“I’m sorry, but can you help me?” she asked.
The Travelers Aid volunteer introduced himself as Peter Slowik, and he listened to Rosie’s story in attentive silence. She told as much as she could, having already come to the conclusion that she could not depend on the kindness of strangers if she held what was true about her in reserve, out of either pride or shame. The only important thing she didn’t tell him-because she couldn’t think of a way to express it-was how unarmed she felt, how totally unprepared for the world. Until the last eighteen hours or so, she’d had no conception of how much of the world she knew only from TV, or from the daily paper her husband brought home.
'I understand that you left on the spur of the moment,” Mr Slowik said, “but while you were riding the bus did you have any ideas about what you should do or where you should go when you got here? Any ideas at all?”
“I thought I might be able to find a women’s hotel, to start with,” she said.
“Are there still such places?”
“Yes, at least three that I know of, but the cheapest has rates that would probably leave you broke in a week. They’re hotels for well-to-do ladies, for the most part-ladies who’ve come to spend a week in the city touring the shops, or visiting relatives who don’t have room to put them up.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Well, then, what about the YWCA?” Mr Slowik shook his head.
“They closed down the last of their boarding facilities in 1990. They were being overrun by crazy people and drug addicts.” She felt a touch of panic, then made herself think of the people who slept here on the floor, with their arms around their taped garbage bags of possessions. There’s always that, she thought. “do you have any ideas?” she asked. He looked at her for a moment, tapping his lower lip with the barrel of a ballpoint pen, a plain-faced little man with watery eyes who had nevertheless seen her and spoken to her-who hadn’t just told her to get lost. And, of course, he didn’t tell me to lean forward so he could talk to me up close, she thought. Slowik seemed to come to a decision. He opened his coat (an off-the-rack polyester that had seen better days), felt around in his inside pocket, and brought out a business card. On the side where his name and the Travelers Aid logo were displayed, he carefully printed an address. Then he turned the card over and signed the blank side, writing in letters that struck her as comically large. His oversized signature made her think of something her American History teacher had told her class back in high school, about why John Hancock had written his name in especially large letters on the Declaration of Independence. “so King George can read it without his spectacles,” Hancock was supposed to have said.
“Can you make out the address?” he asked, handing her the card.
“Yes,” she said.
“251 Durham Avenue.”
“Good. Put the card in your purse and don’t lose it. Someone will probably want a look at it when you get there. I’m sending you to a place called Daughters and Sisters. It’s a shelter for battered women. Rather unique. Based on your story, I’d say you qualify.”
“How long will they let me stay?” He shrugged.
“I believe that varies from case to case.” So that’s what I am now, she thought. A case. He seemed to read her thought, because he smiled. There was nothing very lovely about the teeth the smile revealed, but it looked honest enough. He patted her hand. It was a quick touch, awkward and a bit timid.
“If your husband beat you as badly as you say, Ms McClendon, you’ve bettered your situation wherever you end up.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I think so, too. And if all else fails, there’s always the floor here, isn’t there?” He looked taken aback.
“Oh, I don’t think it will come to that.”
“It might. It could.” She nodded at two of the homeless people, sleeping side by side on their spread coats at the end of a bench. One of them had a dirty orange cap pulled down over his face to block out the relentless light. Slowik looked at them for a moment, then back at her.
“It won’t come to that,” he repeated, this time sounding more sure of himself.
“The city buses stop right outside the main doors; turn to your left and you’ll see where. Various parts of the curb are painted to correspond with the various bus routes. You want an Orange Line bus, so you’ll stand on the orange part of the curb. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“It costs a buck, and the driver will want exact change. He’s apt to be impatient with you if you don’t have it.”
“I’ve got plenty of change.”
“Good. Get off at the corner of Dearborn and Elk, then walk up Elk two blocks… or maybe it’s three, I can’t remember for sure. Anyway, you’ll come to Durham Avenue. You’ll want to make a left. It’s about four blocks up, but they’re short blocks. A big white frame house. I’d tell you it looks like it needs to be painted, but they might have gotten around to that by now. Can you remember all that?”
“Yes.”
“One more thing. Stay in the bus terminal until it’s daylight. Don’t go out anywhere-not even to the city bus stop-until then.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” she said.
She had gotten only two or three hours” worth of broken sleep on the Continental Express which had brought her here, and so what happened after she stepped off the Orange Line bus really wasn’t surprising: she got lost. Rosie decided later that she must have started by going the wrong way on Elk Street, but the result-almost three hours of wandering in a strange neighborhood-was much more important than the reason. She trudged around block after block, looking for Durham Avenue and not finding it. Her feet hurt. Her lower back throbbed. She began to get a headache. And there were certainly no Peter Slowiks in this neighborhood; the faces which did not ignore her completely regarded her with mistrust, suspicion, or outright disdain. Not long after getting off the bus she passed a dirty, secretive-looking bar called The Wee Nip. The shades were down, the beer signs were dark, and a grate had been pulled across the door. When she came back to the same bar some twenty minutes later (not realizing she was re-covering ground she’d already walked until she saw it; the houses all looked the same), the shades were still down but the beer signs were on and the grate had been rolled back. A man in chino workclothes leaned in the doorway with a half-empty beer-stein in his hand. She looked at her watch and saw it was not quite six-thirty in the morning. Rosie lowered her head until she could see the man only from the corner of one eye, held the strap of her bag a little tighter, and walked a little faster. She guessed the man in the doorway would know where Durham Avenue was, but she had no intention of asking him for directions. He had the look of a guy who liked to talk to people-women, especially-up close.
“Hey baby hey baby,” he said as she passed The Wee Nip. His voice was absolutely uninflected, almost the voice of a robot. And although she didn’t want to look at him, she couldn’t help shooting a single terrified glance back at him over her shoulder. He had a receding hairline, pale skin on which a number of blemishes stood out like partially healed burns, and a dark red walrus moustache that made her think of David Crosby. There were little dots of beer-foam in it.
“Hey baby wanna get it on you don’t look too bad priddy good in fact nice tits whaddaya say wanna get it on do some low ridin wanna get it on wanna do the dog whaddaya say?” She turned away from him and forced herself to walk at a steady pace, her head now bent, like a Muslim woman on her way to market; forced herself not to acknowledge him further in any way. If she did that, he might come after her.
“Hey baby let’s put all four on the floor whaddaya say? Let’s get down let’s do the dog let’s get it on get it on get it on.” She turned the corner and let out a long breath that pulsed like a living thing with the frantic, frightened beat of her heart. Until that moment she hadn’t missed her old town or neighborhood in the slightest, but now her fear of the man in the bar doorway and her disorientation-why did all the houses have to look so much the same, why?-combined in a feeling that was close to homesickness. She had never felt so horribly alone, or so convinced that things were going to turn out badly. It occurred to her that perhaps she would never escape this nightmare, that perhaps this was just a preview of what the rest of her life was going to be like. She even began to speculate that there was no Durham Avenue; that Mr Slowik in Travelers Aid, who had seemed so nice, was actually a sadistic sicko who delighted in turning people who were already lost even further around. At quarter past eight by her watch-long after the sun had come up on what promised to be an unseasonably hot day-she approached a fat woman in a housedress who was at the foot of her driveway, loading empty garbage cans onto a dolly with slow, stylized movements. Rosie took off her sunglasses.