I’m sitting at the Department of Family Services with this Iraqi guy and his family. Refugees. Fresh out of Baghdad. Arrived in San Francisco last night. I need to connect them with Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid.<\/p>\n
Welcome to America.<\/p>\n
His wife holds two kids and he cradles a baby girl. He points to the rest room and then himself and lifts the baby for me to hold. I shake my head no. Liability. If something were to happen while I held your baby, well, it\u2019s not going to happen.<\/p>\n
Sorry, man, I say.<\/p>\n
He shrugs, takes the baby with him to the men\u2019s room.<\/p>\n
They speak no English. I need a cigarette. How do I say that? A translator at the settlement agency explained to them what we\u2019d being doing today. He should have come with me, but, typical non-profit, it didn\u2019t have enough staff to spare him from the office.<\/p>\n
I tap my pack of smokes and point outside. The wife smiles, and I stand, cigarette in hand. I spread my fingers. Five minutes, I say. More smiles. Outside, the sun\u2019s reflection dances across the back windows of parked cars and I squint, cupping a lit match in my hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, brother, you got another one of those?\u201d<\/p>\n
I turn and face a homeless guy I recognize right off. Little Stevie Krantz, a thin, patchy half-ass beard blotting his face like mold. Crack dealer back in the day. Walked around in a body length mink coat no matter the weather. Hotter\u2019n hell and there\u2019d be Stevie in his coat, all five foot, four inches of him sweating rivers. Mister Big Man with a roll of bills in each pocket held tight with rubber bands.<\/p>\n
Booze did him in. Just started sipping and nipping More and more, morning, noon and night. Next thing you know, Stevie\u2019s on Sixth Street messing himself, walking barefoot hollering at the moon. Mink coat funky as road kill. Booze, man, can you believe it? A fifth of this, a fifth of that. Amazing when I think about it. All that crack he dealt, and it was booze that rocked his world. Still, he was able to knock up Vernetta. Back in the day, she was as fine as she wanted to be. But in the end what she got was rank Little Stevie.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s up, Stevie?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTom? Hey man! I didn\u2018t know it was you!\u201d<\/p>\n
He hugs me, raw Thunderbird breath melting my face.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet off me!\u201d<\/p>\n
He backs away and I give him a smoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019ve you been? Haven\u2019t seen you in like years, man. You\u2019re not at Out of the Rain no more, Tom?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I say. \u201cIt hasn\u2019t been that long. About two years. I left.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHear about your boy Michael?\u201d<\/p>\n
I shake my head. Michael was my office manager at Out of the Rain. I took him from our shelter like I did most of my staff. The contract required I do that. Funders saw us as more than a service agency, a kind of vocational rehabilitation center for people who had been on the street.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re required to hire the homeless, you know, recovering drunks who more often than not start drinking again, schizos who forget to take their meds, whacked-out, traumatized combat veterans who consider a simple question the equivalent of giving them shit, you count on the few Michaels of the world who don\u2019t drink, talk to themselves or pick fights. He was one of the few normal people I hired. I haven\u2019t seen him for months.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was diddling me and Vernetta\u2019s kid, man, our son Stevie Junior. Police called him on it. He\u2019s running. But he can\u2019t run far. Far enough from me, anyway. Sick motherfucker diddling a three-year-old kid, I\u2019ll kill him.\u201d<\/p>\n
I give Stevie a look like, c\u2019moon, but he\u2019s pissed off enough to glare right back at me, his eyes shot through with the red lines like you see on road maps.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know anything about that.\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just saying so you do know. He\u2019s your boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI hired him. That doesn\u2019t make him my boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s your boy, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStevie, you\u2019ve been such a standup father, I\u2019m impressed you care.\u201d<\/p>\n
He lurches at me and swings, his left fist just missing my face. I\u2019m surprised at his speed, a little of the old crack-dealing Stevie not so pickled after all.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake it easy,\u201d I say stepping back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll kill him!\u201d Stevie shouts, shadow-boxing a tree thinner than him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019d you hear this about Michael?\u201d I ask, feeling an old here-we-go-again weariness coming on me whenever someone told me about one of my staff fucking up.<\/p>\n
\u201cStreets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSidewalks got lips? Tell me who told you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw John. They\u2018d started a business together.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat kind of business?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMail.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMail?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou on the streets, you could use their room for an address. You know how it is. Shelter\u2019s always put a time limit on how long you can have your mail sent to them. So for twenty-five bucks a month, you use Mike and John\u2018s address.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not bad. I must have had more than one hundred guys using Out of the Rain for a mailing address before I cut that shit loose. Too much paper and with a staff that could not alphabetize and clients accusing us of stealing checks we couldn\u2018t find, it became my definition of hell.<\/p>\n
John was always thinking, always laying plans for some get-rich-quick scheme. Get enough guys receiving disability or Social Security, that twenty-five bucks a month could add up. John and Michael could keep their jobs at Out of the Rain, do the mail thing on the side until it took off, yeah, it could add up real good for them. Not likely, but it could if you convinced people who liked to drink and shoot up their money to part with the twenty-five dollar fee. Good luck on that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I had been program director of Out of the Rain for seven years before I resigned. I don\u2019t know, I was tired. Same people like Little Stevie, day in day out, no change. Breaking up fights, being called all kinds of motherfucker by the same drunk who five minutes later hits you up for a dollar and who can\u2019t understand why you just 86\u2019d his ass. Staff as loopy as the clients.<\/p>\n
Out of the Rain was about the only place that would hire them, homeless and formerly homeless. Some of them were flat out crazy, and they knew it. I, however, had options they didn\u2019t. I could leave. A solid education, no drinking or mental problems. I had that much going for me. When I earned a master\u2019s in social work, I thought I wanted to save the world. I soon learned I didn\u2019t and I walked.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a case manager now with International Assistance, Inc., an agency that helps refugees. Mostly Iraqis because of the war. Most like me have an education and job skills. They are grateful to be here. They are polite. If they drink or use, they don\u2019t do it in front of me, and they don\u2018t come to my office fucked up. Once they get settled, they find work and I don\u2019t see them again. Ever. They\u2019re on their way. That\u2019s the way I like it. They don\u2019t come back every day to show me how they are slowly killing themselves with booze or some shit like Little Stevie.<\/p>\n
John was my outreach worker and if anybody was diddling anybody, I\u2019d\u2019ve thought it was him. He always brought in young women he found on the street. Hookers, runaways, slumming college graduates. He turned them over to the benefits advocate who helped them find a place to stay. Nothing wrong with it, but I wondered. Surely there were homeless men who crossed his path and needed help too. But he always found women. Young women. I told him he better not be bringing them home with him. He looked shocked at the idea and denied anything. He stayed in touch with them after they found shelter or were placed in a rehab program. Follow up, he explained. To show \u201cpositive outcomes\u201d on his stats. That\u2019s legit. I was required by the state to document everything. Maybe it was a head trip, an ego thing for John, a daddy-figure thing. Still, I wondered about him. But then I wondered about all my staff. None of those gals ever complained about John, however. Never. You can\u2019t fire somebody for something you think they might be doing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s John at, Stevie?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHurley Hotel. That was their office.\u201d<\/p>\n
Office, I mutter to myself. I give Stevie another smoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cMike always had my back.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d Stevie said. \u201cHe took care of Vernetta when I couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWouldn\u2019t stop drinking is what you wouldn\u2018t do and turning her onto crack and whoring her out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHard to believe about Mike. Sorry I swung on you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I was back on the job I\u2018d 86 you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a public sidewalk. I can swing on whoever I want. You got another smoke?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just gave you one. Straighten up. Look after your kid. Where is he?\u201d<\/p>\n
Stevie shrugged.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Vernetta\u2019s momma, I think, in Oakland.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou think? You seen Vernetta?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Heard she took off after this thing with Michael and hit the streets. I don\u2019t know where.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI got to go back inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stevie nods, sucks on his cigarette, closing his eyes as he exhales.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what in hell are you doing here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking with Iraqi refugees.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMan, what you doing with A-rabs?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEarning a living. Later, Stevie\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLater, bro.\u201d<\/p>\n
He walks off swaying from side to side, arms out, a sailor of the streets in search of balance. I rejoin my Iraqi family. They smile, I smile back. They face forward and continue waiting for their name to be called. Patient people, for what they\u2018ve been through. I give them that.<\/p>\n
To tell you the truth, I hate fucking babysitting. It\u2019s easy, but it\u2019s long and boring. No war stories with this job. We could be here all day. I cover my face with my hands thinking and let out a long breath. Michael, Michael, Michael. Not you. Of all people, not you. I don\u2019t believe it. I don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong. He wasn\u2019t a friend, really. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019d call him. Close colleague, I guess. We went through some times together. State budget cuts, drive-by shootings, the deaths of some clients and staff to drug addiction. It left a bond of sorts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to go,\u201d I tell the Iraqis.<\/p>\n
They look at me puzzled. I point outside. They smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cSmoke?\u201d one of the kids asks stretching out the \u201co\u201d sound more than he needs to, but he\u2019s learning.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d I say and stand up. \u201cSmoke and drive.\u201d<\/p>\n
I make a motion of gripping a steering wheel. I point outside, make the driving motion again and then point back inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go, come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
I tell a security guard the name of the Iraqi family and ask if he would show them to a window if their name is called while I\u2019m out. The intake workers have translators here, so I\u2019m good on that score. The security guard\u2019s cool. Not a problem, he says. I shake his hand and leave a five-dollar bill in his palm. He smiles. No problem, no drama. It suits me most of the time, but I don\u2019t want to hold anyone\u2019s hand right now. I walk outside. I need to find John.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019d never have noticed Michael if the copy machine hadn\u2019t jammed. But the bitch did. I was trying to print some sign-in sheets for the front desk. Something always fucked up. Running a nonprofit was hard enough without the copy machine crapping out on me. But when you depend on donated equipment what you get is used and cheap and worn down. I spent more money repairing things than I would have had I bought them new. But my executive director never listened to that argument when I asked him for more money for equipment.<\/p>\n
So there I stood staring at the copy machine\u2019s blinking red lights telling me it was in cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can fix that, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
I glanced at this guy looking over my shoulder. Big dude, black square glasses, short brown hair combed to the right side. Late thirties, maybe. Red plaid shirt tucked into his jeans, a bowling ball shaped stomach pressing out against it. Work boots. Pleasant voice but impassive. Almost a monotone. I thought, \u201cWho called the repair man?\u201d and immediately began worrying about how much we had left in the budget for maintenance and if it would be enough to pay him.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid we call you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled, just barely.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stay in the shelter.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stepped around me, opened a panel on the copy machine and twisted a few knobs. He yanked out the ink cartridge, pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper and then slammed the ink cartridge back in and shut the panel. The copy machine began clicking and flashing green lights. Then it fell silent like a car with it\u2019s ignition shut off. After a moment, it started humming again and the rest of the sign-in sheets began dropping into a tray.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo problem, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
I watched him take a seat in the reception area and remove a paperback book from a backpack propped against his chair. He crossed his legs and started reading.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is that guy?\u201d I asked Jay, my receptionist.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Jays said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen him around but don\u2019t know him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow long?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA while, I think,\u201d Jay said and started slapping his face.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t start,\u201d I told him.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the kind of thing I dealt with among my staff. Jay was a whacked-out, sandy-haired Vietnam combat vet with post-traumatic stress disorder. He used to come in every morning, sit in the reception area and refuse to talk to anyone. How do you get someone to talk? I asked myself. Well, you force him. So, I made him our volunteer receptionist.<\/p>\n
For two days, the phone rang off the hook while Jay sat beside it and refused to lift the receiver.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoddamnit, Jay!\u201d I yelled at him. \u201cAnswer the fucking phone!\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me. He looked at the phone like he had just noticed it. He reached for the receiver. In a barely audible voice thick as syrup he said, \u201cOut of the Rain. May I help you?\u201d He listened for a moment and then told me the call was for me. In a world of reduced expectations, Jay met my definition of success.<\/p>\n
Now the phone was ringing again and he stopped slapping himself long enough to answer it like a champ.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s Anne in the kitchen,\u201d Jay said. \u201cThe coffee machine is broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAsk this Michael guy what the fuck he knows about coffee machines.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Hurley Hotel smacks up against a dilapidated convenience store. Old men, older than their years, lounge by the open door of the convenient store sitting on plastic milk crates and hustling crack to anyone walking by. Shriveled even older-looking men, longtime dope fiends and drunks most of them, wander inside the store to get cash from the storeowner. He receives their disability checks and serves as their payee. He takes a percentage. They buy his wine and cigarettes. They\u2018re usually broke within two weeks and he loans them money. When the next month\u2019s check arrives, he takes his percentage plus what they owe him plus interest and hands out what little remains. Naturally it doesn\u2019t carry them through the month so he loans them more money and the cycle repeats itself. They can\u2019t win. Not a bad racket. I wonder if that\u2019s what John and Mike were ultimately thinking. Use the mail drop as an in to becoming payees.<\/p>\n
I go inside the Hurley\u2019s darkened lobby. I ask a man behind a barred window for John\u2019s room. He points upstairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThree-oh-two.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks.\u201d<\/p>\n
I approach the stairs, feeling my asthma kick in as the mildewed stink of the carpet shuts down my lungs. It\u2019s the kind of rotten odor you smell in old people\u2019s homes: decay and rot and a languid mugginess that suspends itself among the cobwebs and takes the place of air. I haul my ass up three flights, take a hit off my inhaler and knock on John\u2019s door.<\/p>\n
\u201cYo, John!\u201d<\/p>\n
The door opens a hair then widens when John sees me.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, Tom,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat are doing here?\u201d<\/p>\n
I haven’t seen him since I left Out of the Rain but he looks the same. Short, with a gut and the two bottom buttons of his shirt open revealing his undershirt. Gray hair brushed back off his forehead. Glasses one size too large balanced loosely on his nose.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard about Michael.\u201d<\/p>\n
John lets me into a small room with two desks. Metal filing cabinets stand behind the desks. I go over to one of the desks and see a tray filled with business cards.<\/p>\n
Michael Keys, administrator<\/p>\n
Homeless Mail Depot, Inc.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I notice small framed photos of the girls John brought in to the drop-in center beside a stack of business cards with John\u2019s name and title, \u201cC.E.O.\u201d Little notes are scrawled across the photos. Thank you John. I love you John. You\u2019re the best, John. He even has one of Vernetta and Stevie junior. He sees me looking at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t part of what Michael was doing, Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone knows you got your freak on with young girls. How young did you go?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot that young.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t lie to me, Johh, how young did you go?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do you care? You\u2019re not director anymore?\u201d<\/p>\n
I stepped toward him. I\u2019ve never kicked anyone\u2019s ass but I\u2019m willing to learn how on John.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow fucking young did you go, John?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t part of it, Tom!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow could you not know?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow could you not?\u201d<\/p>\n
That stopped me like traffic light. I leaned against a desk a kind of slumped defeat. He had me. I\u2019ve been asking myself the same question. How could I not?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll\u2019s I know is what Jay told me,\u201d John says. \u201cMichael was at work. The police asked about him. Jay told Michael. He split. Called me from the Greyhound bus station. Said he was out of here. Gone, bing just like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
John slides down his chair takes a box of business cards and throws them across the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo much for these,\u201d John says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Michael fixed the coffee machine and kept the copy machine humming. He had other skills, too. He organized the front desk, the place where everyone coming into Out of the Rain had to stop and sign in. Threw away spoiled food that had been left in drawers, refilled the pen holders and put the tokens in a plastic container. When my office assistant fell off the wagon crack pipe in hand, I hired Michael to replace her.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I leave John\u2019s place and try to put the pieces together. What had I missed about Michael? I remember him telling me he was an army brat. Called his father sir long before he joined the military himself. He serviced planes. He married in his twenties. His wife got lonely living on base, Oklahoma he said it was. Fort Bragg? Anyway, she killed herself, I know he told me that. Her death sent him over the edge. He drank. He received a dishonorable discharge. He kept drinking. He hoboed around eventually landing in San Francisco and Out of the Rain.<\/p>\n
I didn’t do a background check on Michael or any of my other staff. I didn’t have the budget or the time; too busy begging for money to keep my doors open to even think about doing something like that. His value to me was all I needed to know. If Michael had a record, so what? Damn near every homeless person I knew had a record. Part of the profile.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t doubt Michael was in the Army. All that sir shit. Makes sense. Or at least he was an Army brat. Perhaps he was married. But did she die by suicide or leave him? Was he discharged for drinking or was he thrown out because he was suspected of raping kids? Is his name really Michael?<\/p>\n
After I hired him, he continued to spend his nights in the shelter. I told him to find his own place. He had a job, money for an apartment. He had no reason to take a cot from someone without a job. He didn\u2019t like the idea.<\/p>\n
I wonder if he knew what would happen if he lived alone. That the shelter had not only been a place to lay his head, but a crowded, noisy place that prevented him from being alone with his desire.<\/p>\n
Another question. I got lots of them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I remember the day John walked Vernetta into Out of the Rain. Why wouldn\u2019t I? She was the hottest thing we were ever likely to see strut through our doors. Two years ago. Man, it seems a lot longer.<\/p>\n
Vernetta, fine, sashaying light-skinned Puerto Rican gal who made even the queens look twice. Wearing a pink dress that showed off her cleavage and trim legs. Twenty something. So hot you had a hard time making up your mind where to look. Vernetta sucked the air out of all our lungs. Even the most dazed drunks felt their heads clear and vision return, a new light in their eyes. A bottle of Thunderbird and a dime of crack had nothing on that girl.<\/p>\n
Only Michael seemed not to notice her. He did his job with an unbroken rhythm. He asked me to sign a check request form for more bus tokens. Didn\u2019t even look up when she walked by.I signed my name and handed the check request back to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, sir,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That day, Vernetta sat down and checked out the reception area like she owned it. We\u2019d get people like her from time to time. Not as hot but like her in every other way. People who didn\u2019t belong, who seemed to land from Mars and rattled our usual routine of freakouts and fights and DTs. For a moment they carried with them a fresh attitude that would give off a sense of possibility until we all calmed down and recognized them for what they were: an accident waiting to happen. Some little Miss Thing using the gifts God gave them to get what they wanted. Booze, dope, whatever. They didn\u2019t come to Out of the Rain by accident. They had just held up better than the rest.<\/p>\n
So Vernetta started hanging with Little Stevie, who still had his groove on although some cracks were showing. But at that time he knew where to get dope even if he was too drunk to deal it himself. For a quick fuck or blowjob, Little Stevie turned Vernetta onto crack. She\u2019d sweep into the center zippidy-do-dah, speeding her brains out, jamming cigarettes in her mouth like firecrackers and throwing them out just as fast, talking a mile a minute. She was possessed, out of her mind. Little Stevie watched her before he passed out in a chair smiling in his sleep. Dreaming of booze and Vernetta on her knees.<\/p>\n
It amazed me how fast she got raggedy. She stopped changing clothes. The one dress, that first one we saw her in, torn and stained. Face all droopy. Even Jay noticed. She\u2019d look good again if she stuck her head in a tub for two hours and washed her hair, he said.<\/p>\n
But she was feeling no pain and didn\u2019t care about her funk. I don\u2019t know when I noticed her pregnant. It just kind of dawned on me like it dawned on everybody else. Suddenly her little stick body had a bulge. I was so used to dealing with drunks, I at first thought her kidneys were going. However, that bulge got bigger and bigger and then it hit me. Oh, shit, I thought, oh shit. I told her what crack would do to her baby. How he might be born blind or without an arm or a stomach. How his brain would be mush. She never sat in one place long enough to listen.<\/p>\n
Then I stopped seeing Vernetta. She disappeared just like that. Even Little Stevie didn\u2019t know where she was. Not that he cared. He bragged about knocking her up but that was as far as he carried his fatherly duties.<\/p>\n
\u201cSir, I need to talk to you,\u201d Michael said to me one morning. I looked up, budget sheets strewn across my desk. I was busy drafting reasons why the state should continue funding us.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know Vernetta?\u201d Michael said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho doesn\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s staying with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I took off my glasses and pushed away from my desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, sir. She moved in a few of weeks ago. I saw her on the bus and sat with her. She\u2019s pregnant, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe told me she was trying to quit using crack but had no place to stay where someone wouldn\u2019t be smoking it. I told her she could stay with me. I told her she had to attend an NA meeting twice a day and show me a note from the facilitator. Little Stevie doesn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat makes you think she\u2019s not going out and lighting up when you\u2019re here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d know if she was smoking again, sir. She\u2019s scared about this baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe should be. When\u2019s it due?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFour months.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow long has she been with you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThree weeks. Clean so far. Hard at first.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI bet. You\u2019re putting me in a bad spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI could fire you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI should fire you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael had violated rule number one: never, I mean never, was a staff person to take a client home. All sorts of problems with that. Like exchanging a roof for sex. Even if that wasn\u2019t the case, the accusation, if made by a manipulative little dope fiend like Vernetta, would be hard to refute.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should have taken her to a shelter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael looked at me. I was full of shit and he knew it. A woman\u2019s homeless shelter wouldn\u2019t have taken Vernetta because she was a crack head. A battered women\u2019s shelter wouldn\u2019t want her because she wasn\u2019t battered. A detox wouldn\u2019t want her because she was pregnant. Liability, liability, liability. No one would have taken her. I knew that even as I spoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not touching her, are you? I\u2019m talking even a hug.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, sir. You can come over if you want, sir, and ask her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe seeing a doctor?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Tenderloin Free Clinic, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019s the baby?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood, they say. If she stays off the crack.\u201d<\/p>\n
I look at him for a minute. He stares at the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, sir?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not your fault your wife killed herself.\u201d<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t do shit to make up for something that wasn\u2019t your fault.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not a shrink but I don\u2019t have to be fucking Freud to guess that much. This isn\u2019t your kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFind a wife and make your own kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know where to start, sir. Vernetta sat next to me on the bus. I didn\u2019t ask for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
We looked at each other. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. He looked tired.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep your fucking hands off her and don\u2019t say a God damn thing to anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never had this conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I took a homeless gal home once. My first social work gig. A detox center for the homeless. Jean was thirty-seven, ten years older than me. Speed freak. Wore sandals, jeans and t-shirts and babbled on about people thinking she looked like Janice Joplin. She was prettier than that. A cross between a dead head and a cowgirl. She made no sense high, but I was drawn to her. I felt butterflies in my stomach when I saw her. A tingly desire. Every now and again she\u2019d stop her speed freak chatter and look at me and I knew she knew.<\/p>\n
\u201cPick me up a block from here by the park when you get off, work\u201d she said one afternoon.<\/p>\n
You have a choice, I thought as I drove my dinged-upped \u201982 Toyota hatchback toward the park near Seventh and Howard streets. You can keep going, turn around. I didn\u2019t. I stopped. Jean sat on a swing set drawing lines in the sand her one outstretched leg. I leaned over and opened the passenger door. Jean got in.<\/p>\n
Ten minutes later, I parked the car outside my apartment on Masonic and Page.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to brush my teeth,\u201d she said when we walked into my apartment.<\/p>\n
She went into the bathroom and I walked into my room, sat in a chair across from my bed. When she came out I said, \u201cIn here.\u201d She kissed me without a word. I tasted the toothpaste mixed with cigarette breath. She dropped her pants and pulled down her panties. She was ready to do it just like that. She sat on my lap and tugged her t-shirt over head. I looked at the scars on her stomach and her right side where she said she had burned herself rolling into a camp fire.<\/p>\n
In the morning, she asked for five dollars. I gave her twenty, and a change of clothes; a pair of my jeans–a little big for her–and a plaid shirt I no long wore, and dropped her at the park. Then I went to work. I saw her in line at the front door waiting for us to open. She was cool. When she saw me, you\u2019d think we\u2019d never met.<\/p>\n
Jean said nothing when I told her we were a one time deal. Someone would find out. I\u2019d lose my job fucking a client. I suppose she expected it. She\u2019d been around the block a few times, long enough to there was nothing to us. When I dropped her at the park for the final time she didn\u2019t even ask for money.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I was thinking of Jean when I stopped by Michael\u2019s basement apartment in the Mission unannounced one afternoon.<\/p>\n
Vernetta answered my knock. Her pregnancy was at a point where the T-shirt she wore barely covered her bulging stomach. But her eyes were clear, voice steady.<\/p>\n
\u201cTom?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. How you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cReal good.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you doing here? Michael\u2019s not at work?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just checking on the situation. My staff isn\u2019t supposed to be taking in clients. Keep this visit between us, Vernetta. I\u2019m covering Michael\u2019s ass and I want to be sure I\u2019m not being played a fool. May I come in?\u201d<\/p>\n
She stepped aside. I looked around. The drawn curtains, closed windows, stale air. A hot plate on a card table. Two chairs. A back room where the whir of a fan muffled the sounds of traffic. One lamp. Off. Everything in shadow.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t you want any light?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s how Michael likes it. If he wants the lights off they\u2018re off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps he wanted to keep out the hot summer sun. My mother used to do that. We didn\u2019t have A\/C so she\u2019d close the curtains in the summer to keep the house cool.<\/p>\n
I thanked Vernetta. I walked toward 16th Street to catch the Muni back to work, skirting around the speed freaks hanging out in the alleys. I tried to convince myself I was making up for Jean by letting Michael take care of Vernetta. Look how good she was doing. Hell, she had a point. His place. If he wanted the lights off, they\u2019re off. Still, a part of me kept thinking that was weird.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Hurley stands a block up from Out of the Rain. I haven\u2019t been back since my last day there one year ago. I feel an overwhelming urge now to stop by. The problem with leaving a job is that you leave part of yourself behind. The job becomes your identity. I wasn\u2019t just Tom Murray, I was Tom Murray, director of Out of the Rain. Sometimes, I miss that Tom.<\/p>\n
It feels good walking through the doors again. A man in a blue suit and tie, a bottle of air freshener by his elbow sits at the front desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
I pause like a dog that had its leash yanked. I approach the desk and give him my name. I want to see the director, Deborah Brinker, I say. Miss Deborah, he corrects me. OK, Miss. Deborah. No, I don\u2019t have an appointment, but she will know me. I was the director before her.<\/p>\n
He appears unimpressed. He gets on the phone and pages her.<\/p>\n
\u201cJay still here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not allowed to give out information on our clients. Confidentiality.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not a client.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTalk to Miss Deborah then.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a brief conversation in which the the front desk guy gives my name to, I presume, Miss Deborah, he hangs up, tells me to sign in. Then he points to the stairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can go up now.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I reach the top, I pause and consider what had once been my office. The door is closed. Framed university degrees hang on the wall. Miss Deborah, sits behind a desk bare of anything but a computer and plastic trays filled with filed papers.<\/p>\n
I knock on the door. With a sigh, she shuts off the computer looks up and waves me in. She reaches across the desk and shakes my hand. I wait for her to tell me to sit down. She doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Tom Murray,\u201d I say. \u201cI was the previous director.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMiss Deborah,\u201d she says. \u201cPleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you weren\u2019t expecting me. I just wanted to come by and tell you how sorry I am to hear about Michael and to offer my support. If there\u2019s anything I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The offer hangs between us. I feel a little desperate. I want to talk about Michael. How awful I feel, how confused. But sitting and facing Miss Deborah tells me I made a mistake. I don\u2019t belong here. Not anymor3e.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, Mr. Murray,\u201d Miss Deborah says. \u201cIt\u2019s been quite a shock. Totally unexpected.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe board of directors knows about this but not our funders. I hope it doesn\u2019t go that far. Everyone understands, of course, Michael wasn\u2019t my hire.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does that matter?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing, I hope. But if this frightens funders, if they worry about the type of staff we have, I\u2019ll be forced to emphasize he wasn\u2019t my hire.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t say anything. I\u2019m her excuse. She\u2019ll beat hell out of my name as long as she needs to. I don\u2019t blame her. I\u2019d do the same thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you do a background check on Michael, Mr. Murray? Did you confirm his job histories? Michael\u2019s so-called time with the military? I did. No Michael Kelly with his birth date and Social Security number was in the Army.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably not his real name.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the more reason for background checks, isn\u2019t it? And did you know Vernetta lived with him when she was pregnant? I\u2019m sure you didn\u2019t, but why did you permit Michael to babysit for her?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he did on his off hours. . .\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe brought her baby here to work, I\u2018m told. You must have known that much.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t say anything. I feel like that apostle whats-his-name when the rooster crowed every time he lied. I didn\u2019t see the harm, I want to say. Not from Michael.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean no disrespect but it\u2019s a good thing you left when you did or you\u2019d be answering a lot more questions,\u201d Miss Deborah says. \u201cI\u2019ll try to keep this from following you. You work with refugees now, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just came to offer my support,\u201d I say. \u201cThat\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miss Deborah returns to her computer. I stand to leave. Then I think of Jay again.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes Jay still work here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s on disability now,\u201d she says still facing the computer.<\/p>\n
\u201cDisability?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI had the benefits advocate enroll him in SSI. He didn\u2019t need to be here. He\u2019d never get a job anywhere else. That does us no good. I want people who can find work and move on. Jay would barely answer the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pushes back in her chair until it rests against the wall behind her and faces me, offering a tired, even sympathetic smile that tells me she knows I think she\u2019s a bitch. She\u2019s not. She\u2019s doing what\u2019s she\u2019s doing because that\u2019s what she learned in school. Comes with the degrees. She doesn\u2019t want Jay. She wants suits. She wants order. She wants to triage the Jays out of here.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou put up with a lot hiring people like Jay, Mr. Murray,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ll give you that.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vernetta had a baby boy. She named him Stevie Junior. That was more credit than I\u2019d have given his father, who never made it to the hospital. Nine damn pounds. Because Vernetta had stayed clean, the doctors thought the boy would have little to no brain damage from crack. Over time they would know, but his prognosis was strong.<\/p>\n
She entered a halfway house for single moms in recovery. Michael and I used the agency van to deliver her to her new home. He hauled her things up three flights of stairs to her room. It had bay windows and a nice view of the ocean and hardwood floors that caught the sun and shined like ice.<\/p>\n
Michael set up the baby crib. When he finished, she embraced him and sobbed. He held her like a robot and looked over her shoulder at the ocean but nothing in his face revealed what he might be thinking. Not a blink or a tear or an expression of any kind. Just a blank stare and a stiffness to his body as he patted her back one, two, one, two and then stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cPretty controlled in there,\u201d I said when were back outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cMilitary training, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should be really very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t just drop out of her life. She still needs you. Little Stevie isn\u2019t going to be any kind of dad to that kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, sir, he won\u2019t. I\u2019ll come by. I told her I\u2019d baby sit.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vernetta would bring Stevie Junior to work from time to time and leave him with Michael while she attended an NA meeting.<\/p>\n
After I submitted my two weeks\u2019 notice, I told Michael he should leave, too. I knew of a job opening at Hap Street Youth Center for an office manager. After-school activities for wealthy suburban kids in Walnut Creek. Easy. No stress. Good money. Go for it, I told him. He said he would but he never applied. To work with kids, you must agree to a background check. I hadn\u2019t thought of that before now. I guess Miss Deborah had a point.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What was it like for Michael to be on that Greyhound bus after he got off the phone with John? Did he feel badly? Did he think, Another close call? I made it. I\u2019ll stop it this time. I really will. Or was his escape part of the thrill?<\/p>\n
Sitting in his seat hunkered down, maybe a hat pulled over his face, I imagine him pretending to be asleep to avoid being noitced until he does fall asleep only to awaken some place else hours later. He finds a homeless shelter and sleeps among other homeless men to protect himself from himself below the police radar, his life resuming once more.<\/p>\n
If Michael is caught and I\u2019m called to testify, I would talk about the man I knew. I would stand up for that man not because I condone child abuse but because that man and I were colleagues, partners. The one guy I could say, Hey, let\u2019s have lunch, and it wasn\u2019t an act of charity. We talked sports. We bitched about the weather. The one guy at work I could hang with because he wasn\u2019t fucking out there. I knew when I was talking to him, I was talking to him and not half a dozen personalities jockeying around in his head. He wasn\u2019t Jay. He was stiff, dull and ordinary. He changed his clothes every day. He had all his teeth. He didn\u2019t hit me up for cash. And for a while he did a good thing by Vernetta.<\/p>\n
Then I think, What am I doing? Look what he did. Did to me. Not just Stevie Jr., not just Vernetta. But Me. Me. I trusted him.<\/p>\n
Fuck him.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I doubt the police will find Michael. If they had not caught him before why now? He was messing with the child of a crack head and a skid row father. We\u2019re not talking the Rockefellers here. Crack addicts and drunks. Low, low down on the priority scale.<\/p>\n
And now Vernetta is on the street again. My kid was abused by the man who helped me, maybe even saved my life and who I trusted and loved, and boom, the dam broke. Violated once more, she cut loose and got herself some crack. An overwhelming desire always waiting to bust out. She needed an excuse and got a great one. And Stevie Junior, where the hell is he? Is he really with Vernetta\u2019s mother or her NA sponsor or just out there too, lost and alone?<\/p>\n
These days, I live alone in the same apartment I fucked Jean. I have no secrets other than her. And she was legal. Doesn\u2019t say much for me, I know, but I can leave the curtains wide open and the lights on, mirrors in place.<\/p>\n
I hope Jean cleaned up. I hope but I don\u2019t want to run into her and find out. I\u2019m afraid of what I\u2019d see, what I might be tempted to do. Like try to help her. I mean really help her this time. Guilt, man. It hangs on after all these years. I prefer to deal with people I won\u2019t see again. Like my Iraqi family. Wrap things up at the Department of Family Services this afternoon and they\u2019ll be on their way and I\u2019ll be on mine. No drama. Yeah, it gets old but I can deal with old. Old is better than the alternative. If you help the same people too often their little mindless shit will either add up to nothing or something and you\u2019ve got to decide which it is and whether you can look away or not.<\/p>\n
Me, I\u2019d rather not know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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