Lauraine Snelling Read online

  A refugee from Vietnam, Mai always wore two black-lacquered sticks to help hold her thick dark hair in a swirl on the top of her head. A number two pencil shoved over her ear had become her trademark. Petite and as active as a young girl, Mai made change while chatting with the customer.

  “You not been to my restaurant? Ah.” The look of horror would have done a cinema queen proud. She reached under the cash drawer. “Here, you bring this, one free dinner.” She handed the couple a coupon and their spring rolls, laid in flat paper cartons with a container of sweet vinegar. “Use for dipping. Eat those, come back for more.”

  They left smiling, and Hope stepped up. “Two pork.”

  “On the house.”

  “Mai.”

  “No. No say nothing.” Mai, her dark eyes laughing, dished up two. “Where that man of yours? Swear off spring roll?”

  “No.” Hope started to take a bite. “Ouch.”

  “Sign say hot spring roll. You never learn.”

  “We need to talk.” Hope blew on her spring roll and dipped it in the sweet-and-sour sauce.

  “I take one more girl for now.” Mai handed out another order while her assistant kept the spring rolls frying in the deep-fat fryer.

  “Thank you. I have a girl about ready.” Hope glanced over at the sound of raised voices, then realized the voices were not in anger. Where was Roger? “But I mean we need one of our real talks.”

  “Been too long.” Mai whipped out another coupon. “Only for special people like you. Come to the restaurant, ask for me. I make you something extra good.” She waved her customers on and greeted the next one.

  “Well talk later.” Hope raised her spring-roll container. “Thanks.” She closed her eyes, the better to savor the mingled flavors. She had tried once to learn the minute chopping and mixing required for the filling but had quickly run out of patience. Somehow the ones here at the market tasted even better than those at the restaurant. Perhaps it was the sunshine and the view. Off to the east the Transamerica building added its unique spire to the city skyline of the financial district. White-painted Coit Tower topped Telegraph Hill. From this vantage point, its cylindrical shape was hidden by the surrounding two-and three-level flats, but it was always there, a sentinel that welcomed those coming from the sea, a reminder of bygone days.

  Ah, but she loved San Francisco.

  The local bus stopped and disgorged another group of customers for the market. The locals always came early to get the best produce, then went about their busy Saturday lives. Applause rippled on the air. Most likely the clown with long skinny balloons had come to entertain the children. Sometimes a mime showed up. Several artists had set up their jewelry and art booths, like those provided for the tourists along the sidewalk by Ghirardelli Square, Maritime Park, and Fisherman’s Wharf.

  Hope wound her way back to the side door and slipped inside. Good smells came from the kitchen as those with cooking duty prepared lunch. She put her bagged eggplant in the small refrigerator in her apartment. Tonight she’d make stir-fry for just her and Roger.

  “Someone waitin’ in your office,” Celia said, looking up from chopping cabbage for the cole slaw.

  “You should have come for me.”

  “Not me. You looked to be havin’ a good time—about time.”

  “Who is it?”

  Celia shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “Have you seen Roger?”

  “Nope.”

  Concern wiggled its maggot way into worry. Should she call his pager? If he had it on vibrate, he wouldn’t mind. But then she still wouldn’t know where or how he was. Surely, she would have heard by now if there’d been any trouble.

  “Please apologize for me and tell whoever is waiting that I had to run out for a second. I’ll be right back.”

  “Whatever.”

  The visitor had left by the time Hope and her husband returned.

  “I forgot all about her,” Hope said, then gave Roger a look of reproof. “You could at least have called me or told someone where you were going.”

  “Like I said, I just wanted to follow them a ways to see if they would double back.” He showed her his cop face. “But they took off in a Lexus parked three blocks away.” Roger had a healthy streak of wife-protectionism that sometimes drove her nuts. “Pedro was sitting on his corner. He said D’Angelo has a well-known stable of girls. It’s funny how quickly he came into power.”

  Her anger lasted all of one second. “He wasn’t around when you were on the force?”

  “No, I never heard of him until Kiss mentioned him.” Roger furrowed his brow, obviously flipping through back files to locate any mention of D’Angelo.

  It had been four years since Roger had been shot, and what with his long recovery and then a bout of depression, he had lost touch with a lot of the street people. Once he’d officially retired, he renewed some of his contacts. Now both he and Hope were known as friends by many of the street people, who knew more about what was going on in the city than did most of the city officials.

  Roger returned from his thinking place—as Br’er Rabbit would have said—and gave his wife a winning smile. “You weren’t worried about me, were you?” Roger loved the Uncle Remus stories, which were no longer PC, but then he’d never been worried much about being politically correct anyway.

  “Not a bit,” Hope said, crossing her fingers to negate the lie.

  Roger rolled his eyes.

  Hope shrugged, then picked up a business card that had been placed in the middle of her desk calendar. “Hmm. Julia Collins, an attorney from Kansas. I wonder what she wanted.” She turned the card over to find a local phone number, certainly a hotel, since there was a room number also. She looked up to see Roger watching her.

  “Someone looking for someone?”

  “I don’t know, but if that’s what she’s doing, she sure came a long way, when a call might have answered any questions.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Roger knead his back and tilt his head from side to side.

  “Need a rub?”

  “Please. Carrying in that box of peaches, that’s what did it.”

  She gave him a questioning look. “You didn’t carry them in. The fruit vendor did.” She knew he’d not slept well. After tossing and turning in bed for a while, he had gotten up and gone into the other room to read. She wasn’t sure when he’d come back to bed, but he’d been deeply asleep when she got up this morning to start the dough for the elephant ears. “Sit.” She pointed to a chair and went to work on his shoulders and neck. “You’re due for a real massage.”

  “Not until payday.” His voice already took on the gentle throb of relaxation. “You have such good hands, Hope, darlin’. More to the right.”

  While she dug and pressed to loosen muscles tightened by pain, Hope found the movements soothing for herself. As she told him to relax, her body did the same. Except for the queasy slosh in her middle that called for more Turns.

  He yawned, then said, “I think I’ll go get a nap.”

  “Good idea.” The moment he left the room, she dug in her desk drawer for the bottle of antacids and chewed two to powder.

  “Miss Hope, you get the paperwork done for Jessie?” Celia stuck her head in the doorway.

  Hope shut the desk drawer so Celia wouldn’t see what she was doing. “I thought you went home.” She didn’t want Celia on her case. The woman was worse than a mother hen.

  “You know, stuff to do.”

  Hope searched through the stacks of papers on the right side of her desk. It was inevitable that what she was looking for was in the last stack, on the bottom. “Here it is.” She gave it a quick once-over. “Nope, I didn’t finish it, but I can do it right now.” She pulled out her chair and sat down. The amount of paperwork that came across her desk was ridiculous. There were forms for this, forms for that. She was always behind, but there was just never enough time. Time or no, it had to be done in order for Social Services to release the money needed to run J House.

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sp; Celia stood beside the desk, waiting. “Did you call that lady lawyer?”

  “Not yet. Did she say what she wanted?”

  Celia shook her head. “But she seemed real upset.”

  Hope handed Celia the signed and dated form, then picked up the phone and dialed. She was about to switch the handset to her other hand when she heard a hello. “Hi, this is Hope from Casa de Jesus returning your call. I’m sorry I couldn’t see you before you had to leave. Saturdays are crazy around here. How can I help you?”

  “I’m searching for my granddaughter,” the woman said, getting right to the point. “The local police station suggested I check with you.” The voice sounded professional, a bit clipped.

  “What’s your granddaughter’s name?” Hope waved Celia off and started taking notes.

  “Cyndy—with two ys—Jacobson. She’s sixteen, almost seventeen, a natural blonde, slender, about one hundred thirty pounds, five foot five. She wants to be a movie star. I started my search for her in Los Angeles and made contact with a girl who claimed to be her roommate. She told me Cyndy had been offered a screen test in San Francisco.”

  A screen test in San Francisco didn’t make a lot of sense, at least not for a street kid, but Hope had long since stopped trying to make sense out of the crazy things people did. Hope asked questions about Cyndy’s past: what her home life was like, had she been abused, was she pregnant, on drugs or alcohol. The woman on the other end of the phone didn’t have a lot of information, but she was forthcoming with what she did have.

  “I don’t know why Cyndy left home. I do know that she and my daughter don’t get along. They never have. I don’t get along with my daughter either. I regret to say we have something of a dysfunctional family. My daughter, Donna, became a mother at a very early age and never quite took to the job. On top of that, she has a drug problem and—other problems, too. I tried to talk Cyndy into coming back to live with me, but she said she’d tried living with me before, and I put too many restrictions on her. I suppose I did, but it was only because I thought she needed some boundaries. A teenager has to have boundaries or else … ” Julia’s voice faded out.

  Hope’s heart went out to the woman. “Julia, just so you know, we are not in the business of searching for runaways, but we run across a lot of them. As a matter of fact, we had a girl about that age and general description come here the day before yesterday, but she left, and … ”

  “Oh no, you should have stopped her!” Julia cut in. “It could have been my Cyndy.”

  Hope was used to people overreacting, so she’d learned to exercise patience and understanding. “We don’t operate like that here,” she explained, purposely keeping her voice soft and gentle. “We’re a refuge, a safe place for girls like Cyndy to come, to get a shower, a good meal, and a place to sleep. It’s up to them if they decide to stay. If they do, we try to help them in any way we can.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “I understand what you’re going through,” Hope said. “I don’t know if this girl—she called herself Kiss—is your Cyndy or not. All we can do is pray she’ll come back. Do you have a picture that you could give us? That would help immensely.”

  “Yes, I do. I’ll go make some more copies and bring a few by later today, if that’s convenient.”

  “I’m planning on being here, but something could come up. Even if I’m not here, put her name on the picture and leave it with whoever is here. It’ll get to me.” Hope had no sooner said good-bye and hung up the phone than she heard a crash, followed by a colorful expletive, coming from the other room. A moment later, a small child began wailing in the playroom, and an ambulance siren pulsed up Kearney Street a few blocks away. Adding to the noise level, doors slammed out in the parking lot as the vendors loaded up their vehicles. All the normal Saturday noises of J House.

  Hope walked out of her office and saw myriad papers, file folders, and pamphlets scattered across the floor. It looked like a dust devil had just blown through.

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t ask,” Celia snapped as she knelt to gather the mess.

  “I won’t. But I’ll help after I see what’s going on in the playroom.”

  “Ophelia’s found another bug.”

  “Oh.” Today was turning into an eye-rolling type of day. Hope shook her head as she opened the door to the children’s playroom, where a little black girl, her hair captured in many short braids with bright ribbons, stood screaming in the middle of the room. Her wails had made two other little girls begin to cry—a chain reaction.

  “Okay, sweetie, what is it?” Hope knelt in front of the four-year-old and looked into her frightened eyes.

  “A bug. A bug.” Ophelia pointed at a big black beetle trying to escape into the corner.

  “Did it bite you?” she asked, gathering the child into her arms. She smelled so clean and sweet, just like a little girl ought to smell. Night after night, Hope dreamed about holding a child of her own like this, but that’s all it would ever be—a dream. She’d given up on having children a long time ago. She’d done a lot of stupid things during her rebellious years and, like most kids, never imagined how things might end up. For Hope, it had been a hospital bed, a long recovery, and the reality of never bearing children. Too much damage, the doctor said.

  The little girl shook her head and sniffed. “No bugs, Hope. No bugs.”

  At least it’s not a roach. “Okay, okay, let’s put him outside.”

  “No-o-o. Kill it.”

  “But why? He didn’t do you any harm. Bugs need to live too.”

  “No-o-o. Bad bugs.” She scrubbed her eyes with little pink-palmed fists.

  “Where’s your mommy?”

  “I dunno,” she cried, then wrapped her arms around Hope’s neck.

  “Okay, okay.” She carried Ophelia over to a chair. “You sit right here, and I’ll take the bug outside.” She waved the other two girls over. “You two sit right here, next to Ophelia.”

  Rub-a-dub-dub, three little girls in a tub—chair. All three curled up their legs and watched as Hope caught the shiny-backed beetle with one of the shirts from the dress-up corner. On her way to the door, she tried to remember who had playroom duty today. A little boy named Conner sat in the corner watching the goings-on, his thumb in his mouth, dark eyes cautious. He’d been there a week and had yet to say anything to anyone.

  Hope planned on getting his hearing tested. Conner and his mother had come to the shelter because the father beat the child until his ears bled. When the police went to arrest the father, he’d disappeared, and thank God, he hadn’t come looking for them.

  Hope put the bug outside, the girls returned to their play, and Conner smiled at her. Feeling ten pounds lighter, she returned to the mess around the front desk.

  “We need more office help.” Celia held a stack of papers against her prodigious bosom and stared switchblades at the desk, counter, and credenza, all mismatched donations or yard-sale finds, and all buried in stacks of file folders and papers.

  “Somehow, I think we’ve said that before.” Hope squatted to gather more of the errant papers into another pile. “I think that anytime paper gets in a stack, it breeds more paper. Have you noticed that?”

  Celia shook her head. “¡Qué asco! I can’t keep up, and you can’t keep up.”

  “I know. I know. Let’s set these along the wall where no one can bump into them.” Hope put her armful down and straightened it as best she could. When she raised up, a wave of dizziness sent her grabbing for the desktop, which sent another stack tumbling. “Oh, brother.”

  “Sister and mother, too. What’s wrong?”

  “I must have stood up too fast. I’m a little dizzy.” Hope blinked and stood still until the dizziness passed.

  “Dizzy, tired all the time, poppin’ antacids like candy—it’s time you got yourself to the doctor.” Celia set the final stack against the wall and came over to feel Hope’s head. “No fever. You had anything to eat today?”

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bsp; “Spring rolls, an elephant ear, and a peach,” Hope said. What she didn’t say was coffee, coffee, and more coffee.

  Celia rolled her eyes and pursed her bright, red-defined lips, foot tapping. “You get back to your office, and I’ll get one of the girls to fix you somethin’s that’s good for you. Go on now, ¡ándale pronto!”

  “Okay, but you have to promise not to say anything to anybody, especially Roger. Promise?” Celia crossed her heart. “And check the duty roster to find out who’s supposed to be supervising the playroom, and tell them … ”

  Celia took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and marched her toward the office.

  Thank God for Celia. As maddening as she could be at times, the woman had a heart of 18-karat gold and a work ethic that made her the most valuable worker at J House.

  Once back in her office, Hope sat down at her desk, leaned back, and closed her eyes.

  Maybe this was God’s way of trying to tell her she needed to sit down and do paperwork. If it wasn’t … She thought back over the past couple of weeks—the tiredness, the heartburn, the upset stomachs … and now dizziness. Like I need a health problem right now. Big Dad, God of all healing, you know how I hate doctors. Whatever this is, just take care of it, please. I don’t have time to be sick.

  Tampa, Florida

  Was California much farther from Florida than Florida from New York?

  Clarice Van Dam, once widowed, twice married, stared at all the moving boxes, most of which she had packed herself because she couldn’t bear to let strangers handle her things. All her treasures were now wrapped and packed. She’d heard the packers talk about her interfering, but she didn’t let it bother her. Some of her collections were extremely valuable, not only in dollars but in memories.