night handouts. It was nice to be in a room, though, instead of crouching together in an alley, or trying to find a good spot by the river with the others.
The place that will have me won’t have fees, or first and last. It won’t even be in the paper. I toss the Weekly on a chair and go back to work.
After my shift, I ride my bicycle back down to Riley’s neighborhood and then a few blocks farther, where the sidewalks become cramped and cracked and the houses squat closer together. Just like in St. Paul, in this neighborhood people are still doing nothing, but doing it on porches of decrepit apartment buildings or while leaning against telephone poles, because it’s warmer here. I ride until I find a scrawled sign Scotch-taped to the chain-link fence in front of a peeling white building: ROOM FOR LET, ASK INSIDE, 1A. The front door to the building is wide open. Two houses over is a drive-in liquor store.
Inside, an elderly man answers the downstairs door marked 1A, OFFICE. The room behind him is dark. He blinks as though the light hurts his eyes.
“You Section Eight? Don’t matter if you are. Just want to know up front.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I tell him.
He shrugs, pulling a thick jumble of keys from his pocket. We walk down the matted red carpet in the lobby to some creaky-looking stairs. There are doors all along the first floor, most with peeling paint.
Blue duct tape holds in loose plaster on the stairwell walls. The old man stops to lean on the banister. I hesitate and then touch my fingers to his elbow to help. The skin there is whitish and dry, cracked.
“Sixteen steps,” he breathes. “I bet you don’t know how old I am.” His crinkled eyes are tinged with pink. His nose sprouts hair and blackheads. My grandmother always took care of herself: she had her hair done every week and she smelled like creams and cinnamon. I wish I had remembered to ask my mother about her, what happened to her that made the insurance for Creeley stop.
This man is crumbly old, and not well taken care of. He laughs, revealing a damp and largely empty mouth. “Me neither!”
On the second floor, he pauses. “You seem a little young for a place like this, but I don’t ask questions. A lot of people here have troubles. I just ask they don’t bring any extra, you understand?”
I nod as he leads me to a door that has been plastered and painted with a sickly shade of brown over an already strange shade of orange. I lived in some crappy places with my mother, where mice ate through cupboards. I lived outsi
de with rain and icy snow. I lived in Seed House. These shitty, broken walls and crappy paint and this old, old man: it all falls somewhere in between. After what I’m used to, it’s not paradise, but it isn’t hell, either.
The room isn’t much bigger than a large bedroom, with an extra room off to the side. That room, I find out when I peer in, is actually a combination kitchen and bathroom, with a dented pink refrigerator and an old-looking sink on one side and a toilet and tiny claw-foot tub on the other. There’s no stove and the tub is the smallest I’ve ever seen. When I climb in and sit down, my knees press almost to my chest. It’s weird, yet I kind of like it.
He shrugs. “The building is old. Nineteen eighteen, maybe? Back in the day, tubs was a real luxury. People laid a board across them to eat supper. That was the dining table! There’s a common bathroom down the hall for the men. I try to give the rooms with toilets to the ladies.”
He says across like acrost. People laid a board acrost them to eat supper.
The ceiling is a maze of peeling paper and red and yellow splatters. I look over at the man.
He rubs his chin thoughtfully. “Well, see, that was old Roger. Sometimes he’d get the fits when he was drinking, start the fighting with the mustard and the ketchup. He liked his hot dogs, our Roger.
“Got a ladder you can use to clean it up. Knock twenty bucks off the first month since the room isn’t cleaned. There’s a fella down on the first floor used to do my handiwork, but he don’t wanna do it no more.” He pauses. “Call him Schoolteacher, cuz that’s what he used to do, I guess. He’s always jawing about something. I guess you can’t really get rid of what you used to be. It kinda sticks to you.”
Outside, sometimes that’s what older people became known for: not their name, but what they used to do, before they ended up on the street. MoneyGuy. BakeryLady. PizzaDude. If you were a kid, though, that’s all you were: Kid. I wonder what I’ll be known as here, if I’ll just be Kid again.
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