No Offense

by Francesca D'Armata

  “Sure you do. It’ll be a couple weeks, right?”

  She read the paperwork on my desk.

  “How’d you know?” He looked for a reaction.

  Unfazed, she walked her fingers up his arm. “Oh, a little birdie told me.”

  The traffic came to a standstill. Nick shifted to neutral.

  “Nick, let me pick out the colors in your condo.”

  “Got it all done but the bedroom.”

  “I’m an expert in bedrooms. When I finish, you’ll never want to come out of the room.”

  “I hope we’re still talking about the decor.”

  “We’ll make a day of it,” Cricket sang. “We can get the linens and everything. Go out to lunch. It will be fun! I’ll do some special decorating for you.”

  He shifted gears. They were boxed in.

  “Nick, you realize Cricket’s in college. Right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Just don’t forget; Cricket is a grown woman now.”

  He pressed tightly toward the door. “I prefer clean earth tones.”

  “You need to add at least one jewel tone. Like your tie. Looks way better than a cream-colored one.” She winked.

  He swung his head toward her and then back at the road. What’s she up to?

  Chapter seventeen

  Finding a women’s shelter in Lubbock wasn’t easy. They not only didn’t advertise; they were shrouded. Steely finally found someone who gave her a hotline number. The hotline wasn’t much of a hotline. A directory assistant screened her before providing another number to call. It took all day for a call back. After answering dozens of questions, she finally was given an address.

  The facility was located only a few blocks from the university. All she needed was somewhere safe until she could find something more permanent. It would be somewhere that campus police wouldn’t run her off. The dorm bench and her car were not considered acceptable sleeping facilities.

  Two circles around the block advanced her no more except to realize the street number did not exist. She parked and walked, checking every door until she found a midrise cinder-block building. The name and address of the Henderson Women and Children’s Center might have been left off the building, but they remembered to install a reinforced-steel door.

  To the left of the door was a glass window, a good two inches thick. She tried pushing the door, but the slab of steel didn’t budge. She stood, staring blankly, until a light lit up the window. Her eyes caught the BULLETPROOF sticker in the lower right corner.

  The lady inside spoke through a speaker.

  “Yes?” the woman asked.

  “I’d like a room, please,” said Steely politely.

  “Do you have a bed reserved here?” She popped a mean piece of gum as she spoke.

  “Well, no, not yet. But I would gladly pay a reasonable rate.”

  “Honey, this ain’t no hotel.”

  “I just need a place to stay for a while.”

  “Come in.” The door cranked open with ease. The structure resembled a family resort. An indoor playground was the focal point of the first and second floors. Several mothers watched as their children played. The women were smiling, but their faces were worn.

  “Come over here, please,” she said.

  Her name tag read “Jane,” but that was clearly not her real name unless everyone who worked there had the same name. The drawer beside her was full of “Jane” badges.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Is your life in imminent danger?”

  “Danger?” Steely flashed her eyes toward the playground and then back to Jane.

  “Has someone threatened you and/or tried to harm you and/or your family and/or caused you and/or your family physical or emotional harm?” This was clearly not the first time Jane asked those questions.

  “No.” Steely took an extended look at the mothers. This facility was on lockdown. The mothers were smiling, but they hadn’t always smiled. Most of them had some sort of visible bruising.

  “Then, sorry, we’re full,” said Jane. “We’re only taking life-endangerment cases right now.”

  Life endangerment? “Miss, I’m sorry to have bothered you.” Steely turned toward the door and waited for it to open.

  “Young lady?” Jane said.

  “Yes?” she said, not turning back.

  “You don’t have any place else to go?”

  “No, but I’ll be fine.”

  “You can go to the general shelter. They’ll take you since you’re homeless. Turn right at the next light. You’ll see it on the left.”

  Steely glanced over her shoulder and nodded. “Thank you. I’ll give it a shot.” She made a quick exit. As she walked away, a young mother with two small children approached the same door. Her right arm was in a cast. The door opened without a question asked. The young mother had been there before. She knew the routine.

  The general shelter was easy to spot. The lighted sign above the front door was clear about what was inside. They had plenty space for Steely or anyone else who dared to enter. But Ron and Bethany, the couple who ran the place, blocked her from taking further steps inside.

  “This place isn’t for you,” Bethany said firmly. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “We put our lives at risk every day we’re here.” Ron shook his head. “Someone could lose it and go berserk. Some of the people here are barely functional. Many have fried their brains with drugs. Some unfortunately are still users. We’re here to help them. You can’t stay here.”

  Steely listened. Then she decided to get real with them. “Is it safer than living under a bridge? Because so far, that’s my only other option. I’d sleep in my car if I could find a safe place to park. It’s a weird feeling waking up hooked onto a tow truck. It cost me sixty-five dollars for a ride I didn’t want to take.”

  Bethany poked Ron. They agreed. “You can go to the Henderson Women’s and Children Center,” Bethany said. “You’ll be safe there.”

  “It’s really nice.” Ron picked up a phone.

  “No, I can’t go there,” Steely rebutted.

  “Don’t worry,” Bethany said. “We can get you in Henderson.”

  “I really appreciate it. But no, I can’t do that.”

  “You sure?” asked Bethany.

  Steely nodded.

  Ron set the phone down. “OK. If this is what you want.”

  “But you must keep to yourself,” Bethany instructed. “Don’t be friendly. Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Avoid eye contact with everyone. We’ll put you in the far back. It may be a little safer in case there’s trouble up front.”

  Steely took a deep breath and exhaled, nostrils flaring. “Thank you.” She lowered her head and maneuvered to the back. It didn’t take but a few steps before she looked into the eyes of Ron and Bethany’s objections. Space didn’t mean a private room with a bed and a mattress. Space meant a cot. And a general shelter meant anyone generally human—most of the time—qualified for a cot crammed up next to another. There were some road-rage-looking people cohabitating in the open, square room. Most were men. Only two other women in the entire place. They must not have been in imminent danger, or they surely wouldn’t have been there. Not one person stayed at the shelter because his or her life was good. Everyone had trouble or was trouble.

  Steely took her place on the eighth cot in the ninth row, with her allotted blanket and premium pillow. The cot was made of a washable canvas. It was clean but tough. No problem. She was tired enough to rest on a bed of rocks.

  Within a week, Steely learned how to sleep with one eye open and one leg hanging off the cot. By the end of the first month, she was educated about life in a shelter: First, you don’t get any sleep at the general shelter with people fighting spontaneously throughout the night. Second, you learn how to get out of their way fast. The cops were called almost every other day to maintain order. Third, they don’t do background checks. If they did, they’d have to kick out many of the occupants. On any given day
, fifteen to twenty of the residents had a device strapped around their ankles with a tiny blinking light. They were the convicted felons on parole. You don’t get that kind of leg accessory for a misdemeanor.

  After school started, Steely spent most evenings at the campus library. It was open around the clock, and its lounge chairs (big enough for a bear) were more comfortable than a bed. She studied each day until she fell asleep. She’d leave at sunrise, so she could get back to the shelter and change clothes before class. The occupants usually weren’t throwing punches at six in the morning. They were either worn out or passed out. Either way, it was the most peaceful time of day.

  Thanksgiving week proved to be the most peaceful week. Everyone left, except Steely, Ron, and Bethany. The couple set a small table with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Ron and Bethany held hands and then reached over the table for Steely to join them. Ron gave thanks and passed Steely a plate.

  The couple seemed balanced, smart, and loving. Steely wondered how they ended up running a place that most people wouldn’t set foot in. They spent every day working with people who had more problems than could be named.

  Maybe Steely should have worked up to the question, but she didn’t. She asked pointedly. “Why are you here?”

  Ron looked over at Bethany. “When we got married, we pictured a family with children and a puppy. You see, we both were only children, so we wanted at least two.”

  Steely set her fork down. They can’t have children. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No, it’s a normal question,” said Bethany. “I’d be wondering too.”

  Ron said, “Steely, my parents died in a car accident right after we got married. Then Bethany’s mother died of breast cancer two years later. Her dad passed from a stroke a few days after that.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Bethany tightened her grip on Ron’s hand. “We were just about to consider adopting a baby when we saw Jeri, our next door neighbor, get beat up by her boyfriend.”

  Steely’s face broadened. “Did she survive?”

  Bethany nodded. “She got a restraining order and took off with their baby. Ron and I started thinking. What if she hadn’t had the money to leave? She’d have been homeless unless someone took her in. An average of three women each day are killed by domestic violence.”

  Ron looked around the room, spreading his arms. “We didn’t want to live just for ourselves. We can’t help everyone, but we can help some. The biggest problem is drugs.”

  Steely looked down at the table. Steve’s credit card sat on top of a grocery receipt. She bent close enough to read it and then shot her gaze back up at the couple. They didn’t need to be working at the general shelter. They didn’t get paid either. Their last name was Henderson. They were trust-fund babies.

  The shelter went back to its daily ruckus until the week of Christmas. Again, everyone left except Steely and the Hendersons. She expected a quiet Christmas Eve, her first without her mom or dad. This was before the choir from Outreach Christian Church poured into the building. It wasn’t the gifts or the carols that helped her the most. It was the people who cared for her—a stranger housed in a place she never thought she’d be at Christmas.

  Staying at the shelter helped Steely realize how easy it would be for some to end up homeless. The people there had some of life’s worst problems. Not all caused their own problems. Some had other people who caused their problems. Either way, they all found themselves with no place to call home.

  Steely began the winter semester by establishing a routine. She spent her days at school. Evenings at the library. Then she went back to the shelter to shower and dress. The library served two purposes: study course work and research financial fraud. The court cases she studied were way more interesting than her school books. Especially the ones the prosecutors won.

  One morning during the first week of class, Steely came back to the shelter to clean up. Everyone was asleep except one woman who appeared to be in her midthirties. This was the first time Steely had seen her. The woman targeted Steely from the moment she entered the facility. Steely ignored her as instructed, making her way through the cots to her spot in the back.

  The woman followed.

  Steely kept moving. They didn’t lock eyes until the woman was a couple of feet away. Steely waved awkwardly and moved on. The woman didn’t wave back. She tracked Steely until Steely reached her cot in the back. Then she got right up in Steely’s face.

  Steely glanced around the room. Everyone was asleep. Ron and Bethany were out of sight, most likely asleep. She hoped the woman was normal enough to handle eye contact. Since there was nowhere to escape, she did what she did best—act normal. “May I help you with something?” she asked.

  The woman growled, “If I ever see you near my man again, I’ll make skinny-girl stew out of you. Throw in a few potatoes, carrots, and onions and you’ll taste like chicken.”

  “Not everything tastes like chicken,” Steely snickered nervously.

  The woman wasn’t amused and continued staring at her through dilated pupils.

  “Ma’am, I don’t know your man,” Steely calmly replied. “And I know I haven’t been around him because I haven’t been around anybody. I’m antisocial.”

  The woman swished out a five-inch blade with an equal-sized handle.

  “Ah!” Steely flung back against the wall. Her mace was within reach. Fighting a razor with a squirt of mace most likely would not be productive. The woman might not even flinch, even if Steely emptied the entire canister on her. Her teeth looked big enough to chew up the can and spit it back at her.

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know your man. I don’t know anyone here except Ron and Bethany.”

  “His name is Ron.” The woman moved the blade closer to a vital vein in Steely’s neck.

  “Oh no! There are two Rons.”

  “Don’t lie to me.” The woman squeezed in tighter.

  Steely thought it might calm the woman if she just confessed and agreed. There was no time to convince her there were two Rons there. She had to speak without moving her jaw. “OK. I promise I’ll never do it again.”

  The woman pressed the weapon on Steely’s neck. The blade was dull and would take additional pressure to slice through skin. “There’s still blood on this from the last skank who said that.”

  Maybe that was a bad call. Maybe reason?

  “Look you don’t want to go back to prison, do you? You could get the death penalty.”

  “Didn’t get it last time. They said I wasn’t fit for trial.”

  “Never mind then.” Steely leaned as far away as she could without falling sideways. Dicing someone up was certainly a parole violation. The assailant would be able to begin preparations for that stew before anyone monitoring the device strapped around her ankle was alerted.

  The woman kept the weapon on Steely’s neck. “I can handle a knife better than a butcher. One slit and you’ll never speak again. That is—if you survive. You understand me?”

  Steely was a mannequin.

  The woman came closer. “Don’t let it happen again.”

  Steely blinked twice.

  The woman flipped the blade back in place and left.

  Steely left too.

  The next three weeks, she bedded down in a sleeping bag in the back seat of her car. The days were short and the evenings frosty. She could shut both eyes at night with no concern that someone might threaten to make a fresh batch of skinny-girl stew. The twenty-four-hour café, where she parked, didn’t mind her taking up a space.

  Steely unzipped herself from the bag, sat up, opened her backpack, and took out an envelope with a paper listing her grades. They were good. Certainly they could have been better. She was fine with them as long as they were good enough to stay on scholarship and keep the upper-level accounting classes she scheduled for the summer. Housing would be plentiful then.

  She rolled up her bag, grabbed a small tote, and headed to the ladies’ roo
m inside the restaurant. Scrubbed her face, brushed her teeth, and changed her clothes. She was about to leave when her cell beeped. Ms. Blackwell’s number flashed on the screen. She hadn’t talked to her in six months.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Julia Blackwell,” she snapped. “Steely, you sound like you’re in a tunnel. Where are you?”

  She darted out the restroom and headed for her car. “Does that sound better?”

  “Are you trying to get me fired?”

  “What? I think we have a bad connection.”

  “I told you to withdraw your application.”

  “I just—”

  “Don’t you know freshmen are required to live in campus housing or at home with parents? The rules were fully covered at the spring open house for prospective students.”

  “Ms. Blackwell, I had no idea. Nobody said anything—”

  “Where are you living anyway?”

  “Close by. You’re not expelling me because of a technicality, are you?” Steely reached the car, opened the door, dropped her bag in the back seat, and got in.

  “It’s a good thing for you that I received your letter of recommendation.”

  “You know some people are unstable. Wait—was it good?”

  “Of course. And I found a spot for you as an RA, as long as you don’t gamble. You don’t, do you?”

  “Gamble? No—”

  “Then the room is yours.”

  Steely hadn’t been in contact with anyone socially since she’d arrived in Lubbock. If a serial killer had grabbed her, no one would have known she was missing. The letter of recommendation did puzzle her. Who would have sent it? It didn’t matter. She had a place to sleep with a home address, and nobody there had mandatory leg bracelets.

  The dorm room was private, since she was replacing two girls, not one. The two previous RAs had been expelled. The school didn’t care much for RAs running a casino out of the dorm. By the end of the fall semester, every student in the building owed them money. Parents complained. Police were called. They were out.

  The room had a second-floor view of her favorite bench and a private bathroom with a shower. The bed wasn’t much softer than a cot, but it was a bed. On top of it was her first piece of mail: an envelope containing a cashier’s check, identical to the ones she and her mom received after her father passed. Anonymous had found her.