A Knight Of The Word

By the time Ross reached the lobby, the voices had died away. He paused in the doorway and peeked out guardedly. Della was bent close to a teenage girl who had collapsed in a chair to one side of the reception desk and begun to cry. A younger girl was clinging tightly to one arm, tears streaking her face. Dellas' hand was resting lightly on the older girl’s shoulder, and she was speaking softly in her ear. Della was a large woman with big hair, skin the colour of milk chocolate, and a series of dresses that seemed to come only in primary colours. She had both a law, gentle voice and a formidable stare, and she was adept at bringing either to bear as the situation demanded. In this instance, she seemed to have abandoned the latter in favour of the former, and already the older girl’s sobs were fading. A handful of women and children occupied chairs in other parts of the room. A few were looking over with a mix of curiosity and sympathy. New arrivals, applying for a bed. When they saw Ross, the women went back to work on their application forms and the children shifted their attention to him. He gave them a smile, and one little girl smiled back.

“There, now, you take your time, look it all over, fill out what you can, I’ll help you with the rest Della finished, straightening, taking her hand from the older girl’s shoulder. “That’s right. I’ll be right over here, you just come on up when you’re ready.”

She moved back behind the desk, giving Ross a glance and a shrug and settling herself into place with a sigh. Like all the frontdesk people, she was a trained professional with experience working intake. Della had been at Fresh Start for something like five years, almost from its inception, according to Ray Hapgood, so she had pretty much seen and heard it all.

Ross moved over to stand beside her, and she gave him a suspicious frown for his trouble.

“You at loose ends, Mr. Speechwriter? Need something more to do, maybe?”

“I’m depressed, and I need one of your smiles,” he answered with a wink.

“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.” Della 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.” Della 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 I’d 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 first aid 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 non-profit corporations funded by Seattle Public Schools, various charitable foundations, and private donations. Both organisations were the brainchild of one man —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.