“Shoo, what office you running for?” she gave him a look, then gestured with her head. “Little lady over there, she’s seventeen, says she’s pregnant, says the father doesn’t want her or the baby, doesn’t want nothing to do with none of it. Gangbanger or some such, just eighteen himself Other girl is her sister. Been living wherever, the both of them. Runaways, street kids, babies making babies. Told her we could get them a bed, but she had to see a doctor and if there were parents, they had to be notified. Course, she doesn’t want that, doesn’t trust doctors, hates her parents, such as they are. Good Lord Almighty!”
Ross nodded. “You explain the reason for all this?”
Della gave him the glare. “Course I explained it! What you think I’m doing here, anyway -just taking up space? Who’s been here longer, you or me?”
Ross winced. “Sorry I asked.”
She punched him lightly on the arm. “No, you ain’t.”
He glanced around the room. “How many new beds have come in today?”
“Seven. Not counting these.” Delta shook her head ruefully. “This keeps up, we’re going to have to start putting them up in your office, having them sleep on your floor. You mind stepping over a few babies and mothers while you work-assuming you actually do any work while you’re sitting back there?”
He shrugged. “Wall-to-wall homeless. Maybe I can put some of them to work writing for me. They probably have better ideas about all this than I do.”
“They probably do.” Delta was not going to cut him any slack. “You on your way to somewhere or did you just come out here to get underfoot?”
“I’m on my way to get some coffee. Do you want some?”
“No, I don’t. I got too much work to do. Unlike some I know.” She returned to the paperwork on her desk, dismissing him. Then she added, “Course, if you brought me some-cream and sugar, please-I guess Id drink it all right.”
He went back down the hall to the elevator and pressed the button. The staff’s coffee room was in the basement along with a kitchen, storage roams for food and supplies, maintenance equipment, and the water heaters and furnace. Space was at a premium. Fresh Start sheltered anywhere from a hundred and fifty to two hundred women and children at any given time, all of them homeless, most of them abused. Administrative offices and a firstaid room occupied the ground floor of the six-story building, and the top five floors had been converted into a mix of dormitories and bedrooms. The second floor also housed a dining hall that could seat up to a hundred people, which worked fine if everyone are in shifts. Just next door, in the adjacent building, was Pass/Go, the alternative school for the children housed at Fresh Start. The school served upward of sixty or seventy children most of the time. The Pass/Go staff numbered twelve, the Fresh Start staff fifteen. Volunteers filled in the gaps.
No signs marked the location of the buildings or gave evidence of the nature of the work conducted within. The buildings were drab and unremarkable and occupied space just east of Occidental Park in the Pioneer Square district of Seattle. The International District lay just to the south above the Kingdome. Downtown, with its hotels and skyscrapers and shopping, lay a dozen blocks north. Elliott Bay and the waterfront lay west. Clients were plentiful; you could find them on the streets nearby, if you took the time to look.
Fresh Start and Pass/Go were nonprofit corporations funded by Seattle Public Schools, various charitable foundations, and private donations. Both organizations were the brainchild of one main–Simon Lawrence.
John Ross looked down at his feet. Simon Lawrence. The Wizard of Oz. The man he was supposed to kill in exactly two days, according to his dreams.
The elevator doors opened and he stepped in. There were stairs, but he still walked with difficulty, his resignation from the
Word’s service notwithstanding. He supposed he always would. It didn’t seem fair he should remain crippled after terminating his position, given that he had become crippled by accepting it, but he guessed the Word didn’t see matters that way- Life, after all, wasn’t especially fair.