what’s happened: Madeleine Carter leaving the shelter in hysterics, everyone in the room in an uproar, all because of you.
“We have rules here, as I told you when you came in. One is against drunkenness, two is against creating a disturbance. You’veviolated both of those. If you want to stay tonight you will sit quietly in the refectory until we can give you a bed. But if you ever return here in a drunken condition you will not be admitted. Do I make myself clear?”
“As a broken windowpane, my good woman.” Luisa’s disdain was hampered by her slurred consonants and her unsteady legs, but she followed the director down the hall to the refectory.
Hector decided he, too, had heard all he could take of Brother Rafe’s preaching. He made his way past the homeless women drifting into the shelter, some with shopping carts, most with all their belongings slung over their backs in plastic bags.
He sat in his car for a long time. A man came to the gate at one point and became furious at being denied admission. He stormed around and swore, threw a bottle at the fence, stomped down the street, then came back and tried to muscle his way through the gate in company with some of the entering women. One of the volunteers came out. Hector thought her very brave, to confront the man in person, but whatever she said was effective: he left the gate and took up observation across the street.
After Hector had been sitting for half an hour, Luisa lurched out. She was singing, in a very loud voice, “Sempre libera,” Violetta’s first-act aria from
La Traviata.
10
Down for the Count
H ARRIET FIRST LEARNED about the woman at the wall the day Mrs. Ephers had her heart attack. That’s why she didn’t bring her usual energy to the problem. The senior partners at Scandon and Atter couldn’t believe it when the president of the Hotel Pleiades complained to them: Harriet had always given both clients and firm what they wanted in the past; no one could believe she wasn’t doing it now.
“I E-mailed Harriet as soon as I heard about the situation,” the hotel president told his superiors in the Olympus Hotel Group during one of those endless meetings corporations convene to avoid action and assign blame. ”Apparently the garage people had a complaint earlier, got operations involved. They had the cops remove the woman once, but when she reappeared, Brian Cassidy at the garage thought corporate had decided she could stay as long as she kept a low profile. But that night …”
That night Luisa got thrown out of Hagar’s House for breaking up the Bible study class. She leaned against the gate, muttering to herself, but when a man walked by, said, what’s a fox like you doing out here alone? looks like you could use some company, sheflagged a cab. In the dark the driver could see her imperious hand and the outlines of her expensive suit, not the torn and dirty details.
When the cab dropped her at Michigan and Wacker the driver was furious to discover she had no money. Leaving his car where he stopped—blocking two lanes of traffic—he jumped out to chase her. A horrible screech of metal on metal made him turn around: a bus had ripped off his open door.
A policeman strolled over from the far corner, demanding to know what the hell the driver meant, leaving his cab in the middle of the road. By the time he explained he’d been stiffed, Luisa had disappeared underground.
Those two homeless women had been very kind in their way. The diva clutched the railing to keep from tripping on the stairs. Philistines, not recognizing Violetta’s great aria when Luisa started to sing it in the refectory, but sympathetic with her plight when that bitch who gave herself airs because she had a title objected to Luisa’s impromptu concert. How pathetic people were in their neediness. Why should Luisa bow and scrape to a director of a homeless shelter, when her own name had been on dressing rooms in Milan and London? But when that idiot, that
“We have rules here, as I told you when you came in. One is against drunkenness, two is against creating a disturbance. You’veviolated both of those. If you want to stay tonight you will sit quietly in the refectory until we can give you a bed. But if you ever return here in a drunken condition you will not be admitted. Do I make myself clear?”
“As a broken windowpane, my good woman.” Luisa’s disdain was hampered by her slurred consonants and her unsteady legs, but she followed the director down the hall to the refectory.
Hector decided he, too, had heard all he could take of Brother Rafe’s preaching. He made his way past the homeless women drifting into the shelter, some with shopping carts, most with all their belongings slung over their backs in plastic bags.
He sat in his car for a long time. A man came to the gate at one point and became furious at being denied admission. He stormed around and swore, threw a bottle at the fence, stomped down the street, then came back and tried to muscle his way through the gate in company with some of the entering women. One of the volunteers came out. Hector thought her very brave, to confront the man in person, but whatever she said was effective: he left the gate and took up observation across the street.
After Hector had been sitting for half an hour, Luisa lurched out. She was singing, in a very loud voice, “Sempre libera,” Violetta’s first-act aria from
La Traviata.
10
Down for the Count
H ARRIET FIRST LEARNED about the woman at the wall the day Mrs. Ephers had her heart attack. That’s why she didn’t bring her usual energy to the problem. The senior partners at Scandon and Atter couldn’t believe it when the president of the Hotel Pleiades complained to them: Harriet had always given both clients and firm what they wanted in the past; no one could believe she wasn’t doing it now.
“I E-mailed Harriet as soon as I heard about the situation,” the hotel president told his superiors in the Olympus Hotel Group during one of those endless meetings corporations convene to avoid action and assign blame. ”Apparently the garage people had a complaint earlier, got operations involved. They had the cops remove the woman once, but when she reappeared, Brian Cassidy at the garage thought corporate had decided she could stay as long as she kept a low profile. But that night …”
That night Luisa got thrown out of Hagar’s House for breaking up the Bible study class. She leaned against the gate, muttering to herself, but when a man walked by, said, what’s a fox like you doing out here alone? looks like you could use some company, sheflagged a cab. In the dark the driver could see her imperious hand and the outlines of her expensive suit, not the torn and dirty details.
When the cab dropped her at Michigan and Wacker the driver was furious to discover she had no money. Leaving his car where he stopped—blocking two lanes of traffic—he jumped out to chase her. A horrible screech of metal on metal made him turn around: a bus had ripped off his open door.
A policeman strolled over from the far corner, demanding to know what the hell the driver meant, leaving his cab in the middle of the road. By the time he explained he’d been stiffed, Luisa had disappeared underground.
Those two homeless women had been very kind in their way. The diva clutched the railing to keep from tripping on the stairs. Philistines, not recognizing Violetta’s great aria when Luisa started to sing it in the refectory, but sympathetic with her plight when that bitch who gave herself airs because she had a title objected to Luisa’s impromptu concert. How pathetic people were in their neediness. Why should Luisa bow and scrape to a director of a homeless shelter, when her own name had been on dressing rooms in Milan and London? But when that idiot, that
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