Invisible Ellen (15 page)

It wasn't far to the downtown Macy's. Justice drove while the two women sat in the back and decided what to say. Actually, Temerity decided, and Ellen wrote, but she felt that they were her words too. When they'd finished their note, Ellen read it back.

Janelle,

You don't know us, but who we are is not important. There is someone who needs you very much, and maybe someone else who can help you as well. Your brother, Sam, is a father. He had a little girl, not even a day old. She is at Saint Vincent's hospital. Her mother, Cindy, is desperately in need of a friend. She cannot
take care of the baby, so she has decided to give it up for adoption. She did not know of your existence either until last night, just before she went into labor. She is confused and alone, and she misses Sam very much. Perhaps you can help each other.

It was signed simply, “Two friends.” Ellen wanted to make it “three friends” but Justice begged off. “This is
your
good deed,” he said.

“Okay, we're here. How do you want to do this?” Justice asked as he slipped the car into an available parking space.

“I kind of thought you'd take it in,” his sister said.

He sighed. “Of course you did. Okay, what does she look like?”

After a brief pause, Ellen realized that she would have to answer that.

“She's tall, slim, dark skinned, with pale gold, almost greenish eyes, very beautiful, and one leg is shorter than the other,” Ellen said.

Justice frowned. “Can you be more specific?”

“I don't remember anything el—” Ellen began, but Temerity cut her off with a smack to Justice's arm.

“He's joking. Go on,” she told her brother. “Just give it to her and leave. Tell her you're the messenger, or something like that.”

“Don't they always shoot the messenger?” Justice asked, switching off the engine and unbuckling his seat belt.

“That's only when it's bad news,” Temerity said brightly, earning herself a look that only Ellen could appreciate. He got out of the car. They sat in silence for exactly three seconds and then Temerity blurted out, “What do you think she'll do?”

“What do
you
think she'll do?”

Temerity hummed for a second and then said, “She'll go, right away. Of course she will. And I think we should be there.”

“Wh . . . wha . . . what?” Ellen stuttered.

“Don't you want to see what happens? How she reacts?” Then before Ellen could answer, she said, “I do! And that means you're coming, since, you know, I don't have the ability to process light and whatnot.”

Justice returned within five minutes and told them that he'd handed over the note and gotten the heck out of there.

“Great, to Saint Vincent's,” Temerity said.

But Justice protested. “Okay, now you're crossing the line into creepiness. It's one thing to find out someone needs help and make a connection for them to get that need met, but it's another to spy on the event.” Temerity opened her mouth to object, but he went on. “No, I won't. I'll tell you what I will do. You know my friend Amanda?”

“Sure, the one who finished premed and actually became a doctor?”

“Yes, her, smart-ass. Guess where she works.”

“Tell me it's Saint Vincent's,” Temerity begged. “Say the words.”

“The words.” Justice snickered.

“Give me strength.” Temerity clasped her hands and raised them to the sunroof. “Don't make me kill my brother. He doesn't mean to be so stupid, he just can't help himself.”

“It's Saint Vincent's.” Justice smiled broadly.

“Thank you.” She dropped her hands and turned toward Justice. “You may now sleep without immediate fear of reprisal,” Temerity said.

Justice rolled his eyes at Ellen. “And she's interning in obstetrics, so guess
where
Amanda works at Saint Vincent's.”

“Ellen, you want to take this one?” Temerity turned in Ellen's general direction.

“Um. The baby place?” she suggested.

“The baby place,” Justice agreed. “Exactly. I will call her and ask her to check in and let me know what the status is of both of your adopted characters. Okay?”

Ellen couldn't have been more relieved. As much as she wanted to see the outcome of their machinations, she didn't think she could take one more moment of being out in the world. Besides, she had to get to work in a few hours, and she needed a nap first.

“Fine.” Temerity crossed her arms and stuck out her lower lip. “Typical. I miss all the fun.”

Justice shook his head. “You've been having more fun than even monkeys should be allowed to have,” he said. “Ellen, can we drop you off somewhere?”

“Home, if it's not too much trouble.”

“You don't have to be at work for a few hours. We could go do something,” Temerity suggested.

But Ellen felt so twisted and wrung out that the only “something” she wanted right now was semidarkness, four walls and her bed. Justice seemed to understand. “Home it is,” he said.

Ellen climbed the stairs to her apartment feeling spent but softer, more pliable, as though if someone poked her, it would leave an indent. She went to the back window and looked out. The scene hadn't changed and the courtyard was deserted. Ellen didn't even get anything to eat before she took off her shoes, curled up in her bed, set her clock radio alarm to ring in two hours, and dropped off to sleep.

W
hen the jangle of the phone woke her, Ellen picked it up automatically, as though she'd been doing it all her life, and murmured a sleepy, “Yeah?”

Temerity's voice was eager. “It's me.” Even half-asleep, Ellen smiled at the irony of the pronouncement. Who else would it be? But Temerity was already on a roll. She was saying, “Okay, so here's the deal. Janelle went to meet Cindy. I guess that went pretty well, because according to Justice's friend Dr. Amanda, Janelle has now taken charge of Cindy's care, and the baby's.” Trying to clear the fog in her head, Ellen sat up and asked, “Is that good?”

“Have you ever seen someone who needed taking care of more than Cindy?”

The question was a difficult one for Ellen. She hadn't ever evaluated the level of “need to be taken care of” in anyone before, much less compared one to another. So she just made a noise she hoped sounded like she agreed with whatever Temerity thought.

“What about those other people?” she asked.

“The Newlands? Not sure.”

“Oh.” Ellen was undecided if she felt anything about that, though the memory of Susan Newland's face streaming with tears left a
rough spot just under her collarbone. Having an opinion was more of a nuisance than she'd expected.

“And while we're making our rounds through the hospital wards, T-bone, I mean J.B., is not as sprightly as we would wish. In fact, he's pretty much spright-less. I wish there was something we could do to help him.”

“Like what?” Ellen asked.

“Give blood, or, I don't know . . . catch the guy who shot him might be good.”

Ellen had a brief image of the man in the hooded sweatshirt with the pierced eyebrow in the ICU waiting room, but she kept it to herself. Both of Temerity's suggestions sounded substantially more demanding than slipping someone a note, and Ellen was doubtful that she was capable of any undertaking that involved either the gathering of clues or the giving of bodily fluids.

“You going to work?” Temerity asked.

“Yeah, I have to get ready now.”

“Okay, call me in the morning, I'll let you know if I hear anything else.”

Ellen stumbled to the shower, wondering how her life could possibly have changed so much in seventy-some-odd hours. But while the tepid water splashed over her, the answer came so clearly that she spoke the words out loud. “Because I got involved.” Something she'd arduously avoided, with truly remarkable results. She'd done one thing, tripped one guy, and it had snowballed into expecting phone calls and visiting people at hospitals and being ambushed by music that made her weep. That last one she really hadn't seen coming. She almost—not quite, but almost—longed for the numbness of the good old three days ago.

Instead, as she dried herself with a thin, practically nonabsorbent towel, lifting her breasts and stomach to dry beneath the overlapping skin, she found herself thinking curiously about Irena. She felt . . . she searched for the right word . . . invested in the woman. And there was something, something reassuring, in a very uncertain way, about the fact that she would speak to Temerity tomorrow. She ran the sentence through her brain again to try to interpret it. She would speak to Temerity tomorrow, and she found it impossible to decipher accurately without any point of reference. She'd never, as far as she could remember, been committed to “speaking to someone tomorrow” just to exchange ideas or information. That deceptively simple sentence could mean, or bring, anything, because it meant plunging into the sea of unknown, especially with Temerity, and the unfamiliarity felt like a thrown rock that sent up a disruptive splash.

From standing back and watching it, she'd always known it was a crazy world, but it was a whole different crazy when you wandered out into its churning eddies. Persuading herself that she could retreat at any time, Ellen got dressed.

When she headed out to work, it was dark and the sky overhead had filled with clouds that bounced back the light from the city, casting a pewter sheen on the streets. It was like slipping into an illustrated world, and Ellen felt more than usually unnerved.

Trucks were stacked up three deep at the loading dock, and it was swarming with drivers and loaders, hindering her sneak entry. She was early as usual, so Ellen walked along in the shadow of the building to wait for a lull in the activity. Several large dumpsters were lined up against the wall, green for garbage and blue for recycling, filled to overflowing with broken-down boxes. The excess cardboard
was stacked in neat piles in between them. Ellen sat down on a comfortable pile and took out her notebook.

In the light from the gargantuan parking lot fixtures, she read back what she'd written on the bus ride over.

One line read, “A woman with an expensive handbag slapped her child for playing with it. The child did not understand. The woman should have explained, or given him something else to occupy his time.” And another, “Scowling, mean man is rude to a woman with groceries. She asks him if he's having a bad day, and he says yes. They talk for a while, then he helps her carry her groceries off the bus. Both are smiling.” There were several others, all of them supplemented with comments.

They were different from the lists of misdemeanors and petty behavioral crimes that were only a page or two back in the notebook. Leaning her head against the brick, she thought about this. What she was recording wasn't different. They were still just small observations, written snapshots of moments; what was different was how she was documenting them. She wasn't sure if it was because she was looking at people more closely or that she had taken a step back and was slightly farther away, but the result was that she could see more of the picture. She smiled. Imagining what caused people to behave the way they did was growing on her, it added to the story. Because, Ellen saw now, there was always more to the story. She thought about the woman with the grocery bags. Instead of immediately taking offense at the man's frustration, the way most people would, and snapping back at him, she had made the unusual choice to ask gently if there was a reason for the man's mood. Of course, the man could have chosen to continue being impolite and mired in his misery, but something as simple as a question instead of a retort had drawn him out and paid off for both of them.

Her musing was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Someone was walking toward her hidden nook with deliberate, heavy steps. Instinctively, Ellen leaned into the shadows.

But whoever it was had stopped on the other side of the recycling container. She heard the flick of an old-fashioned lighter and smelled the taint of unusually harsh cigarette smoke. A low, tubercular cough, from deep in a tortured chest, accompanied the odor.

After a short wait, more footsteps approached. These were quicker and clicked along at a pace that said their maker was in a hurry.

Someone barked, “Get out of sight of the dock.”

Ellen tensed, recognizing the Boss's oily voice.

“Nobody will see me,” said a husky voice, definitely the smoker's voice, she thought. It had the rasp of a Slavic accent, though his English seemed confident. “Okay, I'm here. You got my money?”

“There's going to be a delay on that.” The Boss sounded nervous. He quickly added, “And anyway, I have a proposition that will make your half of a cell phone chump change.”

“I'm listening.” The fruity cough was followed by the sound of spitting.
Gross,
thought Ellen. “I'm interested,” the smoker said, and then he coughed again. It sounded like infected thunder, rumbling and soggy in the distance.

“I have to know you're in. I'm not telling you the plan unless you're in.”

The smoker laughed. “How much?”

“Fifty thousand, at least.” The Boss boasted like a kid who'd cheated on a geography test and gotten away with it.

“Tasty. What do I have to do?”

“Create a diversion, enough to distract everyone there, take care of one security guard, if necessary.”

“You want me to kill somebody? That's extra.”

“No, I don't want you to kill the damn security guard. Just . . . distract him. Jesus, try not to maim anybody. That's all I need. One of the guards is my wife's uncle. He's seventy, for God's sake.”

“Relax. When?”

“Saturday evening, that's our biggest day, and we empty the cash from the registers right after ten p.m.” The Boss laughed nervously. “I'll take care of that side. You need to make a big noise at exactly ten fifteen, and when the guard comes to investigate, I need him occupied for maybe five minutes, then I'll meet you at the usual place and you'll have more cash than you can fit in your saddlebags.”

Saddlebags?
Ellen looked around for a horse, not that she really expected to see one. She didn't, but she did see a motorcycle, parked in a shadowy corner at the far end of the huge, mostly deserted, side lot.

The scratchy voice said, “No problem. I'll let you know when I'm ready.”

Ellen could imagine the Boss puffing up. She'd seen it a thousand times when one of his employees dared to presume to be his equal. “Remember, I'm in charge here,” he said.

The laugh came again, triggering a coughing fit. When he recovered, the man said, “You're the boss. Oh, and just in case you were thinking of showing up next time without the cash . . .”

A paper rustled, and the Boss said, “What is this?” There was a frightened intake of breath as he answered his own question. “This is the route my kids walk to school.”

“Yeah, I know. Cute kids.”

“How do you kno—? You stay away from my children.” The Boss's voice rose to a squeak from the real fear in it.
So,
Ellen thought,
he does care about something
.

“Up to you.” There was the sound of footsteps, retreating this
time, and Ellen watched the back of a huge man in a black leather jacket and boots as he crossed a football field of asphalt toward the bike, lighting another cigarette and hacking as he inhaled.

A few seconds later, the Boss made his way back toward the docks. Ellen waited for a full five minutes, spending the first two of them recording what she had heard, before heading in after him.

It was 9:45, so Ellen quickly changed and then did something she had never dared before. She went out onto the sales floor before the store was closed. The lines at the checkout were long, and the checkers were working furiously to get out on time. Ellen found a spot near the registers, a camping display, where she could sit on a foldable chair between large, stacked boxes of portable barbecues and watch.

As the last of the customers were herded through the wide lanes, the cashiers began to count out the drawers, making bundles of the various bills and writing the totals on a daily record. Then the manager came to collect it into a heavy canvas bag. It was the tall, balding manager with the sparse half circle of thin red hair. He carried the bag to the front office, opened the door with a key card he wore on a retractable extender attached to his belt, and went in. The door closed behind him, locking securely. One of the cashiers, who was lagging behind the others with her totals, knocked on the closed door, and it opened. They began a casual conversation, the checker leaning a hip against the office door to hold it ajar. Through it, Ellen watched the manager add her rubber-banded cash to the canvas bag and then drop the bag into the safe as he chatted with her. Then he began to record the totals from the cashiers' slips, and the cashier said good night and let the door fall closed. The bag was never reopened and the cash never recounted between the cashiers and the safe.

Interesting,
Ellen thought.

The single security guard who had stood near the office door for the transfer of the money now left that post, and he and the rest of the security staff made their evening pass through the store, starting at the back and sweeping toward the front to make sure that the customers had all found their way out. Ellen sat very still, and the elderly man in the gray uniform walked past the boxes without any recognition that she was seated between them. As soon as he was gone, she got up and went back to collect her supplies.

As she opened the door, cautiously as usual, to the acrid atmosphere of the storeroom, she heard the sound of singing in a strange language from among the shelving. Ellen fetched her cart, topped off her cleaning fluids, and waited. In a minute, Irena came from around the back. Her earbuds were around her neck but not in her ears.
Good choice,
Ellen thought. Out on the floor, it would be safe to wear them, but not here, where someone could slip up behind you, as Irena had learned the hard way. Ellen turned her back and the woman walked past her, stopping at the door to peer out, checking, no doubt, for the lascivious Boss. The hallway was empty, so she crossed herself, muttered something in Russian, and went on her way, humming.

So, Ellen thought, things were looking up for the battered cleaner. Ellen felt a warm sensation in her chest and laid a hand flat on it. She didn't feel sick, but she wondered if the heat meant she was coming down with something. She'd check for a fever when she got home. She gathered the last of her things and was out on the floor working before she realized that she had forgotten to eat dinner.