Thank you, she says.
The train stops at MacArthur Station and a barefoot man with a torn T-shirt and ripped sweatpants gets into the car. He wears boots and his toes stick out of the torn leather. He smells like something spoiled, and I push back in my seat so the guy doesn’t come near me, and I feel the cool damp of my own sweat, the odor of deodorant mixed with it.
The dude makes his way down the aisle, placing cards on every passenger’s knee. The woman across from me looks horrified. Everyone else hides behind their cell phones. The cards have illustrations of hands fingerspelling A through Z. The woman across from me swats hers on the floor. I ignore mine. After he hands out the cards, the dude turns around and collects them, pausing with his hand out until he receives change. All I’ve got is the ten bucks, and I’m not giving him that. I look at the floor, as still as a mannequin, hoping like hell I don’t know this guy or if I do he doesn’t recognize me. Hey, Walter! I imagine him shouting and cringe at the thought.
The woman across from me shrinks in her seat as he approaches. She tries not to watch him. She stares over my shoulder out the window. When he reaches her, he pauses and then sees the card on the floor. He picks it up and snaps his fingers in her face and holds out his hand. She shivers.
No, no, I’m not interested, she says. Thank you. Go away now, please.
The dude snaps his fingers again and makes broad, wild gestures pointing to his ears. He waves his card in the lady’s face, striking her nose.
Go away! she cries, and snatches the card from him and throws it on the floor. Now go! she shouts again, squirming into a corner of her seat. She raises her hands as if he might hit her. People watch, their eyes peering above their masks. They look pained but don’t move. I don’t either. I want to help her, I bet everybody does, but we all have our reasons. Mine, I don’t want him to recognize me.
Leave me alone! the woman shouts.
The train jolts and slows to a stop at the North Berkeley station and the dude stumbles to the floor. As he gets up, I step in front of him to get off. He stands and tries to lean around me, but I’m pushed up against him by other people getting off. Everyone hurries out, the woman with the dirty gutters swept up with them. The dude stares after her. Turning to me, he gives a hard look and shoves me. I push him back and he falls. I don’t recognize him. I wipe my shirt where he touched me and get off before the doors close.
I see the woman walking toward a parked car and a man waves from the driver’s side. The train starts again, moving slowly, picking up speed until it rushes from the station, pounding the ground. My body vibrates until it’s far enough gone that the ground beneath my feet settles and I don’t feel anything but my clothes sticking to me. I look at the slip of paper with the address and start walking. Mist blows in my face. The morning fog hasn’t burned off this side of the bay. I wish I had a jacket.
A sharp pull on my right shoulder spins me around, and I lose my balance and fall to my knees and hit my forehead against the pavement. Everything goes dark for a minute. I press a hand against the bump already forming and close my eyes. Someone grabs my hair and jerks my head back and starts hitting my face. I throw up my hands to block the punches and then they let go and start kicking me and I roll up into a ball until they stop. I don’t move. I hear my breath fast and furious. I open my eyes and raise my head and make out the figure of the dude running.
Pushing myself up, I pick the grit off my face. Blood drips from my nose onto my shirt. I feel my face swelling around my nose and under my eyes. My back and ribs ache. A breeze picks up my fallen mask and swirls it away. After a moment, I stand, holding my head. Dizzy, I sit back down. I piss myself. I smell it.
Looking out at the street, I see the lady from the train staring at me, a hand over her mouth. The guy she met watches me too, as he talks into a cell phone. I stand again and wobble forward, arms out for balance.
Everything was fine until it wasn’t. Oscar was right. I shouldn’t have taken a shower. I’d’ve caught an earlier train and this wouldn’t have happened.
Someone yells, Wait! and I see the woman wave at me and I cover my mouth so she doesn’t see my teeth, not that it matters now. The man with her points to a police car and an ambulance racing toward the parking lot. I keep walking. There’s a liquor store I know on University Avenue and Sacramento Street. A long walk but not too long. I stop at a drinking fountain and rinse my face. The cuts sting. I finger my nose, wincing. More blood drips onto my shirt. I tilt my head back to stop the bleeding, stare into a gray sky.
I’ll have to get another change of clothes.
When I see Oscar again.
Oscar
She knocks.
I look up from my desk. Walter has just left. She doesn’t move, stands by the open door to my office, sucks on her lower lip. I wait, take her in. High cheekbones, loose-fitting jeans torn at the knee. Tits just so, pressed against her T-shirt. About my age, I’m guessing. Mid, late thirties—something like that. A red welt on her arm, a cut on her swollen chin. Right cheek is swollen too. She wears makeup, not much though, perhaps to hide the bruised cheek. A blue scarf covers her blond hair.
Whatever happened, she put some time into herself before coming here. She has pride. I like that. It means either she doesn’t know what this place is or she does and wants everyone to know she’s different. That she doesn’t belong here. I want her. The thought, more of a conclusion really, comes to me just like that. I want her. I’ll do her. She’s mine. That’s how I roll. I think of the couple who walked in last month. What was the wife’s name?
Yes? I say.
She hesitates. My desk faces the wall. When I turn toward the door, I face her. I have arranged my office in accordance with social services psychobabble bullshit drilled into me at in-service trainings. Your desk should not stand between you and the client. No barriers. Don’t cross your legs or fold your arms across your chest. Hands on your knees. Be open, accessible. Appear as vulnerable as the client. Instill trust.
People get paid to dream this nonsense up. I deal with the crap and turn it to my advantage. The trainings provide a day off more or less without cutting into my vacay time. Sign in, hang out until the first break, split, and go home. Nobody notices. I spend maybe two hours at the training and then take the rest of the day off.
What are you? Like a social worker, right? she asks. Her voice is soft, a little hoarse. I like its rough edges.
Benefits advocate, I say. Basically the same thing as a social worker. More or less.
I called a help hotline. They told me to come here.
I see. What’s going on?
I watch her step into my office, staying close to the wall until she reaches a chair and sinks into it. I follow her eyes as they wander the bare walls, my cluttered desk, the pile of trash bags in a corner filled with donated clothing I’ve yet to sort. I flip a switch, turn on a ceiling fan. I keep the windows closed and my office gets stuffy. If I opened them, I’d smell the piss on the sidewalk from the night before and the spilled garbage scattered by dogs.
My office opens to the drop-in center where people with no other place to go hang out playing cards and sleeping during the day, heads on the tables or sometimes stretched out on the floor. Three alcoholism counselors stand around desks in back. They check clients into a second-floor detox. If they’re too drunk to make it up the stairs, they’re put on exercise mats near the intake desks. I notice Katie come in through a rear door. She punches a clock with her time card. She normally works the swing shift but she’s in early. Maybe someone on the morning shift had to leave.
Katie. I like her. I could have her. But she has a job, a place to live. She doesn’t need me. No, I have no need for her.
I think I need a place to stay, the woman says.
You think?
I do.
I look at the clock. Eleven. The day already feels long. I started at eight. Caught the N Judah train from my apartment in the Richmond District, the morning fog off the Bay still heavy as a blanket. It will be just as heavy when I go home. I’d like to move to the Mission. Not nearly so much fog. But the Richmond’s out of the way. I rarely run into any clients and coworkers there. The gray drab of the fog keeps everyone inside. What happens in the Richmond stays in the Richmond.
Looking at the woman, I’m glad it’s been a slow morning. Walter and just one or two others before him. I just finished giving a guy a letter to get on general assistance. To receive GA, the city’s lingo for welfare, you have to show you have a place to live. The city requires a receipt from a landlord. However, to get a receipt you need the GA check first to pay for a place. No check, no place. No receipt, no check. The proverbial catch-22. Smoke and mirrors to deny welfare and save money. Crazy, right?
I think so too. I got tired of telling clients there was nothing I could do. The city’s rules. I’m helpless, whine, whine, whine. Fuck that. That’s not how I roll. No, I came up with a plan, ingenious when I think about it. No one else, not the benefits advocate before me or the guy before that one, thought of it. I did.
I love telling this story. Here’s what I do: I type To whom it may concern on Fresh Start letterhead to the DSS. This letter, I write, is confirmation that so-and-so has a room at one of the residential hotels in the Tenderloin. Please facilitate his GA application so he may continue paying rent blah, blah, blah.
The DSS doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t challenge me. It just needs the paper, some kind of bogus documentation that the client is spending the welfare check on housing. The client gets the check and may use it for rent, booze, or both. That’s not my concern. I get my clients their GA checks. I keep them off the street for a night, or at least I give them that option. I beat the system. I accept the gratitude of my clients. I care. That’s how I roll.
I might have missed this woman had it been a busy morning. She might not have waited for me. It’s the first of the month, which is always kind of a slow time. Mother’s Day, the clients call it. The DSS issues welfare checks on the first and the fifteenth of every month and men emerge from nowhere to lay claim to women with dependent children who receive cash grants and food stamps. I see the women later, broke usually and sometimes beat up, sometimes kicked out of their apartment with or without their kids. I wonder if that’s her story. Part of it anyway.
