Anonymity

by Janna McMahan

  Skinny Cat wove his soft purring between her ankles. Emily reached down to scratch his ear. He had appeared on her porch five years ago. She'd fed him and fed him, but he stayed scrawny and quiet. He came to her for food and shelter and comfort, but always on his own terms. Then he disappeared for days. He led a life of mystery. Like the shrouded gaunt girl with the comic book name.

  Travis

  THE NEWSROOM buzzed. Phones beeped. Fax paper overflowed onto the floor. Circulation guys banged the lobby door open as they toted in stacks of the current week's issue. The art reporter's fingers snapped angrily across her keyboard, which meant she hated whatever she was reviewing. The music and food writers swapped stories, laughing too loud. The sports guy's voice traveled over the partition separating his desk from Travis's. He jawed like an old buddy with the Longhorns’ coach about the possibility of a bowl game.

  The receptionist dumped a five-inch stack of mail on Travis's desk.

  “You look like you could use some coffee.” Lily pushed out her hip in that coquettish way that always made him think of an old girlfriend he missed.

  He grinned up at her. “Can't focus.”

  “Well, get focused. Staff meeting in ten.”

  She sashayed off, tossing another day's worth of crap onto the already overflowing desks of the other writers.

  As she moved away, the racket of the newsroom rushed him again. He went back to poking around Facebook, looking at personal pictures of people he'd never invite out for a beer.

  His editor walked through the room and Travis quickly brought up the screen that held his piece on parking meters. He needed a gripping opening, but a hook eluded him. In truth, nobody really cared about these things except for the city and the merchants. People were never interested in topics like tax accommodations and storm sewers. And the thought of all of the torpid meetings to come made him want to open a vein.

  But somebody had to ask where the money goes. That was his job. To ask the questions. To find the answers. To make people care. Boo-yah.

  His e-mail chimed. Another welcome distraction.

  Hey Travis,

  Zup? Here's my best shot of you. You look hot!

  Emily

  He smiled at her note and clicked the attachment. She had a good eye. He liked the contemplative nature of it. Maybe she could come up with something usable for his story if he could get inside the tribes for an interview.

  Travis had mixed feelings about working with Emily before seeing this shot. This proved that she was at least adequate. But she gave off that vibe that said she was more interested in him than the project, which could become problematic. Travis was making an effort to stop tapping every young thing that thought it would be glamorous to date a writer. Theirs wasn't sincere interest anyway. Girls like that slept with musicians or artists or any guy they thought had some minor celebrity. Travis had made a vow to avoid starfuckers.

  He emailed Emily a quick thank you, something noncommittal, then forwarded the headshot over to the art department.

  “People!” the editor hollered from his office. “Five minutes. Conference room.”

  Assignment meetings were torture. If a reporter didn't have a story to pitch they got assigned something mundane nobody wanted to cover. Of course, there was no guarantee that even a good story idea would get greenlighted.

  “Wow. I'd hit that.” Lily stood behind him looking over his shoulder at his headshot on the monitor. She slid into the swivel chair at the desk next to him, crossed her legs and leaned back.

  “You are totally inappropriate and I'm going to sue you for sexual harassment,” Travis said.

  “You wish. Who took that shot? It's good.”

  “A stringer I'm using.”

  People slogged toward the glassed-in meeting room.

  “Better buck up,” Lily said. “Game on.”

  “Why? Bob's just going to tell us how people want to read fluff now that the economy's in shambles. Help me out here. Tell me what I could write to get you to care about parking meters.”

  “Absolutely nothing.” Lily twisted off to the meeting in that way that made him stare. That was another thing he had promised himself. He wouldn't sleep with anybody else from the office. That was always a disaster.

  When Travis dragged himself into the conference room, his editor was already talking.

  “Travis, so glad you could join us.”

  “My pleasure, Bob.”

  There were no seats, so Travis leaned against a wall.

  “So, who is coming into Austin this week? Anybody good?” More and more, Bob pushed to get recognizable faces on the cover, particularly celebrities coming to town. A celebrity cover meant increased circulation, racks emptied, people coming in for extra copies. Increased circulation resulted in more advertising dollars, which meant paychecks. Entertainment sold. News, not so much. A significant news story on the cover usually meant recycling, not circulation, was what rose that week.

  So maybe Travis was looking at this homeless story all wrong. Perhaps he should approach it in a more entertaining light. He could write about the talents of all of the street kids—how they can juggle and play guitar and sing. Or he could return to the tried-and-true angle featuring Leslie again. Everybody in town would pick up a copy with Austin's famous flamboyant, homeless cross-dresser on the front.

  Leslie knew how to get attention—his perpetual run for mayor, his continual conflict with Austin's finest over homeless rights. He was probably the only homeless guy in America with his own Facebook fan page. It was the cheap way to approach the story, but there was no denying that Leslie's image moved papers.

  Emily

  BATFEST ROCKED. Every August, the city threw a massive street party to celebrate the beloved Mexican freetail bats that spent a season under the Congress Street Bridge.

  The colony, mostly mothers and their pups, crammed up into the expansion joints of the bridge. At dusk, millions of bats gushed out in a black ribbon pulsing along the river corridor, devouring insects by the billions. Their extended exodus was eerie to witness, so soft, only a muffle of air unless one flew too close.

  Batfest, on the other hand, was loud. The Congress Street Bridge is always blocked by a stage at one end. As the sun goes down, Austin's tinted glass skyline behind the stage mirrors the purple Texas sunset. Street vendors line one side of the bridge and people hang along the downriver side so they can watch the mass departure. People fill the walks and grassy areas along Town Lake below the bridge.

  Emily walked from her house toward the river to the festival. As she approached the bridge, the crowd erupted to the high-voltage grooves of “Downtown” by Vallejo. Austin loved their homegrown bands and Vallejo's lyrics about addictions and lust and unchecked vice were always a crowd pleaser.

  She wandered the party, running into friends, stopping to take photographs. Emily had started carrying her camera. Its weight against her neck gave her purpose. She felt invisible and involved at the same time. She shot a few frames of the concert, zoomed in, waited for an opportunity. Clicked off a few shots of the lead singer. Cute. Sexy.

  Folks from Group had staked out a grassy hillside by the water earlier in the day, so Emily headed there to mooch a beer. She sat on a cooler and faced down toward the river walk. People below were paying attention to the action up on the bridge, swaying to the band's Latin-inspired rhythm. She scanned people through the viewfinder and that's when she saw her. It wasn't difficult to pick the hooded figure out of the crowd. She was standing still in a sea of movement. Emily trained her lens on the girl, zoomed, focused and waited.

  For the longest time, the girl watched the stage. Although her jacket had a hood, it was also sleeveless and showed bands of tribal tattoos around her biceps. Emily zoomed in on her profile and focused, but the girl suddenly shifted. Emily tried to keep her in frame as the girl shoved her way through the crowd. At one point, her subject glanced to the side and Emily caught a glimpse of something on her cheek before she lowered her head
and walked on.

  Emily kicked over somebody's beer on her way down the hill.

  “Awww! Man!”

  “Sorry!” she called out behind her. “Sorry.”

  The girl was like mercury, sliding through the smallest openings in the crowd. Emily tried to keep up, but she found it hard to make headway against the opposing current of the festival. Emily bumped a guy carrying hot dogs and tacos. When she looked back again her street punk was gone. Emily cursed to herself and desperately scanned faces in the crowd.

  In the distance, the hooded figure appeared climbing a ramp up to street level. Emily saw an opening and cut through the swarm of people. The girl paused, glancing down at those below. Emily snapped a shot, unsure if she'd focused.

  Once at street level, Emily followed her for blocks, music evaporating with their every step. The girl threaded her way between people, walking rapidly, her head down. She stopped to look in a shop window. Emily saw her chance and called out.

  “Lorelei?”

  The girl whirled around, paused and then yanked her hood back from her face.

  Emily caught her breath.

  “No pictures!” the girl hissed.

  Emily had forgotten the camera hanging around her neck.

  “Oh, this? Okay. No problem. No pictures.”

  A vivid phoenix curled along one cheekbone, its frayed tail feathers touching the edge of the girl's left eye. A cascade of stars sprinkled her other cheek. A scroll design peeked from the collar of her hoodie.

  “How do you know my name?” She was younger than Emily had expected for her height. Several cheap plastic barrettes held back her ratty brown hair. Blond streaks started four inches from dark roots and fell to her shoulders.

  “I heard somebody call you that one day. That's your name, right? Lorelei.”

  She bit her lower lip, considering her answer.

  “Yeah,” she offered. “So?”

  “I'm Emily.”

  “So, what do you want?”

  “I just wanted to meet you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know. You look interesting, I guess.”

  “Are you mental?”

  “I don't think so.”

  “A lesbo?”

  “No.”

  “So, I repeat, what do you want?”

  “Can I buy you a cup of coffee or a sandwich, maybe?”

  Her eyes roamed over Emily, sizing her up for weirdness.

  “No thanks. Just ate.” She pulled her hood back over her head and walked away.

  Emily's inclination was to follow her again, but that would be no way to gain the girl's trust. She hoped Lorelei was on her way to a shelter or soup kitchen, anywhere but the alley or one of those squatter camps scattered along Shoal Creek.

  Lorelei

  SHE HATED the story people. You couldn't escape them. In every city there were the reporters who were so terribly interested in interviewing street surfing teenagers. Even worse were people with cameras. Being photographed was an invasion of privacy, but people just assumed if you lived on the streets that you didn't deserve any privacy.

  If you were spanging, just looking for a little spare change, people wanted to take your picture with their camera phone before they gave you any money. Some people snapped pictures without asking, like you were just another stop on their sightseeing tour or an animal in a zoo.

  The worst were the video peepers. Television station people usually asked before they shot. But college kids out to get a story for a school project showed no respect. They lurked around, waiting for something to happen, for some of the streets to get into a fight. They'd ask, “What's that tattoo mean?” “When's the last time you ate?” “You going to sleep in the park tonight?” They tried to incite the street punks so they could tape random reactions. They always loved a good fight.

  One time, Lorelei had awakened to a video camera stuck into the hedge she was sleeping beneath. It scared her and she shouted at the guy and he ran off. She'd wondered if she was on the news that night, her feet sticking out from under shrubs.

  Gutter punks knew that all reporters were liars. They portrayed the homeless as aimless party animals, addicts, or even worse, mentally unstable, pathetic people nobody would ever hire or trust. Pick a reality—partier or pathetic—apparently, there was no in-between. Simple was so much easier for most people. The truth was too complex.

  Most kids hated the streets. Homelessness wasn't an adventure or a vacation. It was hunger and sleep deprivation, wet and cold. It was embarrassment and hostility and fear. Everybody had a different story, but what it all boiled down to was no safe alternative.

  It didn't matter if your daddy beat you or your mama was a drunk or if you had taken off because there wasn't food at home. Everybody ended up without options. So you tried to find friends and make a little community to protect each other. You tried to blend in so nobody would run you off of a good squat or turn you over to the cops.

  But there were always the really strange kids who attracted attention and ruined it for everybody. Usually it was the foster scare kids. They didn't care about anything, which was what made them so scary. They were the cutters and thieves and messed up crackheads. The ones who flung curses when they begged. Outcasts of the outcasts.

  These were usually the types reporters ended up taping. The reporters all said they were looking for human interest stories, but they weren't really interested in humans. They only wanted an outrageous story, something to make people gawk. They tried to make you think they cared, but they didn't. Nobody cared. Nobody.

  Lorelei never gave an interview, never let anyone have her image. She hated the cowardly stalkeratzis with their zoom lenses. There was truth in the Native American belief that photography captured a part of the soul. That part was called dignity.

  Lorelei guarded what little she had left.

  She wandered up Congress. Normally, she would have cut over a street to avoid the bar and club crowd, but tonight she needed something to eat and the drop-in wasn't serving. She'd have to spange.

  It was both easier and harder to get money out of drunken people. During the day, she found more people gave, but it was only pocket change. At night, she got more money from fewer people. Drunks would either be rude and dismissive, or their eyes would fill with tears and they'd hand over a twenty.

  Lorelei spotted a couple of girls strolling along with Starbucks cups. The way they threw their heads back when they drank meant they were finishing. She followed them and when one tossed her cup, Lorelei fished it from the trash. According to the three-second rule, the cup was practically sterile.

  She walked around a corner and popped the lipstick-stained top. Sweet foam clung to the bottom and the sides. She tapped the bottom of the cup to move the foam down into her mouth. Chocolaty coffee flavor evaporated on her tongue. Her stomach growled.

  Spanging by the university had dried up. All the seriously tanned students who had been so free with their money at the beginning of the school year had morphed into broke, sleep-deprived zombies by midterm. Now Lorelei was just another drag worm to the pretty, polished girls of the University of Texas.

  Her favorite spot to panhandle downtown was the famous Driskill Hotel, the wedding cake building she had seen on her first day in Austin. The Driskill crowd had money, and one twenty-dollar pop was all she needed. The cute valets in their cream-colored monkey suits would run her off as soon as they saw her, but if she was lucky, the first couple of people she approached would help her, and she'd be on her way.

  Outside the Driskill, a line of shiny cars snaked around the corner to the valet stand. Gentlemen in tuxedos stepped from their cars onto a red carpet and handed over their keys. Valets helped ladies in sparkling dresses from passenger seats. The couples all stopped to smooth themselves before walking through the arched-stone entryway.

  The valets were too busy to pay much attention to her if she stayed around the corner out of sight. She pulled her hood close to hide her tats, presse
d her back into the wall and held out her cup. Other elegant people came from down the street and Lorelei held out her empty cup. A man reached into his back pocket as he approached and her heart lifted.

  “Hey!”

  Lorelei turned to see an older guy in a monkey suit of a different color with a shiny gold nameplate.

  “Move along,” the man said. “You can't be here.”

  She looked back at her target and saw the man had reconsidered and was guiding his date in a wide path around her.

  “I said, move along,” hotel man said more forcefully. He stepped closer.

  Anger flared inside Lorelei as her meal money walked past.

  She jerked her hood away from her face and was pleased by his startled reaction.

  “This is a public sidewalk,” she said.

  “And this is my hotel, so move along.”

  “Oh, so you own this hotel? I doubt that Mr. Monkey Suit.”

  “Listen, you little bitch. I'm the concierge here. Now move along or I'll call the cops.”

  She swung the empty cup in his direction and coffee dregs flew out staining the man's white shirt with flecks of brown.

  “Goddamnit!” He grabbed at her, but she was already down the sidewalk.

  She turned around, laughing and skipping backward. “Mr. Monkey Suit! Mr. Monkey Suit!” she called. “Go lick some boots, Mr. Monkey Suit!”

  The man shot her the bird, threw up his hands and disappeared into the hotel.

  Lorelei was suddenly mad at herself for pushing the confrontation so far. She'd never be able to spange at the Driskill again. Panic set in. The concierge was probably calling the cops now. Just like the man said, she had to move along.