The key to it all was the sausages. Maddy liked sausages. Before she had come to London she was mad about them. Granddad, God rest his soul, had been German. He used to make sausages. When she was too young to know about drug dealers or prostitutes she knew what cuts of meat made the best sausages. She knew that it was a rooky mistake to cut the meat too close.
"One bone in the tooth and they lose trust in you," he'd said."And once they lose confidence in the sausage, they won't enjoy the rest as much."
She also knew the importance of seasoning, and the different amount of grinding that you needed to make different kinds of sausages. Granddad's were "chunky" as he called them. He said that a sausage needed to have a bit of texture to it, and she had never, not once, found a piece of bone in his sausage.
Maddy had tried to get a job at a Slippery Joe's once. They had looked her over and turned her down without even offering her an explanation. She still liked their sausages though. Chunky if not a bit underspiced for her taste. There were five Slippery Joes in London. She hung around the front of them until she was driven off, sometimes by the owners, sometimes by bobbies who glared at her reminding her that loitering in a public street was a punishable offense. She moved along.
While she was walking slowly past the third Slippery Joe's she heard a bark. She turned to see a door open and a pair of brown beagles come out of a jewelry shop. The little dogs were held by an elderly lady wearing a blue coat topped with a black fur collar. They walked past Maddy, one dog sniffing at her feet as it passed before the woman pulled it along. She looked back at the jewelry store wondering momentarily if she should go in, but although she could last for ten minutes inside a Slippery Joe's before being asked to leave. (Homeless people did buy food occasionally). It was unlikely that she would even get entirely inside the jewelry store before the police were called on her. So she turned to follow the woman with the dogs.
The woman walked slowly letting the dogs sniff cars, and people, and pee on the lamp posts. Maddy had to saunter behind her looking in the store windows to make it seem as if she didn't have a purpose. That's when she saw the display. A mannequin carrying a rainbow colored umbrella and wearing red rain boots. Behind it on the rack were a host of rain boots in different colors including white.
A smile cracked Maddy's lips and she put her face against the glass and kissed it, so happy for a moment that she had solved the puzzle that she almost didn't notice that the old woman had turned a corner.
Maddy broke into a run stunning a couple by running between them and getting a few choice words at her back that would be sure to reflect badly on the sob if there was any karma in the world. Maddy was still optimistic enough to believe in karma even if she didn't believe in fairness. Those bad words would come back to that man later when he sat in a pub with that girl drinking. She'd look at his smiling face as he took a sip of beer and wonder if those bad words would be said to her if she ever chose to end it with him, and after realizing that they would be, she would decide never to begin at all.
Luckily the old woman was slow, and Maddy was able to watch her walk up to a building. One dog peed on the brown brick fence before she pulled it along and walked inside. Maddy warred with herself walking up to the fence and then back two times before deciding to risk entering. There was no doorman to scare her away and door had a glass front.
Maddy rushed forward looking at the woman who used a key on a chain containing a pink rabbit's foot to open a post box. She slammed it closed but it caught. She tried pushing it but it didn't stay closed.
Maddy rushed off to the side as the woman turned. One dog barked at her, but the old woman pulled him away shuffling into a lift, the doors closing with a ding. Maddy rushed into the abandoned lobby and looked at the half closed mailbox. The number was 215.
She repeated the number to remember it. Paper and pen were a luxury that she didn't have. She sang.
TWO FIFTEEN
SHOES WASHED CLEAN
SAUSAGES CUT TRUE AND LEAN.
It wasn't great, but it would last until she could walk the long way to Baker street. She didn't take cabs, and she didn't like the underground. She might occasion a bus, but walking was safer and she might be able to make some spare change on the way.
Mug caught up to her at Waterloo bridge. He grabbed her arm a little too firmly.
"Word is you've been touched by the rich man in the coat," he said not mincing words.
"What do you want." Maddy said in voice braver than she felt.
"People who get lucky breaks ought to be generous." He said.
"You mean like you were when you found that stash of money in a skip last month? I never saw a pee of that. You didn't give me nothin' though there was more than enough."
"But there's a difference." He said.
"What's that?"
"The difference is you owe me."
"I don't owe you the time of day." Maddy said pulling out of his grip and trying to look confident as she walked briskly away. Mug ran after her and grabbed her with both hands. "You let go of me!" she screamed.
"You don't know what I do for you." Mug said. "How many girls like you survive here without a protector. I let you sleep on my street and I don't ask for nothin' but I could you know."
"Your street? You don't own it. You're just a bully!"
"I don't know what sheltered life you came from, princess, but there ain't nothin' free. When you get money, you give it to me if you know what's good for you. There are other ways that I could take it out of you, but I don't. I like you, you remind me of my little sister, so I let you stay for nothin', but when you get somethin' you give it to me."
"No!" She said and tried to pull away. Someone started to stare so he smiled and put his arm firmly around her, pulling her away under the bridge where no one could see. Maddy could feel his warm breath on her cheek as he pretended that they were a couple having just had an argument. She tried to move out of his grip, but his arms were like iron. He pulled her behind a concrete barrier and pushed her against the wall his breath foul, the stubble on his chin making him look like he hadn't washed in days, which was most likely true.
"Maddy" He growled at her. "You're a thin, ugly little thing, but don't think that makes you safe. There are people who take girls like you and lock 'em in a room with nothin' but a bed and too few sheets to hang themselves. There are some men who even enjoy bouncing up and down on a pile of bones like yourself, and they don't care if you break, so don't act like I'm the worst thing out there. Don't act like there aren't worse things than enjoying the benefits of my protection, cause ugly as you are, even I get bored sometimes."
"Take it!" Maddy screamed throwing all the money she had left on the ground, the change rolling away across the concrete."Take your money and enjoy it. You never gave me nothing but a headache and a bruised arm in all of the time that I've known you. And you ain't gettin' nothing else from me ever again." Then Maddy turned and ran not watching as he rushed to chase after the money which was blowing away from them. She ran until she couldn't hear the sound of the ferry, until she couldn't smell the water in the air. Then she hid in an alcove of a building, a tiny space that was frequented only by herself and a nest of pigeons. She sat out of sight until she caught her breath. She pulled her clothes closer around herself, and rubbed her face waiting for her heart to stop hammering. She would have to find another place to stay. Mug was a stupid guy, but he was persistent. Once he got an idea in his mind, it didn't go away. She couldn't forget how he said that one day he'd beat the hell out of Dandy if he ever called him an Stupid Arse again and Dandy never did, but he beat him anyway. It took him a few weeks of repeating the words to himself, but he thought it so often that he couldn't rest until he had done it just to get it out of his head.
Now he had threatened her twice, first to sell her to a prostitution ring, and second to do her himself just 'cause he's bored. She knew that as he drank the money she had given him, he would think on it more and more until one night as she lay in the cardboard box that had been her home for most of a month, he would saunter over and ask her to pay again for his protection. Maddy huddled the privacy of her own coat, and cried.
Night had long fallen when Maddy finally found her way to the step of 221B Baker street. She had probably missed meeting the man. Regular people liked meeting in the daytime, business hours they called it, but then again the rich man in the coat could hardly be called a regular person could he? Maddy didn't care. She wasn't going back to her old place ever again. She would be content to wait here till morning for the man to return. She didn't expect money. The man paid first when he asked for help. No one ever said that he paid afterwards too. Strange that, expecting that he could trust people like her to do the work after they were paid. Trusting that they would feel obligated to report back to him without promising anything in return.
There was a cafe. It had closed hours ago, but she could still smell the baked bread. It smelled heavenly. It reminded her of the fresh rolls baked by Maman Mildred, not her real mom. They would come out of the oven hot and brown and she'd use a knife to pry them out of the muffin tin. Then she'd put a dab of butter on top of the perfectly arched surface only to watch it slide down the side. Maddy would snatch one up then, letting the butter cool her burning fingers as she tried to eat the steaming thing straight from the oven. Then Maman would clap her hands and shoo Maddy away, but she'd let her keep the roll.
Maman was dead now, and there was no food, only the smell. It would have to be enough, because Maddy hadn't bought any food before Mug had cornered her under the bridge. She turned as she heard the sound of a brisk footstep on the sidewalk. It was the man in the black coat. He walked up to her.
"Well?" he asked.
For a moment, her mind was completely blank, then she thought SHOES and sang...
"Two fifteen, Shoes washed clean, sausages cut true and lean."
"What was that?" he asked.
"I found the street. The slippery Joes on Mornington. There's a store selling white rain boots, and an old woman with two brown beagles came out of a jewelry store there and went into a brick-fronted apartment around the corner with a glass door, her flat was two fifteen."
The man in the black coat's eyes widened, and a hint of a smile touched his lips. Then he turned and walked up the steps and into the building.
Maddy leaned against the metal gate outside of the flat. The metal pushed into her back jabbing her through her thin coat. She hadn't expected anything, but still half a smile seemed like small return for the trouble, but then again, it wasn't the man's fault that she lost her money. She couldn't even claim to have had it stolen. Her stomach growled. It was too late to try the Chinese restaurant. Other folks would have cleared it out by now, and it was too far away. Maddy would have to find another place to go. Maybe closer to the city center she could scrounge enough change to get something out of a machine. At least she had had the smell of a good meal to keep her company.
She was just turning to go when the door opened and two men walked out. The man in the coat and a shorter man with blond hair. Apparently they had phoned a taxi because it showed up moments after the door opened. The shorter man got in but the man in the coat turned and thrust something in her hand before rushing away. She looked down into a box of Chinese take away. It hadn't even been opened. A smile crossed Maddy's face and she walked around the corner to find a private place to eat it. It was the best food she had had all year, not quite Maman's rolls, but still heavenly.
