31
ANSON
The corner of Martin and Belmont was nothing special—just another intersection to anyone passing by.
A pharmacy. A liquor store. A small homeless embankment with several tents and sleeping bags beneath the awning of a long-shuttered dry cleaner’s drive-through.
For those driving by, it wasn’t something looked at; it was something eyes subconsciously averted, trying not to see.
Twill stood still for a moment, taking it all in, then she produced a piece of red chalk from the back pocket of her shorts and drew a symbol on the brick wall beneath the awning.
?
A circle with a diagonal line across the center.
“What is that?”
“A warning.” Twill slipped the chalk back in her pocket. “It lets others know that one of our own was taken and killed from here. If anyone sees or hears anything, they’ll know to take it back to the Quick and let the rest of us know.”
I took a step closer and pointed at the tents and sleeping bags. “Andy didn’t live at the Quick?”
“He did sometimes, when he wasn’t using. Those other times, he’d stay out here. He knew better than to let Stash see him like that. Stash is like a bloodhound for drugs—he can smell it on someone days later. There’s no hiding it from him, so most people just stay away. They all know better.”
The fact that she said “they” instead of “we” was telling.
After seeing her rage back at the hospital, I assumed Twill did drugs.
I never had and I never would, but I was quickly learning it was common for those caught up in the system or living on the streets.
Some of these people saw it as a coping mechanism no different than eating or sleeping.
Twill was telling me she wasn’t one of those people.
“I thought Andy would keep it clean. He was when I first met him. He slipped a few weeks ago and never climbed back out.” She pointed at an orange tent about midway back. “That one’s his.”
Twill stepped over an occupied sleeping bag and motioned for me to do the same, holding her index finger over her mouth so I’d do it quietly. At the tent, she pulled back the flap and slipped inside. I followed after her.
A Coleman lantern was propped up on a milk crate.
Twill switched it on, casting a yellow glow over the tent’s interior.
There wasn’t much to see—another sleeping bag bunched up in the corner.
A backpack stuffed with clothes. A thick paperback copy of Stephen King’s The Stand.
Twill picked up the book and thumbed the tattered pages.
“He said he’s read this like twenty times.
He gets to the end and just starts over.
He once told me that people are on a never-ending journey.
We think we have a destination in mind, some sort of endgame, but there really isn’t.
You get there, and something else comes up.
Then something else. He said he never realized that until he read this book.
He said happiness isn’t a destination—it’s the journey.
” She went quiet for a moment, then put the book aside and dumped out the contents of the backpack. Nothing but dirty clothes.
“What exactly are we looking for?”
“We’ll know it when we find it.” He had a few pairs of jeans. She systematically rooted through the pockets, making no apologies for taking the few crumpled bills she found.
I searched the sleeping bag and found nothing. Aside from a pencil next to the lantern, a rusty letter opener, and a couple of losing scratch-off lottery tickets, there was nothing else inside the tent.
I sat back on my heels. “He wasn’t taken from this tent, right? This is just where he was living? I’m not sure what you expect to find in here.”
Twill was shoving Andy’s clothes back into his bag. “I was hoping to find some chips.”
“Chips?”
Twill stopped and gave me this look, then she reached into the pocket of her shorts and took out several small pieces of paper containing names and phone numbers held together with a paperclip. “That’s what we call these.”
“Your clients.”
“Yeah.” She shoved the note back in her pocket.
“If you want . . . clients . . . you basically have three choices around here. You can go through Lou back at the Quick—they’ll put your picture out there, and they weed out the crazies, most of the time.
They take a percentage for all that, but it’s worth it, if you ask me.
Option Two: You work with a pimp on the streets who offers some of those services, but not quite as organized.
Option Three: You go alone. If we find his chips, we’ll know who saw him last.”
She spoke of this as if it were a regular job.
Like she sold burgers or freelanced as a hairstylist. I tried not to think about what she was really doing.
I couldn’t fault her for it—she was only trying to survive, but I didn’t want to think of her doing .
. . that. Not with people she cared nothing about. Not for money.
“So, what did Andy do to get clients?”
“When he was clean, he ran everything through the Quick.” She bit her lower lip. “When he was using, he sometimes went off on his own to try and bring in more money. He’d work the corner.”
I glanced back out the tent flap. “That corner?”
Twill nodded.