I'll Let You Go

CHAPTER 10. Shelter

After a storm of tears, they laughed and wept until laughter won out, and were forever bound.

Amaryllis told him how her mother had been a dead person all this time and how she had been afraid to tell anyone, even Topsy himself, who had been so kind and with whose food she had nourished the babies. How she was going to tell him but was sidelined by a strange troupe of children who were making a movie — a know-it-all girl, a crippled tall-headed boy with mask and gloves, and a wisecracking flaxen-haired star — the orphan waved All About You! before him to prove the celebrity’s pampered, extolled existence. (Amaryllis wasn’t sure why, but she withheld mentioning the boy who on first introduction called himself Toulouse, and Tull ever after.) Then she told him how the police took the precious ones and the Korean gave her away and she’d only managed to escape by dint of what she now felt to be a miracle — or hoped would eventually be recognized as such. And how, because St. Vibiana’s was impregnable, she had come to this place for sanctuary instead …

Topsy listened, moved to sweet astonishment, running oversize fingers through friendly tangle of beard. He had in his vest pocket, visible through a foggy Ziploc’d window, some crushed notes of almond and pomegranate seed, residue of croissant plucked from a dessert song. He spread the sack open and the starved thing dipped in two nail-bitten fingers.

Suddenly, her voice broke. Where did they take the babies? she asked plaintively. They’d be so frightened without her! She sobbed again and couldn’t catch her breath.

“There, there,” said Topsy, patting her shoulder. “They’ll be fine — just fine. And right along, and right along.”

He made her tug from a tap-water canteen, then watched as she cried herself to sleep.

Hours later, Topsy started to a ruckus: someone coughed, stumbled and cursed in the adjacent hall. A shout and filthy flurry of sleep-drunk birds roused the girl, who shrieked as he stood like a colossus to repel the invader. Whoever it was had candlepower, and that meant official trouble. As the beam pierced their room, Topsy snatched the flashlight, punched the interloper’s stomach (which gave the giant no pleasure), hoisted Amaryllis up and fled. The night was moonless; once recovered, the guard would be slow to leave.

She felt secure holding on and was unaware that he held her, too, arm bent behind him in support like a pale, muttony wing. He took the stairs in gulps; he was magnificent. She sweated, and his coat scratched her face as she clung. More than once the orphan girl thought she’d be pitched into blackness of space and die if she didn’t hold tight.

The lobby was vaguely lit by street lamps. Outside, he set her down by the bent iron, then pulled her to shadow as two squad cars wailed and bleated by; they were meant for some other poor souls. Amaryllis climbed through and stepped to the sidewalk as delicately as a girl at cotillion, while Topsy took longer, doing some damage to the gate. He shouted at her to come back toward him, out of the light. Free of the Higgins now, he took things in full-scope. Where would he go? at four in the morning, with a child on the street? Then it came to him: but if he wasn’t careful, the little sweetheart would land in gaol and they’d throw him in stocks or worse. Kidnapper! Deviant! Monster …

He lifted the girl to his back again then cloaked himself so that his jacket fell over her like a tarp — under cover of night, to an idle observer, she might be a mindless backpack of belongings, queerly squirreled away.

Topsy left the alley in unbreakable stride. For a while it seemed there was someone behind them, but whatever it was soon fell away, swallowed up in his powerful wake. Amaryllis imagined herself the Royal Kumari, freshly absconded, scooped from village seat by a Special Selector — what adventure! She thought of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and how in fact Topsy was a worthy nominee: he was humble and had endured great hardship; he was full of heroic virtue and venerated by the homeless community; and he had now performed the miracle of spiriting her away. From 2nd to Broadway he marched, over streets dream-like and bereft. In the duo’s presence, the Hall of Records remained unfazed. The steam-engorged Central Heating and Refrigeration Plant appeared ignorant of their passing, as did the democratic wooden fence that fronted the burgeoning Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, postered over with an orderly procession of schoolchildren’s acrylic saints (Edith Stein not among them). The sepulchral Hall of Administration slept; the Board of Supervisors and Health Department Administration buildings yawned, then shut their granite eyes.

As the leviathan and his charge ducked beneath the 110, Topsy felt the whole of downtown rise off him like a corroded weight — but they were in danger, because there were no more buildings to hide in and the infamous Rampart station was yet to come.

He slowed so as not to seem in flight past lumpy fields and grassy hillocks on both sides of the wide macadamized road. He could hear the furtive, alien rustle of encampments as they rushed by (Fitz and Half Dead in there somewhere, for all anyone knew). “It’s fine, child, it’ll be right fine,” he said, like a lullaby, turning his whiskery head so she’d hear. “There, there.” When taxis or trucks passed and they were alone again, he let slip the coat from his shoulders so her head struck fresh air. A naked man crouched in the middle of the street defecating, like a figure in an outlandish prehistoric diorama; Topsy thought it a neat diversion for his and the girl’s potential pursuants.

Now, who else roamed this strange place? It was not Epping Forest! How must the entirety of it have looked to a man like William Morris? Tonight, the Victorian age was but a vapor between him and the vast metropolis. The girl had seen to that — the sweet turtleshell stuck on his back had crimped his delusions, the pure unselfishness of his concern for her leeching air from the bubble within which he normally moved. He nearly heard the hiss. He accelerated past the blurred, sleepy storefronts — Salon del Reino de Los Testigos de Jehova — SIGNS-BANNERS — Botanica — Psíquica — Carniceria — Panadería — to a street called, most curiously, East Edgeware. Topsy broke a cool sweat as they swept past the abandoned hotel with the faded advertisement painted on its side — ALL ROOMS WITH BATH & SHOWER $2.50 UP. FIREPROOF — around the stucco face, its crumbly chicken wire disabused by a hundred careless fenders. Another alley: and then he let Amaryllis down behind the shop. They walked a few paces and huddled in the shadow of a dumpster.

Dawn came with usual rosy-fingered treachery. A white Volvo station wagon turned, nosing into its space behind the bakery. With a smile Topsy noticed that his sometime employer, may he be blessed, wore a white mushroomed chef’s hat even as he drove.

“All right, listen,” he whispered urgently. “That man there will help. He’s an ample soul, and his wife is a worker for the public good.”

“But you won’t come?”

A heartbreaking puff of cold came from her tiny mouth.

“It’s no good with me there. He’ll take care of you, girl — him and his wife — but you mustn’t say I brought you here, understand? I know ’im, understand? He’s good and he’ll get me word of what’s happened to you and I’ll come.” Tears again between them, and he dried her eyes with his sleeve. “Go ahead now, there! I’m watching you, child! You’ll do right well with ’im. This man’s my friend. Understand? But you mustn’t tell him it was me. Now, right along, right along!”

She nodded and stared at the ground, her lower lip jerking about. He kissed her cheek, turned her around and sent her off like a toy soldier. She took a few steps, then gazed at him in a way that broke his heart again; but he did not break, and urged her on.

The car’s engine shut off, and Gilles walked to the trunk and rooted around inside. She was fifteen feet from the Volvo, and again turned back — again, he urged her on.

The baker saw her.

“Hullo?”

He stood up straight in his loose bleached clothes and came near. “Hel-lo … here now, what’s wrong? What are we doing all alone?” He looked around but saw no one. “Do you live around here? Where’s Mommy and Daddy? Do you know where Mommy and Daddy are?”

She shook her head, fighting the urge to run to her friend.

“Are you hungry? Do you like cake and pastry? Would you like to come inside, where it’s warm, and have some pastry? Sure you would! Come. Come inside.”

She looked back one last time — the shadow of Topsy was gone.

Amaryllis went to the baker, head bowed like a votary. He knelt and spoke to her with great kindness. The vagrant tucked thoroughly away, strained to hear, but the voice was low and indecipherable. Gilles led her inside.

The morning lifted like a curtain as he retraced his path. The cityscape stirred, stretching itself under a still-cool sun; his step quickened as he entered the tunnel. There would be coffee waiting at Misery House.