White Rabbit Chapter 23

23.

The Boston train station was like a scientific experiment, a bug collection of strange insects crawling all over the place. Food shops and vendors sold everything from hot dogs and Tylenol to pornography and envelopes. A germy slide under a telescopic lens. Delores eyed the top quarter of the cover of a Hustler seeing the very top of some peroxide blonde’s head down to her dirty blue eye-shadowed eyeballs. It made her think of computers and bathtubs. The Pakistani clerk didn’t look like the type to be selling porn and he gave Delores a cruel look so she bought a pack of Milk Duds and a Cosmo pretending not to notice the Playgirls or the Hustlers. The train station was filthy. Pages of the Boston Globe and the USA Today blew around along with paper cups and cleaning people with smaller-than-normal brooms and ugly dustpans and hideous green polos and cheap khakis moped around doing next to nothing, certainly not concerned with stray newspapers or paper cups, and maliciously ignored the bubblegum that was blatantly smashed into walls and permanently impressed in the tile floor so long neglected that they had mutated to simple black spots no longer with any stick. They looked like ominous eyeballs looking in from an outside world. Outside it had looked so promising, like a grand cathedral, but what a dump inside. Those cleaning people reminded Delores of the sucker fish she once had in an aquarium before she realized fish have no personalities and are terrible pets. But you cannot flush people.

The pillars she walked between were fake marble and looked dingy with strips of aging scotch tape all over them, eye-level, from fliers that hung begging for lost dogs and offering free kittens and work at home and weight loss diet scams. Some still remained posted. Cash for homes. Delores knew nothing yet of the Underworld and the grates that exhaled thick mysterious steam she imagined to be coming from some mysterious dimension, but one of certain wretchedness filled with degenerate underlings and pure misery. Probably filled with the same sucker fish cleaning people, too. But as soon as the thought began to construct something similar to Hell in her mind, thereby sanctifying her mother’s Holy Roman Catholic faith, she dismissed it altogether. She made her way outside and stood along the busy street waiting for a driver her mother had arranged to pick her up and take her to St. Anne’s. She was wearing a short plum-colored dress with black stockings and a red sweater. Her brown hair was pulled up and she wore designer glasses that computer boys told her made her look sexy. It was unusually cool for August and there was a nice breeze flowing through with the five o’clock traffic. Curious trees seemed out of place across the street along the sidewalk where businessmen and women walked furiously with briefcases in one arm and newspapers under the other talking on cell phones or texting. A boy walked a dog and a contingent of joggers passed. Delores stared. The annoying sound of the computer lady announcing stops and arrivals stopped ringing in her ears and the stench of urine from the stairwell was replaced with exhaust and dirty asphalt mixed with the smell of rain.

            A sinewy black man with a fuzzy graying beard lurched by wearing a discolored Army coat and dirty gray trousers politely begging for change. He wore a cardboard sign around his neck that said something hardly legible in orange crayon. Pigeons waddled about begging for crumbs like disciples. It was gray and looked like rain. The man stopped and asked Delores for change but she shook her head no and was careful not to make eye contact for the slightest provocation could lead to her doom. Sometimes her mother took over Delores’ unwilling mind. He smelled like sweat, piss and gin. She tried desperately not to open her mouth as he drew closer but then he changed course when he noticed the pigeons being startled and flying away. Their wings made a wonderful sound that frightened Delores. He looked terrified and hurried along looking back over his shoulder frantically. His name was Bird and the train station on this particular street was his living room and the bench by the statue of some governor was his sofa. He listened to the pigeons. If they were afraid he was afraid. If they flew away so did he. Delores debated the tragedy of poverty in her head. She gripped her bag handle tight just as another wretched soul in desperate need of a meal and a bath waltzed up cockily, with dirty white skin, long colorless strands of hair, a greasy mustache, terrible breath and a strong Bostonian accent. Not many teeth. He smelled like sweat, cat piss and malt liquor and wore a Miami Dolphins sweatshirt under the scraps of a scuffed and worn red leather jackets.  

“Hey! Hey!” He said to Delores seedily. “You got anything for me, honey?” he licked his lips and sneered at her as she tried to walk away looking desperately for her taxi. “I’m talkin’ to ya, girl. I says, you got anything for me?” She noticed he was carrying a violin with missing strings and he played something terrible between anything he said to her.

“No I haven’t got anything for you.” she replied meekly. Not even to her new school yet and it was already a disaster. She thought of going back in and buying a train ticket to Michigan. She had Michael’s cell phone number in her journal. But she didn’t. Instead she froze the way a gazelle freezes when a jackal has her by the throat. Same scared look. Same chemicals being released in the brain in the anticipation of death.

“I’m a fucking vet. You not gonna give me any, honey?” More fiddling. The word any crawled out of his mouth and raped her ears.

Nothing.

She looked away hopelessly to the horizon of cars, desperate for the taxi to show. She even half prayed to God as foolish as that is to her:

Dear God, I am sure you have nothing better to do than to make this putrid filth bag disappear, or my taxi to arrive. Much appreciated. Love, Delores.

No green minivan. Nothing even close. Colonial Cab, she remembered her mother saying that it was called. She looked side to side for help. No one. Where are all the policemen when you want them? Security? She was a statue humiliated by pigeon shit. “Ok. I get it. Act like you don’t fucking hear me! Act like a stuck up cunt!” The man shouted. His brain was going haywire. Rage exploded like fireworks in his circuits and flooded his inhibitions. Malt liquor didn’t help. Neither did hunger. Nothing personal towards Delores but much towards what Delores represented to him. She had the silver spoon. She had everything in the world seemingly given to her and he had nothing. Delores no longer smelled the cat piss or the malt liquor. Her sense of fear was shutting down all of her body’s functions. The vagrant said something else followed by more menacing fiddle and a baleful smile.

“Hey, asshole! Get lost!” a stern voice from behind her inoculated Delores from the vagrant’s venom and freed her. She exhaled. A red suitcase sat down beside Delores’ right leg in case fisticuffs were required. Inhale, exhale, sniff, smell, look, see, hear, so on and so forth, as her body functions returned to form. The vagrant didn’t respond. He gazed at Delores for a moment reproachfully and then at the stranger, a handsome man who appeared to be in his thirties. Then he scooted away with his hands up in the air as though to defend himself from certain assault. Then his eyes darted around in his head as though he couldn’t see the person threatening him. He looked frightened and confused but quickly left without causing any harm.

“You should have told him to go away.” the voice behind her said spartanly.

“I couldn’t.” Delores replied feebly. “I have terrible trouble telling people to go away or to leave me alone. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.” Delores turned to thank the man. No one. “I must be going cuckoo.”

No reply. She continued looking for the taxi as though it would solve all of her problems. A green minivan. Colonial Cab. Her mind raced frantically.

“Don’t be alarmed.” Same voice. Handsome man in his thirties, sounded like. She’d become an expert on voices. She ignored him and continued checking passing cars and incoming ones that slowed down in the passenger pick up lane like professional race car drivers where waving pit crews of family flagged them down in case they didn’t see them. Their frantic hands willed the cars to a stop and quickly sized up the car like hobos about to hop empty railcars. Families reuniting illegally in no parking zones. Colorful luggage. Hazard lights flashing, right turn signals. Quick hugs, kisses, goodbyes, tears of all sorts. “Have a safe trip!” “Welcome home!” “How was your ride?” Luggage locked in the trunks of Hondas and Fords quickly like dead bodies. Delores focused on an Asian family. They were soothing. The moved so gingerly and with such grace. You can never tell how old they are. Finely dressed each of them. Clean looking. Was she being ethnocentric in her copious mental compliments? She debated. Then she thought about the red suitcase that plopped down beside her.

Still there.

It was cool for August and it looked like rain. She looked back down.

Still there.

            She looked around. No one. There was a name on the tag. “Alex De Wolfe.” She read aloud. “1440 Constitution Way, Apartment 85, Boston, Massachusetts. Alex De Wolfe?”

            “Yes?” Same voice. Delores turned around toward the street and there stood a handsome man in his thirties. Not very tall, thin, with bright blue eyes. He was in a suit that appeared to be from the thirties and wore a checkered flat-cap. His suitcase looked rather antiquated itself and Delores stood there for a moment regarding him carefully. “I am Alex De Wolfe.” He smiled. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Ms.?”

            “Delores Marlowe.” Handshake. Confusion. “Were you the one…”

            “Yes. I was the one.”

            “Oh.” She paused awkwardly. “Well, um, thanks.” She shook his hand again. “But where did you go. I mean, I looked...”

            “I was here the entire time.”

            “Oh. Well, it was a long train ride from Portland. I must have…”

“Portland, Maine?” He replied excitably.

“Yes.” Delores affirmed.

“Well, that is where I am from! Greetings to a fellow Portlander.”

Another handshake. The green minivan appeared behind him and honked three times. Colonial Cab written on the side in white with the white conspicuous outline of a patriot's head on the door. “Well, that is my taxi. Um, thank you...again.”

The man smiled and picked up his bag. “It is the least I could do for a fellow werewolf.” He walked away.

Delores stopped on her way to the taxi. It registered after four steps. “A fellow what?” She looked back. No one. Alex De Wolfe was long gone.

Milk Duds rolled everywhere.