“God, what was he doing up at that time? We didn’t get the van back to Angel’s until six-thirty.”
“I don’t think he’d been to bed yet,” Donal said.
Ellie shook her head. “We have such weird schedules. It’s a wonder we can still function.”
“And you’re avoiding the subject. That was a good thing you did. Take the compliment, woman. We’re all proud of you.”
Ellie finished pouring water into the coffee maker. Turning it on, she joined Donal at the table.
“It was pretty yucky,” she said. “I don’t know what he’d choked on but it took me forever to get the taste of his vomit out of my mouth.” She looked at the bag of croissants that he’d brought. “And doesn’t that little thought do wonders for the appetite.”
“Sorry I mentioned it.”
“Don’t be.”
But she still wanted to go rinse her mouth out with mouthwash again.
“So your man’s doing fine?” Donal asked.
Ellie nodded. “I called the hospital to check on him before I went to bed this morning.” She paused, then added, “It’s weird. When Angel had us all taking that CPR course, I didn’t think I’d remember any of it. But when it was actually happening, it was like I went into automatic. I didn’t even have to think about it.”
Donal slipped into a broader Irish accent. It was easy for him to do, seeing how he’d been born and lived half his life over there. “Sure, and wouldn’t that be the whole point of the course?”
“I guess.”
Thinking about last night made Ellie remember the man who was actually a woman with her silver flask filled with Welsh whiskey.
“Have you ever tried metheglin?” she asked. “It’s this—”
“Oh, I know what it is. Miki has a friend who makes it. Not quite Guinness, mind you, but it’ll do. Bloody strong bit of the gargle. Sneaks up and gives you a kick like poteen.”
Ellie nodded, remembering how the liquor had made her eyes tear last night.
“Where did you have it?” Donal asked.
The coffee was ready, so over steaming mugs and croissants, Ellie gave him a rundown of the previous night’s events, finishing up with the woman she’d met while Tommy had been talking to the police.
“I would have thought she was a man, if it hadn’t been for Tommy,” she said.
“It’s like one of those old ballads,” Donal said. “You know, where your man finds out his cabin boy’s really a woman. I wonder what she’s hiding from?”
“Who knows? In this city, I’m not sure I even want to know.”
Donal shook her head. “Jaysus, where’s your sense of mystery? Maybe she’s a deposed, foreign princess and all she has left of her former life is that silver flask. She’d be carrying herself with a tragic air, am I right?”
“Hardly.”
“Fair enough. So she’s learned to hide it well. To live with her disappointments. To put the past aside and get on with her life.”
Ellie sighed. “You know, the way you and Jilly can carry on you’d think every street person is some charming eccentric, or basically a sweet and kind person who’s only had a bit of bad luck. But it doesn’t work that way. They need our sympathy, sure, and we should try to help them all we can, but some of them are mean-spirited and some of them are dangerous and some of them would be screwed up no matter where you found them. I don’t think it helps anything to pretend differently.”
“Yes, but—”
“I work with them almost every day and they’re just people, Donal. More messed up than some of us, and certainly more unlucky. And if some of them choose to live the way they do, it’s not because they have some romantic story hidden in their past. It’s because they’re kids whose home lives were so awful they prefer to live in the different kind of hell that’s the streets. Or they’re schizophrenics who can’t get, or won’t take, their medicine. They’re alcoholics, or junkies, or on the run, or all of the above and then some. And the world they live in isn’t safe. It’s more dangerous than anything we can imagine. We go into it, but we can step back out whenever we want. They can’t.”
“I know,” Donal said, his voice subdued.
Ellie sighed again, remembering that he’d suffered his own hard times, he and his sister Miki both, though they rarely spoke of those days. They hadn’t gone through one of Angel’s programs, but they’d still had to endure hunger and homelessness before they found a way out of the darkness.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to come off all high and mighty. It’s just… it breaks my heart sometimes because there’s so many of them and some of them are so young and we can’t even come close to reaching them.”
Donal reached across the table and gave Ellie’s hand a squeeze.
“I know that, too,” he said. “But I’m with Jilly on this one. We just like to see the magic in things, instead of focusing too much on the hurt of it all.”
“When you’re not pretending to be overcome by the doldrums.”
“Pretending?”
“Pretending,” Ellie said firmly. “And please. Magic?”
“Oh, not hocus-pocus, exactly. But you know, there’s magic everywhere you turn, if you pay attention to it. Little miracles like your being in the right place at the right time to give that man CPR and save his life. Or the way some old rubbie can turn out to be the most gifted storyteller. You can sit there with him on a bundle of newspapers in some alley, but when he starts to tell a story, it takes you a million miles away. And some of the street people really are unusual and mysterious—I mean, what better place to hide than in plain sight, on the streets with all the rest of the invisible people?”
This was about the one subject on which Donal could enthuse for hours. Even talking about his art rarely did away with the long face and the Eeyore voice.
“You’re beginning to sound like one of Tommy’s aunts,” she told him. “The mysterious and numerous Creek sisters.”
Donal smiled. “Grand women, all.”
“You’ve met them?”
“Sure,” Donal said. “You haven’t?”
“To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure they really existed.”
“Well, I haven’t met them all,” Donal told her. “I mean, Tommy’s mother has… what? Sixteen sisters? But they certainly exist. Let’s see. I met Sunday one time on the rez when I went up to a powwow with Tommy and Jilly. And then Conception and Serendipity always come to the bake sale at St. Vincent’s every spring. And Zulema’s been doing work with Native kids through Angel for years.” He paused and cocked his head. “What made you think they didn’t exist?”
“I don’t know,” Ellie said, feeling a little embarrassed now. “Their names. The way Tommy talks about them like they’re mythological figures.”
“Up on the rez, everybody sees them that way. They call them the Aunts and they go to them for medicines and stories and that sort of thing. Bloody miracle workers, they are.” He gave Ellie one of his rare grins. “And now that I think of it, Conception told me about a cure for sore muscles. I remember writing it down, but…” He pursed his lips, brow furrowing, then shook his head. “I can’t remember where I put it. But if you asked Tommy, he could get it from her.”
“Oh right. That’d be just what I need. He already passes along their little folk wisdoms at the drop of a hat.”
Donal gave her a considering look. “Which, I’m guessing, is still the sort of thing that makes you uncomfortable.”
“I’m as uncomfortable with it as you or Jilly are comfortable.”
Donal shook his head. “Now that’s extreme.”
“But true.”