Ben Soul

by Richard George

psychic synapses had been slowly healing. She remembered ever more clearly her desire to revenge herself on La Señora and on Dickon (she had come to believe Dickon had led La Señora’s attack).

  Delta had expanded Vanna’s cleaning chores. When she finished cleaning Turquoise’s room, she had to clean Delta’s apartment. It was larger, of course, than any of the working ladies’ rooms. Delta had a bathroom, elegantly appointed with marble fixtures that required special polishing, a bedroom with a great heart-shaped bed that required special sheets that were very hard to fit to the bed, and a sitting room cluttered with plaster saints and votive candles. Several particularly vulgar and sentimental religious prints littered the walls. Each of these had votive candles, also. Once each week Vanna had to remove the candle stubs and put new ones in the little glass holders. Each glass holder had to be washed (which meant scraping off wax and soot) before it received the new candle. Vanna wondered how Delta managed to breathe when all the candles were lit. The sitting room was always low on oxygen, even with the doors open.

  In the end, though, Vanna found an advantage. She had just begun on the candleholders when she knocked a particularly hideous representation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus loose. Its nail fell from the loose hole in the plaster, and only Vanna’s quick reflexive response prevented the prized atrocity from plunging to the floor and an almost certain smashing. This picture had covered Delta’s wall safe. It had a combination lock, of course, and Vanna knew that would stop her prying for a time. Delta, for all her business acumen, was not clever or devious enough to hide her combination very well. She had written it on a piece of paper that she had pasted to the fallen picture. Vanna quickly memorized it. Then she replaced the nail in its loose hole and carefully hung the picture on it. She swept up the plaster fragments that had fallen on the floor and completed her cleaning. She left the picture hanging on a slant. She hoped Delta would straighten the frame, thereby dislodging the nail and bringing down the picture.

  Evidently Delta had tried to straighten the picture. When she went in the next day, the plaster was patched. The picture was down, disclosing the safe. Delta stayed in the room the whole time Vanna was cleaning. Vanna pretended to take no notice of the safe. The day after that Delta had re-hung the picture. Vanna guessed Delta might be holding the retired prostitute’s funds in the safe, along with the receipts from the House. One day when Delta was occupied outside the House on business, Vanna opened the safe and checked its contents. It held several rings, some very old letters, and a stout envelope with the funds for the convent. Vanna shrewdly returned everything to its correct position. She deemed it wisest to take no money from the fund until she could take it all and make good her escape.

  Escape was a major hurdle. How could she get away from the House without pursuit? Delta had many friends on the Dry Bone City police force, and others among the local state troopers. Vanna knew she’d not get far without help.

  The Irons brothers entered her life again. Hannah Bollix, about ten days before the winter solstice celebrations, fell ill with influenza. It kept her in her bed for several days, days when Vanna had to serve in the kitchen. The canapés in the parlor were as carefully made as ever, but the ladies ate very plainly indeed. Vanna did not pretend to understand cookery, or to have any culinary talent whatsoever. She managed to fry hamburger patties and boil potatoes. She could also tear lettuce for a salad. For several days the working ladies at Delta’s House suffered Vanna’s uninspired dinners.

  Vanna also had to take responsibility for deliveries. Among those who delivered items to the House were the Irons brothers. They delivered clean towels and bedding, the very same rainbow assortment Vanna used to refurbish the workrooms for the ladies.

  When Vanna opened the door to accept the first delivery, Clapton called back to his brother, “Hey, Brandon, it’s the lady that looks like Mama!” Brandon came hurrying, a load of colored towels in his arms.

  “Cheese, you’re right, Bro,” he said. “Howdy, Ma’am. Don’t remember us, I suppose.”

  “Yes,” Vanna said. “I believe we met in the parlor.” She spoke sharply.

  “We need to apologize,” Clapton said. He held his cap in his hands and shuffled his feet. A faint sour smell rose from him. Vanna wondered whether it was his natural body odor, or some effect of the rain’s growing mold on him.

  “For what?” she said.

  “For thinking you were a working lady,” said Brandon. He came up on the back porch. Vanna noticed the top towel on the stack he carried had been spotted with the rain that had begun to fall.

  “Apology accepted,” she said. “Stack the towels and bedding in the usual place,” she ordered. “Let me know when you’re finished.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Brandon said. Clapton shuffled his feet again, and jammed his cap on his head, the bill covering his neck. They turned and went to the rear of their truck and began relaying sheets, pillowcases, and towels into the small room off the House’s rear entry. Vanna went to the kitchen and brewed a small pot of coffee. Her coffee was atrocious, she knew. She suspected the Irons brothers wouldn’t notice; she doubted they were latté cognoscenti.

  When they had completed their unloading, Vanna invited them into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. They each drank three cups of the vilely weak brew she offered them. She made small talk with them. She discovered Clapton was the brainy one; he had completed tenth grade. Brandon hadn’t quite finished the ninth grade. Then they quit school to hustle laundry for an uncle who exploited the family connection for every possible cent.

  She also discovered they had lost their mother about a year before, and now lived together in a small set of rooms in a gloomy boarding house. For them, the House was a grand and glamorous place, one they could seldom afford. Even to sit in the kitchen thrilled them. Clapton complimented Vanna on her coffee several times, claiming it was just as good as the brew his mother used to make. Brandon offered an enthusiastic “Uh-Huh!” after Clapton’s compliments.

  Vanna let them rattle on about the wonders of laundry pickup and delivery for a while longer. She set about preparing the vegetables for the ladies’ supper. She was boldly going to essay boiling carrots as well as potatoes tonight, and frying sausage patties instead of ground beef.

  “Boys,” she said, “how far did you say you travel on your route?”

  “Mostly around Dry Bone City,” Brandon said.

  “Have you ever been up north?”

  Clapton answered. “We went all the way to Skater Falls last winter,” he said. Skater Falls was a small town about forty miles north of Dry Bone City.

  “Ever been to the Keystone?” she asked, naming the state capitol. “Ever been to the City?”

  “Those places are too big for the likes of us,” Brandon said.

  “Yeah, we’d get lost, or raped, or something,” Clapton said.

  “Not if you had somebody experienced with you,” she said. “Somebody like me. I’ve been both places. I could show you the ropes.”

  “Cheese!” Brandon said. “Think about it, Clapton! We could have some real fun!”

  “What would we do for money, Bro?”

  “You said your uncle owes you a bonus, didn’t you?” Vanna asked. They hadn’t, but now they remembered saying it.

  “Yeah, he does,” Brandon said.

  “Right,” Clapton said, “but we’ll never see it.”

  “You’ll just have to take it,” Vanna said. “Don’t you collect the receipts for the route?”

  “Yes,” Clapton said.

  “He always counts that money real close,” Brandon said.

  “What if you just kept it for one day, left that night for the north?” Vanna said. “Take the truck, too. You can make peace with him when you get back.”

  “I don’t know,” Clapton said. Vanna saw he was churning the idea behind his pimpled brow.

  “Maybe we could, Clap,” Brandon said. “Let’s think
about it.”

  “Could you go, Miss Donna?”

  “I could, in about a week,” she said. “It’ll take some planning, though.”

  “Next week we collect from a lot of customers,” Brandon said. “It’d be a perfect time, Clap.”

  “Let me think about it,” Clapton said.

  “Maybe you boys should get on your way,” Vanna said, “while you think about it. Don’t want to get your uncle mad at you. Let me know what you decide to do.” The boys got up, caps in hand, and thanked Vanna for the coffee. They left the House talking conspiratorially about getting away to the north. Vanna shut the door behind them and crossed her fingers. Some seeds, she thought, get planted in very uncertain soil.

  The Tea Party

  Delta brought Vanna a knit dress of a soft rose color. “This should suit you. Wear it to the church tea party next Sunday.”

  “What party?”

  “Every year in December the local Evangelical Church of the Foursquare Bible, that church two blocks from here, throws a tea party for all the girls in the house. Their invitation includes all the staff, as well.”

  “Why some church want to throw a tea party for a house of whores, and why they would want to go, is beyond me,” Vanna groused.

  “It’s for something they call their mission outreach. The food’s good, the tea is drinkable, and the ladies are polite. I think some of them are curious. Once I even