***By our 3rd place winner in our Charlie Bartlett Writing Competition - Alexis Landau

Dedication: “I would like to thank Josh Bernstein as part of the inspiration for this story.”

She tries to act like a normal person, like a real person walking down the street, done up in her long jean skirt and gray sweater, her stringy hair tied back with the same black ribbon she’s been using for years, as part of the whole “I’m legit story” that she likes to believe. She almost looks like a woman who could reach into her purse and show you her driver’s license, with a real address on it. But fine lines of dirt run under her fingernails, and the jean skirt has stains near the hem, and her face is weather-beaten and sunburned. A few restaurants on the Venice boardwalk give her food and don’t ask questions. She sits at one of the back tables and the waiters, who know her, serve her as if she is a real paying customer. She requests things, like extra Tabasco sauce, or a side of mashed potatoes and she doesn’t say please or thank you, holding her head up high, as if entitled to these small luxuries.

Well, she’s not. I’ll tell you she’s not because I’ve had enough of her queenly, holier-than-thou attitude. She sleeps two cots down from me at the shelter, St Joseph’s I mean, on the corner of Lincoln and Flower. She prepares for the street with such flourishes, I want to scream. Primping and preening and washing. Some days she prepares for hours, brushing her long hair over and over again, and laying out her jean skirt and white blouse on her cot, pretending she had a ton of other outfits to choose from, as if she had a fancy walk-in closet or some such thing. I sit cross-legged on my cot, with my playing cards all lined up for a game of solitaire, spread out on the blanket, but I’m really watching her. She pretends not to see me, even though every few minutes our eyes meet. She taunts me like this. And if we bump into each other on the outside, she’s especially cool about it and says something like, “Well, excuse me,” with her nose in the air, which used to be perfect until it got broken one night, and now it’s kind of lopsided and swollen. But even inside, passing her in the bathroom, under the blue lights (so we can’t find our veins), when I say hello her eyes go blank, as flat as the water on a clear day.

Today in the bathroom she leans over the sink, washing out her pits; the last thing she does before her daily outing. I stop in the doorway. She transfers the soap bar (Irish Spring) from one pit to the next, scrubbing hard.

“Hello Dolores.” She won’t look at me, as if I’m not here, but I’m making a real effort to be polite and nice.

I come towards her. “Good afternoon Dolores. How are you today?” Still no answer. She pats her pits with brown paper towels pulled from the dispenser. We’re always out of towels and I think it’s because she uses them lavishly, without a care for anyone else. As she starts buttoning up her little white blouse I pull the black ribbon from her hair. She flinches, turning towards me. I smile, dangling the ribbon in the air, between by thumb and forefinger. “Look what I got.”

She tries hard not to open her mouth, so she won’t have to talk to me, because talking to me would make it all the more clear that we’re in the same boat, that we’re no different. She stretches out her palm, waiting for me to hand it back. I debate whether to end the game now, or keep it going a little longer. She knows what I want. I want her to say, “Hello Anne.” That’s all. So easy. But she’s stubborn and queenly and only speaks to the people in charge behind the front desk. She thinks they are her best friends. I dangle it again. Nothing. So then I suck on it. She finally looks at me, in horror. The ribbon is part of her outfit, part of her legit disguise, and here I am, rolling it round my tongue. I chomp on the ribbon some more, as if it’s a great spaghetti dinner. I love noodles; it isn’t hard to imagine at all. She almost says something like “stop,” but she can’t bare it, so I swallow her precious black ribbon, gulping it down. Her eyes get all glassy first, then hard, then the tears fill up, and spill down her sunken cheeks.

“You should feel bad,” I say, “for being such a bitch.”

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