Chasing the Dime

5

The stairway was dark and the boy was scared. He looked back to the street and saw the waiting car. His stepfather saw the hesitation and put his hand out the car window. He waved the boy forward, waved him in. The boy turned back and looked up into the darkness. He turned on the flashlight and started up.

He kept the light down on the steps, not wanting to announce he was coming up by lighting the room at the top. Halfway there one of the stairs creaked loudly under his foot.

He stood frozen still. He could hear his own heartbeat banging in his chest. He thought about Isabelle and the fear she probably carried in her own chest every day and night after night. He drew his resolve from this and started up again.

Three steps from the top he cut the light off and waited for his eyes to adjust. In a few moments he thought he could see a dim light from the room up ahead of him. It was candlelight licking at the ceiling and walls. He pushed himself against the side wall and took the last three steps up.

The room was large and crowded. He could see the makeshift beds lined against the two long walls. Still figures, like heaps of rummage sale clothes, slept on each. At the end of the room a single candle burned and a girl, a few years older and dirtier, heated a bottle cap over the flame. The boy studied her face in the uneven light. He could see that it wasn't Isabelle.

He started moving down the center of the room, between the sleeping bags and the newspaper pallets. From side to side he looked, searching for the familiar face. It was dark but he could tell. He'd know her when he saw her.

He got to the end, by the girl with the bottle cap. And Isabelle wasn't there.

"Who are you looking for?" asked the girl.

She was drawing back the plunger on the hypodermic, sucking the brown-black liquid through a cigarette butt filter from the bottle cap. In the murky light the boy could see the needle scarring on her neck.

"Just somebody," he said.

She looked away from her work and up to his face, surprised by his voice. She saw the young face in the camouflage of oversized and dirty clothes.

"You're a young one," she said. "You better get out of here before the houseman comes back."

The boy knew what she meant. All the squats in Hollywood had somebody in charge.

The houseman. He exacted a fee in money or drugs or flesh.

"He finds you, he'll bust your cherry ass and put you out on -"

She suddenly stopped and blew out the candle, leaving him in the dark. He turned back to the door and the stairs, and all his fears seized up in him like a fist closing on a flower. A silhouette of a man stood at the top of the steps. A big man. Wild hair. The houseman.

The boy involuntarily took a step back and tripped over someone's leg. He fell, the flashlight clattering on the floor next to him and going out.

The man in the doorway moved and started coming at him.

"Hanky boy!" the man yelled. "Come here, Hank!"