Anonymity

by Janna McMahan

  The boa slowly encircled Malcolm's arm and inched its way toward his neck. He seemed affectionate toward the animal and was careful when he lowered her into the cage. He turned the cardboard box upside down and a small rat fell out. It looked half-dead and Lorelei figured the boys had stomped it.

  The snake didn't move. It seemed almost as if it didn't even realize prey was near. The rat smelled danger and made a feeble attempt to flee, making it to the corner of the cage where it collapsed in terror. The predator inched forward and froze again. The room was silent, everyone poised for the strike. The serpent was patient. It watched, flicking its tongue.

  It struck and clamped down on the rat's head. The rodent squealed and struggled. The snake aggressively coiled her body around her prey until only one twitching rat claw flailed outside the spirals of sinew. The predator cinched tighter. There was one tiny squeak and the twitching claw wilted.

  The room rumbled. Girls shrieked. Boy's high-fived each other.

  “Duuuuude!”

  “Oh, man, that was harsh.”

  “Wicked!”

  Lorelei decided to find a bathroom instead of watching the slow, methodic swallowing process. As she made her way toward the hall, a thin hand with dirty nails reached out and snatched her arm.

  “What's your name?” the guy in the wheelchair asked. His teeth were yellow, his eyes roadmaps.

  “Lorelei.”

  “I can't remember that. I'll call you Phoenix. Do you got any cigarettes, Phoenix?” Cigarettes were a sure way to make friends, and she usually kept a pack in her bag for just such a situation. Unfortunately, she wasn't holding.

  “I'm sorry. I don't smoke.”

  He let her arm go. “Pity,” he said.

  “Dude,” Malcolm said. “I got your foul smokes, here.” He pitched a pack to him. “You ought to give that shit up and just smoke more weed, mon.”

  Wheelchair guy became engrossed in opening the cigarette pack, and Lorelei slipped away. Down the short hall she found the bathroom. It was extra large, with sturdy handholds and a shower that a wheelchair could roll into. It was dirty and smelled like men's toilets at gas stations. Cigarette butts floated in old shampoo bottles. The toilet paper roll was empty.

  She opened her pack and pulled out her toilet paper stash. She hovered above the seat as she peed. A roach scratched as it climbed between the folds of the clear shower curtain next to her. She heard more people arrive outside. Music cranked—a tune by Everclear that Lorelei loved. People shouted to be heard. There was laughter. She finished and wiped. Before she left, she squished the bug inside the curtain, adding its oozy guts to the soap scum and mildew.

  “Hey.” Tweak was in her face as soon as she opened the bathroom door. “I wondered where you went. Here, have a beer.” Lorelei didn't really like beer, but to be sociable she took the offering. She hadn't eaten, and if she drank, she would get woozy, so she sipped slowly while she planned what she intended to do for the night. She couldn't stay. There would be a lot of things going on here all night, but sleeping wasn't one of them. Besides, if she fell asleep in this crowd, she'd most likely wake up to find her backpack taken.

  A couple began groping next to her in the hall, but there were so many people crammed into the small apartment that there was hardly anywhere else to go. Fiona pushed past her.

  “Girlfriend, come on,” Fiona said and grabbed Lorelei's hand, pulling her into a back bedroom. People squeezed against the walls as she passed, and she realized with a shot of dread that the guy in the wheelchair was behind her. Fiona pushed open a door and the group filed inside—Ajaicia, Tweak and Fiona dropped onto a bare, stained mattress. The bed had handrails, one pillow and a nasty blanket.

  “I'm Lawrence,” the guy in the wheelchair said to her. “This is my place.”

  Lorelei thought this wasn't something she'd be proud of, but all she did was nod and calculate how quickly she could make her exit. Fiona zipped open her pack and fanned out drugs on the splotchy mattress. The others gathered around. Lawrence pulled a wad of cash from his pocket. Lorelei had thought him needy when he'd asked for a cigarette, but he had a huge roll of bills. He began to count money.

  “You know what I want,” Lawrence said. He pitched a worn leather pouch on the bed, and Fiona pulled out his works. Lorelei felt the walls start a slow inward creep. Lawrence lit a cigarette, and she wanted to gag. Her ears buzzed. Tweak had probably put something in her drink. This had happened to her before, and she had awoken to a guy pawing her clothes off, his hot breath in her face. She had tried to push him away, but her arms were heavy. Somebody, Lorelei could never remember if it was a guy or a girl, but some kind stranger had come into the room and stopped him.

  She needed to get out, but Lawrence's wheelchair blocked the door. They were on the first floor, so Lorelei looked to the window. It was open, an old screen hung on at the edges, but the middle was busted where somebody had pushed through from outside. Everybody was focused on the drugs arrayed on the bed. Nobody paid any attention to her as she slipped through the shredded spines of metal that frayed the hole in the screen.

  She managed to get half of her body through the screen when she got stuck. Thinking her pack was hung on the scratchy screen, she lunged forward to rip herself free. Suddenly, she was jerked back inside the room.

  “Hey!” she yelled, grabbing at the screen where ragged edges punctured her hands. One of her legs still dangled outside the window. The weight of the pack held her off-kilter.

  “Where you think you're going, girl?” Tweak hissed in her ear.

  “Let go!” Lorelei tried to shove him away, but he held tight to the shoulder straps of her pack. “Let go!” Her head felt like it was shrinking, squeezing rational thought out, filling her with fear and anger. She couldn't breathe.

  “That's not very nice. I give you a beer and you try and run out on me?”

  “Dude, let her go!” she heard Fiona say.

  “Please, please, stop!” Lorelei cried.

  “You got to stay and party with us. You're being rude,” Tweak said.

  “I said let her go, motherfucker. You're such a douche.” Fiona again.

  Lorelei was being dragged down, backward, onto the floor. She squeezed her arms behind her back and slid out of the pack. She was suddenly light. She heard Tweak hit the floor and curse. The room exploded with laughter.

  She had to get out. She couldn't breathe. Lorelei shoved through the screen, scratching her face, lacerating her sweatshirt. She hit the sidewalk on one shoulder, but she felt no pain.

  There was yelling inside the room, but Lorelei didn't wait to see the outcome of the fight. She stumbled around the corner and ran past the open front door of the apartment, where the party had spilled outside. She dodged people. Some of them called out to her, but she didn't hear them. She ran to the street outside the complex.

  A city bus arrived. She stumbled on. Luckily, she had her zippered money pouch in her pocket. She couldn't count. Her hands felt numb. She held the leather bag open. The bus driver frowned at her and clicked his tongue, but he picked the correct change out and sent the silver tinkling down into the coin slot.

  “Don't throw up on my bus,” he said. “Pull the cord if you need to stop.”

  Her legs felt like jelly, but her mind was weird and agitated. There was no telling what Tweak had had put in that beer.

  Maybe the bus would drive by something she recognized. She needed campus. She'd find that church and sleep in the cemetery like she had her first night in town.

  At least that was her plan. She rode for what seemed like hours, fighting to stay awake. She didn't want to wake up to a cop in her face. She felt sick and she panicked and pulled the bell cord. The bus dumped her out in front of a metal-sided restaurant. She barely made it off the sidewalk before she collapsed into a bank of scrubby, sticky bushes. She crawled into the interior of the landscaping, balled herself into a fetal position and passed out.

  Emily

  “SAY CHEESEBURGER!�
�� the mother said.

  No reaction.

  “Actually, it's okay if he doesn't smile. They don't want us to force the children to smile if they don't want to,” Emily explained, but she could tell the boy was on the edge of breaking out a grin, so she said, “Okay, say boogers!”

  The boy suddenly showed pink gummy gaps where baby teeth used to live.

  “Boogers!” he yelled. “Boogers! Boogers!”

  Emily released the shutter and checked her screen. It was a cute shot.

  “That's enough,” his mother said to him. “I'm sorry. He's a little hyper today.”

  “No worries. He's awesome.” Emily lined his photo up on the identification software and sent it to print. When the printer spit out the creamy card with his smiling face, she handed it to the mother. “Here, take this to fingerprinting next.”

  She thanked Emily, took her son's hand and led him away to the table where volunteers would roll his fat little fingers in ink and press them inside ten rectangular boxes on the card for safekeeping. At another table, someone would swab the child's mouth and secure his DNA sample inside two plastic bags.

  Unlike the volunteers here, Emily was being paid for her time. Barbara had called in a panic. She had organized this Print-A-Thon as a community goodwill event for a banking client. They were set up under a white tent in the bank's parking lot where for four hours, Emily manned the photo station. Barbara's original photographer had dumped on her and she'd decided Emily was the perfect person to step in to help. It had turned out to be a lot of fun.

  Little ones skipped to their parents’ cars with balloons tied to their wrists, white candy sticks poking out of their plump lips. Less enthusiastic parents trailed behind, identification bags in hand. They were trying to push away thoughts of the solemn need for the service—precautions in case their child is ever kidnapped or runs away.

  Emily had photographed more than two hundred kids. Even she had tried to avoid morbid thoughts of dreadful things ever happening to any of them. In a perfect world, none of this would be necessary.

  By the time the event wrapped that afternoon, her stomach was growling. Barbara offered to buy lunch.

  “You go on. I'll meet you in a few minutes. I've got to finish up here and shut things down. Order me a margarita—rocks, no salt,” she said.

  Emily stowed her camera equipment in the MINI, then dashed across traffic toward Chuy's, thinking about their thin crunchy chips and amazing green chili salsa. The sun was blinding, and if it hadn't been for her polarized lenses she might not have seen the Doc Martens in the shrubs along the side of Chuy's parking lot. The black boots were ubiquitous to the young homeless.

  Emily stood in a dusty parking space wondering what to do. If somebody else discovered this person they might call the police. She decided to go inside, order a sandwich and drink to go, and see if she could get this kid up and moving before the cops arrived.

  It was after the lunch rush, so she got the sandwich and drink quickly. She walked back out to the parking lot half hoping the person would be gone, but they hadn't stirred.

  “Hey,” Emily said.

  Nothing.

  “Hey, wake up.”

  It suddenly occurred to her that they might be dead. Great. And here she stood, like a dummy, trying to pawn food off on a corpse.

  “Hey, wake up,” she said louder this time. She gave the boot a nudge.

  There was a groan. Then, “Huh?”

  “I've got you some food.”

  “Go away.”

  Emily recognized the tangle of hair. “Lorelei?”

  The girl slowly righted herself. Her head came up out of the brush last. Her hair was matted with scaly strands of cedar spines. One side of her face was scratched and imprinted with the saw-toothed pattern of the brush.

  “Emily?”

  “Lorelei? Holy crap. What are you doing here?”

  “I don't know. I guess I passed out.”

  “Here? In Chuy's parking lot?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Get up.”

  “I'm fine. Leave me alone.”

  “You're not fine. You're sleeping in a parking lot.”

  “No, I'm not.”

  She seemed weak, as if her mind were detached from her current situation.

  “Don't you have somewhere to sleep?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then how'd you end up here?” Emily leaned forward into the brush and handed her the drink. Lorelei took it with shaky hands and gulped it down.

  “What happened to your hands and your face? You're all scratched up.”

  Lorelei tried to stand, but tumbled back to her butt. “I'm fine. Don't worry about me.”

  Emily suddenly remembered Barbara was on her way. She couldn't let her see Lorelei like this.

  “Stay here,” she told her. “My car's across the street. I'll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Emily sprinted back across the road to the tent. She found her mother shoving the last few boxes into the back of her SUV.

  “Hey, Barbara,” she said. “Look, change of plans. I ran into a friend and I need to give her a ride somewhere. Can I take a rain check on lunch?”

  “Of course. Stand your old mother up.”

  “Next time, it's my treat.”

  “Sure. Well, thanks for your help. I couldn't have done it without you.”

  “Love you. Gotta go.”

  Emily prayed that Lorelei hadn't bolted. The girl was unsteady as she got into the car, but Emily knew enough not to offer help. Lorelei got in, turned toward the window and curled up into herself.

  “So, where do you want to go?”

  “The Drag.”

  “Okay.” Emily pulled out, and Lorelei began to cry. Tears turned into full sobs and sobs turned into simply out of control. Emily found a tree-lined edge of a parking lot and pulled over into shade. They sat in the idling car. Lorelei wiped her nose on a sleeve. Emily searched around for a tissue, but found nothing.

  “Did something happen to you?” Emily finally asked. “Did somebody hurt you?”

  Tears plopped into the girl's lap.

  “No.”

  “Are you homesick?”

  “No.”

  “Then what's wrong?”

  She didn't reply for a moment. “I lost my pack.”

  “Shit. Did it have all your stuff?”

  She nodded. “Everything. I'll never get it back now.”

  “You forgot and left it somewhere?”

  “No. Some jerk boy took it.”

  She was breathing fast, snot dripping. She opened the passenger door and blew her nose onto the ground. She ran her sweatshirt sleeve across her face.

  “Sorry,” she managed to croak out.

  “Calm down. It's not the end of the world.”

  “You…don't…under…stand.” Who was this girl falling apart in her car? What happened to the tough Lorelei who didn't need anybody?

  “There's no reason to get so upset over a backpack.”

  “It had my clothes…and stuff…stuff I need.”

  “Yeah, so? We'll get more.”

  “And a library book.”

  “That sucks. I guess you have to return that. So,” Emily sighed, “where'd you leave it? I'll drive you wherever.”

  This calmed her some. Still she said, “I'll never get it back. Never.”

  “You don't know that. Let's see if we can find it.”

  “It's somewhere…somewhere you won't want to go.”

  “You'd be surprised where I'm willing to go. Where is this place?”

  “Some crummy apartments, like Fiesta Gardens or Siesta Gardens or something.”

  “I know it. I knew some people there once, but that was a long time ago.” Siesta Gardens had indeed fallen down since the days when her old acquaintances lived there. It was a place she would never go, on an entire street where she would never go.

  “Is this it?” Emily asked, hoping the girl wo
uld say it wasn't, but Lorelei nodded yes.

  They got out at the same time, and Lorelei turned to her and said, “You don't have to go in.”

  “I don't mind.” In truth, Emily didn't want to be left waiting and wondering if Lorelei was going to come back out.

  Lorelei led the way to an apartment that lived at the end of a long row of sorrow. The door was open and people were talking inside. The smell of weed wafted out the door. Lorelei stopped at the threshold.

  “Ah, Fiona's friend. You decided to come back,” some guy said. “And you brought somebody new. Come on in, Phoenix. Pretty women are always welcome.”

  The apartment was dark. UT stadium blankets blocked the windows, and nobody had bothered to turn on a lamp. Everybody was focused on a cage in the middle of the room. It took a few moments before Emily made out what was in the cage—a five-foot snake with a lump in its middle the size of a softball.

  “They fed it last night,” Lorelei whispered. “Street rat.”

  “She never goes hungry,” a guy in a wheelchair said, “although I can't say as much for the rest of these folks.” He waved a bony hand around the room at the skeletal people, their bodies as wasted as their minds. Drugs were one way to take your thoughts off a grumbling stomach.

  “I came to get my backpack,” Lorelei said to him. “Have you seen it?”

  “Sure, Phoenix. Fiona kept it for you. Wrestled it away from Tweak. Smacked the shit out of him for harassing you. I thought you might come back for it. It's in my bedroom. Under the bed. Fiona's still asleep back there.”

  “Passed out you mean,” somebody said.

  Emily didn't bother to follow Lorelei into the back. A joint was lit, and it traveled around the room. When it came her way, Emily took it, hit it and passed it on, although she tried to keep from actually touching her lips.

  “I'm Lawrence,” the guy said. He started introducing people. They all sounded like cartoon characters. “That's Star, Skittles, Monkey, Tweak and Ajaicia.”

  “Yeah, man. We know each other,” Star said.

  “We do?” Emily had thought she remembered a couple of the kids from somewhere, but they all tended to have that same unwashed, scraggly appearance. Then reality hit her. These were the kids she and Travis had rescued from the flood. They looked much different dry. The girl in particular had taken on an air of authority that was surprising in contrast to the shivering girl Emily had helped to save.