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Copyright
© 1997-2002
Nuvein Magazine.
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Sarah looks up: like tall crystal palaces, the glass and marble towers of the financial district in downtown Los Angeles rise into the nighttime sky, glowing from within with lights that are never shut down. Monuments to corporate wealth and an unerring belief in its future growth: if the economy is in recession, you certainly can’t tell it by looking at these buildings. During the day, they house an endless army of polite, well-dressed, tireless office bees, each of them seeming the next one’s twin: lawyers, accountants, bankers, insurance clerks, consultants and secretaries. But at night, the buildings are deserted, as are the streets which at daytime are bustling with life. Most cafés and restaurants shut down no later than 6:00 PM here. That is when evening begins, and people leave the financial district in a thick mass of honking, crawling traffic and clouds of exhaust fumes. Except for the unlucky souls who have to work overtime, nobody has any business being out on the street; the business travelers and occasional tourists who find themselves trapped here instead of in Hollywood or close to the beach safely tucked away in their hotel rooms. At night, this area belongs to no one, except for the drifters who are trying to get a last buck out of a guy going home late from work or out of a music lover returning from a performance at nearby Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and who are sleeping on benches in the area’s posh little parks, the torn bags containing their belongings serving as their pillows.
Sarah steps onto the street across from the building that houses her office, far up behind the row of tiny windows on the 46th floor. In Boston, she thinks, she would now be able to walk to one of the bars on Beacon Hill or on Newbury or Boylston Streets, to conclude the evening with her sister or with friends. Not so here. But she does not yet know many people in Los Angeles anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
A soft breeze announces the arrival of spring in Southern California. People in other parts of the country are still shoveling snow. CNN’s morning business travel report has mentioned weather-related delays at Logan and the New York airports. Joe has probably had to shovel snow in the morning, too.
“Watch out for the cars, Precious!”
Sarah turns around. The woman who has yelled the warning as she has stepped off the curb is wearing a faded baseball cap, plastic blue rain jacket, T-shirt, jeans and brand new sneakers. Small and wiry, she has the face of a sixty year old; but then, with homeless you never know. Besides, Sarah only sees her in the light of the street lamp against which she is leaning. The woman smiles a bright, toothless smile. “You gotta be careful when you cross the street like that, outside the walkway,” she says.
No doubt, in a second she’ll move over and ask her for money. Sarah returns her smile and acknowledges her warning with a raised hand. Not a single car is in sight. “Thanks,” Sarah says and turns back to enter her office building. The woman does not follow her.
She would much rather go home instead of returning to her computer. But she has spent the evening at a meeting of the local bar association at a downtown business hotel, and now she has to finish the brief which she has left uncompleted on the screen. Because of that brief, she has initially been reluctant to leave the office at all. But you have to start somewhere if you want to meet people, even if only professionally, and this evening has been a good opportunity to mingle. As it has turned out, even the discussion program has been halfway interesting. Most of all, though, Sarah is happy because she is beginning to feel that she belongs somewhere again.
She has moved to Los Angeles to make a new beginning, as far away from Boston as possible. Maybe that way, she thinks, she will be able to leave her divorce behind her, in the past. California lives for the future; staunchly believing in the ever-optimistic clichés it produces and reproduces in Hollywood on a daily basis. As far as Sarah is concerned, there couldn’t be a better place for a new start in life.
She works on her brief for another hour, then shuts down the computer and leaves her office, accepting the front desk security personnel’s offer to escort her to the parking garage, a few hundred yards down on the opposite side of the street. Muggings are not unheard of in downtown Los Angeles, particularly late at night, and anybody walking alone makes an easy target. Her firm, like the building’s other tenants, encourages its employees to take advantage of the complimentary escort service offered by building security.
When they step out of the building, the homeless woman is gone. Sarah registers a faint sense of relief.
It isn’t until a couple of days later that she sees her again.
“Good morning, Precious,” the woman says, as Sarah is coming out of the parking garage. “Did you get home ok the other night?”
“Yes, thanks,” Sarah says without looking at her. She picks up her walking speed. But the woman in the faded baseball cap and the brand new sneakers has pasted herself to her side. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” she asks. “Where do you work?”
And what business is that of yours? Sarah wants to reply. But there has to be a gentler way of getting rid of her. “Kyle and Gordon,” she says, indicating her firm’s name.
“Oh, really?” The woman grins. “I got a pal there.”
Yeah, right. The idea that this creature should have a friend in one of the city’s top ten law firms is about as realistic as that of her getting back together with Joe.
“Really,” the woman says, reading Sarah’s face. “Mike Taylor. See?” She flashes a business card in Sarah’s face. “That’s his card.”
It really is the business card of the almighty chairman of her firm’s corporate department. He has probably just been nice to her once.
“I got friends in all the big firms,” the woman babbles on. She is holding a small stack of business cards now. “Look! They all know me. I’ve even been interviewed by the L.A. Reporter. Back last fall, when we were striking for more shelters –”
“I didn’t live in L.A. last fall,” Sarah says.
“No? Oh, right. Where ya’ from? Anyway, we had this strike,” the woman continues without waiting for Sarah’s answer. “And we were all out on the street, here and in front of City Hall, and the L.A. Reporter came and did interviews. And then it had my photo on the front page.” Her face lights up at the memory. “So where ya’ from?” she repeats.
“Boston.” Why is she telling her this? “And you?” Sarah asks.
“Albuquerque. But moved here long time ago. Why’d you come here, better money?”
“That … and I got divorced.” You’re not supposed to be divorced at 31.
“Really? Me, too.” The woman’s toothless grin grows wider. “Six years ago. Hey, we could be sisters! Got any kids?”
“No.” Joe had wanted kids. Now she is glad it has never worked out.
“I got a daughter,” the woman says and flashes a crumpled, half-faded Polaroid in Sarah’s face. It shows a pale, about eight year old girl with dull ash brown hair, the same color as her mother’s, wearing a golden paper crown and a thin white blouse with too short sleeves. “That’s my Angel, when she won her school’s drawing contest two years ago.”
Sarah is still digesting the first part of the information. “So … how old is your daughter?” she asks. What she really wants to know is: How do you raise a kid on the streets? How do you feed her? Where do you sleep? How do you make sure she goes to school every day and does her homework?
“Eleven. Will be twelve this year. She’s in fifth grade. Only missed one year.” The woman’s face communicates a mother’s pride, only slightly subdued by the circumstances that have caused her daughter to miss any time in school at all. “We have our own school,” she adds, “we” being the homeless community, Sarah guesses. “They’re good people,” the woman says. “They make sure the kids stay in school all day, and they give them lunch, too. You know, while we’re … out here, on the street. The City runs it; the school, I mean.”
Sarah tries to do the math. If this woman has an eleven year old daughter, that makes her – not sixty, that much is clear. Not by a long shot. She contemplates whether or not to ask the woman’s age, but decides against it. She herself wouldn’t be comfortable giving up that kind of information, either, let alone to a stranger. Especially one she has so little reason to trust, and whom, in hindsight, she has probably already told more about herself than can be considered wise. She is glad when they approach her office building.
“Hey listen,” the woman says, “I haven’t had breakfast today, and it’s getting on nine… think you can help me out? I only need one more dollar to go for a coffee and a bagel.”
Sarah pulls out her purse. “Let me see,” she says. Not that she hasn’t been expecting the con at this point. She decides she’ll consider it a lesson learned and move on. She takes out a dollar note. “Here you go. But … no booze,” she adds, and instantly feels foolish – and patronizing. The woman doesn’t smell like she’s already had a drink and doesn’t look the part, either. Come to think of it, she doesn’t even smell dirty. Still, with homeless you never know.
“Oh no – never. Not me. That stuff kills you.” The woman produces her toothless smile again, stuffs the bank note into the front pocket of her jeans and holds out her hand. “Thanks! By the way, I’m Rose. Rosie, if you want.”
“Sarah.” She takes the offered hand and shakes it. It feels hard and weathered, the way Sarah imagines a farm worker’s hand would feel.
“Nice to meet you, Sarah. I think I’m gonna go on calling you Precious, though. May I?” Rosie asks.
“Sure.” Sarah shrugs. If nothing else, this is probably better than telegraphing to every single passer-by that they are now on a first name basis.
At lunch, Sarah asks her office neighbor about Rosie. “Oh sure,” Bob Easton says. “Everybody knows her, and she knows everybody here. She’s sort of a celebrity in her own right … you know, kinda like ‘Only in L.A.’ – that sort of thing. I think Mike Taylor did something for her once, not sure what though. Anyway, she’s mighty proud she knows him. So now she’s conned you, too, huh?” He grins. “Well, just don’t let her take you in too much … you know how these folks are. And I hear she’s pretty good with women.”
From now on, Sarah finds Rosie waiting for her more and more often in the morning, or sometimes at night, when she leaves the office. Rosie keeps a respectful distance from the building and then comes running, waiving her hands. “Hello Precious, how are ya’?” – beaming as if she were seeing her best friend again for the first time after ten years. While they walk together the few hundred yards between the building and the parking garage, Sarah learns that when you are “on the street,” it is essential that you are properly dressed and that you find a place where you can wash every day. “People don’t like to give you money when you’re smelly and you look like shit,” Rosie explains. As far as Sarah can tell, only few homeless people in downtown Los Angeles heed that advice. But apparently that is why Rosie is more successful than most of the others who are trying to survive out there. “When I make it out of here,” she says, “I’m gonna go into sales. I’m pretty good at that, don’t ya’ think? I mean, you gotta be able to sell your story if you wanna make it here. And I’m gett’n all the training I need, right here.”
Sometimes Rosie really does manage to land a job; mostly as a cleaning lady in a cheap bar or hotel on the seedier side of downtown, where payment consists in a free room or free food. These breaks never seem to be lasting more than a few days; a week at most, then she is back on the street. But her belief that one day she will make it “out of here” is unwavering.
Rosie tells Sarah about her “regulars” – Sarah now being one of them, too. There is Gina, a banker who works at Wells Fargo and who sometimes brings Rosie clothes for herself and her daughter. There is Alan, who owns a media consulting firm and can always be counted on to pitch in when she is a couple of bucks short for a warm meal at night. And there is Mike Taylor, who has taken Rosie and Angel out on his yacht one day. “A fifty foot yacht,” Rosie says, her eyes wide open. “With really big sails, and you had to pay attention when they were shifting direction ‘cause they would knock you over otherwise, and we went far out from L.A. Harbor, all along Palos Verdes and then over to Catalina Island … well almost, anyway. A whole afternoon we were out there, with him and his brother, and we had sodas and sandwiches and all … really cool. And guess what he says when we’re getting back to the harbor? ‘How would you like steering her?’ he says. You know, all boats are female,” she explains, sharing her bit of insider knowledge. “So anyway, there’s this shiny wooden wheel that you use to steer a boat, and he says to his brother – David is his name – ‘Dave,’ he says, ‘them two ladies are gonna take over now.’ And David nods and does something with the sails, and Mike lets go of the wheel and says to us, ‘She’s all yours, ladies,’ he says. So I let Angel steer her for a while first, and then I went and took that wheel myself … and then we got to the pier and that was up to Mike and Dave then, you know, to properly put her back in place there. Man, that was a great day we had then!”
As Sarah works in the same firm as her hero, Rosie never lets her go without telling her to “say hi to Mike for me,” unshakeable in her belief that if the man has been so nice to her, he has to be best pals with Sarah and everybody else in the office, too. It would be pointless to try to tell her that there are worlds between her position and Taylor’s – not to mention that she isn’t even a corporate lawyer, and that in a 300-attorney office the chances of running into one specific colleague who belongs to a different department than your own are slim to none if you don’t happen to have your offices on the same floor.
Just before they part, Rosie always finds a reason why she needs money – three bucks for a meal, five for a warm bed at night for herself and her daughter, fifteen for a down payment on a room for an entire week. And Sarah makes sure she always has the amounts she has come to expect Rosie to ask of her. Better than giving to some anonymous charity, she tells herself. “Thanks, Precious,” Rosie says every time. “Love ya’.”
One day, Sarah gives Rosie her business card. “There,” she says. “You can add it to your collection.”
“Thanks, Precious,” Rosie says again, smiling her toothless smile.
The business card has sealed it: Rosie is now Sarah’s constant companion on the few hundred yards between the parking garage and Sarah’s office building. Rain or shine, regardless how early in the morning or how late at night, Sarah can count on seeing Rosie come running, waiving her hands, beaming and calling: “Hello Precious! How are ya’?” When she is working late, she no longer has any need for a security escort to the garage. “Needn’t be ‘fraid when you’re with me,” Rosie assures Sarah. “I’ll take care of ya’.”
The building security guards have no sympathy left for Rosie. More than once, they have had to throw her out of the foyer, they tell Sarah, particularly in winter. In the marble and gold entrance hall of the tower entrusted to their watch, a homeless person would be an intolerable eyesore. “Imagine your biggest client comes for a meeting, and this is sitt’n out front here,” one of them says, shaking his head. Rosie hates them. After the last episode, they have made it clear to her that the next time she enters the building they will have her arrested for trespass. “Arrogant bastards,” Rosie fumes. “They just don’t want me near them because I’ve got the goods on them. All of ‘em,” she adds, sneering. Still, she always lets Sarah enter the building alone in the morning, making sure she gets her money when they are still out of building security’s sight. At night, she waits for Sarah with the same respectful distance from the building and only joins her when she is sure building security cannot see her.
Knowing Rosie’s habits, Sarah does not find it unusual when she doesn’t immediately see her outside as she leaves the building one night in late summer. It has been another long day at the computer. When she is finally ready to go home, it is dark outside – way past 11PM. She is longing for a hot bath and her bed.
The night guards ask her, as always, whether she wants a security escort to the garage. As always, she declines; knowing that as soon as she will be out of the building’s circle of light, Rosie will show up, waving her hands and calling her: “Hello Precious! How are ya’?”
But as she starts to walk away from the building, Rosie is nowhere to be seen. Sarah pauses, unsure whether to go back and ask building security to walk with her after all. She decides to wait a while. The street is empty; no cars driving by, not even the occasional taxi. Once, a group of young men wearing business suits passes her, engaged in conversation. Probably on their way back from a business dinner at a downtown hotel.
“Can we help you?” One of them turns around after they have already walked by. “Are you ok?”
“Thanks.” Sarah waives them off, half wishing there were something she could ask them to do for her. But she can’t possibly ask them to help her look for a homeless woman, can she? Even one as prominent as Rosie; and who knows whether these guys know Rosie at all anyway. Maybe they’re just in town for business. And escorts to the parking garage are building security’s job, certainly nothing these people talking about clients and sports cars as they walk by would volunteer for. In any event, she would feel funny asking them – besides, even before she met Rosie she hasn’t always had building security accompany her, and nothing has ever happened.
It has been a hot day; even now the pavement still radiates the heat that it has collected all day long. The humidity in the air is dulling her already tired senses. As soon as the young men are gone, the street falls quiet again. Where the hell is Rosie? Sarah tries to scan the shadows forming at the edge of the lights that are illuminating the street. By now, she has been outside so long that it would look downright stupid if she changed her mind and went back to the front desk.
Maybe Rosie will show up later. Sarah crosses the street and starts to walk in the direction of the parking garage.
“Hey Ma’am, got any change?” He comes out of the shadow of a doorway. The entrance to the parking garage is two buildings away. His sweatshirt and pants are torn and reek of dirt, his hair is an unruly mess that hasn’t been washed in months. The smell of cheap booze accompanies every word he speaks.
Sarah’s heart skips. A lump forms in her throat; her limbs freeze. She motions to walk past him, looking straight ahead of her.
“Lady, I’m talking to you!” He has planted himself squarely in her way. As she tries to sidestep him again, he grabs her arm.
She can hear her blood echoing inside her ears and her skull with every beat of her pulse. “No, I don’t think I have any change.” She has tried to sound confident. No use. Where the hell is Rosie?
“Won’t ya’ at least have a look? How can you know otherwise?”
She hesitates.
“Well?”
The street is still deserted, no human in sight. She curses her pride not to have gone back and asked for a security escort earlier.
She rummages in her purse, looking for the little bag of quarters she usually carries for parking meters, pay phones and vending machines. Maybe she can get away with giving him just that. But she doesn’t find it.
Reluctantly she takes out her pocketbook.
And the world goes black.
Sarah struggles to break through the dull pain radiating through her head. Its source seems to be somewhere in the back of her skull, burning like fire. Blinking, she opens her eyes – and shuts them again, stung by the light. Slowly, she opens her eyes a second time. With her right hand, she feels for the big wad of cloth at the back of her head.
She looks around the room. She is lying in a hospital bed, white linens on a white steel frame, wearing a washed-out hospital night gown. The air smells faintly sterile. Sarah tries to get up, but sits down on the bed again as the room begins to spin. When it stops, she makes another attempt. And another, after the room has started and stopped to spin yet again. Slowly, holding on to the wall, she makes her way to the wardrobe opposite her bed and opens it. The clothes she has been wearing when she was knocked down are on hangers inside, her beige suit jacket displaying a greasy black smudge. She looks for her purse. It is nowhere to be seen. The room starts to spin again. It takes her forever to get back to the bed. She lies down and closes her eyes, waiting for the spinning to stop. It feels like hours until she can open them again.
On the Formica bedside table to her left is a telephone; next to it, a button connected to the wall by an electric cable. Sarah pushes the button.
A nurse appears, all dressed in white, smiling.
“Good morning, Ms. Matthews,” she says. “I see you’re awake.”
“Where – how –” Sarah struggles to concentrate. “How do you know my last name?”
“I believe the home … um, the person who found you had your business card?” The nurse’s eyebrows contract into a questioning line. “At least that’s what the ambulance folks said,” she adds.
“Oh.”
Rosie. Why the hell couldn’t she have come a minute earlier? But Sarah is glad she has found her at all.
The nurse tells her that she has a concussion and they will keep her in the hospital for at least another day, to be sure everything is alright with her. Sarah asks for a glass of water for her sore throat. She inquires how to dial out on the telephone on her bedside table. She’ll have to make a lot of phone calls she doesn’t look forward to – mostly related to the fact that the guy who has knocked her down now has her purse. She wonders whether she still has any money at all.
After she is released from the hospital, Sarah takes an extra day off to take care of the mounds of paperwork and errands necessitated by the theft of her purse. When she calls to have her credit cards canceled, she learns that nobody has tried to use them – yet, anyway. She is very lucky, the guy from her bank feels compelled to point out.
When Sarah returns to work, a hat concealing the now slightly smaller wad of cloth still plastered to the back of her head, Rosie is leaning against a lamp post not far from the entrance to the parking garage. The whole left side of her face is transformed into a bulging, puffy lump of flesh, somewhere in the transition from a black and bluish tone to brown and yellow. Her sneakers are gone, replaced by a worn-out pair with laces that have been knotted in multiple spots.
“ … ‘lo ‘cious … ” She has trouble speaking. Her jaws look like they are out of joint, too. “Howwa’ ‘a?”
Sarah tries to find the right thing to say. “Hi,” is all she can think of. “How are you?”
She wonders whether the ambulance team that has taken her to the hospital has also taken care of Rosie’s face. But she does not ask. What if not? Would Rosie expect a trip to the emergency room?
While they wander from the parking garage to her office building, Sarah thanks Rosie for having called 911. Rosie waves it off and shrugs. Struggling to form words, she tells Sarah that she has been beaten up by a hobo who has arrived in the area a couple of days earlier, the same night Sarah has been knocked down and robbed. “No’ on’ oththe ‘eg’lars,” not one of the regulars, a stranger. That’s why she hasn’t been there when Sarah has left the office, she explains with the guilty expression of a soldier being reprimanded for having failed to show up for duty. “It’s ok,” Sarah says, and inquires what the man looked like. “Ah, ‘ike theyya’ dsho,” Rosie says. Like they all do; you know the type – clothes sticking with dirt, hasn’t washed in weeks and stinks of booze. She points to her feet. “…ook, ‘e ev’n too’ my shoes …” Her eyes have lost their spark. She lifts one foot and turns it so Sarah can see the holes in the bottoms of the worn-out pair she is wearing.
At lunch, Sarah takes a trip to Macy’s Department Store and buys a pair of bargain sneakers. After work, she lets one of the men from building security escort her to the parking garage. Rosie is nowhere to be seen. She hands her the sneakers the next morning.
“than’gs, ‘cious …” Rosie tries to smile. “…ov’ ‘a …”
Sarah assures her it’s nothing; the least she can do. “I didn’t know your size, so I had to guess,” she says. “If they don’t fit, tell me and I’ll exchange them. I kept the box.”
Rosie assures her that the shoes fit perfectly.
A couple of mornings later, Rosie shows up with Sarah’s pocketbook. “Look what I found.” Somebody must have thrown it out, she says; she has found it in a bush in the little park next to the Public Library. It still contains all of Sarah’s credit cards and her driver’s license. Only the cash is gone. “Thanks,” Sarah says and puts the pocketbook with the canceled credit cards into her bag. She can’t help but wonder whether this is truly a coincidence. After all, with homeless you never know. And she has learned the hard way that you can’t really trust them; even those that seem to be more decent than the rest.
When she has to leave the office late at night now, she no longer walks back to the parking garage without asking building security to accompany her. But on her end, Rosie seems to be withdrawing, too. Less and less often, she walks with Sarah all the way to her office building in the morning. Sometimes she still waits for her, leaning against a lamp post near the entrance of the parking garage, smiling a small, toothless smile – “Hello, Precious, how are ya’?” But more and more frequently, her greeting is now followed without further ado by an explanation why she needs money.
After a while, Sarah begins to notice that Rosie is looking sick; her skin is going from pale to ashen, and dark circles are forming under her eyes. She is thinner than ever, too. But, “Nah, just haven’t slept a lot lately,” she says when asked. “Haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon, either … say, you got a couple of bucks for breakfast?”
More and more mornings, they no longer talk at all. Sometimes, Sarah does not even see Rosie and half starts to hope that she might be gone forever. But after a while, Rosie always returns. And when she does, she always has another story of another job at another bar or hotel, another room, another week of free food. And she still always needs money.
The guys from building security think Rosie’s absences have to do with her being beaten up by her boyfriend. They tell Sarah that it’s part of their job to know these things: “You better believe it. Whatever money she brings home at night, he takes from her and spends it on booze. And when she doesn’t bring home enough, he beats her up. Usually not on the face, though. Except once, this summer.”
“That was him?” Sarah asks.
“Well, must have been,” one of the guards says. “Who else do you think it was?”
Shortly before Christmas, Rosie tells Sarah she won’t see her for a long time now. She has a heart condition, they’ve told her. They’re gonna put her in the hospital.
It isn’t until the following spring that Sarah notices that this has been the last time she has ever seen Rosie. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wonders what has happened to her. But she is also relieved that the episode seems to have come to an end. She thinks about her less and less; then finally, no longer at all.
One day at lunch, one of her colleagues starts to talk about charity. Soon, everyone has his own story to tell. Sarah turns to Bob Easton. “Remember when I fist asked you about that homeless woman, Rosie? Well, I ended up giving her money from time to time. Sort of as my private little charity project. You know, better than giving to some anonymous organization, I thought … that way, at least I knew who it’s going to. Haven’t seen her in a while, though. Wonder whatever happened to her.”
“Rosie,” Bob says. “But didn’t she die last Christmas?”
THE END
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