One's Misery, Another's Freedom, Conclusion (Working Title)
Apr 02 '03
The Bottom Line The ending..... comments, I want comments!
She felt awfully cold. Finding warmth at the bootleggers was tough, since it was in someone’s upstairs floor, in a run-down house. But she never noticed it to be as cold as it was right now.
Her brain was too obscured to react to more than one thing at a time. Now she realized that she was in a sitting position. Well, of course. She was sitting on the barstool. But the surface changed. Now it felt like a cold surface, as if ice had formed. Her back was supported, but it didn’t feel as if wood was behind her. It felt like concrete.
Her eyes opened slowly. Her surroundings were darker than she had expected, except for small fingers of light that tickled her pupils. She couldn’t hear any of the voices that she had heard throughout the entire evening. It was an eerie silence.
Did she go deaf, dumb and blind? The Helen Keller of the sidewalk? Did she drink so much alcohol that it shut down her vital senses?
Where was she at this moment? She did not think that she could guess at it......
A loud, dull thump. Almost like that of a car door shutting. Her hearing was intact. The quiet hum of a car engine. Feet within shoes striking pavement, and cement.
“Anything the matter?”
A voice, male.
“.......n...no... no, no....” She could speak. Two down. “Nothing is the matter.”, she hacked out. “I want another drink, is all.... the night’s not over yet. Where did everybody go?”
“There’s nobody here. You’re on the sidewalk. This is Queen Street, not the Sportspage. You’ll catch your death of cold.”
“Queen Street? No way... I am at Dorchester Street... at the bootlegger.....”
“The bootlegger at Dorchester Street?”, the voice asked, with interest.
“Yes, I was there f-f-f-for five hours tonight... it was so great... but I spent all my money... and now I’m poor.......again!”, she laughed with a gasp.
Her eyes were able to trace a better image of the voice that spoke to her. He was wearing a police uniform. Suddenly, she wished that she were still deaf, dumb, and blind.
“That’s too bad, now.”, he said, uncaringly. “Where do you live?”
Agnes paused before speaking. Her judgment had skewed too far to allow her to arrange what she should and should not say. So she kept on talking, letting the words spew.
“I live on Sydney Street -- well, I would have lived there, if some jerk didn’t steal my house... he took it over like it was his. A year later, and he’s still in there!”
“Really?”, he asks sardonically.
“Can you arrest him for me?”
“Well, we’ll see what we can do. Just get in the car and we’ll discuss it.....”
The cop lifts the wretched life form from the sidewalk, and led her to the back seat of the squad car. Every weekend he had to do something much like this. A slight nuisance, he would have admitted, but he couldn’t help but to betray his rigid, professional exterior with a fragile smirk.
“Some cops would be a bit bored with this town....”, he spoke, feeling less uncomfortable, as, purely in a technical sense, he would no longer be talking to himself. “... but I think, living in a big city like Toronto, or Montreal, where every night you could be risking your life with armed robbers and street gangs, and the threat of a drive by shooting, would be the worse of the two. Don’t you think?”
Agnes was still under the effects of the alcohol. She wasn’t able to conjure up a good answer.
“I think so. Charlottetown’s a nice town. The worst thing you have to deal with.... 9 times out of 10, of course, it’s not perfect.... is making sure things don’t get too rowdy on Saturday night. And hoping that there’s at least one drive-thru open 24 hours too, of course.”
As the cop continued speaking, Agnes stuck her hands in her two coat pockets. She rummaged around, thinking that there ought to be something inside those pockets. A delicate search. Nothing. Her pockets were empty.
*
Early in the morning, the guard unlocked the cell door.
She was relieved to be able to leave her overnight cell. She didn’t expect to have been inside for much longer; she knew of people who couldn’t help but to find themselves in jail for the evening, having the bad luck of getting caught unabling to stabilize themselves while under the influence.
She prepared herself to suffer a few indigent remarks from one of the officers, before getting the hell out of this place. She could deal with it.
The guard led her into a room, darkly lit, with a large mirror lining the center of the left-hand side. A man, in civilian clothing, watched her, as he sat on a wooden chair. Papers, neatly packed, rested on the desk, close to his grasp.
“Good morning, Agnes.”, the man grinned, professionally. “Feeling better now?”
She felt more at ease. She was expecting a more harsher tone. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, my head is still a little woozy, but I’ll live.”
“Good. Very good.”, he said, coolly. “Sit down. “, gesturing to another chair at the other side of the table.
“So......”, she smirks. “Are you going to throw the book at me? Or are you just going to throw me out?”
“No... no, we’re not going to throw you out......”, he said, truthfully. “No fear of that.....”
Agnes grinned. “No police brutality here, huh?”
The man grimaced silently, as he looked over the papers on his desk.
“I’m Detective Murray, by the way,”, returning his glance to her upon the final beat of his revelation. “I just have to ask you a few questions.”
“Well, shoot!”, she laughed, hoping to follow proper rules of behavior and mannerisms when speaking with a detective.
“Where were you last night?”, he asked. “..... before we found you out on the street?”
Where was she last night? “I was... with some friends... just having a few drinks.”
“A few? Must have been some enormous bottles.”
“..... um, yea, no wonder I collapsed on the street, huh?”, she forced herself to say.
“Where do you live? I don’t think you had the opportunity to mention such a thing to anyone last evening.”
Agnes believed this question to be slightly tougher to maneuver around. “Ahh... I live... I live in Sydney Street.” The inflection in her voice made that statement sound like a question, asked to herself. “It’s not... it’s not the best place in the world... but it’s better than living in a shoebox, even a two-storied one.”, her laughed inflected with strain.
The detective frowned slightly, not grasping her reference to an earlier comment by one who was a stranger to him.
“What else did you do yesterday? Yesterday afternoon, actually? I’m a bit curious, is all.”
Agnes didn’t understand why the detective was so inquisitive. She didn’t think that all these needed facts were necessary. But she complied in any case.
“Nothing much, just..... wandered around town.”
“Sounds like quite the life!”, he said.
“Yea..... much better than what you have to do everyday, I’d say!”, she smiled.
“Maybe so. But at least I get paid for it.”, he smirked. “I don’t know if anyone else in this force feels the same way I do, but as long as nobody gets shot, and I can get to a drive-thru during the late shifts, then that’s all I need to be happy with my job.”
Agnes felt marked, although she didn’t know why.
“You didn’t happen to walk inside a bank, yesterday, did you?”, he asked flatly.
The scrape of words against her ears created sparks within her brain, and a shock to her heart. Agnes knew that she was being threatened, as her heart beat faster. Her dark secret was in the public domain.
“Bank?”, she parroted lamely.
The detective rose from his seat, walked to the door. He opened it, letting another officer enter the room. This second man was accompanied by a young, dark-haired woman.
“Hello.”, the detective greeted. “Thanks for agreeing to come in here this morning.”, said the detective.
“Sure, no problem.....”, the young woman replied, her words slurred from her nervousness.
“Agnes.... this is Dawn. She works at the TD Bank on Kent Street. Do you recognize her?”
That face. It was unmistakable.
“Yes.”, was what Agnes replied.
The detective smiled, as if quietly celebrating a modest victory. “Yes? You have seen this person before?”
The dark-haired woman returned Agnes’ stunned stare, replacing it with a peculiar curiosity.
This dark-haired woman. Sitting in the drivers’ seat, behaving so bubbly next to that man, the man who sat in the food bank playing the part of a poor, hungry soul, before returning to a world that he was able to afford after all.
The detective turned to the dark-haired woman. “Do you recognize this woman, Dawn?”
“yes... I thought I saw someone in that jacket, while I was doing some errands. She was hanging around the ATM machine. I never took much notice of it. But then one of our customers returned to the bank to say that he forgot the money from the machine. Normally, there’s not much you can do..... it’s your responsibility, not the bank’s. But for some reason, I thought about the person with that jacket -- the jacket that looked as if it had been worn for days. Not the mark of a clean person, perhaps in more ways than one. I was able to bring this up to the manager, and we looked at the security camera footage......”
Agnes felt restrained. She didn’t know how to escape from this one.
The detective was prepared to speak, to say thank you to the young woman for fingering this petty criminal. But Agnes beat him to the punch.
“Fine! I’m poor!”, she screams. “But who’s fault is that? It’s not mine! It’s not mine!! It’s all your fault. Puffing yourself up with all your stuff! It’s not fair! Not fair at all!”
The detective and the woman were surprised by Agnes’ outburst, but the detective regained his composure quickly enough to turn to the young woman. “She was loaded last night.”, he reassured the woman. “Her sense of the world is still a little off, I would say.”
“I bet you’re stealing all sorts of money from behind the counter.”, Agnes continued. “Just like your boyfriend stealing food from the food bank.”
The detective divided his glances between the two women. “This not about her, Agnes... it’s about you...” Yet his statement betrayed a slight curiosity, if only for a casual second. “I have no idea what she does in her spare time. All I know for certain, is that you have been accused of a crime, and we have evidence that would give a probable chance of conviction. She’s not official business... you are the official business.” He spoke calmly, with a touch of ill-concern.
The young woman, the woman Agnes had fevered thoughts about, continued to observe what was occurring. She concluded that this frantic, confused woman wasn’t much of a criminal mastermind.
“Little tramp like that...”, Agnes grumbles, her voice quiet static underneath her breath. “... would love to rob the bank.”
The young woman’s face was splashed with shock, and her mouth curled into a gaping hole of disbelief, bubbling with sarcasm underneath.
“.... what does she know about tramps. Anybody who dresses better than she is a tramp. Anyone who has a job is an arrogant showoff. Anyone who lives better than she is a thief. If she doesn’t have anything, it’s because it was stolen from her.” The young woman focussed her eyes more clearly upon Agnes. “I feel pity for you.”
Agnes had no longer any will to defend herself, as the moonshine still lingered in her stomach.
“We no longer need your services anymore.”, the detective addressed the young woman. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”, she responded, her voice still coated with stunned amusement. “I don’t want to hear any more of this. I’m a little apprehensive about where my emotions might find themselves......”
The young woman departed, returning to her own personal thief, one of those many who were accused in Agnes’ diminutive, homemade court.
“You really enjoy arguing, don’t you?”, the detective smirked.
“You guys can’t prove what I did.”, she insisted, as if mere words revealed the truth in its entirety. “I don’t do stuff like that! I don’t!”
“Videotapes don’t lie.”, he said flatly.
“Jesus!”, feeling herself beginning to choke, her voice cracking. “I just stay in the homeless shelter sometimes, if I find it too cold to sleep behind a dumpster at night. I pick up a few quarters that are lying around.....”
“But not from other people? You don’t panhandle?”
“No. I have.....”, desperately attempting to rip out a character from her empty imagination, “.... dignity. People drop coins all the time, slipping from their fingers as they try to jam them in those rusty parking metres. The coins roll away, get lost... people don’t bother rooting around for ten cents. Happens all the time.”
“I’m aware of your situation.” The officer blocked Agnes’ arguments from his mind. “I know that there’s virtually no chance of you repaying the bank.”
Agnes was not sure if she was being permitted to feel relieved. She had nothing to lose, anyway.
“..... but..... maybe he got what he deserved for being so careless....”, smirking to himself. “.... letting any desperate bastard, or common thief, take it for themselves. Maybe the bank should charge him for being careless with their money.”
“Wh.. what’s going to happen to me?”, Agnes sobbed.
“Well......”, he paused. “What always happens. The bank has the right to press charges. You have the right to defend yourself. I can’t send you back out on the street, because God knows where we’ll ever be able to find you. The fact that you’re homeless.... means that you can go anywhere. Stability and social graces aren’t exactly routine with you. It’s freedom, I suppose..... of a sort.”
Agnes felt defeated in every bone of her body. Even during those hopeless nights in record-breaking cold weather, she never felt the way that she felt right at this moment.
“I’ll have to keep you here overnight.”, the officer continued. “I’ll have to keep you until we know what is going to happen.”
Agnes was frightened. She wasn’t so last night, when she had a warm place to sleep. She even got a free meal from it. But now she imagined herself in the courtroom, sentenced to months in prison. Her crime was theft, or maybe it was her lifestyle. She realized that her road was a one-way street, leading to a dead end.
Now she had added another enemy to the list of those who she felt was against her. The law was telling her that she was wrong, that everything about her was wrong. If she had just took more control of herself last night, she might have woken up behind a dumpster instead of in jail.
*
The guard was on hand to return Agnes to her jail cell.
The time was 11:30 am. Normally she would be hobbling up to the food bank, hoping to receive at least a hot dog and a cup of coffee. Today, however, she was to be eating inside a prison room. The food wouldn’t be any different, and it would have been offered out of generosity, as usual -- but she wasn’t concerned about that.
Her life was finished, she believed. That sweet freedom had lost its hold on her. Freedom. To walk around the street. To watch, like a voyeur, the comings and going of citizens who had different lives from she. To hide from the cold. To sleep in more than one place over a span of a week, a month, a year.
Closer, closer, she was led to that small cell. Her stomach felt wrong. It had been so since last evening. Every inch of every step she took resulted in more corrections needing to be made within her insides.
The door was locked behind her. Her entire frame became volatile. She saw that the toilet was out in the open. Privacy was a scarce commodity in a prison cell. But privacy was immediately slotted as second on her list of concerns, when she stumbled to the foot of the sickly white ivory, and vomited away all her mistakes of the past two days.
*
The bank had no desire to press charges against someone who had no hope of returning eighty dollars. Their decision was to reimburse their customer, and wash their hands clean of the whole affair. It wasn’t as if the bank was in fear of missing their profit target.
The next morning, Agnes was told that she would not have to face a criminal charge. She was free to leave, without a blemish on her permanent record.
Agnes observed the surroundings before she left. She started to feel a twinge of regret at her behavior in front of the detective. Because of the detective, she never felt a chill in the last two days. Because of him, her meals were consistent and tolerable. Maybe, in some twisted way, the detective was only trying to look out for her safety, for as long as he was able.
But as she walked toward the door, muttering her salutations, her minute twinge of regret evaporated, as she returned to her comfort zone. She went outside, feeling the brittle air against her skin. She was back in her regular cell, built with the surroundings of the real world, and the walls she built around her soul.
END
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Alice, a story in nine parts, posted on Sept 24, 2008 - http://www.epinions.com/content_5241348228
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