My name is Tom Murray, I say. I was the previous director.

Miss Deborah, she says. Pleasure.

I know you weren’t expecting me. I just wanted to come by and tell you how sorry I am to hear about Michael and to offer my support. If there’s anything I can do.

The offer hangs between us. I feel a little desperate. I want to talk about Michael. How awful I feel, how confused. But sitting and facing Miss Deborah tells me I made a mistake. I don’t belong here. Not anymore.

Thank you, Mr. Murray, Miss Deborah says. It’s been quite a shock. Totally unexpected.

I can imagine.

The board of directors knows about this but not our funders. I hope it doesn’t go that far. Everyone understands, of course, Michael wasn’t my hire.

What does that matter?

Nothing, I hope. But if this frightens funders, if they worry about the type of staff we have, I’ll be forced to emphasize he wasn’t my hire.

I don’t say anything. I’m her excuse. She’ll beat hell out of my name as long as she needs to. I don’t blame her. I’d do the same thing.

Did you do a background check on Michael, Mr. Murray? Did you confirm his job histories? Michael’s so-called time with the military? I did. No Michael Kelly with his birth date and Social Security number was in the army.

It’s probably not his real name.

All the more reason for background checks, isn’t it? And did you know Vernetta lived with him when she was pregnant? I’m sure you didn’t, but why did you permit Michael to babysit for her?

What he did on his off hours . . .

He brought her baby here to work, I’m told. You must have known that much.

I don’t say anything. I feel like that apostle what’s-his-name when the rooster crowed every time he lied. I didn’t see the harm, I want to say. Not from Michael.

I mean no disrespect, but it’s a good thing you left when you did or you’d be answering a lot more questions, Miss Deborah says. I’ll try to keep this from following you. You work with refugees now, right?

I just came to offer my support, I say. That’s all.

Thank you.

Miss Deborah returns to her computer. I stand to leave. Then I think of Jay again.

Does Jay still work here?

He’s on disability now, she says, still facing the computer.

Disability?

I had the benefits advocate enroll him in SSI. He didn’t need to be here. He’d never get a job anywhere else. That does us no good. I want people who can find work and move on. Jay could barely answer the phone.

She pushes back in her chair until it rests against the wall behind her and faces me, offering a tired, even sympathetic smile that tells me she knows I think she’s a bitch. She’s not. She’s doing what she’s doing because that’s what she learned in school. Comes with the degrees. She doesn’t want Jay. She wants suits. She wants order. She wants to triage the Jays out of here.

You put up with a lot taking on people like Jay, Mr. Murray, she says. I’ll give you that.

Vernetta had a baby boy and named him Stevie Jr. That was more credit than I’d have given his father, who never made it to the hospital. Nine damn pounds. Because Vernetta had stayed clean, the doctors thought the boy would have little to no brain damage from her use of crack. Over time they would know, but his prognosis was good.

She entered a halfway house for single moms in recovery. Michael and I used the agency van to deliver her to her new home. He hauled her things up three flights of stairs to her room. It had bay windows and a nice view of the ocean and hardwood floors that caught the sun and shined like ice.

Michael set up the baby crib. When he finished, she embraced him and sobbed. He held her like a robot and looked over her shoulder at the ocean, but nothing in his face revealed what he might be thinking. Not a blink or a tear or an expression of any kind. Just a blank stare and a stiffness to his body as he patted her back one, two, one, two and then stopped.

Pretty controlled in there, I said when we got back outside.

Military training, sir.

You should be really very proud.

I am, sir.

Don’t just drop out of her life. She still needs you. Little Stevie isn’t going to be any kind of dad to that kid.

No, sir, he won’t. I’ll come by. I told her I’d babysit.

Vernetta would bring Stevie Jr. to work from time to time and leave him with Michael while she attended an NA meeting.

After I submitted my two-week notice, I told Michael he should leave too. I knew of a job opening at Hap Street Youth Center for an office manager. After-school activities for wealthy suburban kids in Walnut Creek. Easy. No stress. Good money. Go for it, I told him. He said he would, but he never applied. To work with kids, you must agree to a background check. I hadn’t thought of that before. I guess Miss Deborah had a point.

What was it like for Michael to be on that Greyhound bus after he got off the phone with John? Did he feel bad? Did he think, Another close call. I made it. I’ll stop it this time. I really will. Or was his escape part of the thrill?

Sitting in his seat hunkered down, maybe a hat pulled over his face, I imagine him pretending to be asleep to avoid being noticed until he does fall asleep, only to awaken someplace else hours later. He finds a homeless shelter and sleeps among other homeless men to protect himself from himself, living below the police radar, his life resuming once more.

If Michael is caught and I’m called to testify, I would talk about the man I knew. I would stand up for that man not because I condone child abuse but because that man and I were colleagues, partners. The one guy I could say, Hey, let’s have lunch, and it wasn’t an act of charity. We talked about sports. We bitched about the weather. The one guy at work I could hang with because he wasn’t fucking out there. I knew when I was talking to him, I was talking to him and not half a dozen personalities jockeying around in his head. He wasn’t Jay. He was stiff, dull, and ordinary. He changed his clothes every day. He had all his teeth. He didn’t hit me up for cash. And for a while he did a good thing by Vernetta.

Then I think, What am I doing? Look what he did. Did to me. Not just Vernetta. But Me. Me. I trusted him.

Fuck him.

I doubt the police will find Michael. If they hadn’t caught him before, why would they now? He was messing with the offspring of a crackhead and a skid-row father. I’m not talking about the Kardashians here. Crack addicts and drunks. Low, low down on the priority scale.

And now Vernetta is on the street again. My kid was abused by the man who helped me, who maybe even saved my life, and who I trusted and loved, and boom, the dam broke. Violated once more, she cut loose and got herself some crack. An overwhelming desire always waiting to bust out. She needed an excuse and got a great one. And Stevie Jr., where the hell is he? Is he really with Vernetta’s mother or her NA sponsor or just out there too, lost and alone?

These days, I live alone in the same apartment where I fucked Jean. I have no secrets other than her. And she was legal. Doesn’t say much for me, I know, but I can leave the curtains wide open and the lights on, mirrors in place.

I hope Jean cleaned up. I hope, but I don’t want to run into her and find out. I’m afraid of what I’d see, what I might be tempted to do. Like try to help her. I mean really help her this time. Guilt, man. It hangs on after all these years. I prefer to deal with people I won’t see again. Like my Iraqi family. Wrap things up at the Department of Family Services this afternoon and they’ll be on their way and I’ll be on mine. No drama. Yes, it gets old but I can deal with old. Old is better than the alternative. If you help the same people too often, their little mindless shit will add up to either nothing or something and you’ve got to decide which it is and whether you can look away or not.

Me, I’d rather not know.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the staff of Seven Stories Press, especially my editor, Dan Simon, for taking on this manuscript.

My thanks to everyone at the publications in which some of these chapters first appeared. Without you this book would not exist.