Absently staring at an unknown display, his mind churned out scenarios of how he could approach her, what words he could use to break the ice.
“Hey,” spoke a female beside him.
Lockhart turned to the sound. He hid his surprise when he saw the teen-aged girl in the red hoodie beside him. “Hello,” he managed to say without tripping over his tongue.
“What exactly are you looking for?” The girl nodded her hooded head toward the display.
He glanced at the display and did an embarrassed double take. Lockhart had stopped in front of a shop that sold products of an adult nature.
“I … I …I was actually looking at the artwork in the window,” he managed to say.
The paintings on the large panes of glass were pretty good, done in the style of Vallejo and Frazetta with numerous scantily-clad damsels in peril, muscle-bound heroes in loincloths and ominous mythical beasts.
“Sure.” She was skeptical of his answer.
“I’m an artist, a photographer,” he said, which was a half-truth. “I’m always searching for ideas or inspiration.”
“What kind of ideas or inspiration are you trying to get from this?” she asked with a sly smile.
The teen stood about five-foot-six and was skinny, almost scrawny. She was cute, with fair skin; her eyes were the color of pale emeralds and there was a dusting of freckles across her narrow nose and high cheek bones; her lips were thin and pale, but her teeth were improbably straight and perfectly aligned. She had applied her mascara with a heavy hand, and her fingernails were painted black. The teen’s red hoodie was a zip-front from Aeropostale, and she wore a black T-shirt beneath it; her skinny blue jeans were too long and folded into cuffs at the bottom, while her scuffed black combat boots were laced only halfway but tied.
Lockhart shrugged. “Ideas and inspiration often come from the most unusual places,” he said.
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“What do you take pictures of?”
“I take photographs of architecture, landscapes, animals, people – you know, all the usual things.”
“Do you make a lot of money taking pictures?”
He laughed. “I do all right,” he said. “I’m not rich, if that’s what you mean.”
The teen shrugged. She turned her eyes out to the street for a moment, watching a couple of vehicles pass by, and then focused on him. “Do you have any money you can give me?”
Lockhart stared at her, those green eyes captivating and haunting. “That’s what this is all about then, right? You want money from me?”
The girl shrugged one shoulder and made a face at him.
“Are you going to buy drugs with it?”
“I don’t do drugs.” She quickly pushed up both sleeves of the hoodie, showing him the inside of her freckle-dusted forearms. They were smooth and pale, without track marks or scars.
He studied them for a moment. Her arms appeared delicate and fragile. “What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?” she countered, pulling down her sleeves.
“I’m Brendan.”
“Well, I’m Maddey, but everyone on the dirty boulevard calls me Ginger.”
“Ginger?”
Maddey pulled the hood down from her head to reveal dirty red hair tied off in a ponytail that disappeared into the back of the sweatshirt and some loose strands tucked behind her ears adorned with multiple piercings. “Does it make sense now?”
“Sure does.” He stared at the teenager, trying to get a bead on her. “Where do you live?”
“Why?”
Lockhart smiled at the way she answered a question with a question of her own. “The street can be a dangerous place. There are a lot of bad people out here …”
“Are you one of those bad people?”
He chuckled. “No, but it’s not like I’d say yes if I was one.”
“I s’pose you’re right about that.” She grinned. “I stay at the shelter on Brigham Street. It’s not the Hilton, but it’s a relatively safe roof over my head.”
“Good.”
“Why, Brendan, are you worried about me?”
The man shrugged and reached into his pants pocket, pulling out a ten dollar bill. “No, it’s just that I know they don’t openly allow booze or drugs in there, not to mention people who are drunk or high, so if I give you this money, you probably won’t go out and buy a bottle.”
“I could smuggle it in.”
Lockhart studied her face and decided she was teasing. “I don’t think you’ll do that.”
“You’re right, I won’t.”
“Okay.” He handed her the bill, and she stuffed it in the front pocket of her jeans.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Lockhart turned to leave but stopped. “Be safe, and it would probably be a good idea to head to the shelter now, so you can get a bed and not have to sleep on the floor.”
“What? No strings attached to the money? Nothing I … have to do?”
He shook his head. “Nope, no strings attached.”
Maddey arched an eyebrow. “I don’t get you, Brendan.”
The man shrugged. “Just call me a Good Samaritan, doing a good deed.”
“Okay,” she said with a nod, “I will.”
“Take care, Ginger.” He turned and began to walk away.
“See you around, Brendan.”
Lockhart waved and smiled. You can count on that, he thought.
For some reason, he just couldn’t shake the girl from his thoughts over the next several days. No matter what he tried as a diversion, she crept back into his head like a heavy mist in the forest.
Lockhart tried to immerse himself in his work – whether at his high-tech office in the downtown high-rise building or his well-appointed one at his residence – his mind aimlessly wandered back to the pretty red-haired teen. On more than one occasion he hammered away at the keyboard of his laptop, watching the words appear on the monitor, only to have his thoughts drift back to Maddey. Several minutes later he found himself captured in the spider web of a daydream, with fingers hovering inches above the keyboard and an incomplete sentence on the flat screen.
Fending off her intrusion into his head was a lost cause.
Three nights in a row he drove to the rough-edged neighborhood where he had first seen her. It was an area of the city that at one time had been staunchly middle class but had almost imperceptibly slipped to near poverty. Lockhart cruised the street where his encounter with Maddey had taken place and the roads adjacent to it, surveying the neon-lit and trash-covered cityscape, hidden behind smoke-tinted windows.
Three nights in a row he went home frustrated and disappointed.
A couple of nights at home with good, but fruitless intentions, Lockhart had surrendered to his curiosity and was back at it. This time he was armed, and his weapon of choice was a digital camera with a massive 75 to 300mm telephoto zoom lens.
He trolled the car down the street, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw her wearing the same red hoodie and blue jeans, talking with a handful of street kids near a tiny green space park. Lockhart took several deep breaths and let them out slowly in a futile attempt to slow his racing heart, to reclaim his swooning head and to dry his sweating hands. It had minimal success.
Lockhart, biting his lower lip, drove the non-descript, black sedan past her and the others who ranged in age from teens to early twenties and continued on for a couple of blocks before he doubled back. He found a discreet curbside parking spot that enabled him to keep an eye on Maddey while it kept him mostly hidden from view.
Over the next three hours he sat in the less than comfortable seat and watched her interact with the kids who came and went with no regularity. Through the tinted glass, Lockhart snapped away with the camera and imagined the conversations they had, the raunchy jokes they told, the street-level news they shared, and the gossip they passed along.
He envied them and was jealous of the time spent wi
th her. They were precious minutes he could never get back, they were seconds lost forever to time. Lockhart wanted to send the street kids away, to scare them off so he could have Maddey all to himself. He wanted to talk with her, tell her jokes, share the events of the day with her, and pass along gossip. But he couldn’t do any of that while the other kids hung around.
His idle fascination with the red-haired teen-aged girl had become something different, something approaching a less than innocent obsession.
He tried to stay away from the street, and for a couple of days he had managed to chase thoughts of Maddey from his head, at least during waking hours, but then he found himself in his car and unexpectedly in that dicey neighborhood. He hadn’t consciously planned it but somehow ended up there.
Lockhart spied the teen a half block ahead, and his heart fluttered behind his rib cage. Still in the red hoodie, she was alone and leaned against the brick façade of a smoke shop. He wheeled the car to the curb and climbed out, locking the doors with the key fob and walking toward her.
The teen gave him a megawatt smile when she saw him. “Hey, Brendan, what brings you to my neighborhood along the dirty boulevard?”
If you only knew, he thought but said, “I just needed to get out and stretch my legs. I’ve been spending too much time sitting behind a desk.”
“Oh, and here I thought you missed me.” She smiled shyly and glanced away from him.
“Yeah, sure,” he responded. “That was it.”
“Liar,” Maddey said, but there was no malice in the word.
They spent the next ten minutes talking. She had told him that she was fourteen years old – turning fifteen in a few weeks – and that she had fled the home her mother shared with a loser boyfriend. The loser boyfriend had verbally abused and threatened her, occasionally smacking her mother around, but Maddey had baled on the less than happy home before she became the target of the physical abuse … or worse.
“Have you got a few bucks you can spare me?” she asked after a momentary lull.
Lockhart pondered the question for a moment. “Why don’t I buy you a meal?”
“You mean like a date?”
He laughed. “No, I mean like me buying you a meal.”
“Your Good Samaritan project again?”
Lockhart shrugged. “No, I …” He couldn’t finish the sentence because he didn’t know what to say, and he certainly couldn’t tell her the truth. “You seem like a good kid who could use a break.”
She smiled at him. “Okay. There’s a little burger stand a couple blocks over. The food is decent, not expensive, and there’s a patio where you can eat.”
“Let’s go.”
“And if I wanna call it a date, I can.”
Lockhart laughed again. “If that’s what you want.”
He smiled when she took a ravenous bite from the cheeseburger; the teen ate as if she hadn’t had a meal for days. Lockhart wondered what she had done with the money he had given her.
Maddey grabbed several fries, stabbed them in a small cup filled with ketchup and stuffed them in her mouth. She washed it down with a swig of Coke.
She raised her eyes and caught him staring. “What?” she asked somewhat embarrassed.
“Nothing.”
“What are you smiling at?”
“You.”
“What about me?”
He thought for a moment and said, “You have a healthy appetite.”
She plucked a couple more fries from the box and popped them in her mouth. “Hey, a girl has got to fill up when she can,” Maddey said after swallowing the food. “You never know when you’ll get your next real meal down here on the dirty boulevard.”
“There’s that phrase again. The dirty boulevard?”
The teen gave him an incredulous look. “Oh, c’mon, you’re joking, right? Really? It’s in the old Lou Reed song. How can you not know that?”
Lockhart shrugged. “I guess the dirty boulevard is a pretty dangerous place.”
Maddey picked up the burger but didn’t take a bite. “You’re down here, so what are you then? The Big Bad Wolf?”
He smiled. “Are you Little Red Riding Hood?”
“I could be,” she answered with a grin that was far from innocent, “if you wanted me to be.”
Lockhart started to say something, but the words caught in his throat. He tried to cover it by taking a bite from his cheeseburger and chewing.
“What?” Her lascivious smile grew even wider. “Did I shock you? You know, a girl’s gotta do a lot of different … things to survive on the dirty boulevard.”
He swallowed his food with a noisy gulp.
“I could be your Little Red Riding Hood if you wanted to be my Big Bad Wolf.”
Lockhart stared at her, green eyes taunting him, but said nothing.
“What? Don’t you like girls?”
After a moment, he answered, “Girls, no. Women, yes.”
She smiled again, but this time it was the innocent version. “I’m just teasing, you know.” Maddey took a bite from the cheeseburger and chewed for a moment before washing it down with a drink. “I didn’t mean anything.”
The conversation returned to less provocative word play as they finished their meals. After bussing their own table, they stood on the sidewalk.
“Thanks for supper,” she said.
“You’re welcome.” Lockhart smiled. “You be safe out here on the dirty boulevard.”
Maddey grinned. “I will.” She quickly stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. A heartbeat later, she was walking away.
“Wait.”
The teen stopped and turned back. “Did you change your mind, my Big Bad Wolf?” She hit him with the lascivious grin again.
He blushed in the neon. “No.” Lockhart dug in his pocket and pulled out some bills. “It’s not much, but …”
She returned and took the bills, folding them and stuffing them into a front pocket of her tight jeans. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome and be safe.”
“I will.”
He watched the red-haired teenager walk away.
Lockhart had no intention of following her and couldn’t explain why he did. But there he was, covertly watching – stalking? – her from a distance as she wandered away from the neon-lit streets and avenues for ones shrouded in darkness.
“What are you up to?” he muttered as she slipped through a hole in the chain link fence that surrounded a four-story brick building. It had been a garment factory and warehouse in a different era, but that had been decades ago. Now it was an abandoned and dilapidated structure that had been unoccupied, much less actually used, for at least a quarter century. Even in the faint illumination from distant street lights, he could tell.
He approached the fence but didn’t enter the grounds through the hole. Instead, he hid as best he could and watched the teen as she stealthily moved to the boarded-up front doors. Maddey glanced in all directions before she pulled the door open and slipped into the darkness that loomed around her like the maw of a prehistoric beast.
Just like that, she disappeared.
Curiosity burned in him like a raging forest fire – Why had she come here? What was she doing inside? – but Lockhart couldn’t summon up enough courage to pull aside the snipped piece of metal fencing and slip on to the grounds. Mentally berating himself for his cowardice while at the same time applauding his discretion, he walked toward his car, frustrated.
THREE
Over next several days, Lockhart obsessed and brooded about Maddey and why she had gone to the abandoned building that night. It wasn’t the shelter she told him she sleeps at. He had to know – needed to know – why she went there and what she was doing. He couldn’t chase those troubling thoughts from his head, no matter what diversion he tried. Her behavior that night seemed more than odd to him, but the ambiguity only fueled his curiosity. Not knowing bothered him, so he took matters into his own hands.
Armed with a flashlight, he ventu
red to the brick façade structure, which had numerous huge windows on all sides of each floor, but only a handful of them were broken or cracked. The company name painted on the side of the building had long faded to oblivion and was indecipherable. It looked worse in the daylight, but it didn’t deter him. Lockhart slipped through the hole in the fence and proceeded into the building.
He started at the top and worked his way down, but, during his less than thorough search, he found each floor was pretty much the same, empty. All the equipment had been removed years ago, and the floors were wide open areas broke up only by brick support columns. Dust, dirt and other debris littered the creaking wooden floorboards. Far out of code electrical conduit was suspended from the high ceilings, while long dead power outlets dotted the floor. He found no visible signs of inhabitation by anything other than rats, there was nothing in the open work areas or the various offices. Lockhart was confused and disappointed as he walked from the main area of the ground floor toward the entryway.
Standing in the lobby, the receptionist’s desk long removed, he had planned to leave, to walk out of the building and into the afternoon sun when he saw an unobtrusive door hidden in the dark recesses of a corner. What the … he thought as he clutched the knob and pulled the door open. It moved silently, and Lockhart found himself atop stairs that led to the basement.
“Oh, boy,” he muttered, “the basement. I hate basements.”
His body and consciousness seemed separate entities as he stood before the wooden steps that disappeared in the darkness. Fear swirled like a river eddy in the backwaters of his mind, but his obsession for Maddey was the current that pushed him forward. He snapped on the flashlight and began to descend.
The further Lockhart climbed down the stairs, the stronger the odor became; a smell different from the stale, musty air of the building above. It was subtle and faint at first but became more pronounced with each step. It was an earthy odor like freshly turned topsoil but with a stale hint of decay and decomposition.
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