I call and get a recording: If you’re calling about shelter, press three. Another recording: The shelter is full at this time. Leave your name after the beep and you’ll be put on a waiting list. If a space opens, someone will call you.
Hello, I’m the benefits advocate at Fresh Start, I say, talking as if there is a real person on the other end. I have a client who needs a bed.
I pause, pretend to be listening.
Will do, I say after a moment. Thanks for your time.
I hang up.
They won’t know if they’ll have a bed until later. I’ll call back.
I hold out hope, wanting her to see me making an effort. A nice man trying to help. Earn her appreciation. Wear her down with the waiting, the calls, the worry. Increase her dependency.
Thank you, she says.
I worked it the same way with the man and his wife. He got in line for the shelter and she prepared to leave for Randolph House. She and her husband looked at each other. They held hands and stood for a long time facing each other. Then she let go of his fingers and walked out of the drop-in looking very small. I watched her go, entered two shelter referrals on the stat form in my computer and clicked save.
I waited about ten minutes to give her time to reach Market and Van Ness. Then I grabbed a red marker, locked my office, and got in my car. Prostitutes lingered outside. I sized them up but wanted nothing to do with them. I drove down Larkin to Market and hung a right until I reached Van Ness. I saw her standing off to one side from a huddle of people beneath a bus shelter, her back turned against a hard-blowing, damp wind. I beeped and beeped again until she looked up. She looked confused and then she recognized me and hurried over. I rolled down the passenger door window and was about to say, I got off early. I’m headed home and live that way. Let me give you a ride, but she opened the door without question and got in.
I hope it’s that easy with this woman here. As she waits to leave for Randolph House, I bide my time by collecting loose pens and markers on my desk, gathering them in a bunch, and brushing them in a drawer.
Housekeeping, I tell her.
I consider the drawer and decide to take a blue marker with me. The color of her headscarf. I will draw a line on my bedroom door, a notch of sorts to indicate I had her. I used a red marker for the husband’s wife, red to remind me of her full mouth.
I watch a bus drone past my office window. An old man sits in the doorway of a closed thrift store across the street. Fog stretches across the top of the store, thick fingers of it breaking and twisting.
Hey, you got any bus tokens? Katie asks me, poking her head through my door. I got a guy I need to send to General.
She notices the woman and drags a finger over the woman’s swollen chin. The woman pulls away. Her eyes tear up.
You all right, honey? Katie asks the woman.
Here, I say, giving Katie a token.
She takes it and gives a slight jerk of her head toward the door. I get up and follow her out. The woman turns slightly in her chair to make room for me to pass her and my hand brushes against her shoulder. She flinches.
Where’re you going?
To get more bus tokens, I tell her.
I let my fingers linger against her shirt. She stiffens but doesn’t move. I close the door behind me.
What are you doing for her? Katie asks.
Shelter.
Looks like she needs more than shelter.
That’s all she asked for.
Look at her, Katie says. Those aren’t birthmarks on her face. If a man did that to her, she’s not going to talk to you.
I don’t appreciate her tone. A little pushy. A little forgetting herself.
I’m just saying you might need some help on this one, Katie says. She might not open up to you.
She will. She has.
Katie shakes her head. I watch her walk away and go back into my office.
Sorry to keep you waiting.
It’s OK.
I sit back at my desk.
Let’s try Randolph House again.
She taps her foot against the floor as I dial.
It’ll be fine, I tell her in a voice I know sounds soothing, calm.
She nods, says nothing.
They get that way after a while, get quiet. The uncertainty. What’s there to say? The man’s wife had been quiet in my car after she got in, and I didn’t speak, so that she would know I was comfortable with her silence. I parked across the street from Randolph House and walked her inside to the reception desk. The sound of dozens of women’s voices rushed us in a rising chorus of shouts and demands. Dirty blankets filled a cart, smelling of the women who had used them. Steam rolled across the ceiling from a shower room and the weight of it pressed against my face. A woman wrapped only in a towel ran past us, grabbed another woman by her hair, and screamed at her for taking her shampoo. Her towel fell away and they fought naked, rolling on the floor, pale wet flesh flopping and slapping the tiles. The receptionist tried to break it up but slipped on the towel and fell cursing.
The wife reached for my hand.
