Looking back now, this was by far my happiest time in Spokane. I was with Taylor, and I’d managed to make her happy; maybe I made her feel beautiful and loved.
And maybe, for a time, she made me feel the same.
“Let me do the talking,” Taylor said as we turned south on Monroe. “These guys are all right, but they can be pretty intense. They’re territorial and very touchy.”
“Homestead?” I asked, guessing at our destination. I recognized the street from my first day in the city. Weasel had escorted me past these very buildings, bitching about the Homestead and all of its rules. I remembered people staring out at us distastefully, peering from doors and windows. But looking back, I realized that those disgusted looks might have had more to do with Weasel than with the stranger entering the city for the first time.
“Yeah,” Taylor said. “They know me. I lived here for a while, before I found the house. They’ll let us in.”
Taylor led me to a street-level door halfway between First and Second Avenue. The building itself was squat and unremarkable: a two-story structure sandwiched between a pair of taller neighbors. As soon as we got within a dozen feet, a man stepped from the shadows inside the building. He was big and thickly muscled, and he had a kinked black beard that masked most of his face. There was a baseball bat clenched in his hands, and he was holding it like he was getting ready to drop down a bunt: his right hand down on the knob, his left wrapped around its thick barrel. I could see an eagle tattooed on the back of his hand. I stopped dead on the sidewalk, but Taylor continued forward. As she approached, the man shifted the bat up against his shoulder and pulled himself to his full height.
“What are you doing here?” the man growled. “I thought you’d left for greener pastures.”
“I can’t pay the old man a visit?” Taylor said, her voice cold, confrontational. “Do you really think Terry’s going to turn me away?”
The man grunted. “Maybe not, but that’s
Taylor made a clucking sound at the back of her throat, and then she flashed the man a mocking grin. The grin looked out of place on her delicate lips. “Since when did you get so deep, Mickey? And since when do you guard doors?”
The big man let out a frustrated sound—something between a grunt and a deep-throated growl—then he lifted his chin toward me. “If you go in, you leave your
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “We go in together. That’s what Terry would want.”
The big man glowered, stone-faced, for a couple of seconds, then he flexed his fingers against the bat. It was a gesture of pure frustration, his fingers pulsing with pent-up energy. “Fine,” he said. “I don’t care! This place is going to hell. No rules. No fucking order!” With that, he turned and disappeared into the building. Taylor followed. I had to break into a trot in order to catch up.
There was a second man standing just inside the doorway, and he stayed behind as Mickey led us back into the building. All the exterior windows had been boarded over with sheets of reinforced plywood. It looked like the Homestead had battened itself down for a hurricane. Or a military assault. Mickey produced a flashlight and waved us forward impatiently.
Before the evacuation, the building had housed a number of small businesses. Every door sported a different name and slogan. We passed MATTHEW FRANK DISCOUNT AUTO INSURANCE, TEMPLE SMITH OFFICE SUPPLIES, and, toward the back of the building, perhaps the sketchiest acupuncture clinic I’d ever seen, labeled simply ACUPUNCTURE. Then Mickey led us up a narrow flight of stairs, and we started back toward the front of the building. Halfway there, Mickey stopped at one of the boarded-up windows. He hit the plywood with a sharp, practiced rap, and the large sheet of wood swung aside. Outside, a five-foot plank spanned the distance to the neighboring building.
Taylor didn’t hesitate. She climbed over the sill and crossed the gap, disappearing into the building on the other side.
Mickey gestured impatiently for me to follow. It wasn’t a long way down—maybe fifteen feet—but I still took my time. I held my hands out for balance and placed my feet with care. When I reached the middle, the board suddenly started to bounce, and I looked back to see Mickey crawling out of the window behind me. The thought of that behemoth bouncing along at my heels—the thought of the wood cracking beneath all that extra weight—was enough to speed me up.
I stumbled over the windowsill on the far side, but thankfully Taylor was there to stop me from falling. Mickey jumped down a couple of seconds later.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked. “What the hell are we doing?”
“Precautions,” Taylor said. She gave me a brief, placating smile but didn’t offer any further explanation.
We were in a short hallway. There was a small bathroom to our right and an even smaller office to our left. The floor was a beautiful polished wood, and Taylor’s footsteps thumped solidly as she took over Mickey’s lead. I followed a couple of steps behind, and I could feel Mickey looming at my shoulder.
The hallway opened up onto a large, mostly empty room, and we stopped at the threshold.
It was a ballet studio.
I was surprised at our destination. I’m not sure what I was expecting—a small, smoky room, maybe, or some type of fortified bunker—but this was not even close. The room was light and airy. The far wall was nothing but glass, providing a view of Monroe Street directly outside. And the wall opposite was glass, too, panels of flawless mirror, reflecting the sun-dappled room. There was a bar bolted to the mirror, and I could imagine ballerinas stretching up and down its length, their pointed toes raised to the sky as they limbered up lithe, supple bodies.
A hint of rose lingered in the air. It was the last remnant of a fleeing ghost. A sense memory: powdered perfume over stale sweat.
“Taylor!”
There was an old, ratty sofa sitting in the corner of the room, facing out toward the massive window. Surrounded by stacks of books and a jumble of discarded clothing, it looked completely out of place on the barren expanse of hardwood floor. Like a pile of trash dropped into the middle of a perfectly manicured garden.
There was an old man struggling up from the low sofa. “Taylor!” he repeated, a wide smile on his face. “My darling girl!” The man was at least sixty-five years old. His hair was salt-and-pepper black, but his temples had faded to pure white. His wide smile was caught in a web of wrinkles, and there were thin lines radiating out from his joy-narrowed eyes.
“I saw you pass by outside,” he said, nodding toward the window. “But I thought you were going to just keep on walking. I thought you were going to give this old man a wide berth.”
Taylor shook her head. A bright smile spread across her face, and she broke into a trot, running up to the old man and sliding smoothly into his arms. I was surprised at the intimacy of the gesture.
In the hallway behind me, Mickey let out a disgusted grunt. Then he turned and left. I heard him scramble back off the windowsill and across the plank to the neighboring building.
“I see Mickey hasn’t changed,” Taylor said, backing out of the old man’s embrace. “Still pissed off … at everyone and everything.”
“Mostly at me, I think,” the man said. “I’m sure he thinks he could do a better job. Thankfully, no one in their right mind would follow where he wants to lead.”
The man noticed me standing on the far side of the room. He flashed a smile and nodded in my direction. “Why don’t you tell your friend to come over here, Taylor. This isn’t a peep show. He’s more than welcome.”
I approached slowly, and Taylor turned her wide smile my way. “Dean, this is Terry. He started up the Homestead. He’s done a lot for me. He … well, I guess he saved my life.”
“I don’t know about that,” the old man said with a smile. It was a relaxed, weary smile. He offered me his hand, and we shook. “It’s not like I did her any favors. She’s strong. I offered her a place to stay, but she more than paid her dues.”
“Modest as ever,” Taylor said. She turned away from the two of us, then crouched down and started to shuffle through the books on the floor. “Agricultural texts? Gardening? You’re still trying to start that farm?”
“That’s the dream,” Terry said. He let the words hang in the air for a second. Then an exhausted sigh escaped his lips. He gave me a nod—an apologetic dismissal—and retreated back to the sofa. Despite his slight frame, the sofa cushions sagged under his weight. It looked like the ratty old thing had reached its last couple of
