mad in pursuit
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SONIA Sonia Mendes doesn't let snow interfere with business. The studded tires on her ancient Oldsmobile can get her anywhere, even through this storm. Still, she curses herself for venturing out. Her only consolation for returning to the Shelter is that she might get to see Sam. She glances at the dashboard. 9:30 P.M. Gusting snow blots out the expressway and she focuses on the tail lights of the truck ahead. She can’t afford to spend the night in a ditch. People are depending on her. She picks up the cell phone and speed-dials the Shelter. “Hello?” “It’s me, honey.” Sonia recognizes the tiny voice of Laura, one of two women in the house. The night attendant hadn’t shown up again. “Driving’s tough so it’ll be a few minutes before I get there. Everything okay?” She cuts the conversation short as the car fishtails onto the exit ramp. Her pulse jumps but finally the heavy car gets traction on the right path and she inches along. “Why the hell am I doing this?” But she knows why. Not for the women. They could have survived the night alone. She’s doing it for $3000 in cash. The Step One Shelter for Women, with its spacious location on the fifth floor of the City Heights Complex, with its six large bedrooms and six modernized baths, cannot survive on United Charities support. Not even with Sonia’s charisma as a success story: a diseased whore and drug addict, picked off the streets, cured, educated, and now helping other needy women. The irony of it makes her laugh, even as she has to gun her way through the drifting piles of snow on Main St. They love her on the speaker’s circuit, but don’t have quite enough sympathy for women who wind up with abusive men to pay for more than a flop house. Sonia has to rely on her own wits to bridge the gap between a flop house and a genuine shelter with decent counseling services. Sonia knows the figures by heart: $1500 a day to meet expenses – $600,000 a year – no frills. United Charities gives her $400,000. She has a bunch of sweet people on her Board – people willing to organize fish fries and putt-putt contests and walk-a-thons – but they’re lucky to scrape up another twenty grand. But Sonia’s no quitter. She still has contacts from her days on the street. She can lay her hands on the best quality cocaine and the most fashionable of designer drugs. A couple dozen young professionals from nearby office buildings cover her deficit and don’t even ask for a tax deduction. “Which brings me to Brett Stern,” she says as she plows her way into the parking lane in front of City Heights. The dashboard clock reads 9:45. It was Brett Stern who called her an hour ago, who begged her to make this ridiculous trek for him, and who dangled the assurance of hard cash. “You spend twenty fucking years helping women get rid of the bastards in their lives, and look where you wind up.” She picks up the cell phone, dials Sam, listens to his terse growl on the answering machine, and hangs up. When she gets out of the car, the impatient act of slamming the door jettisons the keys into the snow. Her knees crack as she stoops to find them and a flash of anger prickles her face and neck. “Gotta tell Brett this is over. Getting too complicated. Fucking me up.” The wind hisses past her ears and sucks the words from her mouth so that she barely hears herself. Money aside, Brett is becoming a liability, his addiction escalating out of control. Keys found, snow sifting into the top of her boots, Sonia marches in big steps through the knee-deep fluff, lets herself in, and races up the five flights of stairs to Step One, in no mood to put up with the sluggish elevator. When Sonia enters, the darkness and the anger dissipate in the cozy glow of the Shelter. It is secure and peaceful, just the way she wanted it. Fay-Beth is at the dining room table puzzling over the Sunday funnies. Laura is sitting at the upright piano, staring at the sheet music, reaching around her pregnant belly, softly sounding out a beginner's version of Moonlight Sonata. Perfect. Even if it’s only temporary. Sonia is willing to bet that within days or weeks, both will return to the men who got them here. Few of her clients find the courage to do otherwise – at least not the first time or two through the shelter. Laura stops playing, eases up from the bench and glides toward Sonia to complain about her swollen feet and ankles. Sonia smiles and falls effortlessly into the role of caring social worker. "Lie on the couch, sweetheart, and I'll get you a couple of pillows and the baby book you've been reading. The next couple of weeks will be uncomfortable, so you just gotta hang in there." Sonia brushes aside Laura's straight blond hair to expose the yellowed bruise on her left cheek. She asks Laura the same question every day: "You will stay here till the baby is born, won't you?" As usual, Laura looks at the floor and doesn't answer. Sonia turns her attention to Fay-Beth – a different type altogether. She is a dull woman, too fat for the pink housecoat she wears day and night. For the umpteenth time, Sonia prods her. "Fay-Beth, you need to show that you care more about yourself. It's an important step in getting your life on the right track." The words flow automatically. "But, Sonia," Fay-Beth whines her usual reply, "why can't I just be comfortable up here? Nobody sees. Nobody cares." I care, Sonia thinks, but lets the subject drop. It is nearly eleven before Sonia retires to the office in her private quarters, adjacent to the Shelter's big living room. The shelter needs a night attendant to take emergency admissions and keep the place secure but it is a rare night attendant who can cope for long with the isolation of the empty building and the unpredictable, late-night distress of the residents, so Sonia maintains a tiny apartment for herself to ease the burden of all-too-frequent twenty-four hour shifts. The windows rattle in their frames as the wind whips up outside. Through the open door, she can see Fay-Beth sitting on the couch with Laura's head in her lap as they watch sit-com reruns on TV. Sonia dials Sam's number and gets his machine again. Irritated, she hangs up before his brief message ends. Where the hell can he be on a night like this? Suddenly, her nerves are stretched beyond endurance. With one eye on the pair in the living room, she unlocks the file cabinet and fumbles around till she finds what she craves: an envelope of 75-milligram Quaalude tablets. She takes out two. A tiny amount, really. She hasn't been using very long – just a month or so – and she is controlling it well, careful not to let her tolerance get too high. She walks back through her small bedroom to the bathroom. Runs water into a glass. Swallows. She returns to her desk, resigned to do paperwork till her one o'clock appointment with Brett. But her thoughts drift toward Sam. Sonia doesn't have Sam figured out yet. He moved into the penthouse at City Heights in June. She was instantly intrigued because the developer replaced the twelfth floor elevator button with a lock. He kept to himself at first, staring resolutely at some distant place to avoid interaction. Gradually, the eyes softened and dared to look her way. She grinned at him and once in a while a hint of a smile would lighten his face. Finally, she wheedled an invitation for a cup of coffee. The apartment was an astonishing airy space, the tall bare windows filled with sky. The furniture was spare and mostly used to show off a big collection of stone statuary, some of which, she swore, looked as if they’d been buried a thousand years and still had the dirt in their crevices to prove it. He gave her a lecture, sounding like a guy from Public Broadcasting. She remembered the Mayans from school, but that was about it. She was less interested in his statues than in the way he touched them, his fingers playing over every little detail, lingering along the edges of books and over the angles of sculpture as he vainly tried to educate her. She found herself flirting and suddenly she was having sex for the first time in years. It was delirious. * Despite trying to shuffle through the paperwork, she succumbs to the tingling relaxation of the ludes and can’t get her mind off sex with Sam: his fingers on the back of her neck, his lips finding hers, his closeness taking her breath away. They saw each other every day for a week: coffee and sex amid his treasures. But then he pulled back, got “busy” and now – let’s face it, he was not out in this weather – he was screening his calls. “The trouble is you come on too strong," she mutters to herself. “He's protecting himself, working something out. Gotta give him a little space, a little time." She picks up a granite paper weight and presses her thumb into the engraved United Way logo. It’s nearly one, time to meet Brett. Laura and Fay-Beth have drifted off toward their bedrooms. Sonia feels flushed and aroused, slightly dizzy. She should leave Sam alone, but she can't resist calling one more time. Again she gets the terse recording and leaves one last plea for attention. Sonia wants relationship with Sam. Nothing as scary as marriage, but something steady, some kind of intimacy she can rely on. But, as she walks through the Shelter to make sure the stove is off and everything is secure, she has to laugh. If Sam has any attraction at all to her, it is for the tough little crusader, the tireless social worker. Sonia the success story. But Sonia is realist enough to know her so-called success is a temporary gift. As a practical woman, she knows the world is made up of winners and losers. She is a loser on a lucky streak is all. And she's been happy to share the fruit of her good fortune with her sister losers. But, deep inside, even at thirty-six years of age with twelve years off the streets, she never feels very far from the fragile fifteen-year-old who found sex and drugs so thrilling. Sam, solitary, independent, sensuous, and just beyond her reach, makes Sonia realize how tired she is of the earth mother role. Her community leadership is a millstone – a permanent, public commitment. Day in and day out, she deals with injured, frantic, powerless women and their unruly, uprooted children – and more often than she wants to, their raging men. The majority take advantage of a few days respite and return home, refusing all but the most concrete assistance: a trip to the Community Clothes Closet, a referral to a day care center. And the only way she can even do this much is by selling coke and pills to the Brett Sterns of the world, by leading a double life, by descending at 1 A.M. from her secure little haven of righteousness back to the underworld everyone thinks she left behind. "Who are you trying to kid, Sonia?" she mumbles as she returns
to her office. "Once a whore, always a whore. Once an addict always an
addict. You'll never wind up with Sam, that's for sure. You're going to be
chained to this pack of losers for the rest of your unlucky life." 05/31/2004 |