How could you not know?

How could you not?

That stopped me like a red traffic light. I leaned against a desk and kind of slumped in defeat. He had me. I’ve been asking myself the same question. How could I not?

So what happened?

All’s I know is what Jay told me, John says. Michael was at work. The police asked about him. Jay told Michael. He split. Called me from the Greyhound bus station. Said he was out of here. Gone, bing, just like that.

John slides down his chair, takes a box of business cards and throws them across the room.

So much for these, John says.

Michael fixed the coffee machine and kept the copier humming. He had other skills too. He organized the front desk, the place where everyone coming into Fresh Start had to stop and sign in. Threw away spoiled food that had been left in drawers, refilled the pen holders, and put the tokens in a plastic container. When my office assistant fell off the wagon, crack pipe in hand, I hired Michael to replace her.

I leave John’s place and try to put the pieces together. What had I missed about Michael? I remember him telling me he was an army brat. Called his father “sir” long before he joined the military himself. He serviced planes. He married in his twenties. His wife got lonely living on base. North Carolina, he said it was. Fort Bragg? Anyway, she killed herself, I know he told me that. Her death sent him over the edge. He drank. He received a dishonorable discharge. He kept drinking. He hoboed around, eventually landing in San Francisco and Fresh Start.

I didn’t do a background check on Michael or any of my other staff. I didn’t have the budget or the time. Too busy begging for money to keep my doors open to even think about doing something like that. His value to me was all I needed to know. If Michael had a record, so what? Damn near every homeless person I knew had a record. Part of the profile.

I don’t doubt Michael was in the army. All that “sir” shit. Makes sense. Or at least he was an army brat. Perhaps he was married. But did she die by suicide or leave him? Was he discharged for drinking or was he thrown out because he was suspected of raping kids? Is his name really Michael?

After I hired him, he continued to spend his nights in the shelter. I told him to find his own place. He had a job, money for an apartment. He had no reason to take a cot from someone without a job. He didn’t like the idea.

I wonder if he knew what would happen if he lived alone. That the shelter had not only been a place to lay his head, but a crowded, noisy place that prevented him from being alone with his desire.

Another question. I got lots of them.

I remember the day John walked Vernetta into Fresh Start. Why wouldn’t I? She was the hottest thing we were ever likely to see strut through our doors. Two years ago. Man, it seems a lot longer.

Vernetta: fine, sashaying light-skinned Puerto Rican gal who made even the queens look twice. Wearing a pink dress that showed off her cleavage and trim legs. Twenty something. So hot you had a hard time making up your mind where to look. Vernetta sucked the air out of all our lungs. Even the most dazed drunks felt their heads clear and vision return, a new light in their eyes. A bottle of Thunderbird and a dime of crack had nothing on that girl.

Only Michael seemed not to notice her. He did his job with an unbroken rhythm. He asked me to sign a check request form for more bus tokens. Didn’t even look up when she walked by. I signed my name and handed the check request back to him.

Thank you, sir, he said.

That day, Vernetta sat down and checked out the reception area like she owned it. We’d get people like her from time to time. Not as hot, but like her in every other way. People who didn’t belong, who seemed to land from Mars and rattled our usual routine of freakouts and fights and DTs. For a moment they carried with them a fresh attitude that would give off a sense of possibility until we all calmed down and recognized them for what they were: an accident waiting to happen. Some Little Miss Thing using the gifts God gave her to get what she wanted. Booze, dope, whatever. They didn’t come to Fresh Start by accident. They had just held up better than the rest.

So Vernetta started hanging with Little Stevie, who still had his groove on, although he wasn’t as slick as he had been back in the day. But he still knew where to get dope even if he was too drunk to deal it himself. For a quick fuck or blowjob, Little Stevie turned Vernetta on to crack. She’d sweep into the center, zip-a-dee-doo-dah, speeding her brains out, jamming cigarettes in her mouth like firecrackers and throwing them out just as fast, talking a mile a minute. She was possessed, out of her mind. Little Stevie watched her before he passed out in a chair smiling in his sleep. Dreaming of booze and Vernetta on her knees.

It amazed me how fast she got raggedy. She stopped changing clothes. The one dress, that first one we saw her in, torn and stained. Face all droopy. Even Jay noticed. She’d look good again if she stuck her head in a tub for two hours and washed her hair, he said.

But she was feeling no pain and didn’t care about how bad she smelled. I don’t know when I noticed her pregnant. It just kind of dawned on me like it dawned on everybody else. Suddenly her little stick body had a bulge. I was so used to dealing with drunks, I at first thought her kidneys were going. However, that bulge got bigger and bigger and then it hit me. Oh shit, I thought, oh shit. I told her what crack would do to her baby. How it might be born blind or without an arm or a stomach. How its brain would be mush. She never sat in one place long enough to listen.

Then I stopped seeing Vernetta. She disappeared just like that. Even Little Stevie didn’t know where she was. Not that he cared. He bragged about knocking her up, but that was as far as he carried his fatherly duties.

Sir, I need to talk to you, Michael said to me one morning. I looked up, budget sheets strewn across my desk. I was busy drafting reasons why the state should continue funding us.

You know Vernetta? Michael said.

Who doesn’t?

She’s staying with me.

I took off my glasses and pushed away from my desk.

Really.

Yes, sir. She moved in a few weeks ago. I saw her on the bus and sat with her. She’s pregnant, sir.

I know.

She told me she was trying to quit using crack but had no place to stay where someone wouldn’t be smoking it. I told her she could stay with me. I told her she had to attend an NA meeting twice a day and show me a note from the facilitator. Little Stevie doesn’t know.

What makes you think she’s not going out and lighting up when you’re here?

I’d know if she was smoking again, sir. She’s scared about this baby.

She should be. When’s it due?

Four months.

How long has she been with you?

Three weeks. Clean so far. Hard at first.

I bet. You’re putting me in a bad spot.

I know, sir.

I could fire you.

I know, sir.

I should fire you.

Michael had violated rule number one: never, I mean never, was a staff person to take a client home. All sorts of problems with that. Like exchanging a roof for sex. Even if that wasn’t the case, the accusation, if made by a manipulative little dope fiend like Vernetta, would be hard to refute.

You should have taken her to a shelter.

Michael looked at me. I was full of shit and he knew it. A women’s homeless shelter wouldn’t have taken Vernetta, because she was a crackhead. A battered women’s shelter wouldn’t want her, because she wasn’t battered. A detox wouldn’t want her, because she was pregnant. Liability, liability, liability. No one would have taken her. I knew that even as I spoke.

You’re not touching her, are you? I’m talking even a hug.

No, sir. You can come over if you want, sir, and ask her.

She seeing a doctor?

The Tenderloin Free Clinic, sir.