by John Shannon
‘Gujarat. That’s just north of what you know as Bombay. Lots of high-tech. But my parents came over when I was two. All I really know is Palo Alto.’
‘You got a strange job for a dot-on-the-forehead Indian,’ Gloria said. ‘I’m a feather-on-the-head Indian, if you don’t take offense.’
‘Ethnicity can be a funny moral area.’
‘If you got a sense of humor,’ Gloria said, and turned away before the obnoxious male partner could put in his two cents.
Somewhere Morty had found a big can of baked beans, and they warmed it on a can of Sterno so the kids didn’t have to eat gefilte fish and chicken soup, but not much ambient heat was making it uphill past the steam leak that they could see billowing out into the staircase when they took turns as scouts with the one flashlight, and it was going to be a chilly night. A jet of steam, probably very hot at first, shot out of the wall enclosure and eventually billowed part way up the stairs but was pretty much defeated by their barricade. The radiator in the room was slightly warm.
They all sat in sweaters and overshirts, scattered around Sam Greengelb’s room after Conor had given up the hunt for his missing guitar and reverted to the harp. Greengelb and Morty Lipman were teaching him, syllable-by-syllable, an old Yiddish folk song, one they told him that Billie Holiday had once recorded. He was game, but he insisted on knowing the chorus in English.
Maeve watched out the window, which had a pretty good view of Main Street and a bit of Fifth, and no one out there looked like the thugs, not unless they were hiding in old refrigerator boxes. But there was a big navy blue SUV that didn’t look like it belonged there. She began to wonder how they were going to get through this weird night unscathed. But she liked all these people and would never have run out on them.
‘Men koyft dos nisht far keyn shum gelt,
Dos krigt men nor umzist’.
Conor wrinkled his forehead and memorized phonetically.
Maeve saw a police car with a big 179 painted on its white roof and a 1 on its trunk. It cruised along Fifth and she wished she could flag it down. She was chagrined to think they were just as imprisoned on the third floor now as the bad guys were locked out.
‘A yidishe mame,
Es gibt kayn besers oyf der velt.
A yidishe mame, oy vey,
Vi biter ven zi felt’.
She had no idea what they were singing, and even less interest, given their situation. She decided to be the responsible party and, while there was still a little daylight, she went upstairs with the flashlight, to make sure nobody else was hiding out there and to check exits. Mostly the room doors stood open to cheerless barren cells, the way she and Conor had left them, with stained mattresses askew and nothing personal on the walls or dressers. A few rooms had a rickety chair and a table the size of a hanky. Nobody answered her hollers. This had to be one of the most anonymous and forlorn habitations on the planet, she thought.
But something inside her objected to the thought, as if she had just affronted the homeless and impoverished. Every place people live is as valid as every other place, she decided. So much of life is just luck. The days in Skid Row had affected her deeply. When this is all over, I will do special exercises, or special penance, or just special charity, to feel normal again.
The sounds of the folksinging drifted up the steps as she started back down. For just an instant she felt terribly lonely – maybe more than she’d ever felt – but she knew that she had loyal allies down there, if not close friends.
Later, when she was back and pretending to take part, the old men taught Conor the chorus of their song in English, swaying back and forth beside one another where they sat on the edge of the bed.
‘My yiddishe mama,
I’d like to kiss that wrinkled brow.
I long to hold her hands once more
As in days gone by
And ask her to forgive me
For things I did that made her cry.’
Maeve couldn’t help thinking of her own mother, and various things she had done to make her cry, and her eyes burned a little as she let herself settle into the burden of the song.
Jack Liffey parked his pickup half a block from the Catholic Liberation shelter and took a really deep breath. He’d already returned to the horrible warehouse and found it utterly empty, and now he had only two possible starting points for searching The Nickel – here and Chopper Tyrus’s cardboard condo. This one was harder, at least emotionally, but he had a feeling it would probably be more helpful. He was still pretty shaky on his feet and had to grasp the brickwork and chain-link from time to time as he approached.
‘Hi, ma’am, remember me?’
The big black woman sat on her folding chair in front of the center. She set down a paper plate of beans and franks and frowned hard into the dusk to try to make him out.
‘You the man come here wid Chopper. You the miracle man.’
‘Absolutely correct. Could you tell the sister I’m here?’
‘Which sister you mean?’ Cagy – for some reason – as if there were lots of nuns in residence.
‘The skinny nun.’
‘Ah, Miz Mary Rose.’
It was hard for him to think of her as anything but Eleanor Ong – or a couple of pet names he’d once used – but he nodded. Sister Mary Rose it was. Even if the memory of her straddling his lap and muffling her cries of pleasure was fresh enough to start arousing him again.
‘Where I’m at right now, I like you-all to do me a favor, sir.’
‘But of course.’
She directed him to the paper bag behind the dumpster just outside the fence, and he could tell from the feel of the sloshing bottle that it was probably a half-drained pint of some twist-cap fortified wine. He’d once known their names but had forgotten them all except Thunderbird and Night Train. Gallo made most of them but didn’t put its name on the labels.
‘How do I get … this package in to you?’ He was afraid to toss the bottle over.
‘They’s a cut in the fence.’ She showed him a short slit in the wire and she held it open hard, just enough to pass the bag through. She took a good head-back slug of whatever it was and then gave a grateful smile to Jack Liffey.
‘You ever need a good time, mister, you come find me.’ He decided it was positive news: she didn’t seem to know what had gone on between him and Eleanor. The woman hid the bag behind a bush and went inside.
It was still early evening but starting to become chilly and windy out, like the rainy night before, and he felt a new sympathy for all those caught out on the streets in the winter, homeless and destitute, even in L.A. He’d had his share and didn’t want another.
Then she stepped out the door, dazzling and confident, and came to a dead stop on the porch when she saw Jack Liffey. ‘We can’t do this.’
‘It’s not what you think. I’m looking for my daughter. You told me you saw her. Please – let it be the thing that you do for me.’
‘Yes, I did see Maeve. She’s sure grown up. But it was two days ago.’ She set her arms akimbo. ‘I have no idea where she is now.’ She waited a while, then sighed. ‘All right, there’s a woman staying here that Maeve helped. She’d do just about anything for her. Let me ask.’ The sun was declining beneath a black cloud bank far to the west, and a last gleam of light lashed out, between the skyscrapers of downtown, and caught her like a Kleig light, in a thoughtful pose, watching him. ‘You’re a sore temptation, Jack.’
‘You, too.’
She turned and went inside without another word. He’d have understood if she’d just sent him away immediately.
She’d once told him – her very last words to him way back when – that she didn’t think he was going to make it. She and Gloria were a pair. He wondered why he was drawn to such strong women – if it was a vanity of some kind.
Then a skinny woman with the caved-in face of the dustbowl and limp blond hair came out the door. She wore a thin dress, a pink sweater, and weird rubber shoes. A smaller
edition of the woman peeked around the door, her expression as ferocious as a guardian angel.
‘Sister said Maeve was in trouble,’ the woman offered.
‘I’m her father, Jack. Who are you?’
‘Felice Stone. I been looking for my old man Clarence, from San Antone. You know him?’
Hope really was eternal, he thought. It was starting to get cold out, and he saw how thin their clothes were. ‘Sorry, no. Do you know where Maeve might be tonight?’
‘What’s her trouble?’ the little girl snapped out.
‘She has too much sympathy for her own good, I’d say,’ Jack Liffey replied.
That seemed to make the little girl even angrier.
‘I’m sorry, what’s your name?’
‘Millie,’ the girl said. ‘Can you help us find my father?’
‘Probably not, Millie. This is a pretty big city that tends to swallow people up. But if you tell me what you know about Maeve, I’ll ask a police officer I know to help with your father.’
Sister Mary Rose came out behind them, carrying a folded blanket. She threw the blanket to the black woman eating the last of her dinner. ‘Don’t leave now,’ she said. ‘The rule is you can’t come back in after sunset.’
‘Eleanor – shame on you,’ Jack Liffey said. He had a strange intuition that these two could just possibly help him find Maeve. ‘If we all followed the rules, the bullies would win every time. These women love Maeve, I can tell. If they want to help, I’ll protect them.’
‘Can you even protect yourself right now?’
‘Ooh. You hit low. I’m still here, you see.’ He was tempted to add, ‘And I’m armed,’ but he didn’t. It wouldn’t have carried the right weight with Eleanor. ‘Millie, do you know anything about where Maeve might be?’ he asked.
‘No, siree.’ She seemed genuinely apologetic.
‘I made the decision to let them hear your story, Jack. You can see they can’t help you. Let them stay in the shelter where it’s warm and safe.’
He was about to agree.
‘We all know they ain’t no safe, not nohow, Sister ma’am,’ Felice said with her beleaguered intensity. ‘Not in this here world. Even good union men from strong companies get laid off now. Even schoolteachers get just junked out with the junk.’
Eleanor let her head nod to one side, as if she’d been chastised by her Mother Superior. ‘Thank you, Felice. That tells me where I live. Go with God and Jack, if you wish, and help him. He’s a good man. Jack, God help you if you let any harm come to these innocents.’
Strangely, though still unsteady on his feet and clinging to the fence, he felt that he had been waiting years and years for just such a responsibility. He wondered if he might still be trying to prove himself to Eleanor, whom he had once failed spectacularly. ‘This one isn’t about you,’ Jack Liffey said softly to Eleanor.
No, it was his task – the one he would ride until the wheels fell off.
‘Are you so sure?’
‘I’m not sure the sun will come up tomorrow. Please get them coats,’ he requested.
She nodded once and went inside. Quickly she came back with the requisites.
‘Come on, ladies,’ Jack Liffey said. ‘Our job, should we accept it, is to find Maeve tonight. She’s out here somewhere. And it’s a cold and dangerous night.’
Eleanor let the girl and her mother out the gate with her key, and she followed them to his pickup. ‘Lend a willing ear, Lord God, to our prayers, and bless this truck with Your holy right hand. Direct Your holy angels to accompany it tonight, that they may keep those who ride in it from all dangers, and always guard them.’
‘That’s impressive,’ Jack Liffey said. ‘Do you have a blessing for skateboards, too?’
‘Shut up, Jack.’ But he saw her suppressing a smile as she turned away. He did his best not to look in the rearview mirror.
The bench seat of the little Toyota pickup wasn’t really roomy enough for all their hips, even skinny as the women were, and the little girl had to sit forward in the middle, her legs on her mom’s side of the hump. ‘OK,’ Jack Liffey said. ‘Ideas? Anything? Places you saw her.’
‘Kin you git me a cigarette first?’ Felice asked. ‘I think I going to die if I go another night without smokes.’
So that was part of her motive. ‘Easiest thing in the world. But think about Maeve, please, while I drive. Where would she go?’
‘She was looking for a boy.’
He nodded. He wished he had a photo of Conor. If there had been any extras in the house, Gloria had grabbed them. He’d seen one of Maeve’s copies briefly, but he hadn’t seen Conor in the flesh since he was about two years old.
‘Please. I need a ciggie.’
In a few blocks he pulled up on a hand-lettered sign for Mike’s Market and parked in front. ‘What’s your brand?’ Jack Liffey asked.
‘Cheap is good. American Eagles is good.’
He’d never heard of it. Some brand they’d come out with since he’d quit so many years ago, he thought. ‘How about I get you something nice? Virginia Slims or Marlboros.’
‘Oooh, Slims. Please.’
That was good because it sealed him off from temptation. Gloria had always said that if a man even touched one of those skinny pastel cigarettes, his balls would fall off.
As a big black security guard loomed in the shadows watchfully, an Asian clerk peered out a small hatch. ‘Have you got any single-malt whiskeys from Islay?’ Jack Liffey asked.
The clerk frowned. ‘You want walk with the king? In this store? No got.’
It’d just been a tease. ‘I’d like a pack of Virginia Slims, and … here.’ He plucked a Milky Way out of a display and set it in the metal declivity that passed under the bulletproof glass.
The price he rang up on the cigarettes made Jack Liffey lift his eyebrows a bit since he hadn’t bought smokes in two decades – $6.67 a pack – but he knew the real problem was still coming, what he called his people’s credit card, the $100 bill he always kept in his glove box. His wallet was long gone. ‘Look, this is the only cash I have right now. Can you accept it?’
‘No take. Too big.’ The clerk shook his head firmly at the bill and held up two palms.
‘How much would I have to buy in here for you to take it? How about fifty dollars of stuff?’
‘Sixty dollah.’ Life was a haggle.
‘Fifty-five.’
‘Sixty. Gotta be more half.’
He decided not to argue the math, and he wandered the two cramped aisles in the little mart picking up treats at random for the women, candy, potato chips, mac-and-cheese boxes. There weren’t a lot of luxury goods. And nothing much appealed to him.
‘What would you buy?’ he asked the black sphinx who was eyeing him neutrally.
‘I go for the beef jerky, man.’
Jack Liffey grabbed a handful of cello packs of some mini-mart brand of over-processed flaked-and-formed beef jerky. Back at the clerk window, he told the man to throw in a full carton of Slims.
It was well over $60, and the clerk took Jack Liffey’s Ben Franklin. On the way out with the paper bag, he stopped and tossed the beef jerky packets to the guard.
‘On me, friend.’
‘Jesus be with you tonight.’
That was twice in a half-hour Jesus had been enjoined to watch over him. He wished he could trade those blessings in for ordinary luck. He had more faith in that.
He handed the bag in the truck window to Felice. Millie had crawled across her mother’s lap, her face was outside, hung over the truck window and her finger jabbing urgently at something out there over his shoulder. Whirling around, Jack Liffey felt a chill, as if a man with a three-foot machete was about to attack him.
What he saw was an empty sidewalk and the window of Mike’s Market, if you could call it a window any longer, every inch blocked by cardboard cartons, a fading ‘Special’ sign for milk, posters for fortified wine, and dozens of promotional notices that had seen better days, some f
or products like Colgate Dental Cream with Gardol that no longer even existed – or maybe they did. Down in the lower right corner someone had managed to slide in a ‘Missing Person’ notice, with a boy’s photograph and a request to call what he recognized instantly as Maeve’s cell number. He walked over and squatted down to it and quickly noticed the resemblance to Mike Lewis, almost impish, dark wavy hair and wise eyes.
‘Hello, Conor,’ Jack Liffey said to the photo. ‘Haven’t seen you in donkey’s years.’
He went straight back into the store to ask about the notice.
In California, service sector jobs increased from 79 per cent of all jobs in 1990 to 84 per cent in 2006, many of these making or serving fast food. A full 43 per cent of the newest jobs were in the lowest fifth of the earnings distribution. The typical Latino worker’s hourly wage declined by 8 per cent, and African-Americans fared even worse.
FIFTEEN
To Get out of the Box Canyon Alive
‘How soon from the last tenant out on the street to the stripping crew coming in the door?’
Eddie Wolverton shrugged. ‘I don’t really handle that end, Mose. Danny’s your structural engineer, but I bet he could put a contractor on alert. Probably six a.m. the day after, and they could be hanging the waste chutes by seven. But it’s not like there’s a lot of folks standing on line to take your place. You know, some guy with shiny Manolos just waiting to relaunch the Fortnum as the ritzy new Fortnum-Sheraton Skid Row.’
‘Don’t kid yourself,’ Vartabedian said. He held out a box of his second-best Corona Canelas, and Eddie waved them off. He didn’t keep his best ones here in his local office. ‘There’s three public housing agencies who’d love to have that building to rent out to lots more bums. I bid high to drive them off in the first place, but it’s all contingent on this fucking catch-twenty-two about the place being empty.’
Vartabedian plucked a cigar out himself, rolled it in his mouth to wet it, and then used the little gold guillotine off his desktop to circumcise it. From where he sat, by turning his head slightly to the right, he could see a big red sun inching down and across the narrow slit between the KPMG tower and the Deloitte & Touche. He nodded to suggest the interesting view to Eddie, but he didn’t notice whether Eddie bothered to look. It really was a glorious sight, he thought as he puffed hard. He watched the tail end of the sun creep across the opening, an incandescent red gasbag sinking at a shallow angle into the Pacific. His father had burned out one of his foveas watching a solar eclipse in Turkey when he was twelve, but there was little danger of that here with the sun so low and all the smoked glass on his retrofitted windows.
