Chapter 29: Signs of the Times

I opened the door and ushered the odd trio into the living room. For a moment, no one spoke. I studied the young woman and in return, she was intently studying me. It seemed to me that we were locked in battle, all of us, not wanting to be the first to speak. I turned to Sanchez.

"You can let her go," I said, keeping my voice deliberately mild. Sanchez dropped her hand away, but the policewoman didn't.

"Please," I said, staying mild.

The policewoman shrugged. "She can be wild."

I laughed.

I couldn't make out anything about what the girl was thinking; her expression was sullen. She was wearing a short sleeve plain white t-shirt and old jeans, replete with holes.

"Ms. Sanchez, there are two reasons why the young woman needs to be restrained. She's a danger to someone, either me or herself, or she's a flight risk. I'm not a jailer, and I'm not going to be watching her twenty-four/seven. And if she's dangerous, why you can keep that good grip on her as the three of you turn around and march out the door."

The policewomen visibly hesitated and I smiled. "You are here to release her, right? I've got room for one more if you're going to be a permanent guest."

The hand came away and the girl continued to stare at me, a sullen and angry expression her face.

"You have some papers for me to sign?" I asked and Sanchez nodded.

"I'm going to need some more of those applications. They are for the permanent staff at the new house."

"Staff?" Sanchez asked.

"Housekeeper, groundskeeper, handyman," I told her.

Sure enough, Sanchez walked into the trap. "Servants," she said, both dismissive and condescending at the same time.

"Staff," I corrected her. "Employees. There of their own free will."

"I'll get them to you later this afternoon. I'll need to know the address of your new domicile."

The girl had, in the meantime, walked over to the sliding glass doors and looked out at the pool. She didn't say anything, but stood silently, her back to the room.

I gave Sanchez the old phone number, but told her that after today it wouldn't work. One of the many things I had to do, utilities-wise today.

I signed the papers Sanchez had for me, and then pointedly showed them the door. When they were gone, I turned and walked up and stood next to the girl. "My name is Laura Alban Hunt," I spoke to the glass, not the girl.

"Rachael Avilla," she said, also talking to the glass.

"This is my old house," I said, and then laughed. "Not that old, but I bought a new one. It's larger and nicer. A bigger pool. We're going over there in a few minutes."

"I'm not supposed to get my leg wet for a couple of days."

"I've got some plastic wrap you can use when you take a shower."

She looked at me directly, her voice raised. "You saying I stink?"

"No, but go a few days without a shower and you will."

She waved at the front door. "You stood up to them."

"They weren't being very smart. That and I don't like them very much."

I saw an expression cross her face just then; I wasn't sure what it was. It didn't take long to find out, though. "You got a bathroom?"

"Sure," I pointed it out to her and she all but ran for it. A few seconds later, I could hear someone being sick. I didn't know if I was going to be needed or not, so I just stood where I was, waiting.

She reappeared after several minutes. "This new house of yours, you got an empty bedroom?"

I took that to mean unoccupied, so I said, "Yes, of course. My partner and I will be in one, you can pretty much have your pick of the others."

She shook her head, "No, I meant no furniture."

"No, all the rooms are furnished, why?"

"Because right now, I got a handle on puking. By noon..." She shook her head. "Well, I'll be climbing the walls and throwing up anytime I eat or drink something. Probably shit myself, too."

I remembered Sanchez mentioning the girl was a heroin addict. I also recalled vague stories of how hard a habit it was to break and that going "cold turkey" was unpleasant.

She looked at me. "What kind of bull-shit did they tell you about me?"

"Not much. They said that you have a couple of kinds of VD, drug and attitude problems. That you were stabbed."

"Shanked. The fucking bitch wanted my jeans." She shook her head, smiling for the first time. "She might have shanked me, but I cold-cocked her good, right after that. I busted her teeth."

I nodded, not really understanding. Oh, the words made sense. But she'd been in a fight because someone else wanted her jeans? That didn't make any sense.

"Look, let me tell you something," the girl went on. "I'm not high, and I don't ever want to get high again. Like I said, I don't know what they told you.

"Last week, I woke up on the street. I'd been fucked in every hole in my body. I was bleeding in half a dozen places.

"I sat there for a long time, thinking about it. I got pretty fucking scared. So, just like that," she snapped her fingers, "I decided to give it up. The streets. Then my fucking asshole pimp started on my case about getting back to work. I took the fucker's baseball bat and beat him fucking silly with it. That's when the fucking cops came.

"Lady, I don't ever want to go back out there. Ever. I don't care what you want me to do, so long as it doesn't mean going back out there, I'll do it. But for the next couple of days... it's not going to be fucking pretty."

"There are times," I told her, "when I hear a young woman in there, hiding in the corners of your mind. Then I hear the street girl."

"Yeah, well, we need to get going. They gave me some stuff last night, but it's just about worn off. You have to put me in a room without furniture. You know why they call it 'kicking the habit?'"

I shook my head. "Because you go a little crazy. You get an overwhelming urge to kick things. Better if there's nothing to kick, you understand?"

"If you throw up every time you eat or drink..."

She laughed. "That lasts two, three days. This is like the third time I've gone cold turkey. I couldn't do it on the streets. No fucking way. Those people," she waved at the door Sanchez had left through, "are almost as bad. I told them to stop giving me the shit and they'd just hold me down and shoot me up. I was less of a problem, you see.

"I figure they want to make an example of you," she told me.

"Do you have any things? Clothes, toiletries?" I asked.

She shook her head. "The clothes on my back. They gave me this raggedy-ass pair of jeans yesterday when they cut my other pair off. Fucking bastards. It was a new pair, the fucking pimp stole them from a Target a couple days before."

Besides the holes, I was pretty sure the jeans she was wearing were boy's jeans. The t-shirt, too.

"Doesn't fucking matter," Rachael went on. "Like I said, in a few hours, I'm going to be a mess."

I sighed. She was roughly the same height as Susan, but if anything, ten or twenty pounds lighter. The thought of letting her go two or three days without something to eat or drink worried me.

Rachael had a knack for reading people. She spoke seriously. "It's going to look bad, I'm not shitting you. But you don't die; you just wish you could. Please, tell me you won't take me to a doctor."

"I can't promise that," I told her. "You have medical problems that need to be treated."

A flash of anger passed over her face. "They won't get the AIDs test back for a another day. I swear to God," she crossed herself, "that I ain't going to sleep with anyone for a couple of days.

"You call a doctor and about the only thing he can do is give me more stuff. They like to do that. They think it's better to ease you off. Full of shit is what they are. Please, I don't want any more. Not ever. You make an excuse; you tell yourself just one more time... And the next time, and the next time and the next time...

"Now, we need to go. I can hold it in for about another ten, twenty minutes."

I led her out to the car and she promptly tipped the seat back and closed her eyes. I drove to the house.

When I stopped and turned off the engine, she sat up and looked at the house. "You're shitting me!"

"No."

I led her inside. I'd made a quick judgment on the way over, and led her to one of the main house bedrooms that had its own bathroom. As soon as Rachael saw the bathroom, she ran for it, closing the door behind her.

I figured she'd be a minute or two, so I went out. Calvin was in the living room. "Can you and Tom empty out the bedroom I was just in? Everything? Put the stuff in storage or something. Then I need some tarps or plastic sheeting to go over the floor, then some old bed sheets to go over the plastic. A couple of old pillows and old blankets. Something no one is going to miss.

"No mattress?" Calvin asked.

"No, unless you have one that can be tossed afterwards. She's going to be messy."

"I think Tom has some of the plastic ground cover sheets. Heavy plastic. We don't really have any old sheets, pillows or blankets. Mrs. Baxter was a source of a lot of charity donations."

"Well, if we don't have any, would you run out to a thrift store and buy some? Give me the receipts and I'll pay you back."

He nodded. "Mr. Baxter gave me a credit card for household expenses."

"I'll set that up," I told him. "Could you also see to getting the old utilities turned off and the new ones put in my name?"

"I'll try. Sometimes, they get petty when it's not you personally doing it."

He went to get Tom and I went into the room knocked on the bathroom door. "I've got some men coming to move the furniture, Rachael. Don't be startled, okay?"

"Yeah!"

Then I heard the sound of retching, coming from the other side of the door.

I had Maria run off to the store to get some 7-Up, ginger ale and root beer, my own favorite upset stomach remedies. I didn't know what Rachael liked, but I was going to be ready.

I was standing in the middle of the now empty room when Rachael called from inside the bathroom. "Those fuckers gone?"

"Yes," I told her.

She came out and I pointed to the door. "Those fuckers are my employees. A married couple with grown children, and a widower with a grown daughter. They aren't fuckers. I've already told them they don't have to put up with anything from you. You will be polite to them, do you understand?"

"And you?"

"You and I will work it out between us."

She looked around at the thick clear plastic on the floor. "Lot's of plastic for my leg!"

"They're getting some sheets and pillows," I told her. "It will be a few minutes. You sure you don't want a mattress?"

"I would just mess it up, too."

I contemplated the old bed we'd left behind when we moved from Long Island. The bed itself was one that we'd bought right after Roger and I had been married. We had skimped on it, and it was just a metal frame, a set of box springs and a double bed-sized mattress. The problem about moving twice in six months was a lot of excess baggage had been shed for the first move.

"I don't think you can do much harm to an old mattress. It will be more comfortable than the floor."

"For the next couple of days..." she paused, turned, and rushed for the bathroom.

A minute later she was back. "Too bad my stomach doesn't know there's nothing left to puke."

"Yeah, I've had the flu a few times," I told her. "I know what you mean."

"That's what a doctor told me the first time I tried this. It's like the worst case of flu, ever. Could I get some more toilet paper?"

I found Tom who knew where it was kept; I got an armload of rolls. Oh yes, I've had the flu a few times!

When I got back to the bedroom, Rachael was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, her head pillowed on her knees. I laughed to myself. Either she was an incredible actress or she was going to have a terrible time later on in life when she wanted to sleep with someone -- she snored loudly.

I put the toilet paper in the bathroom, in one of the cabinets, leaving a couple of rolls on the back of the toilet. It took a second, but I realized that there was no mess. When I was sick, I made a mess, splattering everything around. Either Rachael was more dainty than I was, or she'd cleaned up after herself. What did that say about her? I'd said it before, aloud, now I repeated it to myself. She was two people -- one the foul-mouthed, tough street kid and the other was a normal young woman, probably on the tidy side. Susan was like that, whereas Jamie's room, I'd been told, required wading to cross.

Maria was back with the groceries a little later. She showed me where the pantry was, if you want to call a walk-in closet bigger than any bedroom closet I'd ever had a pantry. We kept back a six-pack of each and put them in a large refrigerator to chill. She smiled at me when I offered to help with carrying things. "That's my job," she told me.

"I've been here less than an hour and I find that it's really nice to have someone to fetch and carry things for me. It would be very easy, I think, to start taking it for granted."

She smiled at me. "I was thinking you had adapted very well."

I laughed. "Necessity is like that. But I will do some of the work, because, like I said, I don't ever want to take you or anyone else for granted."

"Mr. B. used to say that the ideal situation was that the work got done and he didn't notice it."

"It was something my husband taught me," I told her. "You thank people for their help, even if it's just a quick thanks. So thank you."

She shook her head and left grinning.

I went and asked Rachael what her drink preferences were and she shook her head. "Water, water, water! Even that I'm gonna barf. What the fuck is ginger ale?" She was sitting on the floor, as she'd been earlier.

"A sweet drink that tastes of ginger. I could tell you how I like it best, but you'd probably barf again."

"Why are you doing this?"

"It's a long story. I wanted to help someone in particular; she's special to me. The foster parents she is with aren't accredited for adoption, nor for 'long term care.' They were going to take her away from them at the end of school. Her foster mother isn't going to live that long; it would just cause the girl ten thousand times more pain than anyone has any right to ask someone to endure. So, I applied, thinking I'd ask for her, then let her visit a lot."

"You got a husband?"

"No, he's dead. He was killed on 9/11."

"I never knew my mother-fucking asshole father. My mother ripped off some fucking drug dealer; they shot her in front of me. I was nine fucking years old."

I smiled at her. "I realize it's early yet, but someday I'm hoping you will forget that word."

"Fucking never going to happen," she said emphatically.

"It's nothing more than a four letter exclamation mark," I told her. "You don't need it."

She looked at me. "That's not the usual reason people get on my case for my language. Those that give a shit."

"Well, you'll find that I'm not the usual sort of person you've met."

"You're not married, but you got an old man, anyway?"

I shook my head. "I'm gay. She's about midway between how old you are and how old I am."