The Fallen Angel continued

What really happened.

Madeline listening

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A few weeks later our office moved. The bankruptcy had begun along with the move to the temporary bunker. I was there and at our next office infrequently, having no desk or prints to bid, except on one occasion. This separated us and I rarely talked to Madeline again.

But I bet it was one of the best Harlequin romances she’d ever enjoyed. Certainly her heart was in it, as I unfolded my story and saw the gleams in her eyes. She stared straight at me from her chair, spellbound, and I leaned in closer, as if we were sharing secrets. Maybe I should have written Harlequin romances and made a living at it. But it would have taken this ‘Madeline’ in my daily life to inspire them. I’m sure she would have.

She’d be the main character in all of them, with little for me to invent on her part. The words she’d say I already knew. And her gestures and movements I would glean and learn to describe by just watching her, a delightful task. It would take just a series of improbable events, colorful places and lovers for me to invent, and maybe a few tabs of acid.

Here’s the real story of that night, which Madeline didn’t hear:

We were both so tired we slept most of the day. I woke up around one, took a shower but then lay down beside her again, just to nudge against her soft skin. She was still sound asleep and I hadn’t had such company in bed for a long time, a beautiful female, laying right next to me. So I just reclined there on my back, under the single sheet, barely touching her, close enough to hear her soft breathing. I was staring at the ceiling and wondering how someone with so many gifts could throw it all away for a momentary high, an artificial drug-induced buzz that only lasted a few minutes. I’d seen enough addicts, (mostly on St. Croix) ruining their whole lives for it, but most of them were losers to begin with. She seemed far better than that.

I thought of all my old theories of how university graduates could always maintain control. She’d told me the night before that she had a degree in journalism. I could only surmise that the drug had a far more potent affect on some, an allure or seduction impossible to resist in some people’s central core. I could easily reject it, dismiss it as nothing, as less than zero, an annoyance, as if someone blew smoke in my face, a nasty, toxic, plume of smoke.

I felt lucky I had this immunity, yet infinitely sad that she didn’t, and probably no cure for her. I lay there motionless till I heard the guys, Mickey and John, burst in the front door at five, home from work. She was still asleep all this time. She might have been at the end of some three-day binge, now catching up, who knows. But she did wake up to the noise, recognized me beside her, thanked me for sharing the bed and not disturbing her rest. It was a heartfelt thanks accompanied with a warm smile, probably one she rarely found a chance to express.

She asked to use the shower and while she was in the bathroom John cooked up a large meal, knowing we had a guest, meat and potatoes and a can of peas, set it on the table with four plates, just as she came out, along with four bottles of beer, a working man’s feast. She sat down with us, saying she hadn’t eaten in days and devoured her plate with gusto, along with us. When she finished, still in John’s white bathrobe from the bathroom door, (nobody said a word about her borrowing it) her hair still wet with droplets, she gets up from the table and sits on the couch, throws her hair back and with a look of deep satisfaction says: “all I need now is a good blowjob."

I think this statement might have given John the best and fullest laugh of his life. He nearly choked on his food. Mickey and I were equally laughing in tears. She certainly knew how to pay back hospitality. Then she went to my room and dressed, sat on the couch again as we cleaned up the table, took out her pipe, did a single hit, got up and said: “Well boys, I’ve got to go. Thanks for the good times."

She said this sounding like a cowgirl. As she got up and opened our front door, I said: “Your welcome back, any time”. Mickey and John nodded in assent. She looked back at all of us, paused and smiled, as if taking in a picture. She looked great, energized. Then she turned and left with a spring in her step, purse in hand, and with her boots and shiny, black skirt, a true hottie.

She stepped out into the dusk, the decadent, neon lit strip of Isla Verde, headed towards the projects. She never did revisit us there. Or maybe she tried. We were gone a few weeks later.

I forget her name. She certainly deserves one. If it comes back to me I’ll insert it. I’ll never forget her face. As I like to finish off a story, I did hear a good deal more about her a year later, once again by the most improbable coincidence. I consider myself blessed whenever I find a settling conclusion to a drama. All unsolved questions or unfinished business only irritate the mind, deep in its sub conscience, affecting sleep and even dreams.

I was finishing up a small store in Isla Verde with Kim, my new apprentice. I barely remember the store, just a few details. But it was the place she got a good jolt, her one and only, hooking up a 277 volt fluorescent light that was supposed to be off-line. It wasn’t, and that was my fault.

She fell five steps off the ladder onto the carpeted floor. I ran over but she was so shook up by the shock she asked me to let her lay there on the floor and catch her breath. I bent over, felt her quick pulse and asked if she was ‘okay’. She said she was, just wanting to lie still a bit. A hippy-looking American in his late forties saw her fall from outside the storefront window, (it was a strip mall) and rushed in to offer help. He had long, curly, gray hair below his shoulders and had some knowledge of our construction work because he knew of Victor. He lived a block away in an apartment and just happened to be passing by. I recognized him and mentioned this, that I recalled him talking to Ross one afternoon at the sidewalk bar. I was sitting across from them, disinterestedly listening. His name was Jim.

Anyways, we began to talk as we stood there looking down at Kim, asking her if she was feeling any better. She was wide-eyed and lucid, saying she just needed to rest. I fetched a water bottle from her knapsack, opened and handed it to her. She tried to drink on her back, spilling it, then turned to her side with difficulty. So Jim and I each grabbed an arm and dragged her to the wall so she could sit up and sip more easily. She still looked dazed. Then he told me he had an apartment nearby where she could rest more comfortably on a couch. But she said she’d be fine in a few minutes if we just leave her be.

I asked if there were other roommates there, seriously considering this proposition. He told me he lived alone but that a short while back he did have one young woman living with him, an American, a blond. He said she even looked like Kim. That’s why when he saw her fall down he ran in the store so fast. But that other girl had a terrible crack habit. She was a journalist before that. He found her on the street one night, hands against a wall, puking, stinking, disoriented and near death.

He didn’t have to go any further, I knew exactly who he was talking about. I told him I’d met her too, a year before, and had to hear her story.

He told me she stayed with him for six months. When he found her she was very ill. He carried her to his place. Then he slowly nurtured her back to health, letting her sleep most of the day and night, feeding her slices of fruit and spoons of soup as she lay in bed. She just had to open her mouth. He carried her to the toilet or a ready bath and shut the door. He was a true gentleman.

But he made sure she couldn’t leave the apartment. He had a deadbolt on the front door so she couldn’t slip away when he was asleep or out on errands. He put locks on all the windows and took the cord to the telephone whenever he left. He knew her habit, her craving. But she couldn’t even crawl from the bed to the bathroom in the first weeks.

She stayed with him all that time, away from crack and slowly recuperated. He never took advantage of her and as she regained her health and wits she thanked him and told him her life story. She amazed him with her intelligence, he being no lightweight himself as he’d studied psychology at some state college. They enjoyed each others company and talk all the more as the months rolled by.

Soon she was sitting at his small, kitchen table, making tea and helping with dinner, never out of a bathrobe as he’d hid her clothes, one more obstacle to her leaving if she found the chance. He’d told a neighbor couple and an ex-girlfriend about her and they were soon coming by, all the more as she slowly recovered and charmed them too with a deep interest in her case.

But when she was well again he faced a dilemma. He couldn’t keep her as a prisoner. That was kidnapping. As an invalid, in the months before, he could just claim he was nursing her. They all knew if they just let her walk out she’d head straight back to the projects and repeat her self-destruction. So they tried group session talks and every therapy they could think of. They were all completely focused on her recovery, all the more because they recognized she was such a talented and rare being.

They went through her purse and found some numbers and names. They contacted her family but no one was willing to take her back. Apparently she was a rebel from an early age, a runaway, and her first talent was blowing up every bridge she ever crossed. But after a year of bed-hopping she found a real boyfriend who helped her get into school and into journalism, supporting her. She earned her degree and moved up the ranks from a small publication to the Times through pure, raw talent and writing skill, still in her twenties, her looks, of course, helping out immensely. They never should have flown her to San Juan so young.

People can have some fatal addiction in them all their lives, like some rare allergy, but if they never encounter the aggravating catalyst they go through life healthy, never ever suspecting they have a flaw. I’m sure this happens more often than not. If we made everyone on their twentieth birthday take one big hit of crack we’d have twenty times more addicts then exist today. But most never come into contact with it. It has no place in their social circles. So they’re fortunate without even knowing it.

She was cursed in being sent to this place, but blessed in Jim finding her. After the phone calls, for which he was still in debt, they flew her back to the former boyfriend who helped her through school. And just by chance he’d recently broken up from a two year long relationship.

He was single again, and they talked for hours every night and after a million promises from her, in the sweetest voice, he assented. Harlequins don’t get any better than that. And I always considered them ridiculous fabrications.

Jim said she’d called him just a month ago, happy to say all was going well. I thanked him for all his kindness to her, one small relief to my troubled soul at the time, one unexpected piece of good news, a hundred others not good, with the bankruptcy of our company and my own loss of work and income.

This was the strangest scene, as all the while we were ignoring Kim on the floor, hurt, right next to us as we eagerly discussed the fate of another woman who looked a bit like her. I finally knelt down, excused us for this rudeness, but turned back to him, thanking him again for doing the right thing.

Kim

I wished, as I heard his story, that I could have taken his place, imagining the scenes he described, spending months beside her in her slow, bed-ridden recovery. But my motives weren’t so noble and I knew it. They all involved me in bed next to her, as before.

This good Samaritan had the perfect setup, a nice apartment, a spare bedroom, money, no job, pure motives and Christian compassion. His one reward for this was her company and her gratitude. He was a heavy pot smoker, his only indulgence as he didn’t drink. He shared this with her daily in clouds of smoke. He said it helped in stopping her cravings.

And I believe it did, as I’ve seen it do wonders for others. I considered him the luckiest man on Earth for the chance he’d been given, to save her. As I spilled out my over-the-top thanks, I told him again of my one night encounter with her, taking her to our condo for a bath and meal, some parts omitted.

He looked a bit confused at first. But then it all clicked, my concern for her and my thanks. He’d just helped out a lost soul in trouble, an expatriate like us, smart and so much worth saving, then sending her home, the rarest of good deeds in this world.