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Nineteen

While Dico and Ding were talking, Eddy was talking to himself in an extremely agitated fashion. He had risen to his feet and had started running toward the shelter entrance.

"I wonder what possessed him to come wandering down here at this hour if he's staying at the shelter," Felicity said.

"They probably just released him from jail," Rose said. "They tend to do a lot of the paperwork at night and as soon as it's finished, they release the prisoners—and people like him are left wandering at two and three o'clock in the morning. It's stupid, but it's the system."

"We'll see about that," Felicity said, as she and Rose left Dico to the attitudinally altered Ding and his friends and followed Eddy to the shelter's dark alleyway entrance. "Why is there no light at the doorway?" Felicity asked.

Rose shrugged, wondering if Felicity thought of herself as a building inspector as well as a fairy godmother.

The shelter was in a converted store. Its front door was for some crazy reason boarded up so that it could only be entered through the alley. Swaths of newsprint were taped to the picture-window front.

"We'll need a disguise at this point," Felicity said. "Your outfit'll do, given a bit of judicious fitting and smudging. Pull your shirt out and do something or other with that jacket. Tear it or something."

"No way," Rose said. "It cost me fifty bucks at your shop, and wasting a perfectly good coat is not my idea of a way to help the homeless." She pulled it off, turned it wrong side out with the lining rucked up in the back, and threw it over her shoulders. "Better?"

A yellow-toothed, straggly-haired bag lady stood before her dressed in a droopy collection of rags including what appeared to be the soiled trousers from a men's plaid polyester leisure suit, scuffed and torn saddle oxfords that had once been black and white, mismatched sox, a wrinkled and torn flannel shirt over a Huskies sweatshirt, topped by an army fatigue jacket and a daisy-covered vinyl rain cap from which greasy ropes of iron-gray hair drooped. She was carrying half a dozen plastic supermarket bags bulging with items Rose couldn't see.

"You're still too neat," this apparition told Rose. "Muss your hair."

Rose did so and they entered the shelter. It took a moment for Rose's eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was a good thing she didn't move before they did. Two or three years ago, shelters used to have proper beds for people to sleep in and bathrooms and cooking facilities. This one offered nothing but a place indoors to spread out and catch vermin and infections from the other denizens.

The sound of coughing, sneezing, sniffing and whimpering mingled with other voices, querulous, cranky and whiny, if not openly hostile. Several people were muttering and arguing with themselves like Crazy Eddy. The only warmth in the place was body heat, and the room smelled of backed-up plumbing, urine, farts, vomit and rancid body odor. No wonder so many preferred sleeping on the streets.

The place was an absolute breeding ground for disease, a sort of petri dish for people, with whole families piled together under one sleeping bag or on top of one bare mattress. The kids could be incubating tuberculosis, leprosy, plagues for all she knew. She wondered if the federal government's free vaccination programs had arrived in time to protect these kids before they were out on the streets, never mind their parents.

Rose felt a flush of shame that she had been unaware of these dismal conditions before. She had visited this place three or four years ago, shortly after she began her present job, and had somehow imagined, despite knowing about the budget cuts and diminished services, that the shelter had stayed the same. She blithely continued to send people here without ever returning to inspect it herself or volunteering to do anything for it. The fact was, by the time her day was ended and she rode back across the Sound, she was filled to the roots of her hair with misery and needed badly to escape it. No doubt everyone else who should have concerned themselves with the deterioration of such places had responded in the same way. With economic times so hard, many people were working extra hours and extra jobs just to try to keep going, and had less money and less time to help the less fortunate. There was still the fear that poverty and homelessness were contagious, and at times Rose wondered if the fear wasn't valid.

But this dump was no escape or haven for anyone.

There didn't seem to be any sort of coordinator or supervisor on the premises, which wasn't surprising, since no coordination or supervision of the facility seemed to have occurred for some time.

"I had no idea," Rose whispered, turning to Felicity, or at least to where Felicity had been standing. Then she realized the door behind her was ajar, and she stepped back into the street to see the bag lady/Felicity pull a cordless phone from one of her plastic bags and speak into it. A minute later, a city utilities truck arrived, and six workers climbed out, set up barriers and opened a manhole. Two of the workers, a man and a woman, flash-lights in hand, entered the building, and through the open door Rose saw one of them picking his way back to the bathroom while the woman set to work on the antiquated steam heat registers on the side and rear walls of the building.

In a very short time the two utilities workers emerged and the woman said to Felicity, whom she apparently recognized regardless of the rags, "That's it, Godmother. Just a tad plugged. The bathroom's a mess, though."

"No problem," Felicity said.

"That was the easiest job I ever had fixing this sort of pipe, to tell you the truth," said the woman, who was probably in her late fifties and was dressed in a coverall with a nametag that said "Morales." "You didn't have anything to do with that, did you?"

"No, dear, you just have a magic touch. You'll make a fine commissioner next election."

"Gracias, Godmother."

"De nada, dear. You will remember to send an inspector around regularly now, won't you, and a repair crew if necessary?"

"I will attend to this personally, Godmother, to show my appreciation for what you have done for me and my family."

"That eases my mind considerably, Esmeralda. Please tell your workmen there will be a van arriving shortly with hot coffee and breakfast. Another alumnus is in the process of buying the restaurant next door to convert to a soup kitchen."

"That is very gracious, Godmother, but I think we are finished now."

"Then adiós, Esmeralda, and give my love to your children and grandchildren."

"Adiós, Godmother."

Rose watched all this open-mouthed. "Wow, that's what I call networking. You wouldn't want to run for mayor—no, governor, would you?"

"Certainly not. My sort are guerilla do-gooders, vigilante busybodies, an underground composed of like-minded associates, most of whom are alumni, beneficiaries from past forays. Our tactics would never withstand the scrutiny of the press, or the paper-pushers for that matter, and except for fixing the utilities, which came out of the city budget—the part reserved for the mayor's birthday party—the activities are privately funded. I'm afraid the mayor will be appalled to learn that she's serving an inferior vintage of champagne to the one she originally ordered, but we must all make little sacrifices. Speaking of which"—she withdrew from her plastic bag scrub brushes, face masks, rubber gloves, sponges, disinfectant and cleanser—"you and I will now go clean the loo."

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Framed