Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection (43 page)

I know what you’re thinking. A guy like him should be in an institution, and I suppose you’re right, except they pronounced him cured at the Zeb when they needed his bed for somebody whose family had money to pay for the space he was taking up and they’re not exactly falling over themselves to get him back.

We live right in the middle of that part of Newford that some people call the Tombs and some call Squatland. It’s the dead part of the city—a jungle of empty lots filled with trash and abandoned cars, gutted buildings and rubble. I’ve seen it described in the papers as a blight, a disgrace, a breeding ground for criminals and racial strife, though we’ve got every color you can think of living in here and we get along pretty well together, mostly because we just leave each other alone. And we’re not so much criminals as losers.

Sitting in their fancy apartments and houses, with running water and electricity and no worry about where the next meal’s coming from, the good citizens of Newford have got a lot of names and ways to describe this place and us, but those of us who actually live here just call it home. I think of it as one of those outlaw roosts like they used to have in the Old West—some little ramshackle town, way back in the badlands, where only the outlaws lived. Of course those guys like L’Amour and Short who wrote about places like that probably just made them up. I find that a lot of people have this thing about making crap romantic, the way they like to blur outlaws and heroes, the good with the bad.

I know that feeling all too well, but I broke the only pair of rose-colored glasses I had the chance to own a long time ago. Sometimes I pretend I’m here because I want to be, because it’s the only place I can be free, because I’m judged by who I am and what I can do, not by how screwed up my family is and how dirt poor looked pretty good from the position we were in.

I’m not saying this part of town’s pretty. I’m not even saying I like living here. We’re all just putting in time, trying to make do. Every time I hear about some kid ODing, somebody getting knifed, some-body taking that long step off a building or wrapping their belt around their neck, I figure that’s just one more of us who finally got out. It’s a war zone in here, and just like in Vietnam, they either carry you out in a box, or you leave under your own steam carrying a piece of the place with you—a kind of cold shadow that sits inside your soul and has you waking up in a cold sweat some nights, or feeling closed in and crazy in your new work place, home, social life, whatever, for no good reason except that it’s the Tombs calling to you, telling you that maybe you don’t deserve what you’ve got now, reminding you of all those people you left behind who didn’t get the break you did.

I don’t know why we bother. Let’s be honest. I don’t know why I bother. I just don’t know any better, I guess. Or maybe I’m just too damn stubborn to give up.

Angel—you know, the do-gooder who runs that program out of her Grasso Street office to get kids like me off the streets? She tells me I’ve got a nihilistic attitude. Once she explained what that meant, all I could do was laugh.

“Look at where I’m coming from,” I told her. “What do you expect?”

“I can help you.”

I just shook my head. “You want a piece of me, that’s all, but I’ve got nothing left to give.”

That’s only partly true. See, I’ve got responsibilities, just like a regular citizen. I’ve got the dogs. And I’ve got Tommy. I was joking about calling him my pet. That’s just what the bikers who’re squat-ting down the street from us call him. I think of us all—me, the dogs and Tommy—as family. Or about as close to family as any of us are ever going to get. I can’t leave, because what would they do without me?

And who’d take the whole pack of us, which is the only way I’d go?

Tommy’s got this thing about magazines, though he can’t read a word. Me, I love to read. I’ve got thousands of books. I get them all from the dump bins in back of bookstores—you know, where they tear off the covers to get their money back for the ones they don’t sell and just throw the book away?

Never made any sense to me, but you won’t catch me complaining.

I’m not that particular about what I read. I just like the stories. Danielle Steel or Dostoyevsky, Somerset Maugham or King—doesn’t make much difference. Just so long as I can get away in the words.

But Tommy likes his magazines, and he likes them with his name on the cover—you know, the subscription sticker? There’s two words he can read: Thomas and Flood. I know his first name’s Tommy, because he knows that much and that’s what he told me. I made up the last name. The building we live in is on Flood Street.

He likes
People
and
Us
and
Entertainment Weekly
and Life and stuff like that. Lots of pictures, not too many words. He gets me to cut out the pictures of the people and animals and ads and stuff he likes and then he plays with them like they were paper dolls. That’s how he gets away, I guess. Whatever works.

Anyway, I’ve got a post office box down on Grasso Street near Angel’s office and that’s where I have the subscriptions sent. I go down once a week to pick them up—usually on Thursday after-noons.

It’s all a little more than I can afford—makes me work a little harder at my garbage picking, you know?—but what am I going to do? Cut him off from his only pleasure? People think I’m hard—when they don’t just think I’m crazy—and maybe I am, but I’m not mean.

The thing about having a post office box is that you get some pretty interesting junk mail—well at least Tommy finds it interest-ing. I used to throw it out, but he came down with me to the box one time and got all weirded out when he saw me throwing it out so I bring most of it back now. He calls them his surprises. First thing he asks when I get back is, “Were there any surprises?”

I went in the Thursday this all started and gave the clerk my usual glare, hoping that one day he’ll finally get the message, but he never does. He was the one who sicced Angel on me in the first place.

Thought nineteen was too young to be a bag lady, pretty girl like me. Thought he could help.

I didn’t bother to explain that I’d chosen to live this way. I’ve been living on my own since I was twelve. I don’t sell my bod’ and I don’t do drugs. My clothes may be worn down and patched, but they’re clean. I wash every day, which is more than I can say for some of the real citizens I pass by on the street. You can smell their B.O. a half block away. I look pretty regular except on gar-bage day when Tommy and I hit the streets with our shopping carts, the dogs all strung out around us like our own special honor guard.

There’s nothing wrong with garbage picking. Where do you think all those fancy antique shops get most of their high-priced merchandise?

I do okay, without either Angel’s help or his. He was probably just hard up for a girlfriend.

“How’s it going, Maisie?” he asked when I came in, all friendly, like we’re pals. I guess he got my name from the form I filled out when I rented the box.

I ignored him, like I always do, and gathered the week’s pile up. It was a fairly thick stack—lots of surprises for Tommy. I took it all outside where Rexy was waiting for me. He’s the smallest of the dogs, just a small little mutt with wiry brown hair and a real in-security problem. He’s the only one who comes everywhere with me because he just falls apart if I leave him at home.

I gave Rexy a quick pat, then sat on the curb, sorting through Tommy’s surprises. If the junk mail doesn’t have pictures, I toss it. I only want to carry so much of this crap back with me.

It was while I was going through the stack that this envelope fell out. I just sat and stared at it for the longest time. It looked like one of those ornate invitations they’re always making a fuss over in the romance novels I read: almost square, the paper really thick and cream-colored, ornate lettering on the outside that was real high-class calligraphy, it was so pretty. But that wasn’t what had me staring at it, unwilling to pick it up.

The lettering spelled out my name. Not the one I use, but my real name. Margaret. Maisie’s just a diminutive of it that I read about in this book about Scotland. That was all that was there, just

“Marga-ret,” no surname. I never use one except for when the cops decide to roust the squatters in the Tombs, like they do from time to time—I think it’s like some kind of training exercise for them—and then I use Flood, same as I gave Tommy.

I shot a glance back in through the glass doors because I figured it had to be from the postal clerk—who else knew me?—but he wasn’t even looking at me. I sat and stared at it a little longer, but then I finally picked it up. I took out my pen knife and slit the envelope open, and carefully pulled out this card. All it said on it was, “Allow the dark-robed access tonight and they will kill you.”

I didn’t have a clue what it meant, but it gave me a royal case of the creeps. If it wasn’t a joke—which I figured it had to be—then who were these black-robed and why would they want to kill me?

Every big city like this is really two worlds. You could say it’s divided up between the haves and the have-nots, but it’s not that simple. It’s more like some people are citizens of the day and others of the night. Someone like me belongs to the night. Not because I’m bad, but because I’m invisible. People don’t know I exist. They don’t know and they don’t care, except for Angel and the postal clerk, I guess.

But now someone did.

Unless it was a joke. I tried to laugh it off, but it just didn’t work. I looked at the envelope again, checking it out for a return address, and that’s when I realized something I should have noticed straight-away. The envelope didn’t have my box number on it, it didn’t have anything at all except for my name. So how the hell did it end up in my box? There was only one way.

I left Rexy guarding Tommy’s mail—just to keep him occu—

pied—and went back inside. When the clerk finished with the customer ahead of me, he gave me a big smile but I laid the envelope down on the counter between us and didn’t smile back.

Actually, he’s a pretty good-looking guy. He’s got one of those flat-top haircuts—shaved sides, kinky black hair standing straight up on top. His skin’s the color of coffee and he’s got dark eyes with the longest lashes I ever saw on a guy. I could like him just fine, but the trouble is he’s a regular citizen. It’d just never work out.

“How’d this get in my box?” I asked him. “All it’s got is my name on it, no box number, no address, nothing.”

He looked down at the envelope. “You found it in your box?” I nodded.

“I didn’t put it in there and I’m the one who sorts all the mail for the boxes.”

“I still found it in there.”

He picked it up and turned it over in his hands.

“This is really weird,” he said.

“You into occult shit?” I asked him.

I was thinking of dark robes. The only people I ever saw wear them were priests or people dabbling in the occult.

He blinked with surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

I grabbed the envelope back and headed back to where Rexy was waiting for me.

“Maisie!” the clerk called after me, but I just ignored him.

Great, I thought as I collected the mail Rexy’d been guarding for me. First Joe postal clerk’s got a good Samaritan complex over me—probably fueled by his dick—now he’s going downright weird. I wondered if he knew where I lived. I wondered if he knew about the dogs. I wondered about magicians in dark robes and whether he thought he had some kind of magic that was going to deal with the dogs and make me go all gooshy for him—just before he killed me.

The more I thought about it, the more screwed up I got. I wasn’t so much scared as confused. And angry. How was I supposed to keep coming back to get Tommy’s mail, knowing he was there? What would he put in the box next? A dead rat? It wasn’t like I could complain to anybody. People like me, we don’t have any rights.

Finally I just started for home, but I paused as I passed the door to Angel’s office.

Angel’s a little cool with me these days. She still says she wanted to help me, but she doesn’t quite trust me anymore. It’s not really her fault.

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 heart-shaped 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 down-and-outers get a second chance.