Fragments (4 page)

She turned the
coat back round as soon as she was round the corner and began the
long march. She ignored her routine, and the library, and the
various dropping off to heat up spots. She needed to get back to
that alleyway, and back home, before the light went.

There were
spots at the back of her eyes and a rime of sweat on her neckline,
and under her arms, by the time she reached it. Her feet were
frozen lumps – no amount of coat kept them warm, and her blood was
pounding along her veins. When she stopped, looking around the
entrance, her legs shook and beat out the pulsing rhythm of her
veins and muscles. The muffler over her mouth was sodden
through.

The sleet had
turned into soft and gentle waves of deadly lace. The wind had
dropped as the temperature had and the large soft flakes danced
around. She’d already fished out her ice grips and put them on. The
soft carpet of pristine snow hid the ice sheets underneath. Drifts
were already starting to form at the corners of buildings and the
frozen mounds of pushed through sludge from the snow patrols. Sound
had deadened out around her as traffic had thinned. Anyone with any
understanding of the city, and how savage it could become in snow
storms, was heading for heat and hearth and home.

The dark maw of
the alleyway looked almost pretty in the dancing white flakes. She
hesitated: why wasn’t there police tape?

Staring into
the void, she shivered: surely not...? Not the same decision to
make again a day later. That poor woman couldn’t have been there
all night long... someone would have found her? Someone had, of
course. Maggie thrust that thought away. With a deep breath, she
pushed herself into the alleyway, her heart thudding painfully in
her chest. Guilt would do that to you.

There was no
body, no lump, no covering snow hiding anything. The dumpster
hadn’t held a body either. No police tape. No scraping back of the
garbage as clues had been sought: nothing. If it hadn’t been for
her own discarded gloves lying there, sodden and soiled, she’d have
thought she was in the wrong place.

She was dizzy
with exhaustion by the time she’d slogged back home. Going through
her dry out routine in the toilet she had to drape the coat on the
towel warmer – even it had got a wee bit wet. As soon as she moved
into the main room the hunger inside her hit, roared through her.
She realised she’d not eaten a thing all day. All that walking,
slogging through the sleet, sludge, and wind. All the miles out to
the alleyway, all the miles back. She’d not eaten one morsel. It
wasn’t just that she hadn’t thought to try the two good soup
kitchens on the way there. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t
dumpster dive in that coat; it was too good to risk. She’d had the
chocolate bars and peanut butter cups in her satchel. She’d simply
forgotten.

She devoured
the out of date chocolate as she huddled against the radiator. She
was late back, not much heat left. When she felt she could stand,
and not faint, she heated a tin of actual soup from her emergency
supplies and spooned it down. Some bread would be nice. Tomorrow
she would buy fresh bread; soft, white and luscious.

Wary of the
previous night’s mistake she made sure she was tucked in bed, the
coat once more over her blankets and bottles, before the heat gave
way to chill. She hadn’t put the television on: it was a matter of
pride that the meter never ran out and she’d wasted those hours
yesterday. Tonight, she’d just lie in the dark, warm and snug, and
snooze.

In the
dreamscape, the wolf was coming for her. In the dreamscape, the
wolf was on her throat, foul breath robbing her soul of hope as the
fangs ripped open her veins, spurting her life onto the snow.

It was three
a.m., again, and again she was up, cold and shaking. She warmed
through a cup of hot water and sipped it, sitting up on the bed,
wearing the coat. Her father had told her that this time of night
was called the hour of the wolf. The hour of doubt and misery,
despair and fear. It was a time of night she avoided at all costs.
A lifetime with too few pleasures and too many regrets, did not sit
well at three a.m. At least, with the coat on she was warm, well,
mostly warm: how could she get fur boots for her feet...?

Pay day had a
well worn routine and the coat only interrupted it minimally. Using
her EMT card, she got the money out in the nearest ATM to the
electric company offices and spent a huge portion of her cash
allowance on stoking up her card. Then she went food shopping and
filled up her bags with staples and essentials. She noticed a
couple of people nudging each other at the tills, when she stood in
that coat and handed her card over to use up her food stamps. She
couldn’t blame then, she’d have done the same. She usually went to
the library then and sat and read the newspaper as she thawed out,
but as she wasn’t cold, she trudged on to take everything back to
her room. Her victory meal – having made it through another month –
was usually had on her knees by the radiator, but it was too early.
So she carefully made Dolly a three slices of bread peanut butter
and jelly sandwich, wrapping it in a paper bag, and went back out
to find her. This time of day she was usually begging above the
underground vents on third. Dolly was there but the encounter did
not go well. As she approached Dolly with the bag, Dolly had
started screeching and wailing, throwing snow and insults at her.
Maggie just stood and stared as Dolly’s fury hit into her.

‘Don’t you come
here with your filthy fucking coat and give me charity you smug
sanctimonious cu...’

Maggie backed
away as the insults, and the projectiles, got filthier and more
deadly. The bag with the food dropped into the snow. Maggie had
seen Dolly do this, often, to well meaning but clueless rich
people. She wasn’t that sane, that was sure, and she was choosy who
she offered her booze to, and took food and money from. It was part
of why all the real street people took care of her. Maggie had
never thought she’d not recognize her... she’d tried to speak, to
say, ‘Dolly, it’s me, Maggie...’ but the words had caught in her
throat. The image of the dead woman face down in the alleyway had
risen up between Dolly and her.

Who was she, to
be handing out food, when she wore a dead woman’s coat on her
back...?

Later, when
she’d finished crying into her pillows she tried to eat her victory
meal. She found she wasn’t hungry.

Three a.m.
brought a vision of the dead woman, floating on a rotting lake of
stagnant water. Still face down, her hair matted and trailing in
the twigs and leaves. Ice was forming around her, locking her in to
the winter. In the distance, the wolf howled.

The next day
brought a snowstorm. Holding a cup of hot water, Maggie looked out
and knew there would be no help to it: she’d have to stay in. Even
though the coat would cope, her legs would give out, her feet
shatter in the snow; thank goodness she’d found the coat.

After five days
of never-ending storm, she had begun to appreciate the meaning of
the phrase ‘cabin fever’. She always wished she was one of those
women who did things: knitted, quilted, tailored her own clothes.
Heck, after five days of looking at the whiteout, she’d have
whittled wood. She was out of books to read and her radio was dead
– she needed new batteries. The television was okay, but not for
full time distraction, electricity notwithstanding. She’d have to
go out and get some supplies. Checking the cupboards she was
surprised by how much food there was. There was even a stale end of
a loaf of bread. Curious.

She slogged out
to the library and found she could do quite a few hours there, as
the coat made it warm enough. Her feet stayed dry and warm. She
even nodded off over the newspapers as she was getting so little
sleep at home. It was the cardinal sin, however, nodding off, and
she was asked to leave before she’d checked out new books. Her face
burned a little; she’d never been asked to leave. The librarian
station was filled with faces staring at her, and the coat.
Whispers. Why was a woman like her asleep in the library? What sort
of woman was she... with that coat and worn boots which rustled
with plastic bag liners when she moved? Unseen, her library card
was left on the floor under the table she’d fallen asleep on.

She had to go
past one of her most visited soup kitchens on the way back and the
smell of the food rolling out into the frigid air, enticing in the
needy, made her stomach roil. She realized she was hungry, and made
to descend the snowy stairs down to the Church basement. She got as
far as the second step, then thought through the problem of the
coat. It wasn’t even that she would probably get comments, or
looks. It was the thought of the dead woman in the alleyway. She
just couldn’t go into a Church, even the basement. What if someone
had seen the woman wear it in there? Recognized it, thought she was
the dead woman? Her cheeks burned with the shame of it and the fear
of it seized her heart. Maybe she could go in, slip the coat off...
just carry it, inside out. Maybe slip it into one of the black bags
her satchel held? Then she could have her bread and stew, or soup,
and chat with the workers, and the others supping, and feel the
cheer of being part of something, no matter how fragile.

But what if she
lost it? What if someone stole the bag when she put it down on the
floor? What if she got in a fight over the hidden contents of a
large bag, as sometimes happened, and she lost it? She’d be back in
the cold, again: all over cold. She’d be back out in the streets,
all day long, no matter the weather.

She walked on,
past the market, past the launderette, past the shopping mall.
She’d got out for a few hours and her room waited. The coat would
keep her warm as she waited for the radiators to fire up.

Each three a.m.
brought a rough awakening; a sense of shock and terror. A need to
get out of bed, wrap the coat around her and sip hot water as she
waited out the frigid dawn. There was something wrong, somewhere.
She couldn’t put her finger on it, couldn’t quite see the pattern
in the swirling snow outside the window.

She wasn’t sure
how she’d got to the mall, nor why she’d been asked to leave. The
guard who had her elbow firmly in his grasp, was walking her out
into the cold dark night, telling her she was now banned. She
stood, watching his mouth move, trying to make sense of the words.
It made no sense. He was saying something about dogs, how she’d
been asking to buy a dog, to keep her safe from the wolf. He thrust
some dollars into her hand, twenties. Said she didn’t have enough
to buy a dog, and the mall didn’t sell them anyway. She looked down
at the money: where had it come from?

The banging on
her door was loud, so terribly loud. She couldn’t think. She stood
up, switched off the TV, and staggered to the door. For a moment,
she couldn’t face opening it. ‘Maggie, I know you are in, OPEN THE
DOOR’. She reacted automatically to the command, she opened up the
door, standing back and pulling her coat round her, feeling herself
shrink into its bulk. It was Tony, looking annoyed, then concerned.
She stared at him, once more watching lips move but not quite being
able to hear what they said: not quite making sense of anything. He
was looking down at her, with a curious look on his face. He held
paperwork in his hands. Paperwork. Paper.
Lease!
The image
of her standing in the street, like Dolly, begging, flashed through
her brain. She shuffled back into her room, searched through her
pocketbook. There, her EMT card. She turned back, handed it to
Tony. She could hear her own voice give him the ATM digit code.
Tony looked back at her, searching her face, saying something in
soft tones. She didn’t like that, wondered if he’d see the image of
a woman lying down dead in a frozen alleyway on the backs of her
eyes. She slammed the door shut in his face.

She’d sat down
on the floor, her back to the wall, looking at the door. It wasn’t
good, this wasn’t good. Whatever was wrong with her, she had to get
hold of it. She couldn’t lose this place, couldn’t get thrown out.
She’d never make it, never make it to the sun, if that happened.
She’d never ever, ever make it on that bus if she lost here. Never
have another dog to play with in the park on long summer days, to
cuddle up to on winter nights, to brush and love and be loved by.
Never have another good day in her life. She was rocking, tightly
curled up on herself, when a shadow appeared on the other side of
the door. Her EMT card was pushed back through to her. She looked
at it, feeling so hot there, in her lovely coat, that sweat was
sticking the lining to her. Maybe she had the flu...?

Her electricity
running out was a complete shock. She woke to a room in complete
darkness. She woke at three a.m., as usual. The nightmare was
shredded and fading as she stumbled around to try and find the
flashlight she kept in her bedside cabinet. She had lost her coat
somewhere, in the thrashing from the dreams, and the cold sliced
her. She stood up and felt faint. She was oblivious to the crash as
she tumbled headlong back into the tunnel she’d been running out
of, with the wolf’s breath at her heels.

The pain of
lying there drove her to consciousness, her body demanding she
move. As her eyes opened she saw the coat on the floor, under the
bed. It was daylight and she felt transparent, like a window. She
was sure the daylight was going through her skin and bones. Her
mouth was dry and her lips cracked. A terrible sunken feeling was
clawing up from her stomach, hurting every bone in her body. She
rolled forward, snaking her hand under the bed. The barest touch of
the fur and the pain receded. She found the strength to inch
forward, grasp it with one hand. She pulled it towards her, feeling
better the nearer it got. Finally, she pulled it over her head and
rested. The darkness she was in, under the weight of the coat, was
warm and comforting. She wasn’t sure if she’d slept again but it
was late afternoon light that greeted her when she finally pulled
the coat on again, and stood up. The shakiness was gone. She felt
fine, what had happened..?