Street Smart

Just as he knew the woman was slowly sucking the life out of him.

He needed his son, a boy to teach all the things he loved, to play ball with, explore with, watch horror movies with. A boy to bring vibrancy and enthusiasm and messy science experiments into his home.

A son to carry on the Everson name.

A child to give hope and purpose to his future.

A reason to live.

On Thursday evening, just before dusk, Francesca was sitting on her corner, dressed like a teenage homeless person, holding a battered McDonald’s cup out to passersby with a hand that was gloved—even in the July heat—although her glove was fingerless. She’d been observing others for five days and, if nothing else, had a pretty clear idea how to portray any number of characters. For some reason, a lot of the homeless folks covered their hands in some fashion.

Perhaps for trash-digging?

It was a story she’d have wanted to do were she living in another lifetime. With another heart.

She wasn’t showing around the picture as much, though it was always close at hand, securely tucked into the waistband of her torn-and-dirty pair of too-tight jeans. A lot of the same people were coming by. And were starting to notice her.

So she was now permanently homeless—at least in the role she played. It was the only reason she could think of that would allow her to hang out continuously at the same corner. Homeless people seemed to pick a place and stake it out as their own personal property. Probably some kind of homing instinct.

A cop stopped at the corner. She and her mother were in contact with the Las Vegas police and she knew her presence could be explained in a sixty-second phone call if necessary. Still, she’d noticed that a lot of homeless people tended to avoid the eye of anyone in authority. Francesca studied the once-white tennis shoes on her feet.

Did they avoid those glances out of shame? Or fear of punishment? She shrugged the thought away. Everyone had problems. Heartaches. Hard lives. Some were just more obvious than others.

The job she’d done on those shoes wasn’t half bad. She’d had to rub them against the cement in the parking lot outside the Lucky Seven for more than an hour to get that ragged hole in the toe. She’d thrown away the laces and then she’d tossed the shoes around in a big bag with dinner leftovers, shaken them off and left them outside to dry.

For all that, they were the most comfortable pair of shoes she’d had on all week.

The door of the phone booth creaked. Forcing herself to stay in character, to appear disinterested, Francesca slowly turned her gaze toward it. She felt as if she now knew that small booth more intimately than she knew her own body. After five days, she really didn’t expect much. She just didn’t have anything else to do. Anywhere else to go, to look.

She had nowhere to be. Not that week. Not for the rest of her life. Until she ran out of money and needed to eat. But with the savings she’d amassed, that wouldn’t be for a long time. And it wasn’t something she particularly cared about one way or the other, anyway.

A woman stood in the booth, her back to Francesca, dialing quickly.

Francesca had no idea how she was going to earn money when she needed it again. She had no desire to pick up a camera. No inner voice guiding her to the perfect picture. Though she had a few of her cameras in her bag at the Lucky Seven, she hadn’t touched them since that first day in town.

She watched the short brunette, of indeterminate age, as she talked. And then the woman turned.

She couldn’t be more than twenty. If that.

And she was pregnant.

That made the seventh pregnant woman this week. Seven times she’d lost her breath as the sight slammed into her. With practice it was supposed to get easier.

It didn’t.

And this one was so young, barely a child herself. How could she possibly cope? Birth was hard.

And mothering so much harder. What would she do if she went to her baby’s crib one afternoon, reached for him, expecting to pull that tiny warm body into her arms and found it limp and—

No. Forget it. Just forget.

Professional detachment was slow in descending, but as it came Francesca was reminded of the pregnant girl she’d seen in that same phone booth a couple of days before. The girl who’d inadvertently turned up in Francesca’s dream last night.

In the old days that had meant a story for sure.

Today, Francesca was only irritated by the distraction from what mattered. There was no anticipation, no “aha” moment, no real vision of what would be. Just a nagging idea that if she’d had anything left in her, she could have done something. Taken photographs. Told a story…

Still, as the girl finished her conversation, Francesca approached her, holding Autumn’s picture. Her gaze remained at eye level.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I’m looking for my friend. She told me to look her up when I got to town but she moved. The last address I had for her was in those apartments.” She nodded toward the rent-by-the-month place next door. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen her, would you?”

It was one of the lies she’d perfected over the week.

The brunette glanced at the picture. And away.

Another dead end. Francesca wasn’t surprised. She knew she’d have to turn over a lot of nonessential pieces before she found the right one.

And then she realized the girl hadn’t said no. She was looking at the picture again.

“Do you know her?”

Shaking her head, the girl studied Francesca—obviously taking in her tattered clothes, dirty hair, lack of makeup. Even the shoes she’d so carefully aged.

“You hungry?” she asked instead.

No. Not for a long time. “A little.”

“I’ll bet it’s been a while since you had a good meal.”

She shrugged, leaving her shoulders hunched defensively as she’d seen a twenty-something homeless guy do the other day on her way home. He seemed to pretty much hang out in an alleyway between the Lucky Seven and a tattoo parlor.

The girl dropped a buck in the tattered McDonald’s cup. “There’s a discount food mart the next block over. You can get a lot there.”

“Thanks.”

Apparently the gaunt cheeks she’d seen in the bathroom mirror at the Lucky Seven that morning added credibility to the part she was playing. Good to know her lack of desire for any kind of food had paid off somewhere.

“Where you staying?” the young woman asked.

“Around.”

The girl looked at the photo again. She was withholding information. Francesca’s deadened instincts surged for the briefest of seconds.

“You sure you haven’t seen her?” she asked, scuffing her feet. “I could really use a turn of luck.”

“Maybe I have,” the girl said. “I’m not sure.”

Maybe. Those dormant instincts became a little more sharply honed. “Do you have any idea where that might’ve been? Or when?”