January Girl and the Three Gifts
He had read books, newspapers and magazines. He knew that if you ran away sometimes you met people who did bad things to you; but he had also read fairy tales, so he knew there were kind people out there, side by side with the monsters. Neil Gaiman “October in the Chair” in Fragile Things
“See you, fangirl,” Irish said, as he wrapped his Mac cord one-handed and stowed it in a backpack so disreputable it gave credence to his sister’s bragging he could run Lava Falls as easily as hack. Janine knew that, too. And that he treated her like an honorary sister. On his way out she saw the tease-ends of a long scarf crocheted by some female admirer and a penny whistle in the back pocket of his jeans. Janine admired the good-bye view. Nice ass. Something vibrated. Janine read the text from her rotor Mama. Her thumbs flicked. Nice thumbs, Irish said to her once.
She wished just once her study partner’s glance would drop.
Texting her mother without thought, Janine kept her eyes on her life source - the computer screen. She was fanning on Neil Gaiman. He was cynical and sincere, attractive and open and his blog just wrote itself into her carrel - more real to her than most of her friends. What a writer of short stories! When Janine tried to write fiction, the longhaired cat named memoir climbed into her lap, kneaded its claws. All she could whine out were pitiful tales of vulnerable high school girls - the kind that didn’t eat or date enough or get into their first choice college. More unfortunately, the girls in her stories never met vampires of the handsome variety.
She sleeped her screen and rubbed her eyes to get grit out of the corners. She was blog-blind (two cupcake blogs probably took her over the top) and needed fresh air. Online she’d discovered that her hero had been in Boston, and she hadn’t known, hadn’t purchased a ticket to see him in his tuxedo (imagine that), hear him bless the year - every month of it, every person of it -- even Janine, born on January first (the tax-minus baby and no photo or free Pampers). 8:59 PM. How unmemorable is that? - five hundred, thirty-nine minutes into ninety-one.
Back to the blessing. Neil Gaiman’s benediction was all about magic, dreams, sweet madness, reading good books -- presumably his, even if Symphony Hall was strange product placement for The Graveyard Book, (maybe not, given the age of symphony audiences these days), kissing someone (right, that was easy, too, wasn’t it?) making good art, being kind and wise.
And then he said (because Janine had seen it on YouTube - how second-hand prophylactic is that?) “I hope that somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
Janine had ice blue eyes, magnified behind glasses with stars on the sides, fine wispy blond hair, a snowflake tattoo on her shoulder and helicopter parents. Nothing to make her even mildly unique in her sophomore class. Freshman year she tried to shock blackhawk-mama and trafficopter-dad. She wanted to surprise them, but always in predictable ways. No originality, even in rebellion.
Surprising herself? Was that possible, short of schizophrenic? Well, why not - the dead-end of January 15 would have to do. It was a Friday. Janine checked her wallet for plastic, stuck a single card in her back pocket and left the wallet in the book-hole she made after volunteer training at the Suffolk House of Correction where she learned that hollowed out books were vehicles for contraband. Veritable Hummer -- Norton’s Anthology. Her wallet would be supremely ignored. She shutdown and stacked the laptop on that bible of Brit lit, put the Smartphone on top of that, then the Kindle … and the Nook (addictions!) un-corked the iPod. Namaste.
Via negativa. If she couldn’t surprise herself by doing something, maybe she could surprise herself by leaving something behind. Then she waffled. She’d return tomorrow to find Norton’s reigning in solitary splendor. She carried her little cairn of technology to the basement and shoved them in a locker.
Via negativa also described Copley Square in light snow and street-light -- library lions … Philip Brooks (she hummed a few bars of “O Little Town”) … the sheer sheerness of the Hancock Building. She crossed the street, slouched for shelter under the great stony hen of Old South Church, headed down Dartmouth for Commonwealth Avenue. She smelled Joe’s American Bar and Grill and her vegan stomach growled for burger.
“Lady? lady?” Panhandler, she suspected. Probably slept in the First Baptist porch, a local haunt of interfaith hospitality. “LADY!” whine escalated. The adrenalin pumped and she felt more alive than she had in weeks … since Christmas Eve, when there had been all that candle wax and pine and feeling ten again for Santa.
“What do you want?” she was assertive and pleased with herself. Surprised?
“I’m hungry. Got a dollar?”
She didn’t ... exactly.
She spread her fingers. “No cash. Out for a walk.” She looked away, then something risky as World-of-Warcraft shifted and she met his eyes. Met his eyes. Probably, the most stupid thing she had ever done in her life. She started to move.
“Wait, lady!” He was in his backpack rooting around and the inside of her eyeballs opened with fear. OMG - this is it. I’m going to die!
The five-dollar bill he handed her was folded and creased like a nursing home cheek. “Get yusself some coffee,” he mumbled.
“Oh, I couldn’t … thank you. Thank you so much.” She had been on the edge of being so ungracious she cringed. He thought she needed money. Of course, he did not buy “out for a walk.” Who would?
“Look,” he said, and he stretched to perhaps five-six. Mediterranean … Greek or Italian maybe, with that nose and good hair, curls lengthened into greasy dreadlocks. Right age for Vietnam, scanning older by the short supply of teeth. He still looked strong, under layers of sweaters and scarves and the inevitable Boston Globe insulation. He had to be strong to stay alive out here. It was too cold for him to smell. Janine guessed the “he smells” was mind-cramped by visual rather than olfactory clues. Cultural clues. She was looking with her new who-stuck-those-eyeballs-in-your-head. He’d invited it, but he never looked directly at her, as if afraid it would frighten her. It would.
Courteously addressing snowflakes inches above her right shoulder, “Vincies Cafe, open all night for Emerson College kids. Tremont Street down by the Shubert. In the morning ask for Bridge.” He said it Brijz thorough his missing teeth. “Bridge over Troubled Waters. Health van. Good for runaways - won’t turn you in.”
“Thank you. You’re very kind, Mr. …”
“Ronnie. Ronnie De Luca. Remember now, Brijz. Be safe, young lady.”
“Janine.”
“Janine.”
One fairy godfather. Maybe surprising himself. A step toward her surprise? Or maybe she would be college-kid predictable and “pay it forward” in some cute tweet-worthy way rather than eating with it, which is what he wanted.
Janine hunched her shoulders under her coat. Down Berkeley? Arlington? The Public Gardens. She needed some adventure between Copley Square and nowhere, and the Public Gardens and Boston Common might offer it. Otherwise she could go straight to Vincies, feel like a loser (nothing new there), and raise a coffee to toast Ronnie.
The flower beds of summer were covered in dirty snow but, lit by street lamps and fringed by low cast iron scallops, their shadows ruched like old silver silk. All the squirrels had gone to bed with their nuts. Did squirrels that survived on human handouts have the good sense to gather nuts? For that matter were there nut trees in the Public Gardens among manicured fruit trees poised for spring blossoms? Oak maybe - no Boston almonds, Beacon Hill pecans. Janine considered squirrels, licensed like street musicians to beg from humans, going home each night to the nuts of Southie or Brighton or Cambridge after working their patch of the Public Garden.
She climbed the stone arch above the pond where swan boats glided tourists all summer on tradition and twenty-somethings’ quadriceps. This was Boston for many - a figure-eight in an old barge and Make Way for Ducklings. Look - that’s where they nested, learned to swim, followed their mother -- Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack. It was frozen now. Quiet. Except for the troll.
Except for the troll. Under the bridge. Troubling the waters. Janine’s eyes were well adjusted to darkness and she saw the mound on the ice in the shadow cast of the arch. Another homeless person, perhaps not so harmless as Ronnie De Luca. Or a corpse. It was a shaggy mound. Though she knew it couldn’t be fur, a trick of light predatorized it. It didn’t take much for her to freeze, so to speak, in place, one with the granite. No clip clop for her. She wasn’t moving.
The troll stirred, two-headed. Two-headed? At least two voiced.
“You aren’t texting? Put it away!’
“Love you, too, babe.”
“Put the damn phone away.”
“I’m cold. Snuggle with me.”
“This sleeping bag is rated for Tibet!”
“The subways are going to close soon.”
“Half an hour yet. And your mama’s not waiting up for you. Monica’s covering for you. Stay with me. Let me touch your hair. You have beautiful hair.”
“Where’s my hat. Give me back my hat. Stop distracting me!”
“Come here and tell me when I’ll see you again.”
Janine heard a tussle but there was laughter in it.
“Ben.”
“Um?’
“This is amazing. We’re on ice over water, and above the flow we are wrapped up and warm. No one knows we are here, right in the middle of Boston. No one. Our families would have a complete meltdown - oh, God, get it - meltdown? … like …”
“Like what?”
“Like Romeo and Juliet.”
“Ugh. TM-H. Too-much-highschool. Play with a bad ending due to lousy communication because Juliet was texting when she should have been paying attention.”
“Ben?”
Hum?’
“We’re both under the balcony.”
Janine moved back from the edge guessing that the ill-starred young lovers were looking up at her.”
“It’s a gender thing - Romeo and Romeo or rather Ben and Jared - both under the balcony.”
“That’s right! Hear this, if there are any girls up there - Juliet is not the moon and we are under the balcony and out of the closet. We are in love and you can tell anyone.”
“Did you have someone particular in mind?” She was just crazy tonight.
Old Marx Brothers movies had nothing on the sleeping bag cataclysm that greeted her unexpected voice. Bingo, she thought. Surprised someone … again. She leaned way out, laughing in spite of the peculiarity of the situation. “It’s all right,” she called down to them. “Don’t worry about me. In fact, I was afraid of you. I thought you were a troll.”
“Like Shrek, dude?” the irrepressible Jared.
“I think he’s an ogre, but yeah. So who am I supposed to tell … Jared?”
“OMG she knows our names!” two confused voices.
“Well, duh, Bardlings. And here is mine. Janine, born in January. There you are in a sleeping bag in the Public Garden and you each have someone. I am walking around the city all alone and a homeless man felt so sorry for me he gave me five dollars. Frightening? Not so much. So, get over yourselves.”
Jared declaimed, “Tell my mother. Tell my little sister. Tell Ms Olivier, my teacher in the third grade who really liked me. Tell Ayden Sheppard, the bully in the eighth grade that he will never be able to hurt me again because I have someone who can protect me. Tell … the Boy Scouts I want my fairy badge. Tell Taylor Lautner he’s beautiful. Tell my father I love him. Put it in my college applications. Tell it to the prom committee. Tell it to the swim team. Tell them ... tell them I like chocolate better than beer. Tell them I can dance.”
“You like chocolate more than beer?” Ben, now. “Could we play a little more to stereotype - brie better than beer, tapas better than tequila, foie gras better than Four Loco, and the inestimably lovely Janine better than … Jell-O shots?”
“So, let me guess … you guys from Lexington? Lincoln?”
“Newton.”
“Ah, hence the subway. Well, it’s a good new year for love, so love on. I’m off before I freeze to the railing.”
“Want to get warm?” hospitable Jared, of course.
To give Ben credit, “Keep me company while my beloved texts … whom-ever.”
There was a small wrestling sound.
She laughed, “Thanks, nicest offer I’ve had in a long time. But … I guess I’ll keep moving on … but to you, … she started to sing,
“When you want something but can’t name it, it’s under a streetlight,
it’s something you’ve never seen before, open the door.
Josh Radin, great song, and now it’s always going to make me think of you guys.”
“Awesome. ‘The Rock and the Tide’ CD?”
“You got it. Bye, guys. Watch the time, if you want to make the Green Line.”
“See you sometime, JA-neen.”
Janine regretted leaving them, her small new relationship … or relationship to a relationship … or voyeur -- was it voyeuse? to a relationship. The song played in her non-technologically enhanced head. A bit self-conscious, she mumbled it, pretending she was listening to an iPod.
“I wait for something under a streetlight,
it won’t be long, cause it’s dark, it’s cold,
it’s one of those nights where
something out there keeps me alive,
but I don’t know where to go.”
Lovely, I am romanticizing myself - and that is surprising. Not.
And not surprising was the next half-hour now that she was looking for someone or something - a third encounter. She was in a fairy tale right? Oh, dear. Gaiman’s were as grim as Grimm’s. And it was cold, very cold and very dark-not so musical or romantic right now. She crossed Charles, daring the Boston Common proper. Snow began to fall lightly. She held out her black fingerless glove and let the infinitely unique crystals be displayed for their brief white life.
Could she stick out her tongue and catch them? Of course. People would think she was high. For high, it was appropriate behavior. For college student, high was an appropriate state. Ergo. She didn’t want to disappoint the universe. She stuck out her tongue and felt them land, her heat extinguishing them completely.
The skating rink. Dark at this hour. She used to love skating, but the one time she had rented skates with friends her ankles had been limp as linguini. Irish had been there. (Put the skates on your thumbs - they’re stronger.) It had been fun and she had so much energy when she got back to the dorm. She made hot cocoa and wrote most of a paper. They hadn’t gone again. Finals, long papers, Christmas.
Janine emerged at the spiritual kiss formed by Park Street Church and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Lots of religious edifice by the Red Line station. Common Cathedral service on Sunday afternoons was the only worship she ever attended, and only when she was walking by at the right time. In youth group, two or a million years ago, they drove in to “help” the congregation of the homeless. They sang hymns, served sandwiches, walked to Quincy Market to spend more money than those guys saw in a month.
No hymns under the streetlights tonight. It was as deserted a Friday night she’d ever seen. Nobody walked from party to party; nobody slept on the grates. No cops. Down Tremont Street she passed the dark Majestic Theatre, full of the ghosts of old ingénues and stagehands. She could haunt them - she knew how to get in from her tech stint during freshman year. She’d liked that, too. Like skating. She was hungry.
She was hungry. She thought about the Tufts Medical Center cafeteria - night staff and families who couldn’t bear to go home or to hotels. There wouldn’t be students. Unlike Vincies, full of students. She would have to do that little do-you-invite-me-to-sit-down-or-do-I-invite-myself. And she was, for all intents and purposes, naked -- no e-reader, nothing hanging out of her ear, not even a … phone to text her mother, who’d probably already filed a missing person’s report.
She turned in, went down the stairs, from habit or the bill warm from Ronnie, so much warmer than plastic. It was dark. There was a tiny little square of floor, big enough for one comic, three musicians, or an improv troupe into condensed plot. A band was playing, probably for free, probably to get noticed.
They saw each other at the same time. His smile was broad, easy. Clearly Irish was glad to see her. “Hey!”
She wove through the tables, happy and doubtful as a princess homing in on a frog. “Hey, yourself. It’s been ... what? three hours?”
“Thought you were going to your dorm. Sit. Order. Pay for yourself - I’m broke.”
“No. Yes. I guess so. What else is new?”
He grinned again.
She warmed herself at it. (Like a couple boys snuggling on ice.) So this is where she was coming all night long. Around in a circle. Like a … to the server, “Donut, chocolate covered and a decaf latte.”
“Donut? Early for breakfast?”
She raised an eyebrow. The plate in front of him had half-eaten pancakes and bacon and a big mug that probably wasn’t decaf. And a coke and half-eaten sweet potato fries? Weird choices.
“Best donuts in town and the latte is mostly to put my hands around something warm. I’ve been on the strangest walk and met …”
“Wait. Hold your story till Jess sits down.”
And that was when Janine saw the girl headed for them, or for her fries and coke presumably, from the restrooms behind the bar. She was short and very plump, but she bounced as if not self-conscious at all. Janine wondered how that was possible in this girls’ universe. She had light brown hair in a messy pony-tail, bangle earrings, bright eyes, a grin the size of Alaska. Jess sort of lit up the place and Janine wondered whether if the other girl stuck out her tongue, she would melt. Right now, it would be convenient.
And scarves - lots of scarves wrapped around. Like the one hung over the back of Irish’s chair. Janus, two-face, smart and dumb. That was her.
“Hi … Jess?”
“Yep. And you must be Janine, Irish’s study friend. He told me you look like … hey like walking January.”
“He did, did he?”
“Nothing bad. But I know what you have tattooed on your shoulder. Very seasonal!”
Janine felt a veritable Valentine’s Day seep up her neck. Really nothing inappropriate about her tattoo. Then her donut arrived. Could she climb in the hole? But this was her night. Whatever.
“You crochet, right?” Janine pointed at the scarves and flicked her thumb at Irish’s demo model.
“Knit. I love it, but I just do back and forth, forth and back. Scarves, scarves, scarves. Different colors, different yarn. Keeps me sane in class. I’m a Communication Sciences and Disorders major. Not like film or theatre or you with creative writing. Lots of minimally engrossing lectures, read boorriinngg! Some people text. I knit. Enough with the constant contact.
“Would you like one? You look cold. Here…” She unwrapped three from her throat and they were … very long and, yes, different - purple and red stripes, orange fun fur, black with little mirrors hanging all over. Really pretty cool. All of them. Of course, Janine couldn’t take one could she? She didn’t spare Irish a glance. What was he thinking, asking her to sit down? Get a life-coach for date night protocol.
She hesitated. No, not about accepting. This was beautiful work and Speech Path kids were the sanest at Emerson. Choosing -- the choice was important somehow. Black with little mirrors was so her. Orange fun fur never would be. (Which door - the lady or the tiger?) …
“Seriously I could have this?” she reached for the purple and red, wool soft as a baby blanket, a fugitive from pastel … there were kind people out there, side by side with the monsters.
“Your Mom called me about an hour ago. Said you must have lost your cell phone. She was starting worry.” He wagged a finger, stifled a laugh.
“I didn’t take it with me tonight.”
“Now, that’s surprising. Borrow mine, Thumb-janina?”
“No this is surprising.” She wrapped the scarf around her neck several times until she felt warm. “I’ll call, actually talk to her. But not now. First we eat.”
Jess laughed, “Always my favorite choice, can’t you tell?”
“Well … Yeah. Looks as good on you as my new …” Janine stood up, twirling twenty inches of purple and red, “... panache looks on me.”