Invisible Ellen (16 page)

The realization panicked her with a sensation that the floor had dropped out from below her, but a quick check told her that, though she was hungry, she was neither on the brink of death nor in
immediate danger of starvation. In fact, she felt better rather than worse. Stranger and stranger, this changing of routine.

The work-task sheet told her that tonight she'd been assigned to the fresh food section first, and then the dry goods. As she wiped down the signs and cleaned up the free fruit samples smashed into the floor, some still skewered with toothpicks, Ellen eyed the piles of red and green apples. She'd never found fruit very appealing—it just wasn't substantial enough—but she pushed a few from the edge of the pile into her dusting rag and slipped them into her apron pocket, and when her break came, she took them, along with a family pack of fried chocolate pies, into the bathroom.

The first bite of the red apple was crisp and chewy and crunched satisfyingly. The juice dripped down one side of her mouth and Ellen felt the fresh, sweet taste explode on her tongue. Once, long ago, she'd been given half an apple by a school nurse and she remembered its firm, sugary snap now. But the apples she'd received at school lunches or at the group home had been tasteless mush in comparison. She devoured four apples, liking the sour tang of the green almost as much as the sweetness of the red, and then found she could eat only one of the single-serving pies. To her surprise, she drank less than a third of the large coffee with the hazelnut creamer she had brought in from the break room. It tasted . . . fake with the apples. The artificial flavoring coated her mouth and clashed with the authentic sweetness of the fruit.
I
must
be coming down with something,
Ellen thought.
Possibly the stomach flu
.

She was back on the floor when she heard an announcement over the PA. “Irena, please come to the office.”

That couldn't be good. The only encouraging sign was that the voice was not that of the Boss but of Thelma, one of the stock managers. Ellen wasn't sure but she thought Thelma was Produce; at any
rate, she always saw the woman counting boxes filled with leaves of unidentified plant life.

Three minutes went by before the PA clicked on again. “Irena Medvedkov, you have an emergency phone call. Come to the office.”

Ellen looked around. She did not know where Irena was working tonight, but she had a good idea why the woman wasn't responding. Taking a duster, Ellen started along the row of aisles. She spotted the American hopeful in the toy section.

Her ears were plugged with the tiny speakers that led by a twisted cord to the scratched and dented portable CD player on her cart. She was humming as she pulled down packs of toys, scrubbed off the shelves, and then replaced them.

The problem was how to pass on the message without having to reveal herself, but Ellen needn't have worried. She'd forgotten the Crows. A public announcement of some kind of personal emergency ruffled their black feathers like a strong wind rich with the scent of sloppy picnickers. Within seconds the two women, one tall and scrawny, the other short and thick, came hurrying around the end of the aisle. Kiki's long strides providing a slower backbeat to the rapid pattering of Rosa's hurried, short, clipped steps.

“Irena!” Kiki shouted, tugging at the woman's sleeve so that she spun in alarm. “Take those off!”

“There is problem?” Irena asked, the fear making her voice quaver.

“The office has been paging you,” Rosa said, more gently. “There's an emergency phone call for you.”

“I don't want to go,” Irena said, physically cringing.

Kiki sniffed and squared her bony shoulders. “I'll go with you. I don't want you to be alone if this is bad news.”

Ellen snorted. The Crow meant, of course, that she didn't want to
miss being the bearer of Irena's private misfortune to the masses. She'd be back to broadcast the bad news quicker than live TV. Rosa looked disappointed. “I'll come too,” she said, but Kiki wouldn't hear of it, and Rosa, a sour scowl puckering her already pickled countenance, was relegated to waiting.

So as Kiki got a talon gripped on Irena's wrist and propelled her toward the back offices, Ellen decided her best bet was to stay near Rosa, who sulked her way to the frozen foods and pretended to dust while she kept one eye fixed on the doorway that led to the management offices.

It was only a matter of minutes before the door opened again and Kiki rushed out. Rosa met her halfway across the floor. “The baby is sick,” she reported breathlessly. “Thelma is going to take Irena to the hospital. The kid is there already.”

“What's wrong with it?”

Kiki shrugged. “I couldn't find out, something about a cough and a fever. She was yammering in Russian and that's all I could get out of her. We'll go in the morning, take some flowers to the poor girl. We'll find out the rest then.”

“Yes. She must be frightened. Poor girl,” Rosa echoed. “What hospital?”

“Saint Vincent's, of course. You don't think they'd take an immigrant with no insurance to a private hospital.”

Rosa crinkled her nose. “Rough place.”

“I offered to go with her,” Kiki said grandly, “but the Boss said no, only Irena and Thelma could go. He looked pretty satisfied with himself about it.”

Rosa's eyes glittered. “Getting back at her for not putting out?”

“Of course.” She sniffed. “Men. Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em.”

Rosa ignored the comment and said, “I hate Saint Vincent's, so run-down and depressing. They took my nephew there when he was accidentally shot by a drunken friend.”

“Well, that's just not fair.”

“I know, he spent two weeks in the hospital and has a hell of a scar.”

Kiki's beady eyes narrowed with happy malice. “I don't mean it's not fair that he was shot. I mean it's not fair that they can shoot each other. We should get a turn too.”

The two women laughed and moved away, bellyaching ferociously, all their “concern” for Irena easily relegated to the back of their minds.

Ellen returned to work. Was Irena's life, she wondered, a journey over stormy seas that she had to successfully negotiate before eventually winning through? Or was she doomed to spend her life bailing seawater out of a leaky boat?

Now that Temerity had pointed out certain things on the horizon, Ellen was finding it hard to pretend she didn't see the woman drowning.

Ellen Homes wouldn't have put it this way, but Temerity's promptings had roused her, stirred her to lift her head so that maybe she could see just a little bit farther out into that uncertain ocean. And she found that she wasn't as eager to turn away as she had been.

Because she had a feeling that, far out, past the storms and waves, the sunlight on the water must be lovely.

J
.B. is no spunkier, so we're giving blood,” Temerity said instead of “hello” when Ellen woke up and dialed her number before even getting out of bed. Ellen looked at the receiver. It was unnerving the way she knew it was her, even if there was a supposedly logical explanation. But the girl went on without waiting for a response. “Or,
I
am anyway, and you're going with me. We'll tell the hospital it's for J.B. from an anonymous donor.”

This confused Ellen. How would Temerity know J.B.'s blood—what was that word? Kind? Sort? Her drowsy brain wouldn't let it through. It was funny how you could forget a simple word sometimes. She knew, of course, that not all blood was the same, she'd read about it in at least two books. One was a medical thriller, and the other was a book that claimed vampires were real, which she hadn't finished. Ellen thought that vampires were silly things to believe in, because she'd never seen one and she worked nights.

“Why? Does he need your blood . . . uh, kind?” Ellen asked.

“Don't know what kind he has, but mine's that flavor lots of people like.”

Cautiously, Ellen's lips twitched at a thought. She decided to go for it. “Vanilla?” she dared.

There was a barking laugh that made Ellen feel practically plucky. “More like tutti-frutti. Meet me there? My appointment is at four.”

Ellen looked at the alarm clock. Three. That meant she'd had about eight hours of sleep, not her usual twelve to fourteen, which typically used up most of her nonworking time. But she had something else to occupy her today. As well as possibly meeting Temerity, she could no longer put off going to the thrift store, because her left shoe was not of much use for anything other than throwing at spiders. Not that she would; she quite liked spiders, as long as they stayed in their corner. “Okay.”

“Great, see you outside.”

The thought of meeting up left Ellen humming a few notes of the music Temerity had played for her. She opened her refrigerator and stood looking in. After some consideration, she took out a loaf of bread, cheese, bologna, mayonnaise and a jar of pickles. She made a triple-decker sandwich, opting out of the mayonnaise, which, when she opened it and gazed in, made her stop humming. Her stomach vetoed the gunky white goo and she put it back, wishing she had brought home more of the apples. It had come as a complete revelation that she'd forgotten the taste of a good apple, outside of fried dough, and the compact orbs would be far easier to stash in a duffel bag than a ten-inch pie and nowhere near as sticky. She'd get some tonight.

Another layer of tape resurrected her mostly dead shoe enough to take her the three blocks to the thrift store. Ellen slipped in behind an unruly family. Their half-dozen or so young boys jerked and hopped and burst out like microwave popcorn around their parents, who, though not much older than midtwenties, looked worn-out and completely done. The activity was frenetic and dizzying to watch, so Ellen edged her way carefully around the frenzy and went to the
shoes, which were an equally confusing, but less mobile, mess on rickety racks. After several minutes of searching, she found first the left and then the right of a slightly worn pair of black Converse that fit well enough. Now she had two shoes, but only one lace between them. Situating herself on a pile of rolled-up carpets, Ellen pulled the lace out of her old shoe and began to thread it into the new one. She had almost completed the task when she heard a cough, a sickly one, deep and grumbling.

The producer of the unhealthy reflex, whose size and symptoms fit the general description of the man she'd seen walking away from his meeting with the Boss last night, was standing near a large cardboard box. He was rooting through a tangled heap of hats, scarves and other miscellaneous accessories, holding a black leather glove in one hand and trying to locate its mate.

Ellen studied his face. What she could see of his skin had the yellowed and rutted pallor of a lifelong smoker who spent a lot of time in harsh weather. Most of his face was hidden behind a severely trimmed black beard. A woman stood next to him, fidgeting and tapping one foot compulsively. She looked forty but was probably in her late twenties. She was meth-addict thin and wearing so much makeup that it gave her skin the same cracked, rough appearance as her leather jacket. She was antsy and jumpy, her eyes constantly cutting to the door. She reached impatiently into the box and pulled out a different pair.

“How about these?” she asked.

“No good,” he muttered.

“Come on, let's go, Georgi. What's wrong with these?”

With an obvious effort at patience, he said, “No fingers, Loretta. We'll go when I'm ready. Go look around.”

Without taking offense, Loretta threw the gloves back into the
box and pulled a pack of cigarettes from her jacket. She dug in it with shaking fingers until she extracted one of the bent white cylinders and stuck it in her mouth. “Maybe I should look for a wedding dress,” she mumbled.

The man, Georgi, smiled and shook his head. “You don't need a dress to get married at the courthouse.”

“I want one,” she whined.

“If you want, my sweet. Go outside and you can smoke.”

She began to wander toward the door, searching her pockets for a light. “Hurry up. I need a bump.”

When she was out of earshot, Georgi mumbled what sounded like a profanity in what Ellen assumed was Russian and continued rooting through the box.

Ellen took her shoes to the front and paid. The man behind the register, his back twisted into a cruel, unnatural angle, did not trouble his tortured spine to look up as he slid the change across the counter. Grateful, Ellen took the shoes and fled the store.

The wiry Loretta woman was standing just outside the door, smoking next to a sign that read
NO SMOKING WITHIN TWENTY FEET OF DOORWAY
. Every deep drag on the cigarette pursed her mouth into an ugly pucker. A woman entering with two young children gave her a reprimanding look and waved a hand in front of her face. “Do you really have to smoke right here?” she asked, gesturing to the children.

“Yeah, I do,” Loretta said and exhaled a cloud of tar and nicotine in the woman's direction. For a moment Ellen thought that the mother, whose nostrils actually flared, would launch into Loretta, but after an assessment of the brittle drug addict, the fire in the mother's eyes faded to quiet disgust and she hustled her kids through the door.

Ellen wondered what would have happened if the mother had asked Loretta if she was having a bad day, like the woman on the bus with the groceries. She knew that it would probably have unfolded differently, most likely ending in physical assault. Loretta was the kind of person who had long ago replaced any kind of decency with a switchblade. She'd seen Loretta's type before—“type,” that was the word, “blood type”—angry, miserable and violently self-destructive. The only way to deal with someone that mean and unstable was to walk away, or better yet, run, so that they didn't have time to hit you in the back of the head with a convenient brick.

This Loretta woman struck an old, ominous chord in Ellen, launching another unwelcome flashback. A clear picture smacked on Ellen's mental windshield of a chain-smoking drunk, her mother, arriving home with a shopping bag. Afraid to hope, Ellen watched eagerly as her mother reached in, handed her a small pack of peanut butter crackers, then took out a carton of cigarettes and a gallon bottle of vodka. Even after she greedily consumed the snack food, Ellen cried with hunger until her mother slapped her and sent her to her blanket on the floor.

Banishing the memory, Ellen turned her gaze through the plate-glass front of the thrift store to watch the young mother with her kids. The kids seemed well fed and happy. The woman leaned down and kissed the taller one on the head. Ellen thought,
I'll bet that's nice
. She would have been happy for her mother not to beat her.

Long years of experience made it easier to shake off the longing and the repulsion when the thankfully sparse recollections unleashed a sneak assault on her, though even the suggestion of hunger still panicked her. To distract herself, Ellen turned her focus back on Loretta, pulling out her notebook and writing the details of the
vulgar couple and their exchange. It did the trick. It wasn't long before the man Loretta had called Georgi came out.

Loretta took a last long, hard drag, then flicked her still-burning cigarette onto the sidewalk. She rubbed her hands together compulsively. “About time. Let's go.”

He pulled the new gloves from the front of his pants with a smug glance back at the store. Stolen. Ellen wrote that down. Without bothering to hurry, he said, “I'll drop you at the Clown, then I've got business.”

Loretta started to whine. “You promised me a fix.”

Ellen wrote, “The Clown.” It was a bar, not far away, that seemed to cater to the Russian populace around it, judging from the language of the altercations outside. She'd passed it many times. Its windowless front was a constant backdrop for drunken fights and its back parking lot for the occasional unsolved stabbing.

“You'll get it, baby, but business comes first,” Georgi said. Before she could respond, he started up the bike that Ellen had seen last night. The engine's earsplitting volume shattered the relative quiet of the storefront, and Ellen's hands flew up to cover her ears protectively. She could see Loretta's mouth moving, but the discordant roar blocked out all other sound and interrupted everyone and everything around it. As the pair rode off, taking the onslaught with them, and Ellen was capable of thought, her first was why anyone would choose such a noisy vehicle, but then it occurred to her that anyone who had a brain would most likely want to be able to use it, so maybe only stupid people wanted to ride those things. She wrote that down too.

In the deafness of the thumping reverb in her eardrums, Ellen switched her shoes, throwing the old pair into the trash can, and started out for the hospital.

The “new” shoes were a good find, only slightly worn with plenty
of squishiness left in the soles, and Ellen enjoyed the cushioning, the bouncy effect. The bottoms of her old ones had been compressed and worn until they were leaf thin, with all the spring of a sheet of aluminum foil. She found herself walking a bit faster and enjoying the separation between feet and concrete.

The spring in her step got her to the hospital in half the time. She positioned herself between two of the large planters at the very edge of the entrance plaza, waiting for Temerity, feeling winded but oddly energized. When she did arrive, the blind girl found her way to the same bench they'd occupied while they waited for Justice, and sat listening.

After a glance down at her shoes, Ellen crept slowly up behind Temerity, leaned down and was just about to whisper
Boo
, when Temerity jumped up and said, “Oh good, you're here. Let's go in.”

“What . . . how? I got new shoes.”

“I can tell. Nice, by the way. But you also have a distinctive smell. Everybody does. Yours is very homey, like”—she paused with a concentrated, dreamy look—“breakfast cooking, something like that.”

“Breakfast?” Ellen asked, her mouth starting to water. “Like bacon?”

Temerity smiled. “Yes, but combined with cinnamon rolls in the oven. One of my very favorite smells.”

“Mine too!” Ellen said.

Temerity reached out a hand and Ellen automatically turned so that she was facing the same direction and her friend could lay it on her shoulder. “Between you and me,” Temerity whispered, “it's always mystified me that some people get up and have just coffee. Really?”

“I know, right?” Ellen said. It had always befuddled her that anyone could skip breakfast, especially bacon.

Temerity got a pass to the blood donor suite. Once there, she sat with a volunteer who filled in her paperwork for her. Ellen took up a position in a chair by the door and stared listlessly at the TV in the waiting room. A soap opera was on and it grated on her nerves. Did people really say,
He's a shadow of his former self
? or
You will be mine. Oh yes, you will be mine
? She'd never heard a real person say either of those phrases, and she listened to a lot. The theater of real life was so much more intense and interesting, which was why it was her uncontested favorite diversion. Second to that, Ellen liked books—at least you could pick and picture your own show, and the paperbacks were only a quarter at the thrift store.

After a half hour or so, Temerity was led into a different room. She was back in about fifteen minutes, with a cotton ball taped on her arm and a box of juice in one hand. She found Ellen and sat down next to her. Ellen stared at the cotton where a small, dark red dot showed through the clear tape that covered it. The spot of blood made her feel queasy and she had to look away.

“I'm not supposed to go anywhere for a few minutes. They're afraid I'll black out and then they'll have to admit me. I tried to explain that I'd faint if I saw something
besides
nothing. Blackout is my norm. Alas, to no avail, so we have to wait.”