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  "Hey," he replied. And then she had just disappeared. Afterwards, at parties or at clubs they were casual friends and they often danced together or talked over beers. It was evident that Eric was crushing on her. Karen’s friends would ask her why she didn't go out with him, he was such a fox! Karen would shrug. For right now, she simply enjoyed knowing that he wanted her.

  ***

  No sooner had Eric stepped out of his Jeep Cherokee did Bryan swoop on him, like he had dropped from the sky like some unwanted bird turd zeroing in on its target. Although Bryan was Eric's best buddy--had been since elementary school, his presence at this moment was very much unwanted. Eric knew that the first question out of Bryan's mouth was going to be if he had fucked Karen or not.

  "So, was it good?"

  "Was it good?" Eric replied feigning ignorance, still walking.

  "Hey, I seen you and Karen leaving together. Man, she is so fucking hot!"

  "I ain't saying nothing."

  Bryan suddenly stopped walking. Eric looked at him and reluctantly he stopped also.

  "Is she the one?" Bryan's expression was thoughtful, even considerate. He knew that Eric was not inhibited when it came to talking sex. As a matter of fact he could put such a descriptive flow into his words that it was almost like watching the act on TV. Neither of them hurt for girls, but Bryan had come to enjoy listening to Eric's colorful narratives. However, there was one exception: Eric clammed up big time if he really cared for the girl.

  "She's the one, ain't she?"

  Eric thought real hard before answering. "I like her...but I don't know if she likes me." Sure, they'd spent almost the entire night screwing, but there had been something...distant, bored even, in her actions. It was like she was doing it alone. Eric realized something for the first time; People could be intimate without having sex and people could have sex and not be intimate.

  Sophie picked up her mug of tea with a satisfied smile and took a careful sip; it was lukewarm again. But it was okay because she’d just begun her first chapter of her new novel! She would knock off this chapter and after getting a better feel for the characters, create an outline and then write up a synopsis. Then she would be able to make her deadline easily. She stood, went to the toilet to pee and then carried the half finished mug back into the kitchen to warm it once more. She glanced out the window, remembering the kid that had been sitting on the stump. Christ Almighty, they were still there. That had to have been at least an hour ago since she’d last looked.

  The curb was not a safe place to sit. Why hadn’t that kid gone deeper into the alley where there were at least dark places that could better conceal them? Where the kid was sitting was illuminated by the beam of one lone streetlight that had been placed in the small strip mall’s parking lot. The purpose was probably as much to deter criminals as it was to offer illumination for night-time customers.

  Maybe the kid didn’t want to be hidden.

  Sophie frowned seconds before her eyes glazed over.

  “If it wasn’t for you, Sophie, I would have probably died a long time ago.” Her mother had said to her. “You saved my life. I didn’t care about myself. I was reckless and stupid. I was going to join some black militant group just in the hopes of doing something dangerous and stupid enough to kill me.” Mama’s voice always said such things in a calm, matter-of-fact manner as if this confession would not send Sophie’s young mind spinning in turmoil. Mama’s eyes softened as she continued speaking. “But then I had you and I knew that I had to live so that nothing could ever hurt you…” And those words had so devastated her seven year old brain that forever after she would be marked. She didn’t think that her mother had purposely done this; certainly her mother was smart but not sneaky/child psychology smart; for her mother’s words ensured that Sophie would forever be a girl worthy of her mother’s life. Sophie was a good girl, never any trouble to her mother or anyone else.

  When her eyes cleared, Sophie slipped on her clogs because she wouldn’t have to bother to bend down and lace them. She was wearing pajama bottoms and a long sleeved t-shirt that she liked to sleep in. It didn’t matter if she went outside in them; people these days wore such things to the mall. Sophie grabbed her jacket and unlocked the back door. She looked around even though she had an outside light that illuminated the small back yard. There was nothing lurking in the shadows, so she quickly crossed the yard, slowing only when she reached the cement barrier that marked ‘her’ side of the street.

  It was a little boy; maybe not little, but a boy. He was sleeping with his head resting on his knees. A huge green duffel bag rested beneath his body. Ah so that’s how he could sit on the wall; he was actually sitting on the duffel bag that was propped against the wall. Damn he was pale and thin. She watched him quietly before crossing the broken cement wall to the narrow alley with its buckled paving, and the boy still didn’t move. She slowly sat down next to him. The cement hurt her butt since she didn’t have the luxury of sitting on a nice cushy duffel bag. It shouldn’t have, though, not with the amount of padding that she had back there. Plus her knees creaked and she wondered how easily she would be able to stand again, she was practically squatting as it is. She was too old to sit on something this close to the ground she thought with a sigh.

  Sophie sat quietly, taking in the expanse of her and her neighbor’s yards. She needed to straighten the water hose; it had come undone and was lying in a pile beneath the ring that she had attached to the back of the house just for the purpose of keeping it neat. She couldn’t wait to see her flowers bloom, it still felt like winter so there would be a few more weeks of rain before that would happen. It’s why she hated spring; it was only pretending to be summer.

  Sophie was surprised that the boy didn’t wake up in the five minutes that she had been sitting next to him wool gathering. She would have wondered if he was even alive if not for the low even breathing that issued from his otherwise motionless form. His face was turned away from hers so that she couldn’t really see him clearly, only a mass of longish black hair and a bunch of narrow limbs concealed beneath layers of baggy clothes. His hands clasped his legs tightly and she wondered how one slept when not in a state of total relaxation.

  Why am I out back at freaking 4 am, sitting next to a homeless boy? Because no child should ever be left to hurt.

  “Sophie Ann Baxter, get the belt because I’m going to whup your tail!” With shaking hands, Sophie went into her Mother’s closet and located the hard, thick belt. Once she’d made the mistake of getting the thin narrow one but it had hurt worse. She didn’t get many whippings but when she did, her mother laid into her good. She knew this one was coming because she hadn’t been doing her homework. Math was just too hard and she didn’t know how to finish—and her mother couldn’t help because she had no idea about formulas and such.

  Sophie didn’t know to try to explain this to someone, she had just left her homework undone, and now Mama was laying that belt on her good. Sophie’s eyes would squeeze close with each painful lash against her backside. Because Mama swung wildly, the belt would land just about anywhere; on her back, her legs, once she’d had a welt on her neck!

  With each strike of the belt, Sophie would grip the bed sheet, she writhed around but she didn’t make one sound. She bit back her cries. Oh, there would be tears but she wouldn’t give her mother the satisfaction of seeing them. She would cry later when she rubbed the welts. She never let anyone see her cry. Ever.

  The belt suddenly stopped. Mama always delivered each lash with a statement or questions that you weren’t really supposed to answer such as, “Are you out…of…your…mind?”

  You never wanted her to get long winded and you didn’t want to answer because then the response would just be punctuated with further strikes of the belt.

  But her mother said no more and the belt just stopped moving. That was short. Sophie looked over her shoulder and her mother was just watching her calmly.

  “Get up Sophie Ann.” Okay, so she was still ma
d or she wouldn’t have thrown the Ann in there. Sophie got up and pulled up her jeans.

  “I’m not trying to break you.” Mama said as if that statement had any meaning.

  “What?”

  “Break.” Mama moved to leave the room but turned to look at Sophie who was gingerly sitting on the edge of her bed. “My daddy tried to break us. He whipped us and beat the boys. And Sophie, I never told you this, but I was the only one who never cried.” Sophie absorbed her words. “I had to learn to be strong in order to survive this life. I’m not going to be the one to break you. I want you to continue being strong, little girl.” Then Mama had left the room. Sophie was twelve and that was the last whipping she’d ever gotten.

  Sophie knew about her mother’s abuse at the hands of her grandfather. She had known since the age of nine. “Why didn’t you tell somebody, Mom?” The teachers said to tell somebody big. They had used the words ‘stranger danger’ and Sophie had liked the sound of it at the same time that she hoped she would never have to use it. Still, danger didn’t have to come from a stranger…

  Her mother had given her a hard look. “Nobody would have cared about someone like me.”

  “Hey…” She said softly. It was barely a whisper but the boy leaped to his feet in the way that only the youth could do. He spun in her direction ready to bolt; his eyes had that deer-in-the-headlight look. He was tall, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to be sitting while he was standing over her, not that she wouldn’t be able to lift the frail boy and toss him if she was forced to; he was just that small . His eyes scanned her form and he seemed to decide that he was in no imminent jeopardy of being harmed because he relaxed his defensive posture.

  Now that she could see his face it was evident that someone had beaten him pretty badly. His lip was split, his eye was swollen and nearly completely closed and his mouth looked like it was packed with cotton. She squinted and slowly held out her hand to him.

  “Can you help me up?”

  He looked at her hand for a moment and then slowly offered her his. His palm was smooth but his grip was strong and then he braced himself and helped her to stand. She thought she might pull him over as she struggled to her feet, but he was stronger than he looked.

  Once standing she noted that he was taller than her, maybe six feet but his baby face made him seem very much smaller, especially when his eyes lowered at her scrutiny. He had to have realized that she was examining his bruises.

  “I’m Sophie.” His eyes flitted to hers before staring at his feet again. She thought he did it more to conceal his face then out of shyness. He nodded once and mumbled a soft sound that could have been hi. He seemed to be politely waiting for her to tell him to leave so that he could make his getaway.

  “Do you want some water?”

  He looked at her, his brow gathered in confusion as his eyes searched her face. Sophie gestured to her house.

  Lucas was not sure what to make of her. He had just stopped to rest for a minute and then she was there. Now that the initial shock of her appearance had disappeared he realized that his body was just one throbbing nerve ending. Even his hair hurt. And his mouth was bone dry. He had money; a little, and he could buy something to drink, but it was too late in the night for anything to be open. And Lucas had learned long ago, to not look a gift horse in the mouth.

  He nodded.

  The woman headed across the alleyway and Lucas scooped up his duffel bag and gingerly but quickly followed, even though each move felt like he was being pounded with blunt instruments. Sophie stepped over the low cement partition and stumbled over some large pieces of broken concrete that had been concealed in the weeds.

  Lucas reached out and steadied her and the woman gave him a surprised but thankful look. She was tall for a lady, and looked to be in her forties, and she was plump…not plump because plump meant rounded. She was just big, proportionate looking even though she wore baggy pj bottoms and a super long shirt partially concealed by a jeans jacket. And she had clogs on her feet, the ones with the chunky heel, which is the reason that she had lost her balance on the crumbled concrete. She had a pleasant face, not really pretty, but nice. Her hair was unkempt as if she had just gotten out of bed. It was pulled back into a ponytail, the ends long enough to reach between her shoulder blades.

  She moved up the backstairs of a small, but neat, one story house. It seemed all brick and concrete and had a nicely maintained yard. Lucas became a bit leery. He didn’t much go into people’s homes unless they wanted something from him, and what they wanted was never good. His eyes became guarded as he prepared himself for what was surely to come. Would he fuck her if she asked? His body hurt really bad but if she gave him some food then yeah, he probably would. If she had a guy in there though, he would run.

  She went inside and held the door opened for him. He hesitated, trying to peer into the darkened room. She gave him a soft smile.

  “It’s okay.”

  He entered the room and looked around, his eyes becoming adjusted quickly as there was light coming from the next room so that they were not in total darkness. Sophie moved to the fridge and examined its contents before retrieving a bottled water. He accepted it tentatively but once it was in his possession it was his and he quickly untwisted the top and upended the contents into his mouth. He drank swiftly, too swiftly because his head began to pound with brain freeze. He lowered the bottle. He had just drank half of its contents in seconds. He belched and whispered his apology. He suddenly adjusted his weight from one foot to the next. He had to pee. He wouldn’t ask because it was one thing to be given a bottled water that was completely disposable and wouldn’t have to be scrubbed clean because he had come in contact with something that she would need to use again. It was a totally different thing to use her toilet.

  “Do you want something to eat?” She asked in the same way that she had asked if he wanted some water. There was no pity, no cajoling, it was just a simple question.

  His stomach growled at the mention of food. “Yes.” Why lie? Gift horse and all…

  She turned back to the fridge and Lucas drew in a deep breath.

  “Um…may I…” She looked up at him with dark eyes that seemed too dark to be brown. Do people have black eyes? Luke didn’t know but since his went from blue to violet he figured that anything was possible.

  “The bathroom?” The woman prompted.

  He nodded nervously, but he really had to pee and didn’t know if he could hold it until after she gave him food.

  “I’ll show you where it is.” She led him through a large dining room. It was a shotgun house which meant that he could see clear through to the front of the house even from the back kitchen. It was nice, small but spacious. She didn’t have a bunch of old lady stuff cluttering the rooms, maybe a few too many plants but her furniture was nice and simple from what he could see. She had some art pieces on her walls and they showed abstract images of mainly black people. She didn’t seem rich, but she didn’t seem poor either.

  She led him from the dining room to the left and they were in a short hallway. On either side of the hallway were rooms, one was a darkened bedroom. Lucas could make out the shadowy images of furniture and a portion of an unmade bed. He turned quickly away, not wanting the woman to think that he was a maniac. He glanced in the direction of the other room. It was lit and appeared to be an office. Low, jazzy-like music issued from it. But straight ahead was the room he was concerned with; the bathroom. The lady turned to him and he saw her brow shoot up in surprise. He guessed he looked pretty bad and that she hadn’t been able to tell from the darkness outside.

  “Take your time. If you want to wash up there are clean towels and wash cloths in the closet behind the door.” Her brown face hid a grimace. “There are…bandages in the medicine chest.” Her eyes swept his dirty clothes before she turned back to the kitchen.

  Lucas felt his face redden and knew that she’d seen his embarrassment. Well at least she didn’t kick him out. “Thank you,” he rememb
ered to call out. He saw the woman hesitate but she didn’t turn and continued on to the kitchen. Lucas sighed and shut the door after him.

  This was an old house, the fixtures where ceramic and not metal, and they looked like claws. There was even a claw foot tub. But it was nice; so very clean. When was the last time that he’d been in a toilet that didn’t smell of shit and piss? He smelled the faint aroma of soap and pine cleaner.