SHELTER

Lita was a raven-haired, raven-lipped, kohl-eyed beauty, no more than nineteen or twenty years old. Her clothes were dark as well, and close-fitting. She came to stand beside our table in a cloud of subtle perfume, which left me uncomfortably conscious again of my own aroma.

“I’m Lita,” she said, smiling at me with unsettling warmth. “And who are you?”

“Matthew?” I said, wondering why a smelly stranger like me should merit such a smile.

“Remember that conversation we had,” Stacy asked Lita, “about how well things are going now, and your wish to pass the help along? Here’s your chance, I think.”

“Really.” Lita’s smile became curious. “So, what’s going on, Matthew?”

“I’m…not sure,” I said, wondering how this pretty girl was supposed to help. “I have to live here now, on the street, for a while. I…just need someone to teach me how.”

“Catcher sent him to me,” Stacy explained.

“That’s…weird,” said Lita. “Are you a friend of his?” she asked me.

“No. He just saw me watching them, and came to find out why.”

“And sent you to Stacy?” Lita seemed even more puzzled.

“That’s what I thought too,” said Stacy, “until I talked with him a while.”

Realizing there was no third chair around, I stood up and offered Lita mine.

            “Aren’t you the gentleman,” she said with an air of amusement, but made no move to take the offered seat.

“That’s what I mean,” Stacy said to Lita, standing now as well. “Before I called you, I asked him if he could be trusted, and he said, ‘Trusted to what?’ I wish you could have seen his face.” Her eyes grew round with mock innocence. “Catcher’s right. Wherever he belongs, it’s not out there. And I have a very strong sense that he’s worth helping.”

“Something in his cards?” Lita asked, glancing at the table where they were still spread.

“I’ve promised him confidentiality about that,” Stacy answered, leaning down to sweep them into a loose pile beside the box they’d come from. “But I don’t think you’ll need the cards to see it. You two should sit down and get acquainted. I’ve got things to tend to.” Picking up the cards and box, she left us, vanishing again through the velvet curtain at the back of her store.

Lita sat in Stacy’s chair as I reclaimed mine. “So. …Who are you, Matt?”

For fifty years no one had seemed at all interested in who I was or where I’d come from. Now that I was not supposed to tell anyone, it seemed the first thing everybody asked. “I don’t remember much,” I said, already refining my routine. “I just…something bad happened.”

Lita’s smile vanished. “What was that?”

I shook my head, trying to look distressed. “I can’t remember.”

“Well, what if your family’s worried? Maybe they’re looking for you.”

“I don’t think…I have any family left…”

Her brows arched. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “What happened to them?”

“I… My uncle… I can’t…I can’t talk about it. I can’t remember. I just know I have to hide. For a while.”

“Are you running from the law? ’Cause I cannot be harboring anyone who’s—”

“No!” I said, startled. “I…I don’t even smoke!” I looked back down at the table. “I was just in the way…I think. When things...” I trailed off without looking up.

She studied me in silence for a while, glancing once toward the velvet curtain, as if wondering what the hell Stacy had gotten her into. “Here’s what I think, Matt,” she said at last. “I think you have good reasons for not telling me the truth about whatever made you run. I can respect that. I won’t pry. If Stacy says you’re special, I believe her. She’s very good at sensing these things. Just look me in the eye and promise me you’re not going to rip me off or cause me any trouble with the cops if I let you stay with me tonight.”

“Stay with you?” I asked, surprised. “Where?”

“At my apartment. Isn’t that what you want?”

“No. I mean, maybe, I guess. That would be very nice of you, but I didn’t—”

“Stacy hasn’t told you anything about my situation?”

I shook my head. “She just said a friend was coming over I should meet.”

“And you didn’t ask who, or why?” Lita sounded more astonished by this than she’d seemed about any of the rest.

I shrugged. “I just figured you were someone who could help me learn how to live out there without…you know, just looking like food to everyone, I guess.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” she said, clearly trying not to laugh. “Stacy wasn’t kidding. You’ve pretty much got ‘I don’t even smoke’ stamped on your forehead.” She offered me a softer smile. “She called me because she knows I’ve got a place where you could stay safely. But only for a while, ’til we come up with some better plan for you. Okay? Is that clear?”

I nodded. “That’s…amazing! I won’t cause you any trouble. Really!”

“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious by now, but I had to ask.” She stood up and called out toward the back of the store, “Okay, Stacy, I’ll take him, but I have to go.”

Stacy stuck her head out through the curtain. “First sale today,” she said cheerfully. “You want a bag with that?”

“No.” Lita grinned. “I’d stay and chat, but if I’m late getting back, it’ll be harder to convince Adam he should give me tomorrow off.”

“Okay then. Come back and tell me how it goes.”

“Thank you, Stacy,” I said, following Lita to the door. “I owe you big.”

“You owe me nothing. Just don’t piss Lita off and make me look bad.”

“He won’t,” said Lita. “Bye.” As we stepped back onto the street, she said, “I’ve gotta get back to the music store where I work, and talk my boss into letting me have tomorrow off so we can get you settled.”

“No!” I said. “Don’t skip work on my account. I’ll just—”

“It’s no problem,” she cut me off. “The whole idea here is to get you off the street, not leave you dangling there. And besides…I don’t think your showing up right now is just coincidence—any more than Stacy does.”

“What, did she read your cards too?” I asked, meaning it to be a joke.

“She reads my cards all the time.”

“And you believe that stuff?”

“She’s very good at it. Her advice has saved my butt a dozen times. But that’s not why I’m helping you. The universe has done me a lot of huge favors recently, and if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that when the universe does something for you, it’s a good idea to say thank you like you mean it—as quick and loud as you can.”

“Well…that’s pretty nice, I guess. Especially for me.” I was unsure how to feel about being someone’s cosmic payoff. “But I still don’t see why you need to take tomorrow off work when I could just hang out somewhere until you’re done.”

“How long ago did you get here? To the avenue, I mean?”

“This morning,” I said.

She nodded. “Yeah. I thought so, and that makes you a target for people who won’t wait to kick your ass. Maybe there’s a reason the universe wasted so little time getting you to me. I’m not gonna waste time accepting the gift.” She looked gravely down at me. “I’m a person who believes in reasons, Matt. That’s partly why I’ve survived—’cause I know there’s something bigger than me or you at work in the world.”

We came to an intersection and stopped among a crowd of others waiting for the light to change. A woman standing next to me stepped away, waving at the air in front of her face, in case I didn’t know I needed a bath, I guess.

“You have no idea how weird it is that anybody here—even Catcher—took your case at all, much less that quick.” Lita’s expression had turned hard. “We’re a kind of family out here, but not the kind who believes in solving anybody else’s problems.”

The light turned green and we moved on.

“You keep saying ‘we,’” I said. “We who?”

“Squatters,” she said.

“What's that? ”

Lita gave me another wry look. “Stacy didn’t tell you anything about me, did she.”

I shook my head. “What’s a squatter?”

“I have an apartment now—and a job,” she said. “That’s part of what I’m thanking the universe for. But I used to live on these streets—in squats and abandoned cars, doorways sometimes—for three years before things turned around. There are good people out here, but they’d be the first ones to tell you it’s no place to spend a day more than you’ve got to—even if you come here knowing what’s up, and ready to cope, which you pretty clearly didn’t.”

“But if you all know better than to help people, why are you helping me?”

“I didn’t say we never help anybody. We helped each other all the time. I just said we don’t try solving other people’s problems. I have no idea what your problem even is, Matt. But if I did, I couldn’t solve it, and I wouldn’t try. I’m just doing you a favor while you work that out. And I’m only doing that ’cause you asked, and ’cause I could and wanted to. Catcher just coming up and…steering you like that, for no reason, is…just another sign to me that there’s more than chance at work here.”

“Okay. …So how did things turn around for you?” I asked, realizing that this might be much more useful information than the tips on street survival I’d been seeking. I was going to have to turn things around for me too, after all.

“There’s a program downtown called Path and Passage that gets resources to homeless kids. They offered me a part-time internship with lots of training, and helped me get into transitional housing. After proving I could show up and be reliable, they helped me get hired at the Vinyl Vineyard. Now I’m off the streets—for good, I hope. It’s harder than I thought, sometimes, just to keep believing I can do it—but I can.” She gazed out at the passing traffic. “And I want to help other people do it too. If I stay clean and do well at the Vineyard for a year, I can apply for full-time work at Path and Passage. That’s my plan, but for now it’s good enough to just help keep you from ending up on the street at all.”

“That program sounds like just what I want,” I said. “Could they get me a job too?”

“We’ll go talk to them, but we’ll probably have to get you emancipated first.”

“Emancipated from what?”

“From being young, and therefore not a real person, legally,” she said. “I went through it when I was sixteen, but it’s complicated, and I needed lots of help. All that’s for later, though. Right now, we just need…” Her gaze hardened suddenly on something up the street. “Fuck,” she murmured under her breath.

I followed her gaze to see two guys coming around the corner ahead of us. The one in front was tall, in his mid-twenties maybe, wearing black jeans over steel-toed boots, a dirty wife-beater T-shirt, lots of piercings, and an impressive green and orange Mohawk. Right behind him was a shorter, younger, but far beefier guy with a shaved head. His sleeveless black shirt revealed well-muscled arms covered to the wrists in swirling tattoos. They headed straight for us, Mr. Mohawk smiling like a lounge lizard.

“Lita! What up?” he said brightly.

“Janus. Billboard,” she greeted them neutrally. “I’m just heading back to work.”

Janus, of the Mohawk, stared down at me—like I was food. “This one of your colleagues?” he sneered. “Hiring kinda young at the Vineyard these days, aren’t they?”

Catcher’s warning rang loudly in my mind, though I would not likely have needed it to know that these two were not the kind to ‘hang with.’

“Friend of a friend,” she said noncommittally. “So lay off.”

Janus looked wounded. “What am I doin’? Just tryin’ to make your little friend’s acquaintance. Got a name, little friend of a friend?” He looked back down at me with a smile that trebled my desire to bathe.

“Matthew.”

“Matthew,” he parroted, clearly awaiting more.

“Janus,” Lita warned, smiling dangerously, it seemed to me.

“What?” he exclaimed, all wrongfully accused again. “You want me to just ignore him? Like that would be more sensitive of me?”

“Why does the word sensitive on your lips give me such a chill?” she asked.

Janus’s wounded expression soured further. “Hey, you goin’ to Sly’s thing tonight? Bone scored us some Pure Molly.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “You and me on E. What about it, Lita?”

“Huge points for imagination,” she said sweetly. “But I can’t make it, I’m afraid. Matt’s a guest of mine, from out of town. This is his first night here, and I can’t just leave him sitting all alone at home.”

Janus’s eyebrows shot up almost to where his hairline should have been. “He’s staying at your place?” He sounded caught between astonishment and outrage. “Who is this Twinkie? You don’t let none of us stay there.”

“I don’t let you stay there,” she corrected him, still smiling sweetly. “Matt won’t try to hit on me, will you, Matt?”

“What?” I was completely lost in all the layers of indecipherable subtext here.

“See?” she asked Janus dryly. “He’s safe.”

“What about Sly’s rave?” he whined.

“What about ‘sensitive’?” she parried.

Janus gave me the least sensitive look I’d ever received. “Bring him then.”

“That’d be the day.” She shook her head. “I really do have to get back to work, you guys. Come on, Matt.” As we passed them, she looked back and waggled her fingers at Janus, then at Billboard, who had scowled at me in silence through the entire exchange. “Have fun tonight. And tell Sly I’m sorry I couldn’t make it, okay?”

When we were out of earshot, she sighed and rolled her eyes. “There’s a sample of why I’m not just leaving you out on the street tomorrow. I think you better hang out at the store with me this afternoon. I just pissed off Janus pretty good, and I’m not sure he won’t try to punish you for that.” She gave me a reassuring look. “Don’t worry, though. Once you’re stashed at my place, I’ll go fix it. By tomorrow, you’ll be cool here. I promise.”

“Thanks. But you don’t have to skip that party tonight, if you want to go. Especially if it helps you patch things up with Janus.”

“So, you’ve got some other plan for dinner?” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “Not really.”

“Didn’t think so.” She gave me a funny smile. “You’re so sweet. There’s nothing to patch up with Janus. But the party might not be such a bad idea once we’ve eaten. Everyone I’ll need to talk with will be there. But I haven’t got a spare key for you yet, so if you leave the building, you’ll be locked out. You okay with staying in tonight?”

“Sure. If you don’t mind leaving me in your apartment.”

“I trust you, Matt. I’ve told you that.”

I trusted her too. Completely. I’d known her less than half an hour, but she already seemed the kindest, most direct and unaffected person I had ever met.  

I wasn’t going to have to sleep under any piles of cardboard after all—or eat from any dumpsters. I had shelter now—with a smart, savvy, beautiful young woman who seemed to know everyone here, as well as just what needed to be done to get me up and running in the world again. Piper had been so right! This whole thing wasn’t half as hard as I’d imagined. Waiting here for Mikayl’s sons might even be…well, if not fun exactly, at least a chance to catch my breath a little. What a lovely thought that seemed.