I read: almost square, the paper really thick and creamcolored, ornate lettering on the outside that was real highclass calligraphy, it was so pretty. But that wasn’t what had me staring at it, unwilling to pick it up.
The lettering spelled out my name. Not the one I use, but my real name. Margaret. Maisie’s just a diminutive of it that I read about in this book about Scotland. That was all that was there, just
“Margaret,” no surname. I never use one except for when the cops decide to roust the squatters in the Tombs, like they do from time to time—I think it’s like some kind of training exercise for them—and then I use Flood, same as I gave Tommy.
I shot a glance back in through the glass doors because I figured it had to be from the postal clerk—who else knew me?—but he wasn’t even looking at me. I sat and stared at it a little longer, but then I finally picked it up. I took out my pen knife and slit the envelope open, and carefully pulled out this card. All it said on it was, “Allow the darkrobed access tonight and they will kill you.”
I didn’t have a clue what it meant, but it gave me a royal case of the creeps. If it wasn’t a joke—which I figured it had to be—then who were these blackrobed and why would they want to kill me?
Every big city like this is really two worlds. You could say it’s divided up between the haves and the havenots, but it’s not that simple. It’s more like some people are citizens of the day and others of the night. Someone like me belongs to the night. Not because I’m bad, but because I’m invisible. People don’t know I exist. They don’t know and they don’t care, except for Angel and the postal clerk, I guess.
But now someone did.
Unless it was a joke. I tried to laugh it off, but it just didn’t work. I looked at the envelope again, checking it out for a return address, and that’s when I realized something I should have noticed straightaway. The envelope didn’t have my box number on it, it didn’t have anything at all except for my name. So how the hell did it end up in my box? There was only one way.
I left Rexy guarding Tommy’s mail—just to keep him occu—
pied—and went back inside. When the clerk finished with the customer ahead of me, he gave me a big smile but I laid the envelope down on the counter between us and didn’t smile back.
Actually, he’s a pretty goodlooking guy. He’s got one of those flattop haircuts—shaved sides, kinky black hair standing straight up on top. His skin’s the color of coffee and he’s got dark eyes with the longest lashes I ever saw on a guy. I could like him just fine, but the trouble is he’s a regular citizen. It’d just never work out.
“How’d this get in my box?” I asked him. “All it’s got is my name on it, no box number, no address, nothing.”
He looked down at the envelope. “You found it in your box?” I nodded.
“I didn’t put it in there and I’m the one who sorts all the mail for the boxes.”
“I still found it in there.”
He picked it up and turned it over in his hands.
“This is really weird,” he said.
“You into occult shit?” I asked him.
I was thinking of dark robes. The only people I ever saw wear them were priests or people dabbling in the occult.
He blinked with surprise. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
I grabbed the envelope back and headed back to where Rexy was waiting for me.
“Maisie!” the clerk called after me, but I just ignored him.
Great, I thought as I collected the mail Rexy’d been guarding for me. First Joe postal clerk’s got a good Samaritan complex over me—probably fueled by his dick—now he’s going downright weird. I wondered if he knew where I lived. I wondered if he knew about the dogs. I wondered about magicians in dark robes and whether he thought he had some kind of magic that was going to deal with the dogs and make me go all gooshy for him—just before he killed me.
The more I thought about it, the more screwed up I got. I wasn’t so much scared as confused. And angry. How was I supposed to keep coming back to get Tommy’s mail, knowing he was there? What would he put in the box next? A dead rat? It wasn’t like I could complain to anybody. People like me, we don’t have any rights.
Finally I just started for home, but I paused as I passed the door to Angel’s office.
Angel’s a little cool with me these days. She still says she wanted to help me, but she doesn’t quite trust me anymore. It’s not really her fault.
She had me in her office one time—I finally went, just to get her off my back—and we sat there for awhile, looking at each other, drinking this crappy coffee from the machine that someone donated to her a few years ago. I wouldn’t have picked it up on a dare if I’d come across it on my rounds.
“What do you want from me?” I finally asked her.
“I’m just trying to understand you.”
“There’s nothing to understand. What you see is what I am. No more, no less.”
“But why do you live the way you do?”
Understand, I admire what Angel does. She’s helped a lot of kids that were in a really bad way and that’s a good thing. Some people need help because they can’t help themselves.
She’s an attractive woman with a heartshaped face, the kind of eyes that always look really warm and caring and long dark hair that seems to go on forever down her back. I always figured something really bad must have happened to her as a kid, for her to do what she does. It’s not like she makes much of a living. I think the only thing she really and honestly cares about is helping people through this sponsorship program she’s developed where straights put up money and time to help the downand-outers get a second chance.
I don’t need that kind of help. I’m never going to be much more than what I am, but that’s okay. It beats what I had before I hit the streets.
I’ve told Angel all of this a dozen times, but she sat there behind her desk, looking at me with those sad eyes of hers, and I knew she wanted a piece of me, so I gave her one. I figured maybe she’d leave me alone then.
“I was in high school,” I told her, “and there was this girl who wanted to get back at one of the teachers—a really nice guy named Mr. Hammond. He taught math. So she made up this story about how he’d molested her and the shit really hit the van. He got suspended while the cops and the school board looked into the matter and all the time this girl’s laughing her head off behind everybody’s back, but looking real sad and screwed up whenever the cops and the social workers are talking to her.
“But I knew he didn’t do it. I knew where she was, the night she said it happened, and it wasn’t with Mr. Hammond. Now I wasn’t exactly the bestliked kid in that school, and I knew what this girl’s gang was going to do to me, but I went ahead and told the truth anyway.
“Things worked out pretty much the way I expected. I got the cold shoulder from everybody, but at least Mr. Hammond got his name cleared and his job back.
“One afternoon he asks me to see him after school and I figure it’s to thank me for what I’ve done, so I go to his classroom. The building’s pretty well empty and the scuff of my shoes in the hallway is the only sound I hear as I go to see him. I get to the math room and he takes me back into his office. Then he locks the door and he rapes me. Not just once, but over and over again. And you know what he says to me while he’s doing it?
“‘Nobody’s going to believe a thing you say,’ he says. ‘You try to talk about this and they’re just going to laugh in your face.’”
I looked over at Angel and there were tears swimming in her eyes.
“And you know what?” I said. “I knew he was right. I was the one that cleared his name. There was
“Oh, Jesus,” Angel said. “You poor kid.”
“Don’t take it so hard,” I told her. “It’s past history. Besides, it never really happened. I just made it up because I figured it was the kind of thing you wanted to hear.”
I’ll give her this: she took it well. Didn’t yell at me, didn’t pitch me out onto the street. But you can see why maybe I’m not on her list of favorite people these days. On the other hand, she doesn’t hold a grudge—I know that too.
I felt like a hypocrite going in to see her with this problem, but I didn’t have anyone else to turn to.
It’s not like Tommy or the dogs could give me any advice. I hesitated for the longest moment in the doorway, but then she looked up and saw me standing there, so I went ahead in.
