The Beggar's Pawn

by John L'Heureux

  Poor Helen was working herself half to death, asking for extra hours at Walmart, risking the annoyance of her faggoty boss. “Stop pestering me!” he said to her when she pleaded for extra hours. “You’re already at part-time maximum,” he said. “Part time means part time and not full time. You’re not a full-time employee. You don’t qualify, period. Honest to heavens, you people are all the same!” Reginald wanted to know what he meant by “you people” but Helen, wisely, did not inquire. Just thinking about money made him crazy. It was for Iris and Helen that he needed it. He himself could live without it; he had demonstrated that for most of his life. But poor Iris. Poor Helen.

  * * *

  —

  POOR HELEN WAS BORN Helen Driscoll. The time was the 1970s and the place was San Francisco and her parents—Elena and Fred—good friends in marijuana and sometimes in cocaine, were typical druggies of that day and place. They cadged food from the back doors of restaurants and coffee shops, they panhandled down at the wharf, where they also performed—Fred on banjo, Elena singing—and when things got really bad, Elena offered her services as a party escort outside the Jack Tar Hotel on Geary and Van Ness. She hated doing it but it was sheer profit and one trick usually brought in enough cash to keep them going for a week or two. On one of these unprotected forays into amateur prostitution she got pregnant and, after three months of unexplained sickness, she went off to the free clinic where she learned she was going to be a mother. As part of the clinic’s service she was warned, firmly, that taking drugs would prove disastrous to the baby. The nurse questioned her about her home, her family, and her feelings about this pregnancy, and when Elena gave only the usual druggie responses, the nurse recommended an immediate abortion. Elena was Roman Catholic, however, and would not even consider it. Instead she left Fred and moved in with her mother, a lawyer and a functioning alcoholic. Elena stopped drugs altogether for several consecutive weeks, and at those times when she absolutely had to have something, she limited herself to marijuana. By the time Helen was born, Elena was thoroughly depressed but she was completely off drugs.

  Helen was born prematurely, with only some of the lesser signs of fetal drug addiction. She was tiny at birth and until she was a year old she suffered from a heart murmur. She was hypersensitive to light and sudden noise of any kind and she grew more slowly than other children. She was a pretty little thing and, when Elena tired of life at home and returned to life on the street with Fred, Elena’s mother hired a nurse and a nanny and took over the care of the abandoned Helen.

  In school she was thought to be slow because, though she was interested and tried hard, she was awkward and frightened and withdrawn. She could not understand jokes and she took sarcasm literally. She had a sweet disposition, however, and tried always to please, and as she grew older she learned how to fit in with the others. Her real life began after high school.

  She got a job as a barista at Starbucks. Reginald was a regular there—a super black coffee and a refill—every morning at eleven. He had a favorite easy chair by the window and after the first two weeks he had established his routine and Helen would bring him his coffee without having to take his order. She rarely said anything but she waited on him as if it were a privilege and after some time he noticed that she was pretty.

  One morning she brought him his refill and he looked up at her and smiled. She flushed red and returned his smile and she looked beautiful.

  “Have you read this?” he asked, and held up his worn copy of Ulysses.

  “I’m reading it now,” she said, and he looked at her as if he didn’t believe her. “I am,” she said. “I saw you reading it every day and I figured it must be good. So I bought it.”

  “What do you think of it?”

  “I don’t understand it. It’s very deep, I guess.”

  “It is deep, and realizing that you don’t understand it is the first step to appreciating it.”

  “I guess,” she said.

  “It’s the greatest novel there is. Period.”

  “I thought it must be.”

  The cashier called her then since there were customers waiting.

  Helen had with some difficulty learned to concoct every drink on the elaborate menu, and she made them quickly and efficiently and well. She was perfectly happy in her job. But now she had to read Ulysses and reading had never come easily to her. She managed to work her way through fifty pages.

  “Have you read Mann and Proust?”

  “I don’t read all that much.”

  “You should read Mann and Proust. They’re the basic modern classics.”

  “I’m still working on Ulysses.”

  “I’m a novelist myself.”

  Helen blushed as the conversation turned personal. “I thought so,” she said. “I see you writing in your notebook all the time.”

  “My journal.”

  “Journal.”

  “I’m a philosophical novelist, basically.”

  “It must be wonderful.”

  He asked her out to the movies.

  “What’s playing?” she said, and then realized her mistake. “I’d love to,” she said.

  They went to see The English Patient because it was an adaptation from a novel by Michael Ondaatje. The book was well written, Reginald said, but it lacked a sound philosophical base.

  “I haven’t read it,” Helen said.

  “You’ve got a whole education ahead of you.” Reginald invited her back to the guest cottage he rented from the Lorings. “We can have a drink in peace there,” he said. “It’s my new place.”

  She did not drink, but she accepted his offer to sleep with him. He was pleased to discover she was still a virgin, or had been until now, and he saw happy times ahead. It was easy to see she was hopelessly in love with him.

  Later, much later, he was surprised to find he felt something like love for her. He felt protective. He wanted to shield her from her own . . . it wasn’t stupidity, really, it was a kind of innocence. He began to ask her questions about herself and was touched to find that her life had been as friendless and unhappy as his own. He asked her more about herself, and still more, and finally said she could move in with him if she wanted. Her natural goodness and generosity made up for her mental shortcomings and he found it pleased him to protect her and do things for her. That was why he sometimes made her tea when she came home from work and that was why he loved Iris. They were his family now and—the Hollisses be damned—they were the center of his being, his rock and his salvation. It was for them that he needed money.

  * * *

  —

  HE HAD TO DO something about getting more money. What Helen earned at Walmart was fine, it was good pay for dumb work, but now that he was back smoking—and, to be honest, he did the odd hit of coke as well—there was just not enough cash to go around. It wasn’t as if he could take a part-time job at a bar or a fast-food place. That was possible when he was just a druggie but not now that he was a professional writer. He would have to depend on Helen.

  Helen, though, had problems. She couldn’t go back to Starbucks because she had been fired for theft years ago when she was pregnant. It was just a mistake, really. Reginald had bought a new computer and suddenly they found there was no money for food, not even for the next dinner, so when Helen brought him the change for his coffee, she slipped an extra twenty in with the change. Reginald had promised her it was safe, it was really just a loan and he would pay the money back later, but she was seen doing it and the manager made a note of it. She did it again and another note was made. With the third note, she was confronted with a charge of theft and offered the opportunity to quit. She quit, grateful, but now the best she could do for a job was part time at Walmart.

  Reflecting on his money situation, Reginald concluded that it was the Hollisses’ fault. They had led Iris into their orbit with cookies and hot chocolate and they had poisone
d her mind with gifts of clothing and books and they had pushed their materialistic values on her. They had seduced her away from her own family. They had kidnapped her emotionally. And now they should pay.

  This was crazy thinking, he told himself, but it had in it a grain of truth. He made several resolutions.

  He resolved to have nothing to do with them. Just let them see Iris as often as they liked until they saw evidence of the harm they had done. Let them see who have eyes to see.

  No. He resolved to forbid Iris to see them at all. Once they realized she had cut them off completely, they would come to their senses. They were old, after all, and they were facing death. They needed Iris. She was their connection to life.

  No. He resolved to write Claire. She was still crazy for him and he could persuade her that she’d look great as a character in his novel. Or he could just write her out, turn Claire into Clark and make him a handsome rakish gay, cutting a swath through the faggoty wastelands of San Francisco. She’d like that. Ambiguity, she’d call it.

  No, it was all hopeless.

  He sat at his computer, depressed. It was ten thirty in the evening and his working day was done. There had been the usual agony of writing, with the printer shutting down twice because of paper jams. He had skipped lunch in favor of a walk to the park, but he had seen no sign of Maggie or David: their schedule was a mystery now that the Herr Professor was stroked out. For the first time in ages he had prepared tea for Helen when she returned from Walmart. She was looking worn out, poor Helen. They had had a quiet vegetarian dinner, pasta with tomato sauce, and then, with Iris, they had watched a film on Netflix. He couldn’t remember anything about it except that there was constant action that bored him senseless. The Bourne Something or Other with that boy from Boston jumping off roofs and beating the crap out of killers with machine guns. Then, while Iris finished her homework, he and Helen had a quiet talk.

  “The thing is,” he explained, “you have to ask for more hours. Walmart is famous for exploiting their part-time people.”

  “But I’ve asked him three times, Reg, Reggie, and he keeps saying I’ve got as many hours as I’m allowed. If I had more hours I’d be full time.”

  “I know. I know that.” He pulled her closer. “What you have to do is ask him for work off the books. Tell him he can just pay you the minimum wage, and what would ordinarily go to benefits can go to him instead. That way you both make out.”

  Helen couldn’t quite understand this so he repeated himself several times.

  “Reg,” she said, “Reggie. I couldn’t. I don’t think I could.”

  “Of course you can. You’re doing it for me and Iris. The thing is not to offend him. You have to pull back if he gets righteous, if he thinks you’re offering him a bribe.”

  “But it is sort of a bribe, isn’t it?”

  “Good people sometimes have to do bad—equivocal—things.”

  “Equivocal.”

  “Equivocal. So you’ll do it. Yes?”

  “You’re a good man, Reggie. I know that.” She smiled at him, a little sadly, and for that moment she was beautiful. He kissed her then and told her how lucky he was. He got her a bottle of Ambien to help her sleep.

  * * *

  —

  HE TUCKED THEM IN, first Iris, then Helen, with a chaste kiss for each. His two women. And now he was alone at his computer, depressed, sick with worry about money.

  He resolved . . . but, no, he couldn’t think of a new resolution. He got up and put on his hoodie and left the house. The sky was overcast and there was no moon, a perfect night for one of his long walks. He would be out of it tomorrow, no doubt, and he would sleep late and lose his writing time, but he had to live, too, you know, he had a right to exist.

  He set off with his long loping stride through the dark streets of Professorville. There were all kinds of nightlife in East Palo Alto.

  25.

  David was doing well but not as well as expected. He limped a little on his left leg. He was often dizzy and his balance was uncertain. All his gestures were tentative. These things would pass in a short time and, after all, he had suffered a stroke that might have proved fatal. So he was doing well for a man who had had three close encounters with death. This is what he told himself when with difficulty he struggled up from a sitting position or grasped wildly for support as he felt himself about to fall. The earlier strokes had been more kindly and of course he’d been younger then. He didn’t fancy himself looking like an old man.

  Maggie was very patient with him at first but as days passed and he made excuses for not accompanying her on her slow walks with Dickens, she began to show her impatience.

  “You can’t just sit there and turn into a vegetable. And you will if you don’t start getting out of the house. At least for a walk.”

  “I’m dizzy, that’s all.”

  “We’re all dizzy. Come with me. Dickens has to walk.”

  “He doesn’t want to walk, do you, Dickens. You want to stay here with me.”

  Dickens thumped his tail against the carpet.

  “Dickens is dying. You’re not.” Tears came to her eyes as she said this. It sounded heartless, and even more so because it was true.

  “Well, I don’t want to walk but I’ll do it if it’ll make you happy.”

  “Happy is a long way from here, let me tell you. Happy will be when you realize you’ve got to put some effort into living.”

  And so they walked Dickens, who moved more slowly now and with increasing difficulty.

  “See how nice this is?” Maggie said. “You’ll feel much better when you get home. You’ll have more energy and you’ll want to do things. You’ll see.”

  “She’s trying to kill me, Dickens,” David said.

  * * *

  —

  IRIS STOPPED BY THAT afternoon to say hello and welcome Mr. Holliss home from the hospital and have a cold drink. She had always been much closer to Maggie than to David, but something about his newly discovered weakness made her more attentive to him and she was content to sit for an afternoon while he read to her from Jane Eyre and, when he tired, she would read to him. She was caught up in this story of an unwanted girl who grew up to become a governess. She would like to be a governess. She would like to teach school. She wanted to be just like the Hollisses.

  She liked best to read with David and then have a little swim in the pool. Maggie had bought her a purple bathing suit, old fashioned with a frilled skirt, and it was kept downstairs in the guest bathroom so she could take a swim without having to carry it to and from home. And since the weather was unseasonably warm she swam nearly every day.

  “So long as your parents don’t mind,” Maggie said.

  “My daddy says, ‘Whatever makes you happy.’”

  David and Maggie found this hard to believe, but there had been no word from Reginald since that final loan of five hundred dollars and they were happy to think that everything was going well for the Parkers. They did not believe it but they wanted to think it was true. So when Iris quoted her daddy saying “whatever makes you happy” they smiled and said wasn’t that nice and how very pleased they were. And so was Dickens.

  The dog looked up at the sound of his name, but continued to lie stretched out beneath the table.

  “Time for a swim,” Maggie said, and she and David moved out to the pool while Iris changed into her bathing suit.

  “It’s too good to be true,” David said. “But I like it.”

  * * *

  —

  REGINALD WAS DEPRESSED and unable to get on with his novel, but he was careful not to inflict his bad moods on Helen or Iris. He was obsessed with the need for money and it was an obsession that grew stronger with time. The Hollisses had so much. They must have millions. That house alone was worth a couple million on today’s market and they had paid . . . what for it? Fifty or sixty thousa
nd back in the early 1970s before the real estate boom. They were practically giving houses away then. It was always the same old story: the rich get richer and people like him, artists and teachers, get royally screwed. It occurred to him that Holliss was a teacher, but of course he was rich besides. Moreover he was a Stanford professor, one of those privileged bastards who showed up twice a week and blatted out the same old lectures year after year and then complained they were underpaid. He knew that type. Holliss was just exactly that type.

  They were crazy for Iris, though, and he was planning to use this to his advantage. He knew she went there almost every day now, having drinks by the pool and taking a nice cool dip, he knew all about it. And he allowed it. “Whatever makes you happy,” he had told her. His plan was not fully formed yet, but in general he wanted them to fall even more in love with her, grow dependent on her, and then he would get what he wanted. He was not sure how, but he’d make them pay up. They could settle money on her. A trust fund or something like that. Or provide her college tuition, maybe. It was possible. At least it was not impossible. It would only take a stroke of good luck. He laughed to himself. Another stroke for the old bastard.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS NOT IMPOSSIBLE at all. Indeed David was the first to bring up the subject. “Shouldn’t we do something for that little girl?” he asked. He spoke tentatively as he did everything these days. “She’s so bright and she’s so lovely, I can’t help thinking of Claire as a girl. And shouldn’t we be thinking about doing something for her?”