Wendy Hornsby: Midnight Baby

“So?” Guido said, gathering up the boy’s sandwich litter from the sidewalk. “Are you coming, or what?”

Sly eyed him. “You cops?”

“Nope.”

“If we go to this place, what do we hafts do there?”

“Take a shower if you want,” I said. “Eat. Go to sleep. That’s all.”

“Eat?”

“If you’re still hungry,” I said.

“Sly’s always hungry,” Pisces said. “Must have worms.”

“What’ll it be?” I asked.

“Clean sheets,” she said.

Sly reached for Pisces’ arm. “Okay. Just for tonight. But we gotta get our stuff first.”

Pisces let out a long breath. I thought she seemed relieved. “Where’s your stuff?” Guido asked.

“On the other side of the park,” she said. “We’ll show you.”

“Fuck that.” Sly pushed her away from Guido. “Don’t show them nothin’. I’ll go get the stuff by myself. Meet me at the liquor store.”

Sly gave us no time to argue. He ran off toward the park like a rabbit let out of a bag. As soon as he was across the street he somehow merged with the night and disappeared. A good trick, considering how much light there was.

“Sweet child,” Guido said.

“He used to be worse.” Pisces shrugged. “Where’s your car? It’s better to drive around the park than walk across it. Too many bizarros hang out in there. The liquor store is on the other side. I’ll show you.”

Sly surprised me. I have been single long enough to have recognized the I’ll-call-you-tomorrow tone in his voice before he took off. Apparently, however, I had misread him. We found him waiting for us exactly where he’d said he would be. That meant that, A, he was fast, and B, the place where he kept his stuff was close by.

When Sly climbed into the backseat of Guido’s Jeep beside Pisces, he was clutching a brown grocery bag against him that contained something about the same size and shape as a leg of lamb. Since it didn’t smell or leak, I didn’t ask.

Sly and Pisces sat quietly in the back. She seemed apprehensive, while he appeared to be somewhat awed. He tried out the windows and fiddled with the seat belts and dome lights.

“You got a CD player?” Sly asked.

“No. Sorry,” Guido said.

“Yeah.” Sly nodded sagely. “It just gets ripped off, don’t it?”

I began to have second thoughts about what I might be delivering to Sister Agnes Peter. Troubled kids, certainly. A nightmare, possibly. From his fidgety silence, I suspected that Guido was having similar misgivings, though he didn’t say anything. Despite the potential for disaster, I could not come up with another alternative.

What I’d told Pisces was true. Taking people in was part of Agnes Peter’s job description. She had doubtless dealt with tougher cases than these scrawny kids. I just hated being the bearer of grief. But in the end, I knew that if Agnes Peter couldn’t handle them, she would know who could.

Sister Agnes Peter lived with about a dozen other nuns in a large bungalow on Griffin Avenue in Lincoln Heights. The house belonged to the church. It wasn’t a convent and none of its residents could be bothered wearing a traditional habit. Most of them taught at Sacred Heart High School in the next block. The rest of them were doers of the good work, like Agnes Peter, whose vows of poverty made them wards of the church.

All things considered, the bungalow was a good place to seek sanctuary. The resident virgins wouldn’t take shit off anybody. Even the local gangs paid their respect: the walls of the house were the only flat surfaces for miles that weren’t tagged and scarred with gang graffiti.

Agnes Peter was watching for us from the broad front porch, huddled in a wicker rocker under a crocheted afghan. She rose as we got out of the Jeep and came down the front steps to greet us, striding with the athletic assertiveness of a drill sergeant. I could not judge her age, fifty-something judging from the context of various conversations we’d had. There seemed to be a little more gray in her short brown hair than the last time I had seen her, though it could have been a trick of the silver moonlight.

“Maggie MacGowen!” Agnes Peter beamed, crushing me in a bear hug. She always smelled of Zest soap. “Good to see you.”

“How have you been, Pete?”

“Flourishing. Just flourishing.” She stepped back and surveyed the others. “So, you’ve brought me some company?”

“You remember Guido Patrini?” I asked.

She offered her hand. “Nice to see you again, Guido.”

“How are you, Sister?” he said, lowering his eyes, nervous as if she had caught him chewing gum in church.

“Pete,” I said, “I want you to meet Sly and Pisces.”

“Pisces, hmm?” Agnes Peter smiled, focusing on the girl. “Astrological sign of the fish. Your birthday’s in the spring, then?”

Pisces shrugged.

“It’s freezing out here. Come inside.” Agnes Peter took both kids in hand and moved with them toward the house. “Have you eaten?”

“Yes,” said Pisces.

“No,” said Sly.

“You have too,” Pisces scolded.

“Have not.”

“Perhaps not enough,” Agnes Peters said. “I think we can find something to tide you over until breakfast, Sly.”

Guido and I, ignored by the others, trailed up the steps and into the house.

I was greeted by warm house smells, of dinner, furniture polish, and fresh flowers. The furnishings were old and the rugs were a bit threadbare. Just the same, there was a gracious air about the old place, a sort of well-tended, if impoverished, gentility. A house full of women.

The old floorboards complained as we walked across the large foyer. But no one seemed to notice us. This house was filled with activity, and newcomers in the night weren’t cause for special notice. The chorus of conversation rose and fell as we passed each open doorway: women in the living room talking back to Arsenio on TV, others around the polished dining-room table grading papers, sharing a liter of diet Coke and a bag of Oreos.

Gripping his bag of “stuff,” Sly clung close to Agnes Peter as we made our way toward the back of the house. Pisces seemed more at ease, openly curious about the place. Without seeming forward, she stopped as she passed a nearly antique baby grand piano and picked out the first few bars of “Fur Elise” with her right hand. Casey had been struggling mightily with the same piece for weeks.

Pisces caught up to Agnes Peter. “The G is flat.”

“I thought so, too,” Agnes Peter chuckled. “So, Pisces, Sly, how did you two meet?”

“He was in trouble,” the girl said with a smug grin on her face.

“Was not.” He gave her a token shove. “She was the one in trouble. Any asshole knows you get busted panhandling inside the market.”

“Shoplifting is any better?” She returned the shove. “And who got busted?”

“Both of us.” Sly finally smiled, an economic little crook at the corner of his mouth. “And we both got away, didn’t we?”

“I’m glad you’re here. Both of you,” Pete said. She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Maggie, will you be staying the night?”

“No. I’m at Guido’s for a couple of days.”

Guido gave me a sharp jab in the back and a mortified glare. Like me, he had been raised a good Catholic.

“Calm down,” I said. “Pete knows we’re just friends. Friends can stay under the same roof and not go to hell for it.”

Agnes Peter laughed. “I saw Mike Flint last week, Maggie. He looks fine. Does he know you’re in town?”

“I haven’t had a chance to call him,” I said.

“Uh huh,” she said. “There’s a phone in the kitchen. Mike’s number is in the directory under F. You know, F as in ‘friend.’ “