The Reluctant Prophet

by Nancy Rue

  I wouldn’t have if she hadn’t said their names. Leighanne hadn’t packed herself into a tank top tonight, and her sleeveless apricot turtleneck was as classy as the bob of thick gray hair that was, for the first time, not poking out of a bandana. The Hispanic woman had to be Nita, though she, too, was a far cry from the woman I’d seen downing hot dogs with the best of them.

  “We haven’t actually met,” she said, putting a hand out to me. Her voice was soft with an accent that whispered from south of the border, though she had undoubtedly learned English in the American South.

  Leighanne pointed her chin toward the chair where Geneveve made a mere lump on the cushions. “Is that our friend?”

  “Yeah. So you two are in—oh, wait, I’m not supposed to ask that—sorry—”

  Leighanne gave a laugh reminiscent of a smoking habit somewhere in her past. “It’s okay. We just came to help if she’s willing.”

  Nita craned her neck toward Geneveve. “How many times have we seen this picture, huh?”

  “I appreciate it,” I said, “but I have to say—I don’t know if she’s going to go for it. She keeps saying she wants me to help her change, which, as you can see, I’m doing a bang-up job of.”

  “Forget that,” Leighanne said. “You can’t do it for her. And it doesn’t sound like in-patient rehab’s done much for her either.”

  “That’s what she says.”

  Nita nodded, which I noticed she did every time she started a sentence, as if she were eager for me to agree. “We’d be willing to take her to an NA meeting if she wants to go.”

  “You really think she’s going to sit in a circle with people and talk about her issues?” I said. “I mean, have you really looked at this woman? Come with me.”

  I led them across the living room and wafted an arm toward the shriveled curl that was Geneveve. I waited for the shock, but both of them just nodded.

  “Been there,” Leighanne said. “Twelve short years ago.”

  Nita raised a hand. “Fifteen. Except you would have found me in a jail cell. This woman’s not even close to where I was.”

  I looked from Geneveve to the two of them with their clear eyes and their confident postures and their Harleys parked at my front curb. The distance between Geneveve and them gaped so wide I almost fell into it.

  “She’s going to have to wake up first, of course,” Nita said. “When she does, give her the option and call us if she goes for it.”

  Hank touched my arm. “I have a feeling if you suggest it, she will.”

  “But after that it’s up to her.” Leighanne pulled a pamphlet out of her bag. “She’ll probably be all contrite and think she can stay clean for a couple of days—”

  “And probably will,” Nita put in.

  “This’ll give you the signs that’ll tell you she’s using again, or is about to.”

  I looked lamely at the pamphlet while everyone watched as if they were waiting for me to say something profound. I was entirely out of words, my own or the ones that came out unbidden.

  Hank clasped her hands tidily together. “Anybody up for prayer?”

  “Sounds like the next right thing,” Leighanne said.

  She put her hands out for Hank and Nita to take hold, and Nita slipped a warm palm into mine. My other one hung next to Chief. I felt like the thirteen-year-old girl in square dance class that nobody wants to touch for fear of a cootie infestation. I stuck it in my pocket and closed my eyes.

  “I don’t bite.”

  My mouth came open but I clamped it shut and let Chief pull out my hand and smother it in his. The way it felt … it was best to say nothing at all. Except maybe “okay.”

  “The Lord be with you,” Hank said.

  “And also with you,” the women answered.

  “Let us pray.”

  And then she did, in words that went beyond words into the heart of the tangled mess I found myself in. Words that made me forget for the moment that my life had been snatched away and replaced with someone else’s—some other Allison who took in prostitutes and fatherless boys with half-mothers and rode a Harley into the ’hood and let another woman’s man make her palm sweat. I couldn’t hold all her words. The ones that stayed simply tugged at the knots until a few came loose and I could breathe again. Until I could say thankyouGodthankyouGodthankyouGod.

  When we raised our heads at the amen, I extricated my hand and made the excuse that I had to check on Desmond. I found him asleep, on his blanket on the floor with his head next to the door. Just as I’d done as a kid when I’d been sent off to bed during one of my parents’ parties and I wanted to listen to the chatter. I hoped what he’d heard didn’t sound as mindless to him as those long-ago conversations had to me.

  I covered him up and returned to the living room, where Hank was seeing Leighanne and Nita out. Chief stood at the side window, arms folded as if he were done for the night. I felt compelled to do something to set myself straight—even if I blew it.

  Hands in my pockets, I crossed the room and stood next to him.

  “That was nice,” I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “I know you don’t buy into it, but as somebody who didn’t believe it for most of her life either, I gotta tell ya, Hank is the real deal. If you ever do—”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “O-kay.”

  “There something you’re not telling me?”

  I could feel my eyes bug. “I’m sorry?”

  “About what went down tonight. How’d you find Geneveve?”

  “One of the other ‘girls’ showed me. I practically have a sisterhood with two of them down there now.”

  My voice was coming out too upbeat, and from the way he cut his eyes at me, I knew he heard it too.

  “She know anything about who did it?”

  “I think she did,” I said.

  I was suddenly having a hard time getting anything to come out at all. It only made sense to tell him about the guy who tried to take us down. If I wanted to be told to stay completely out of this from now on.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter,” he said. “The cops don’t try that hard to pursue assault on a prostitute. Whole different set of rules down there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah? You knew that?”

  “Somehow,” I said. “I told a tour group that the other day, and I had no idea where it came from.”

  His eyes took on the same twinkle I saw in the alley, bright and unexpected and—dang it—pulse-quickening. “That’s on the tour?”

  “It was that day. It just seemed like that particular group needed to hear it. I’d keep it in my spiel but I’d probably get fired.”

  “We agreed you were going to call me right away.”

  “If I got fired? When did we agree to that?”

  “No, if you ran into trouble. Tonight.”

  “You and Hank—I swear, you’re like a man with a remote control, flipping the channels on me—”

  “Classic.”

  “What?”

  His eyes narrowed at me. They’d lost their twinkle. “Don’t do that again.” He turned abruptly and gathered his jacket and his riding gloves and gave me one last, searing look. “Okay?”

  I didn’t answer. I was done saying “okay.” Because I couldn’t promise I’d only do what I had to do on this journey with his consent.

  He didn’t wait long before he pressed his lips together and left. It was a good thing he wasn’t a love interest, because that was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen a man do.

  I didn’t expect to see Chief again, but I did, every evening for the next week when he came by with items he collected from the HOG members.

  “Just some stuff they might need,” he said. There was no sign that anything had
changed in his attitude toward me, and I’d managed to get mine sorted and folded and put away. So, as Desmond would say, it was all good.

  While Chief’s nightly haul-always included clothes and toiletries for Geneveve, the bulk of it was school supplies and apparel for Desmond, some of it with a decidedly Harley flavor. I let Desmond cut the sleeves and neck out of the two that wouldn’t be allowed at school anyway and said he could wear those at home. The minute he was in the house in the afternoon, he’d put one on, with a bandana and the boots somebody (I suspected Chief) contributed so he’d be ready to ride when I was.

  That became a daily ritual for us. I taught him how to do the pre-ride check, which he did with more flair than the average biker. Then we rode—not usually far because I couldn’t leave Geneveve for long—just over the bridge and back, or along the Avenida, or down to the fort. It was the only time during the day that he didn’t fight to stay ahead of what might come out of an alley and grab him. He didn’t have a choice but to hang on and lean with me.

  Geneveve was hanging on too, but her dependence on me was significantly more smothering than his. I could hardly step out of the shower without her assuring me that she hadn’t touched a thing while my back was turned.

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Angel,” she said over and over, ad nauseam. “I let everybody down, but I never wanted to let you down. I never did.”

  I didn’t ask her why she had, and she didn’t offer an explanation. Chief, Hank, and I agreed over veal picatta in my dining room one evening that I should leave the issue of the DVD player and laptop alone until we got past the next step.

  “She probably doesn’t even remember who she sold them to anyway,” Chief said.

  “Are they insured?” Hank said.

  “Yeah—”

  “But if you make a claim, you have to have a police report.” Chief looked at me.

  “Not yet,” I said. “I don’t know when, but not yet.”

  The whole thing still didn’t make sense to me, especially the obvious explanation that she needed the money to get high. I read the NA pamphlet three times, and none of the signs of drug use it listed had shown themselves in Geneveve in the days before she ran. Even Desmond had seemed surprised, and nothing surprised that kid except the steady flow of goods that daily made him look more like a normal kid living a normal life. He was still the main reason I didn’t want to involve the police, and he was the same reason I avoided Bonner when he left a message asking why I hadn’t kept my appointment with Liz Doyle. Now wasn’t the time to bring in the authorities. I knew it like I knew the Nudges that more and more kept me from stepping off the path.

  “Just keep telling me I’m not nuts to believe in it,” I said to Hank when we met Friday morning at the Galleon.

  “You’re not nuts,” she said. “A little strange maybe. Who comes in here and only has black coffee?” She folded her hands. “All kidding aside, Al, I see God all over this. Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll get there.”

  “I don’t see how. I’ve tried to talk to Geneveve about NA twice, and she just starts crying and telling me it’s going to be different this time.”

  “What do you say when she tells you that?”

  “Not much. What am I supposed to say?”

  “What any good Southern Christian woman would say to a friend who was deluding herself.”

  “What? ‘You’re a lying sack of cow manure, and you better get your tail to NA before I slap you silly’?”

  “That’s the one.” Hank leaned into the table, her chest barely missing the pool of syrup on her plate. “She isn’t going to shatter. If she were that delicate, she’d be dead by now. Show her some Jesus love. He did not, as you’ll recall, pussyfoot around.”

  Neither did I that night when I sat Geneveve down and told her she was, in those exact words, a lying sack of cow manure.

  The next morning, Saturday, Leighanne picked her up and took her to an NA meeting.

  She said it was better that I didn’t go, if Geneveve was going to make the necessary decision on her own, so Desmond and I watched from the side porch as they drove off on Leighanne’s Sportster, Geneveve looking ridiculous but noble in my helmet. I felt the gelatinous relief you experience after you’ve just thrown up. That lasted until Desmond pointed to the sidewalk and said, “You ’bout to get busted, Big Al.”

  Owen was heading up the walkway to the porch, wearing a blue terry cloth bathrobe and a day’s growth of whiskers. As he got closer, I realized he hadn’t even put in his dentures yet. His mouth looked like a drawstring bag.

  “Morning, Owen,” I called to him. “Desmond, go in and pour Mr. Schatz a cup of coffee, would you?”

  “I didn’t come for coffee.”

  “Get it anyway,” I whispered to Desmond.

  He let the screen door close behind him just as Owen reached the porch.

  “Why aren’t you out on the golf course?” I said. “It’s perfect weather for it.”

  “Because I haven’t slept in three nights, that’s why.”

  At least that was what I thought he said. Without his teeth the words mumbled around in his mouth like loose marbles.

  “Are you sick?”

  “Yes. Sick of the noise.”

  I sighed. “Ever since our last conversation about this topic that I’m getting really tired of, I have made sure I didn’t rev up my engine when I drove out of here. I’m not making anymore noise than your Lexus.”

  “What about the rest of the Hell’s Angels that are coming in and out of here at all hours of the day and night?”

  “We got Hell’s Angels comin’ here?” Desmond said from the doorway, mug in hand.

  “Go put some cream and sugar in that,” I said.

  Owen growled, “I don’t want—”

  “Go,” I said to Desmond. “And toast him a bagel too.”

  Desmond grinned. “How he gonna eat a bagel? The man ain’t got no teeth.”

  “Desmond.”

  “Goin’.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen again, and I got my lips under control before I turned back to Owen. I knew I wasn’t as successful at keeping the laughter out of my eyes.

  “I guess there has been more motorcycle traffic than usual,” I said.

  “We didn’t used to have any. And there I was complaining about a bed-and-breakfast. That would be a sleeping potion compared to this.”

  “I know. I’ll tell my friends to keep it down.”

  “How long is this going to go on?”

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t shoot a barb at a toothless man who was armed with nothing but his desperate love for a one-block street. He’d even left his dignity at home with his dentures.

  “I’m sure it’s only temporary,” I said. “Just until my guests get back on their feet.”

  “They must be pretty far down if it takes a whole motorcycle gang to stand them up.” He licked at his purse-strung lips. “In my day you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps.”

  “I don’t got no straps on my boots.” Desmond backed out of the kitchen with a coffee mug and a charred bagel on a paper towel. The screen door banged behind him as he presented both to Owen. “I gotta see how you gon’ eat that,” he said.

  “Desmond,” I said.

  But Owen waved me off and fished in his robe pocket until he produced his false teeth. Desmond and I watched in fascination as he fit them into his mouth and used his finger to make the final adjustment. I could feel an amazed expletive ready to come out of Desmond, and I gave him a look.

  “I gotta get me some a them,” he said instead.

  “Pray you never have to, kid.” Owen looked at me. “This one of your guests?”

  “Oh, sorry. This is Desmond Sanborn,” I said. “Desmond, this is Mr. Schatz.”

&nb
sp; “Shots,” Desmond said. He dropped into the canvas chair next to mine and threw one leg over the side. “That like shots a tequila?”

  Owen paused over the mug. “What would you know about that?”

  “I know a lot about a lotta things.”

  “Such as?”

  I hovered between sending Desmond back in the house for the next course and settling in to watch the show. I landed on the latter.

  “I know a lot about Harleys,” Desmond said, and then shifted his eyes to me. “Not everything, but enough to get by, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Go on,” Owen said. He dipped the bagel into the coffee. Good grief, he was actually going to eat it.

  “I got some techniques with women. You know. How to talk all sweet to ’em till they melt like butter.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “I’ll be fourteen. In two years.”

  “Don’t wish your life away, kid,” Owen said. “Enjoy every year like you’re licking an ice-cream cone. You know, it’s like an onion. Each layer you peel off as you grow up shows you something new, but you don’t want to rush it. A life’s like a good cheese: It has to be allowed to age very slowly.”

  Desmond had his chin pulled all the way into his chest. “So which one is it—a cheese or a onion or a ice-cream cone?”

  I feigned a coughing spell. Owen barely batted an eyelash.

  “So what else do you think you know?” he said. “Do you have any talents?”

  “Oh yeah. I got lotsa talents.”

  I shifted in the chair. It might be time for me to wind this up before Desmond started giving a résumé of his recent larcenies.

  “Best one, though, is I draw real good.”

  I blinked.

  “How good is ‘real good’?”

  Desmond shrugged. “I could show you.”

  “I’d like to see your portfolio.”

  “I don’t know ’bout that. I gotta a bunch of my drawings.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  While I watched, jaw unhinged, Desmond unwound himself from the chair and hurried into the house.