That was last month, almost to the day. She sighed, thinking of the crusty old lady she had worked for. In the six years they had known each other, they had hardly exchanged more than a dozen words. Yet for all her cantankerousness, the woman had fed her and given her a job, and for the first while a place to live. That was the closest thing to kindness Pamela had ever experienced.
And now, like her parents, the old lady, too, was no more than a memory.
Pamela tossed back the last of her cold tea, folded the paper, stuffed it into her coat pocket and steeled herself to make the twelve block journey back to her flat through the driving, numbing, November downpour.
The cold wind was merciless, sending its chilling, invasive fingers probing through her threadbare, inadequate clothing. Within the space of a block she was soaked to the skin and shivering miserably. Few would have tolerated such discomfort, but comfort was as much a stranger to her as kindness. From long habit she plunged ahead doggedly, thinking only of the relative warmth of her tiny apartment and the few days left ahead of her when she would still have a warm bed to sleep in.
And after that?
But Pamela's mind didn't work that way. To preserve herself she lived in the moment, with the future a dull guess that would be dealt with some other day when it arrived. If it arrived.
A number of times she passed by groups of street people standing around rusted steel barrels with yellow flames licking at their interiors, illuminating sallow faces and needy eyes, lending warmth to outstretched hands. Glittering ominously in the firelight, their eyes followed her incuriously, drawn by movement. Instinctively she avoided them, picking up her pace, knowing that they were more unpredictable on evenings like this, that shared misery often sought a common outlet, sometimes kindling without warning into sudden violence; most often venting itself upon an innocent bystander, someone unsuspecting who had strayed into their midst entirely by chance; someone who normally was and felt safe in their company.
She tried to tell herself that the rain was good for at least one thing, that it washed away that stale, sour smell of old garbage and urine; but right now, bad smells were preferable to mind-numbing discomfort and the feeling that she was not safe.
By the time she reached the small brownstone apartment building she was giddy with cold and past the point of shivering. Her thighs were soon aching dully as she mounted the three steep, narrow flights of stairs, which she navigated more by feel and from memory than by sight; the stairwell was very dim, lighted only from high above the top landing by the grimy remnant of an ancient chandelier. From the moment she entered the building, her senses were assaulted with the musty, damp smell and the closeness of the place, things which, though offensive to most, to her meant home, safety, security. Things no one else wanted always felt safe to her, be they a place to live, a few mean belongings, even the odd stray cat she'd fed.