Harmless (23 page)

“Don’t judge. 
They’re not so bad if you cook them right.”

Do I have to tell you
that I recoiled at the thought? 
Literally
.

She laughed,
attempted to contain the coughing again, and thankfully assured me that she was
joking.

She came back with an
apple-flavored breakfast bar—Apple Hullabaloo—and handed it to me.  We sat down
opposite of each other, with the DMZ of beer bottles between us, our legs
crossed, both of us gnawing on the stale bricks that might have been appetizing
if it wasn’t months past their expiration date.  At first, our conversation
consisted of discussing meals that she missed.

Let me rephrase that:
fresh
meals that she missed.  She had no qualms about eating a
discarded, half-eaten cheeseburger or baked potato as long as the sour cream
hadn’t…well…hadn’t soured.  By now, you understand that I have certain
eccentricities that need addressing, but being grossed out by things such as
eating refuse that has touched someone else’s mouth isn’t one I’m willing to
work on.  End of story.

She had a good sense
of humor and took it well when I teased her about the things I’d had recently,
like steak and black beans, seasoned chicken breast and broccoli. 

Bland to some, yes,
but the Pendragon Castle is well fortified with my dietary choices.

I mentioned oatmeal
and she practically pounced forward, up to her knees, arms out, hands clasping
an invisible bowl, shaking it. 

“Oatmeal!  Oatmeal,
you evil bastard!  I never in my life thought I would miss oatmeal.”

She smiled.  I
laughed.

It was fun.  We were
having fun. 

And I have to take a
second to address that metaphorical elephant in the room.  I was on the lam,
wanted for murder, hanging out in an run-down building with a homeless woman
who didn’t know me from Adam, who only looked at me as an intruder in her home,
as someone that could’ve potentially murdered her while she slept. 

And yet, we were having
fun
. 

Was it strange? 
Yes. 

Momentary bonding had
replaced distrust.  Like how you can meet a fellow American in a French hostel
and develop an instant connection because you’re both removed from your normal
lives.  You’re best friends for a day, you part ways at the train station, and
then you meet the next day’s best friend at a hostel in Prague.

“Oatmeal,” she said
again, staring wistfully and blankly at the wall behind me.  She nibbled on the
Apple Hullabaloo, chewed like it was a job instead of nourishment, then folded
the wrapper over the last half and tossed it to the floor.

I took the teasing
one step further. 

I took the teasing
one step too far.

“With brown sugar,” I
said, chiding her like the five-year-old version of me.

Her smile disappeared
and she sat back down, pulled her knees up to her chest, bouncing one foot
inside a used-to-be-white sock.

“Did I say something
wrong?”

“No, it’s—you have no
idea how hard this is, or how hard it’ll get.  I’m a person, goddamn it.  I
want normal things, just like everybody else.”

I had a feeling that
a sealed package of emotions, like a breakfast bar that had gone well past its
due date, was about to have its foil wrapper ripped open.  I was right.

“How long have you
been on the ground, huh?”

Puzzled, I asked, “On
the ground?”

“Homeless.”

“I’m not home—”  I
caught myself, understanding that I was, in a way.  At least for a while.  “A
day, not even.”

“You’ll learn. 
You’ll learn how it feels.  Look at me—
look
.  What do you see?”

I realize this sounds
superficial, but when you only have a glimpse of the surface, who doesn’t like
a compliment on their looks?  I almost said, “A pretty woman,” or one that
could be again with a shower and a cocktail dress, because it’s in my nature to
please people, but I knew that wasn’t what she was after.  She wasn’t after
aesthetics; she meant as a whole, her extension of Self.  She wanted me to
define who she was as a complicated creature of unknowable depth.

“I see somebody that
looks like she has her shit together.”  It wasn’t my most eloquent response.

It was true, though,
if you saw it from a basic survival standpoint.  She had food and water,
shelter,
protection from the elements
.  In the post office, she had a home. 
If you were a caveman or a doomsday prepper, what else did you need?

“I have my shit
together?  I’m
homeless
.  Are you kidding me?  You’ll never understand
what it’s like to miss things like your stupid brown sugar until you’ve been
out here for a while.  You can beg for pennies on a street corner and maybe go
buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, but the worst thing about it,
the absolute
worst
thing, is the way people look at you like you’re not
even there.  But they do, you know they do, because you can see it in the way
they turn their heads, like suddenly the stoplight is the most important thing
they’ve ever seen or they’re pretending to check their phones.  And I can feel
it, I can feel them thinking, ‘Please don’t ask me for money, please don’t
touch me’ or, ‘Why don’t you get a job like the rest of us?’  You don’t think
I’d get a job if I could?  I want a real bed.  I want a table.  I want brown
sugar.  I don’t want to eat out of a
motherfucking trashcan
anymore!”

“But you don’t seem—”

“Forget it.  You’ll
find out.”

She climbed to her
feet and padded away, hunched over, shoulders shaking.  The kind of thing that
happens when you’re trying to fight off tears and losing.

She disappeared
around the corner and I heard the familiar zip of her sleeping bag.  I almost
broke the rules and crossed the dividing line—I thought maybe I should at least
attempt to comfort her, but then I realized I didn’t even know what to call
her.

I hadn’t bothered to
ask.  I hadn’t bothered to humanize her.

Steve the Oblivious. 
Steve, who spent too much time pondering his own navel, had failed yet again to
see the reality of another person.

I’d inadvertently
done the exact same thing that everyone who’d ignored her had done while she
worked an intersection for spare change or begged for the last bite of
cheeseburger.

I’d made her one of
The Nameless.

CHAPTER 25

I didn’t see her
again until about eight o’clock that evening.  I stayed on my side, alone,
thinking about what I would say to her, something to make it right.  She didn’t
need my pity.  She didn’t need me to offer her hope.  She didn’t need me to
tell her that everything was going to be okay.  She’d probably been filled with
enough false promises—ones from inside her own mind, ones from shelter workers,
ones from a pastor who had likely put a hand on her shoulder and proclaimed
that she was one of God’s children, and that she’d be back on her feet soon.

She didn’t need my
help any more than I needed Detective Berger on my ass.

She needed me to
see
her.  To acknowledge that she was human.

Then again, who was I
to say what she needed?

I went around and
around again, thinking this, contemplating that.  In the end, I decided that if
she ever came back out from her hiding spot, I’d introduce myself—my
real
self—first name only, and then ask hers.  It wouldn’t bring the world around in
her favor but it might give us both a good dose of grounded authenticity. 

I realize this goes
completely against the
modus operandi
, the way of thinking, of the
Steven Allister Pendragon that you’ve grown to love.  In any other situation,
most people would be thrilled to call Planet Pendragon home, or to happily
traipse across the drawbridge and into the Pendragon Castle, but by then I’d
begun to swallow a spoonful of humility.  And, feel free to gag at the sugary
sentiment, but her words had touched me that morning, in a way I didn’t realize
I could be touched. 

She’d opened the
blinds a little more.

I didn’t think about
Shayna for a single second that day.  I thought about She of No Name.  I
thought about Thomas and if he’d made any progress.  I read some of Kerry’s
diary again, and strangely enough, that gaping hole that I felt in regards to
her absence from my life was a little shallower.

I wrapped my legs
around a support beam and did some sit-ups.  Then a handful of pushups.  I
jogged in place, lifting my knees high to my chest.

I couldn’t believe
how much stamina I’d lost in a week.  Out of shape, out of breath, and
bored—for lack of a better way to describe what one experiences while waiting
to find out whether or not he’ll be arrested for murder—I laid back down on the
cardboard and took the longest nap of my life.  I was free to roam as much as I
dared, but I couldn’t imagine that being in an actual prison would be any
different.

When she walked
around the corner, arms crossed and hugging herself, I jumped up and trotted
over to our dividing line, not unlike the way Sparkle greets me at the door,
purring and meowing as loud as possible. 

I thought about that,
and briefly saw myself getting on all fours and rubbing up against her legs. 
You can’t stop strange thoughts such as those.  They wink in and out—we don’t
always act on our animalist urges—then they’re gone.  Because of that, the
world is a much safer and saner place.

She paused opposite
of me, close enough to reach out and touch.

“You probably think
I’m crazy, huh?”

I shrugged.  “You’re
no crazier than the rest of us.”

“I’m normal.  Really,
I am.  I haven’t had a shower in two weeks and the last time I tried to—”

I interrupted her. 
“You don’t have to do that.”

“What?”

“Defend yourself.”

“But don’t you want
to know what happened?  Aren’t you curious?”

“A little, but you
don’t have to tell me.”

“I don’t want to. 
Maybe later.  You want another apple bar?  I tried one of your grody blocks
again and almost spit it out, but calories are calories.”

“‘Grody.’  I haven’t
heard that since the nineties.  But yeah, another fruit brick sounds great.”  I
stopped her before she could walk away.  “Hang on a second.”

She faced me.

“Before we sit down
for dinner, let’s do—uh, maybe we should introduce ourselves.  Properly, I
mean.  What’s your name?”

That got another
smile from her. 

I feel like such a
jerk for saying this, but I glanced at her teeth and couldn’t help but wonder
when they’d last been brushed.  I’m sorry, but it’s a natural response, and one
I couldn’t prevent.  You’d have thought the same thing, I’m sure of it.

“Win,” she said, then
added, “and if you say ‘Winnie the Pooh,’ I’ll kick you in the nuts so hard
your grandchildren will feel it.”

I took an overly
exaggerated step backward, just for show.  “Win?  Is that short for something?”

She grinned and
looked down at her feet, wiggled her toes inside her socks.  “Unfortunately. 
Winton Elizabeth.  My dad worked here for, like, thirty years and absolutely
loved his job, so when I came along, he named me after this Postmaster General
from the seventies—”

“Winton Blount.” 

Of course I knew of
him.  Of course I knew what his name was.  I can recite all the Postmaster
Generals by name and year like some can recite the list of presidents.  But I
never expected the kind of connection that only Fate, or its bastard twin
Coincidence, can provide.

“You know that?”

“I sorta have a thing
for the mail system.”  “Sorta” being the understatement of the century, I
suppose.  “Your dad worked here?  Who was he?”

“Roger.  He worked
out front,” she said, pointing toward the counter.

“Roger!  Your dad was
Roger?  Short gray hair, glasses?  Had that mustache that curled up at the
ends?”

“Yeah, that was him. 
Wow.  That mustache.  Always made me think of some black and white movie
villain, you know?  Like he was ready to rob a stagecoach or tie some girl to
the train tracks.  That’s so crazy that you knew him.”

“Are you kidding? 
Rockin’ Roger?  That guy was my favorite person here.  What’s he up to these
days?”

“He’s…”  She paused,
sniffed, rubbed her nose with a dirty sleeve.  “He, um, he passed away.”

“Oh—I’m—I’m really
sorry to hear that.” 

And I was, as sure as
a mail truck has round tires, it hurt my heart to hear that Rockin’ Roger was
no longer amongst the living.  I’d venture to say that I would’ve been thrilled
to call the man a surrogate father because I’ve never met another human being
that enjoyed the all-encompassing beauty of the postal service as much as I
did. 

On slow days, he and
I would chat about the latest postal developments in the news or the fancy
shipping boxes that had just arrived, and especially the newest collection of
stamps or how neither of us minded that their price had increased by a couple
of pennies.  We used to laugh over the public outrage every time the cost to
send a letter ticked up by less than the amount of change you’d find under a
sofa cushion. 

I have a distinct
memory of him back in May of 2007 when the price of a stamp went from
thirty-nine cents to forty-one cents.  Rockin’ Roger, standing behind the
counter, animated, putting the back of his hand to his forehead, speaking with
the thick drawl of a Georgia debutante; “Oh my dear heavens, whatever will we
do?  Forty-one cents!  We’ll have to sell the plantation!”

He’d never mentioned
a daughter.  But then again, it never came up.  We were too busy discussing
postal things.

“Damn,” I said. 
“Rockin’ Roger.”  And now it was my turn to stare wistfully off in the
distance.  “Do you mind if I ask what happened?”

“In his sleep,” she
said.  “Natural causes.  Something to do with his heart.  Physically, I mean. 
But really, if you want to get sappy about it, I’d say it was a broken heart. 
He got laid off when they shut this place down and it ruined him.”

I know that it
would’ve done the same thing to me.  “I always wondered where he’d gone.” 

And then me being
me
,
I hadn’t made the effort to look for him because the fact that Rockin’ Roger
wasn’t at the new post office didn’t mean that I wasn’t able to mail packages. 
To this day, I feel guilty that I’d let him slip away.  And, please, you don’t
have to answer this question, but what kind of wretch lets go of a friend like
that?

“He was a character,
that’s for sure.”

“Is that why you’re
here?  Because of your dad?”

“Home away from home. 
Dad used to bring me here when I was little.  He got in trouble one time for
letting me climb around in the bins.  You know, the ones with the wheels on
them and full of letters?  When he lost his job, I spent everything I had
trying to help him out. 

“I paid his bills and
his mortgage and ignored all my own, so when I lost my job, too, it went
downhill fast.  I bounced around from place to place, sleeping on friends’
couches and renting cheap hotel rooms when I had absolutely no other place to
go.  By then, I still expected things to turn around.  Surely some job would
come up, because it had to, right?  It had to.  But it never did.  I couldn’t
even get a job waiting tables.  Too much experience or too little experience. 
Everybody kept saying, ‘Things will work out, keep your chin up.’  I believed
it, I really and truly believed it, because something like this couldn’t happen
to
me
—we’ve all got the wool over our eyes thinking the bad things, the
really bad ones, won’t ever happen to us and things will get better before they
get worse.  It never did though.  It never did.  I ran out of money and the
will to keep mooching off the people that’d have me.  Too much pride.  And it
got to the point where I couldn’t face them anymore, so I basically ran away
from life.  The little bit I had in savings dried up and unemployment only
lasts for so long and...here I am.”  She shook her head.  “This fucking
economy.”

“Fucking economy,” I
agreed.  “What’d you do?  I mean before, like for a job.  You didn’t have any
other family to help you out?”

“We didn’t ask.  Dad
wouldn’t.  ‘Pride goeth before the fall.’”

A statement I’d
gotten very familiar with.

Win shoved her hands
in her pockets.  “I taught high school English.  They say there’s a shortage of
good teachers, but you try to find a job as one.  I knew people that spent
years hunting.  And God, look at me.  What would my students think?  You fill
their impressionable heads with fluffy dreams of ‘you can be whatever you want
to be’ and then one day something goes wrong and you’re shit out of luck.”

Something goes wrong
and you’re shit out of luck.  Such an appropriate proclamation for the state of
what my life had become.  My “something” was Kerry’s death.  That “something”
is different for everyone.

“Anyway,” she said. 
“Can we change the subject?  Now that we’re sharing, what’s your story, Dave?”

“You want to grab a
couple dinner bars first?  We might need to sit down for this.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Bad enough.”

I won’t lie—when she
disappeared around the corner, I debated grabbing my things and running away. 
Our developing bond, that hint of a connection, left me with a difficult
decision that I didn’t want to make. 

Drum up a story about
my past and avoid the chance that she would freak out and go to the police, or
tell the truth and hope that she would understand.  I was already a liar.  To
Win, I was Dave Berringer of Ocala, Florida.  A good guy in a bad predicament
that posed no threat to her.  Would more lies matter?  When I left her the next
evening, when I left our little self-contained ecosystem and stepped back into
the outside world so I could meet Thomas, would I ever see her again?

I doubted it.  Not
unless I made the effort.

I’d let Rockin’ Roger
go in the same way I’d have donated a favorite shirt to charity.  It had been
there for a while, I’d loved it, and then I’d given it away and forgotten that
it was ever there in the first place.  Would his daughter be any different?

I sat down and
crossed my legs, feeling the cool tiles through my jeans, even though the day’s
heat had turned the air in the unventilated building hot enough to bake a loaf
of rye bread.

I
liked
her. 
I didn’t
want
to lie.

Yet I decided that
the story of Dave Berringer of Ocala, Florida would be the wisest, and safest,
story to tell.

At least until she
said something that caught me so off guard, it made me question every speck of
motivation I had for the future.

***

She was gone longer
than I expected, longer than I thought necessary to grab a couple of breakfast
bars.  At one point, I was sure I heard the splash of water on tile and some
shuffling of stuff—whatever that stuff might’ve been.

Win came back and sat
down in front of me, carrying a plastic grocery bag.  She’d changed shirts—she
now had on a chartreuse button-down top with a collar (yes, I know what chartreuse
looks like—I also know mauve, which was the color of the lipstick she now wore)
and had let her hair down from the ponytail.  She’d dressed up, improvised as
best as she could for our spur-of-the-moment dinner.