I raised my hand and Miriam clasped it; our hands held together in victory.
Chaz sat on a bench in the middle of the square after work. The wind swirled around his ears and he let it sting his cheeks and mouth. This was what it was like for Mike, except a hundred times worse because he’d stay there all night. The wind lashed at his face and Chaz pulled up his scarf.
He couldn’t take the cold anymore, so he walked a few blocks down to the bar. It was closing, but the bartender let him sit at the counter and drink a couple of beers while he shut down the place. The smell of stale cigarettes saturated the half-lit room. Glasses clinked together in the room behind the bar, followed by the whoosh of a restaurant dishwasher. The bartender turned up the radio in the back and sang along with it, popping his head out long enough to pour Chaz another beer and collect his money. He downed the rest of the beer and walked out the door.
The temperature had dropped since the time Chaz had gone into the bar, and he pulled the gray tuque tight over his head. A car drove around the town square and he wondered who would be out at this solitary hour. It seemed that no one but people like Mike and him were wandering about. The car pulled beside him and the passenger window rolled down. “You live in the Lexington Apartments, right?” He leaned over and saw an older woman behind the wheel.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve seen you walk back and forth into town,” she said. “I can drive you home.”
She looked harmless and he was freezing. “Sure.” He opened the door and slid inside. “I’m not used to seeing people out at this time.”
Her laugh was ragged and tired. “I should have been home hours ago. I was visiting my daughter and her family, and was stuck on the highway for three hours while they cleaned up an accident, some sort of tanker truck.” She threw a hand in the air. “What a mess.”
She drove past the house glowing with Christmas lights, and Chaz pointed to it. “Do those lights drive you crazy in your place?”
She turned and looked at them. “Not really.”
“Somebody said they’ve been up since last Christmas.”
She pulled into the parking lot and snow crunched beneath the wheels. “Yeah, they have.”
He shook his head. “Seems there’s somebody like that in every neighborhood.” He pointed to his building and she drove toward it.
“They put the lights up for their son last year,” she said, pulling in front of the building. “He was overseas in the military and was coming home for a couple of weeks in November. They put up the lights, decorated the tree, and bought gifts for an early Christmas, but he never came. Missing in action. They keep them up, you know, hoping.”
There was nothing to say that could follow that, so he thanked her for the ride and closed the door. He ran up the stairs to his apartment and noticed that the woman didn’t park in front of one of the apartment buildings but drove across the street, pulling into the driveway of the home with the Christmas lights. He stood in the breezeway and watched as she waited for the garage door to open and then pulled in, the door closing behind her.
Eight
Life’s most urgent question is:
What are you doing for others?
—Martin Luther King Jr.
I tried calling Carla’s apartment throughout the morning. Donovan wasn’t a bother, but I did have deliveries to make to some of my families and wondered when Carla would come for him. We made cookies to pass the time. Donovan sat on the kitchen counter and mixed the batter with great flourish.
“Maybe I can take cookies to Spaz,” he said.
“Who’s that?” I asked, turning the oven to preheat.
“He works with Mom and watches me. We play Spider-Man a lot. He’d love to eat these.”
“Well, take some to him!”
Miriam walked through the front door and looked rumpled from a morning of watching workmen at her home. “Your hair’s all mixed up,” Donovan said.
“Thank you,” she said, hanging her coat.
“It looks like a cat’s been playing in it.”
I stirred the batter and laughed. Miriam’s coiffed look had certainly come undone since she moved in. I said it was because she was finally feeling at home and letting her guard down. She said it was because most of her products were covered with mold in the swamp that was once her bathroom. I offered to let her use my products but she said she didn’t use retail, whatever that meant.
Miriam dipped her finger into the batter and put a dab on the end of Donovan’s nose. “How long might this lad be staying with us?”
“His mother will be taking him home today,” I said. “But I do need to run things to some folks and I need to pick up a few bags of hats and gloves at Wilson’s. Would you like to stay here with Donovan or run the errands for me?”