Charles De Lint - Dreams Underfoot

“The woman who died last night,” I said before he had a chance to even say hello. “Margaret Grierson. The Director of the AIDS Clinic. Did she have a box here?”

Franklin nodded. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? One of my friends says the whole clinic’s going to fall apart without her there to run it. God, I hope it doesn’t change anything. I know a halfdozen people that are going to it.”

I gave him a considering look. A half dozen friends? He had this real sad look in his eyes, like ...

Jesus, I thought. Was Franklin gay? Had he really been just making nice and not trying to jump my bones?

I reached across the counter and put my hand on his arm. “They won’t let this screw it up,” I told him. “The clinic’s too important.”

The look of surprise in his face had me backing out the door fast. What the hell was I doing?

“Maisie!” he cried.

I guess I felt like a bit of a shit for having misjudged him, but all the same, I couldn’t stick around. I followed my usual rule of thumb when things get heavy or weird: I fled.

I just started wandering aimlessly, thinking about what I’d learned. That message hadn’t been for me, it had been for Grierson. Margaret, yeah, but Margaret Grierson, not Flood. Not me. Somehow it had gotten in the wrong box. I don’t know who put it there, or how he knew what was going to happen last night before it happened, but whoever he was, he’d screwed up royally.

Better it had been me, I thought. Better a loser from the Tombs, than someone like Grierson who was really doing something worthwhile.

When I thought that, I realized something that I guess I’d always known, but I just didn’t ever let myself think about. You get called a loser often enough and you start to believe it. I know I did. But it didn’t have to be true.

I guess I had what they call an epiphany in some of the older books I’ve read. Everything came together and made sense—except for what I was doing with myself.

I unfolded the paper again. There was a picture of Grierson near the bottom—one of those shots they keep on file for important people and run whenever they haven’t got anything else. It was cropped down from one that had been taken when she cut the ribbon at the new clinic a few months back. I remembered seeing it when they ran coverage of the ceremony.

“This isn’t going to mean a whole lot to you,” I told her picture, “but I’m sorry about what happened to you. Maybe it should’ve been me, but it wasn’t. There’s not much I can do about that. But I can do something about the rest of my life.”

I left the paper on a bench near a bus stop and walked back to Grasso Street to Angel’s office. I sat down in the chair across from her desk, holding Rexy on my lap to give me courage, and I told her about Tommy and the dogs, about how they needed me and that was why I’d never wanted to take her up on her offers to help.

She shook her head sadly when I was done. She was looking a little weepy again—like she had when I told her that story before—but I was feeling a little weepy myself this time.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I guess I thought you’d take them away from me.” I surprised myself. I hadn’t lied, or made a joke. Instead I’d told her the truth. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

“Oh, Maisie,” she said. “We can work something out.”

She came around the desk and I let her hold me. It’s funny. I didn’t mean to cry, but I did. And so did she. It felt good, having someone else be strong for a change. I haven’t had someone be there for me since my grandma died in 1971, the year I turned eight. I hung in for a long time, all things considered, but the day that Mr.

Hammond asked me to come see him after school was the day I finally gave up my nice little regulated slot as a citizen of the day and became a part of the night world instead.

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, trying to fit into the day world—I’d probably never fit in completely, and I don’t think I’d want to. I also knew that I was going to have a lot of crap to go through and to put up with in the days to come, and maybe I’d regret the decision I’d made today, but right now it felt good to be back.

She watched the taillights dwindle until, far down the dirt road, the car went around a curve. The two red dots winked out and then she was alone.

Stones crunched underfoot as she shifted from one foot to another, looking around herself. Trees, mostly cedar and pine, crowded the narrow verge on either side. Above her, the sky held too many stars, but for all their number, they shed too little light. She was used to city streets and pavement, to neon and streetlights. Even in the ‘burbs there was always some manmade light.

The darkness and silence, the loneliness of the night as it crouched in the trees, spooked her. It chipped at the veneer of her streetsmart toughness. She was twenty miles out of the city, up in the hills that backed onto the Kickaha Reserve. Attitude counted for nothing out here.

She didn’t bother cursing Eddie. She conserved her breath for the long walk back to the city, just hoping she wouldn’t run into some pickup truck full of redneck hillbillies who might not be quite as ready to just cut her loose as Eddie had when he realized he wasn’t going to get his way. For too many men, no meant yes. And she’d heard stories about some of the good old boys who lived in these hills.

She didn’t even hate Eddie, for all that he was eminently hateful. She saved that hatred for herself, for being so trusting when she knew—when she knew—how it always turned out.

“Stupid bloody cow,” she muttered as she began to walk. High school was where it had started.

She’d liked to party, she’d liked to have a good time, she hadn’t seen anything wrong with making out because it was fun. Once you got a guy to slow down, sex was the best thing around.

She went with a lot of guys, but it took her a long time to realize just how many and that they only wanted one thing from her. She was slow on the uptake because she didn’t see a problem until that night with Dave. Before that, she’d just seen herself as popular. She always had a date; someone was always ready to take her out and have some fun. The guy she’d gone out with on the weekend might ignore her the next Monday at school, but there was always someone else there, leaning up against her locker, asking her what was she doing tonight, so that she never really had time to think it through.

Never wanted to think it through, she’d realized in retrospect.

Until Dave wanted her to go to the drivein that Saturday night.

“I’d rather go to the dance,” she told him.

It was just a disco with a DJ, but she was in the mood for loud music and stepping out, not a movie.

First Dave tried to convince her to go to the drivein, then he said that if she wanted to go dancing, he knew some good clubs. She didn’t know where the flash of insight came from—it just flared there inside her head, leaving a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, a tightness in her chest.

“You don’t want to be seen with me at the dance,” she said.

“It’s not that. It’s just ... well, all the guys ...”

“Told you what? That I’m a cheap lay?”

“No, it’s just, well ...”

The knowing looks she got in the hall, the way guys would talk to her before they went out, but avoided her later—it all came together.

Jesus, how could she have been so stupid?

She got out of his car, which was still parked in front of her dad’s house. Tears were burning the back of her eyes, but she refused to let them come. She never talked to Dave again. She swore that things were going to change.