Part 2

Sisters/Act 1

I'd settled into a livable routine in the first week or so, having learned from the junkies and hookers all the best hiding places and invisible nooks to squirrel myself away when the sun set. My first night I'd actually stayed with one of the girls. Kelly. She said I reminded her of her little brother, who was probably a junkie somewhere by now but that was alright because she knew all the best dealers by phone number. She'd been trying to find him so they could get clean together, but the money was good and one of these days she was going to get out of town. She didn't know when. But she missed her brother a lot and I helped her out at the coin-n-wash so I'd have something clean and hopefully disease free to sleep on. She held me that first night, and I cried as I'd been meaning too for three years. She was high and thought I was her brother, so when she comforted me, she called me 'Matt' and the name stuck. So when the pretty brunette at the coffee shop asked me my name a few days later, that's what I told her.

“Playing hooky Matt?” she winked in time with the clink of the porcelain echoing from the kitchen behind her. “I won't tell.” I glanced up from the want ads to settle on her name tag. “Allison” had 'college student' written all over her oval, pretty face. For some reason I was inclined to trust her less than the hooker I'd stayed with the other night. There was something so...normal, nuclear, about this girl. She glowed.

“Is it hooky if you can't go to school?” I replied. She laughed, a sound like rippling harp strings, bizarrely melodious.

“I bet you're picked on a lot huh?” she said, “And obviously you haven't learned about child labor laws yet, 'cause I really doubt Pizza Pizza would hire drivers that couldn't reach the breaks.”

The newspaper was Kelly's. She's circled places that throw food out regularly if things got that bad. And as Allison showed no sign of giving up her blather until I said something more, I told her how I'd spent that first night, hoping the shock value would send her scurrying for the kitchen, or the police to report a homeless minor. To my surprise, she did neither. All she could do is stare.

“Are you going back there tonight?” she asked finally. “I mean...to that girl?”

“Probably.” I answered truthfully. “Unless another more sanitary option presents itself.”

Allison put the tray she'd been clutching to her chest on the chipped Formica counter top and disappeared into the back kitchen, calling out for someone named “Glen.” When she returned, her apron was off and she was pulling a jacket over a low-cut t-shirt. Before I could protest, she grabbed me by the hand and lead me to the swinging glass doors of the shop, pushing hard enough to make the hand-painted 'open' sign clatter arrestingly. Heads turned, but she continued to pull me down the street, struggling with a pair of car keys in one pocket. There was a stone-lined parking lot a few buildings down from the shop, and we made a b-line for a Toyota hatch back of splotted tan and bondo: vegan and environmentalist bumper stickers everywhere that would fit; cannabis shaped air-freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror. I didn't have the voice to protest, partially because something told me that I was neither being taken to the police nor DYFUS, and that was fine. Anything was better than what I'd left behind with Dalia Jeevas.

“Buckle up,” Allison said, “I'm taking you home.”

“No one's there.” I replied, “trust me.”

Twenty minutes later we were parked back outside of my house. A week and half worth of mail was stuffed in the mail box along with detritus of uncollected newspapers and packages and signature request forms. Allison ordered me to wait in the car and strode up the walk to the front door. She rang the door bell.

“Excuse me, mama'?” she knocked on the door, “mama', is anyone home?”

A third knock opened the door. It had always been a shoddy lock, and me being nine and lacking any one discernible father figure had never learned the proper repair technique. Just from being able to make out the foyer I could tell she didn't take everything. A few of the high, round, ornately carved hallway and side tables were still there. The clothes tree with all of my coats, my shoes lined up neatly by the folding closet doors, all tell-tale signs that the woman who left that house was not Dalia Jeevas. The mirror in the hallway was still shattered as if I'd expected it to pick itself up and melt back together after she left. Allison, the truth of my story sinking in, grabbed a few pairs of my shoes and three coats. It wouldn't be spring forever.

“Wow...” she said, coming back to the car, “Just...wow.”

“Yeah.”

She opened the side door and hugged me, flattening floppy mats of red hair to my face in the process. It wasn't as if I minded the sympathy but a part of me rendered it pointless. I'd been living with the reality so long the tragedy was lost to me. Who was anyone to assume I felt bad? Feeling bad wasn't something I did, not about this. One night of weeping in the arms of a sympathetic hooker didn't mean shit to what was ahead of me, or what wasn't, at that point.

“So where to, Matt?” she asked, releasing me. “Is this it?”

I shrugged in the seat, about to ask her to bring me back to Kelly's. There was still something I feared about Allison, a sympathy that I recognized all too well. A girl like her shouldn't have had to ask that—it would have been right off to the police or DYFUS or an orphanage somewhere with shuffling old nuns or something. Not what she said next.

“ I got a flat in Central. It's not much but there's enough room for a sleeping bag. I try to live light, you know...now I'm not promising a permanent solution here but until you can fend for yourself, alright?” She stood, ruffled my hair and took her place in the driver's seat again. We drove back past the coffee shop, heading deeper into the city. Central wasn't any better or worse than the Hamptons, there was just more of it in one place so first timers got the impression of it being a major step up—but look close enough and there was just as much sin incarnate there as anywhere. Allison, intentionally or not was treating me like some kind of stray, and in lieu of a warm bed and food it was more than welcome.