Charles De Lint - Dreams Underfoot

She had me in her office one time—I finally went, just to get her off my back—and we sat there for awhile, looking at each other, drinking this crappy coffee from the machine that someone donated to her a few years ago. I wouldn’t have picked it up on a dare if I’d come across it on my rounds.

“What do you want from me?” I finally asked her.

“I’m just trying to understand you.”

“There’s nothing to understand. What you see is what I am. No more, no less.”

“But why do you live the way you do?”

Understand, I admire what Angel does. She’s helped a lot of kids that were in a really bad way and that’s a good thing. Some people need help because they can’t help themselves.

She’s an attractive woman with a heartshaped face, the kind of eyes that always look really warm and caring and long dark hair that seems to go on forever down her back. I always figured something really bad must have happened to her as a kid, for her to do what she does. It’s not like she makes much of a living. I think the only thing she really and honestly cares about is helping people through this sponsorship program she’s developed where straights put up money and time to help the downand-outers get a second chance.

I don’t need that kind of help. I’m never going to be much more than what I am, but that’s okay. It beats what I had before I hit the streets.

I’ve told Angel all of this a dozen times, but she sat there behind her desk, looking at me with those sad eyes of hers, and I knew she wanted a piece of me, so I gave her one. I figured maybe she’d leave me alone then.

“I was in high school,” I told her, “and there was this girl who wanted to get back at one of the teachers—a really nice guy named Mr. Hammond. He taught math. So she made up this story about how he’d molested her and the shit really hit the van. He got suspended while the cops and the school board looked into the matter and all the time this girl’s laughing her head off behind everybody’s back, but looking real sad and screwed up whenever the cops and the social workers are talking to her.

“But I knew he didn’t do it. I knew where she was, the night she said it happened, and it wasn’t with Mr. Hammond. Now I wasn’t exactly the bestliked kid in that school, and I knew what this girl’s gang was going to do to me, but I went ahead and told the truth anyway.

“Things worked out pretty much the way I expected. I got the cold shoulder from everybody, but at least Mr. Hammond got his name cleared and his job back.

“One afternoon he asks me to see him after school and I figure it’s to thank me for what I’ve done, so I go to his classroom. The building’s pretty well empty and the scuff of my shoes in the hallway is the only sound I hear as I go to see him. I get to the math room and he takes me back into his office. Then he locks the door and he rapes me. Not just once, but over and over again. And you know what he says to me while he’s doing it?

“‘Nobody’s going to believe a thing you say,’ he says. ‘You try to talk about this and they’re just going to laugh in your face.’”

I looked over at Angel and there were tears swimming in her eyes.

“And you know what?” I said. “I knew he was right. I was the one that cleared his name. There was nobody going to believe me and I didn’t even try.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Angel said. “You poor kid.”

“Don’t take it so hard,” I told her. “It’s past history. Besides, it never really happened. I just made it up because I figured it was the kind of thing you wanted to hear.”

I’ll give her this: she took it well. Didn’t yell at me, didn’t pitch me out onto the street. But you can see why maybe I’m not on her list of favorite people these days. On the other hand, she doesn’t hold a grudge—I know that too.

I felt like a hypocrite going in to see her with this problem, but I didn’t have anyone else to turn to.

It’s not like Tommy or the dogs could give me any advice. I hesitated for the longest moment in the doorway, but then she looked up and saw me standing there, so I went ahead in.

I took off my hat—it’s this fedora that I actually bought new because it was just too cool to pass up.

I wear it all the time, my light brown hair hanging down from it, long and straight, though not as long as Angel’s. I like the way it looks with my jeans and sneakers and this cotton shirt I found at a rummage sale that only needed a tear fixed on one of its shirttails.

I know what you’re thinking, but hey, I never said I wasn’t vain. I may be a squatter, but I like to look my best. It gets me into places where they don’t let in bums.

Anyway I took off my hat and slouched in the chair on this side of Angel’s desk.

“Which one’s that?” she asked, pointing to Rexy who was sitting outside by the door like the good little dog he is.

“He can come in if you’d like.”

I shook my head. “No. I’m not staying long. I just had this thing I wanted to ask you about. It’s ...”

I didn’t know where to begin, but finally I just started in with finding the envelope. It got easier as I went along. That’s one thing you got to hand to Angel—there’s nobody can listen like she does. You take up all of her attention when you’re talking to her. You never get the feeling she’s thinking of something else, or of what she’s going to say back to you, or anything like that.

Angel didn’t speak for a long time after I was done. When I stopped talking, she looked past me, out at the traffic going by on Grasso Street.

“Maisie,” she said finally. “Have you ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf?”

“Sure, but what’s that got to do with—oh, I get it.” I took out the envelope and slid it across the desk to her. “I didn’t have to come in here,” I added.

And I was wishing I hadn’t, but Angel seemed to give herself a kind of mental shake. She opened the envelope and read the message, then her gaze came back to me.

“No,” she said. “I’m glad you did. Do you want me to have a talk with Franklin?”

“Who’s that?”

“The fellow behind the counter at the post office. I don’t mind doing it, although I have to admit that it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing he’d do.”

So that was his name. Franklin. Franklin the creep.

I shrugged. “What good would that do? Even if he did do it—” and the odds looked good so far as I was concerned “—he’s not going to admit to it.”

“Maybe we can talk to his supervisor.” She looked at her watch. “I think it’s too late to do it today, but I can try first thing tomorrow morning.”

Great. In the meantime, I could be dead.

Angel must have guessed what I was thinking, because she added, “Do you need a place to stay for tonight? Some place where you’ll feel safe?”

I thought of Tommy and the dogs and shook my head.

“No, I’ll be okay,” I said as I collected my envelope and stuck it back in with Tommy’s mail.

“Thanks for, you know, listening and everything.”

I waited for her to roll into some spiel about how she could do more, could get me off the street, that kind of thing, but it was like she was tuned right into my wavelength because she didn’t say a word about any of that. She just knew, I guess, that I’d never come back if every time I talked to her that was all I could look forward to.

“Come see me tomorrow,” was all she said as I got to my feet. “And Maisie?”

I paused in the doorway where Rexy was ready to start bouncing off my legs as if he hadn’t seen me in weeks.

“Be careful,” Angel added.

“I will.”

I took a long route back to the squat, watching my back the whole time, but I never saw anybody that looked like he was following me, and not a single person in a dark robe. I almost laughed at myself by the time I got back. There were Tommy and the dogs, all sprawled out on the steps of our building until Rexy yelped and then the whole pack of them were racing down the street towards me.