Clang the wide brass headboard sat up tangled sheets and threadbare blanket and all that cloud of white-gold hair “My lady!” hoarsely harsh, “don’t – ”
The bed otherwise empty, in early, slantwise light.
Up on her feet, into the shadowed hall past the piles and stacks of books, into front room filled with so many more, the overstuffed loveseat in the middle of it all, and no one sat or laid upon it, the front door closed, chain lock in place, and all the curtains drawn. “Petra?” she says, hurried, worried, and then, hushed, “Ysabel?”
Push and press and shove that hair of hers back in a roughly ruthless tail, looking back down the book-thronged hall to the window at the end, curtains lofting gently in the breeze through the open sash. Looking to the door to her right. Lets go her hair, which promptly springs back to an unwieldy cloud.
Her hand on the knob. Turn, and push.
Sunlight indirectly cool, white tile, white walls, chipped golden trim, white sink and the rust-pocked mirror above it, white toilet with a brown shag cover on the lid, the tub, dingily white, but here the light is different, a warmly golden lambence rising from what’s within to swallow all watery morning, to gild the scratched enamel of the lip, to lick the soap-scrimmed furls of shower curtains drawn aside, to haze the very air, and carelessly scattered over the tiles stray sparks and whorls of golden dust, dust darkened to ash beneath the sink. A cautious step from grubby carpet to dulled white tile, another, avoiding that dust as best she can, but even so the chilly tinge is washed from her ankle, her shin, from hip and thigh to warm her belly, her breast, to touch her cloud of hair with sunny gold. The tub is filled with owr, a stilled turbulence of golden ripples and furrows, marred only at the foot of it, there beneath the faucet, the shower head high above, where the gold’s blistered with pocks of char, but also at the head of it, where a crater’s dug from the undulant stuff, down almost to the bottom of the tub, a goodly quantity scooped away.
“Oh,” says the Outlaw Marfisa, “my lady, no.”
“Donuts?” he says, hastening over to help, she’s got a couple-three tinfoil tubs lidded with sheets of white cardboard, he takes one of them from her, she’s shaking her pink-banged head, “Bagels,” she says, “day-olds, a donation,” setting her tubs on the table there by the one box of coffee, and here’s Big Jim Turk with another few tubs in his burly arms. “For them,” says Gloria Monday, with a gesture at the crowd about them, a number of beefily oversized white T-shirts, but also bright pops of color, sundresses, an aloha shirt, seersuckers of peppermint and lime sherbet, rainshells in athletic blues and woodsy greens and a startling safety yellow, closing about as he uncrimps the sides and corners of the tub he took, lifting the plain white lid away to reveal bagels nestled neatly row upon row, ambers shading to umbers all glossily crusted, some sprinkled with sesame, some with poppy, some salt, but there are more abstruse confections, various herbs and other more anonymous vegetal matter, clots of melted cheese, “From a Korean joint?” Gloria’s saying, as hands reach in to pluck, to pinch, to seize, to tear, to delicately take up with a folded napkin, “Up in Northeast. There’s kimchee bagels in here somewhere,” and, laughing, “Bagels!” he bellows, getting out of the way as best he can, “Coffee!” He starts handing out cups.
“Sir?” she’s saying, she’s been saying, “excuse me, sir?” not Gloria, no, she’s smaller, younger even, hair in an up-do coming undone, pink of her sweater marred by a swipe of something dark, and in her hands, he blinks, “Oh,” he says, “child, I’m afraid I don’t,” a hand coming up to the back of his head, that might round of tight black curls, but “They told me, sir,” she says, “you were the one to see, about this.”
In her hands a shoe, a loafer, a strap across the softly wrinkled vamp of it, and tucked there the wink of a copper penny.
“That isn’t the case,” he says, gruffly sorrowful. “It’s not me you need,” frowning, straightening to look up and past her, some perturbation there before the unlit stage, “but the,” he says, stepping away from the table, the coffee, the donuts, a hand held up in abeyance, they’re bowing, kneeling, but also looking about, puzzled, concerned, a woman passes among them, her hair a heap of tangled black curls, one of those oversized T-shirts, her hands held before her, folded together, “no, no,” she says, “not on my account, do not, oh, stand, do stand,” her face falling as she catches sight of someone’s upraised hand, holding a glass bottle, “oh, no, don’t,” she says, “keep that, give it your knight, remember your toradh, your liege, no, no,” as more hands are lifted, a repurposed jar, a small plastic box, another bottle, tinted green, “no! I’ve no pockets, nor my hands are free, no, if you must, if you must! Seek out Marfisa, or my Petra, seek them out and give to them, if you must, but first see to what is due!”
“Who are you?” calls someone from the crowd, and “What is this?” and “Yeah!” and “Hey!” and “What?” and scattered demands to “Hush!” and a booming “You!” but “Gentles, all!” she cries, “do not, there is no need, I have but a simple request, so very simple!” Lifting up her folded hands, and the clamor falls to a muttering quiet. “Might one of you have a bus pass, or ticket, or transfer, that I could use?” Lowering her hands. “I do not ask this as a favor, or a gift,” she says, opening her hands, and there, among them all, the light changes.
“What’s happening?” says the girl at his elbow.
“Nothing good,” says Gordon, the Porter Foresworn, looking away from the crowd to her, and the shoe in her hands. “I can’t help,” he says, “beyond a cup of coffee, and there are donuts. There’s food most days, and plenty of it, stay as long as you need, or would like, it’s a free house. My only advice would be,” and he points to the shoe, “lose that.”
“Sir, please,” she says, stricken. “I just want to go home.”
“We all do, child,” he says, “but we’ve come too far. Make your peace, and be rid of it.”
He signs with a flourish, but “wait” she says, “I sign for the trust. You sign for the firm.”
“Yes,” he says, “I,” but then, a frown, “oh,” he says. “Blast. Can’t we just,” his pen indecisively wavering.
“We should keep consistent,” she says.
“I suppose.” He sets to stripping little adhesive flags from the page before him, red, blue, blue. “We’ll need another signature page,” there’s a chirp from the phone on his desk, a sleekly steely console, “it’s a shareholder agreement, for the dispersal of the, ah, tertiary,” another chirp, “did you tell them we’re not to be disturbed?”
“I didn’t think to,” she says, blinking behind her narrow, black-rimmed spectacles. He punches a button on the phone, “Yes?” he says.
“Front desk has a Mr. Cornelius to see you.”
He lets go the button. “Well. Let’s clear this away,” a hand waved over the papers set out between them, “we can resume this, folly, when they’ve sent over a replacement.” Pushing back his chair, getting to his feet, working his grizzled head back and forth, reaching for the speaker button again. “Send him back,” he says, and lets go. “They should send over an assortment of blank signature pages,” he says, “in the almost inevitable certainty that I get it mixed up again.”
“Cornelius?” she says, gathering up the documents.
“You met him,” he says, tightening his tie, silk of a blue and pink cooly at odds with the warmth of his shirt. “At the thing, last week, for our mayor-elect.” Reaching for the linen jacket hung from the back of his angular chair. “I wasn’t at a thing last week for Mayor Killian,” she says, plucking up stripped-off adhesive flags.
“Really?” he says, caught in a shrug of the jacket half up his arms. “I could’ve sworn.” Hunches the jacket up and onto his shoulders, checks the cuffs, “Come in!” he calls, to the tap at the door.
Henderik Cornelius, sandy, smiling, sweeps into the office, suit of summery olive, white shirt unbuttoned at the throat, “Welund!” he booms, a hand up to be shook, “I do hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Of course not,” says Welund, companionably enough, a quickly vigorous handshake, a gesture toward her in houndstooth trousers, a loose black dolman blouse, “one of our associates, Anna Nirdlinger.”
“A pleasure,” says Henry, offering his hand for a single definite pump. “Actually,” turning back to Welund, “I was looking to bend your ear about the help I hoped you might provide.”
“Bend us both,” says Welund, with another gesture for the conversation pit that takes up half the office, there where the two walls of glass meet in a rather obtuse angle. He steps over scattered, tumbled cushions, yellow and ivory and beige striped with gold, to sit himself with his back to the window to the right.
“Hell of a view,” says Henry, his eyes on Welund as he steps over the cushions to set a tobacco loafer on the sunny shag that floors the pit, sitting himself with his back to the window to the left, “As you may know,” he says, but then, a look to Anna, sitting herself between them, her back to the great empty slab of the desk, “as you may not know,” he says, “I, ah, facilitate, introductions, between those with needs, and those with the means to meet them. Usually in the financial realm, of course – do you know Bob Bethel, and his Fides family of funds?”
Welund looks to Anna, who lifts a shoulder in the barest of shrugs, “They borrow money to buy debt at a steep discount,” she says.
“They play an important role in, supporting? extending? providing, financialisation services, to those who might otherwise have no recourse – education loans, automobile loans, of course they got their start, funnily enough, with boat loans, which are now – ”
“Medical,” says Welund, “debt.”
“Yes, Salubritas,” says Henry. “A pilot program, but very exciting, the maturation of the model; represents a quantum leap in what they bring to the table. They have, a, ah – ”
“They scrounge for nickels left on barrelheads,” says Welund. “Let’s not romanticize it.”
“God forbid,” says Henry. “Still. I can think of worse places to park a couple of tens of thousands.”
Anna, coolly, says, “You had a favor to ask.”
“Indeed,” says Henry. “There are needs, and means, beyond lucre.” He lifts a hand, reaching perhaps for a pocket inside his jacket, but veering aside to join his other hand in a sudden jerk to shoot his cuffs, sitting up, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, “Certain,” he says, “individuals, of means, have of late become aware of a, a substance, a pharmacon, one might call it, though it’s as yet unclear whether it’s mixed, or manufactured, or, ah, naturally occurring. It does not, react? or so I am told, as the ordinary stuff of the, the world, to a plethora of scientific tests and assays; quite vexing, I am assured, to some of the finest minds in, well, ever. But this, substance, is itself a means – a means to meet the deepest, direst needs,” and he shakes his head at the saying of it, his mien of sober wonder.
“What, exactly,” says Welund, “are we talking about?”
Henry sits up, and now he reaches into his jacket, “That,” he says, “would be the favor.” He holds out a small plain case of brushed aluminum in the space between them, thumbing aside the lid to reveal what’s within in the light, over that plushly sunny carpet, a tidy little pinch of brightly sharply shining golden dust. “I’m hoping you’ll tell me.”
Anna, sudden, fiercely stern behind those narrow spectacles. Welund, lips pursed, lifts out and up his hands, brings them together, fingers interlaced, behind his head laid against them. “Where are my manners,” he says. “Henry. Would you like something to drink?”
Alighting unsteadily, turning as her bare feet find the curb to wave to the driver who all-unnoticing levers the door shut, the bus beeping and blowing to unkneel itself, snorting as it pulls away. Her black hair’s been combed into somewhat more artful tangles about her shoulders, her oversized T-shirt splotched with something stickily red, dusted with sugar, and with gold, more gold spangles her legs streaked and smeared with darker grime, and milky filth about the edges and the bottoms of her stepping feet, past the glass-walled bus shelter in the shade of a tree overhanging the corner, past the bustling storefront under a sign that says Grand Central Bakery, a couple-few folks at the picnic tables out front, a croissant, a coffee, some avocado toast, past the vegetable stand tucked into a pocket of parking lot, with a hint of a limp into the cross street, heedless of the unearthly electric whine of a hatchback impatiently idling, just an arm’s length away, and in her wake leaves faintly glistening footprints.
Down the slope toward a broad intersection, a recumbent bicycle shop, a convenience store, back wall painted with a sunset-colored mural, a pizza place, a movie theater tucked away to one side, Caravaggio, The Tempest, Edward II, Wittgenstein, Blue, a burger joint ahead of her in the basement corner of the brand-new apartment block rising three floors above, The 20 On Hawthorne say the banners hung above, Units Available, the rest of the intersection hoving into view, a fifth street fed into it all at an angle, and the narrowed prow of an older building, there behind a couple of spreading young trees, an awning lined with lightbulbs yellow and pink and orange and red around the very acute front corner, and a single storey above, the whole of the edifice painted a worn and weathered ivory, with trim and ornaments slathered a deeply kelly green. Hung from the narrow cornice, between a couple of simple acroteria, a big sign brightly yellow and blue, Cruthfield Evans, it says, For Lease.
“White,” she says, obscurely pleased. “And green.”
Mannequins draped in polyester finery, more clothing hung on racks and folded on shelves beneath and about the windows to either side, garish yellows and oranges, sickly blues, muddy greens, a cacophonous welter of color and pattern she pushes through without a second look, making a beeline, “Excuse me,” for the back of the store, “ma’am, you can’t,” a door that says Employees Only, “hey, lady!”
A hallway cramped by boxes stacked along one wall, an ottoman abandoned at the other end, tilted on one broken leg. Knees and elbows she clambers over, bare feet smearing white vinyl, waveringly uprighting on the other side, a hand against the wall. The lobby beyond, mailboxes set in the wall, four of them dully stainless steel, scuffed plastic over handwritten numbers, a short flight of steps to the landing of a steep staircase, she looks up, a hand, both hands on the railing. She slowly starts to climb.
Some time later, not too much, one of the glass doors of that lobby swings open, and he slips inside, looking about. Steps close to the mailboxes, taps them one, two, three, four, “Huh,” he says, pushing his brass goggles higher up his forehead.
Up the steep flight to the landing where they switchback, but here he stops, listening, the sound of a sniffle, a hiccup of breath above, ahead. He starts, slowly, up the next steep flight.
She’s sat on the floor of the hallway in her grubby white T-shirt, arms about her legs drawn up, lifting her head at the sound of his footsteps, those black curls falling away from her face, her eyes gone yellow, brown cheeks smeared with tears. “Sweetloaf,” she says, “it’s gone! All of it, our apartment, the garden, the whole floor, gone!” A door opens somewhere behind her, “Be quiet!” somebody growls, a man leaning out of the doorway there, “get out of here, or I swear,” straightening, as he sees Sweetloaf on the stairs, “hey, she anything to do with you? Get her out of here, or I am calling the cops.”
Sweetloaf holds up a hand, nodding until that man with a grimace hauls himself back inside, and the door slams shut. Then he climbs the last few steps as Ysabel wipes her nose with the back of her hand, and sits him on the floor beside her.
“Fuck,” he says.
He reaches into his brown bomber jacket and pulls out a worn white envelope that he tips toward her. She takes it. Ys, it says, a scribble of dark blue ink.
Sincerely, Bagel founded 2025. Caravaggio, written by Derek Jarman, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, and Nicholas Ward-Jackson, ©1986. “The Tempest,” written by William Shakespeare, within the public domain. “Edward II,” written by Christopher Marlowe, within the public domain. Wittgenstein, written by Terry Eagleton, Derek Jarman, and Ken Butler, ©1993. Blue, written by Derek Jarman, ©1993.
