The rules that had become so much more relaxed with him there all the time pushing at them came back swiftly and ruthlessly. When he first led her into the apartment, clearing a path through the rubble with his foot, she took it in gentle stride. He was impressed with how well she faced the destruction of her safe place where she normally could function without help. She shuffled up behind him, sliding her hand up his arm to rest on his shoulder and tucked her face into the space between his shoulder blades and asked him to take her around, saying she needed to see how bad it was. When he begged her to let him clean up first she refused. "I need to see more," she whispered into his skin. "I need to know what he took." He resisted and argued, claiming they both got knocked around enough in the hotel kitchen, but she just murmured, "Bays." She didn't need to say anything else. Hearing her voice purring out his name was all he needed to do what he was told.
He twisted to look down over his shoulder at her, unable to keep from smiling, "You ain't gonna see much like that."
She shook her head, and took a trepidatious breath, "I don't need to see all of it," she murmured and requested that he take her to the kitchen, giving him directions to look in and under certain things. The bag of clothespins on the laundry basket was inside out and empty, the cracker tin was not only empty, but crushed under a boot and the box of soap flakes contained only soap. With each thing she asked him to check that turned up empty, her face grew more peaked and her grip on him tighter. Her chest of sewing notions was upturned and emptied, including a false bottomed drawer. In the bedrooms, both mattresses were pulled from the frames and sliced open, and the drawer holding Elvie's few simple delicates was out of the dresser and emptied.
Every hiding spot came up empty and she sank down onto the cut open mattress that hung half on and half off her bed with her lip trembling. "He cleaned us out. He's hard up this time." She stood up and fought her way to the door, forgetting about the mess while he begged her to tell him who did this. He understood that she had money hidden in all of the places they checked and that it was all gone, but he didn't know who would know that a houseful of kids living alone would have any kind of money. When she fell, he grabbed her around her waist and tried to set her on her feet, but she fought him too. "Get off me! We have to find the kids." She yelled, shoving him off of her. "They can't be out there all alone." She grabbed his arm. "Please go find Joey and Adrienne!"
"I'm not leaving you alone, Elvie," he answered quietly. "You'll break your neck trying to get a drink of water in this shit!"
"I don't need water, I need my brother and sister safe! Tomás could already be watching them!"
He couldn't hold it in anymore, "I need you safe! Don't you get that? I'm not leaving you alone in an apartment that is torn to shreds! Let me clean up around here and then I'll go find Aide and Joey for you, ok? They shouldn't see their home like this anyway!"
She laughed darkly, "This won't bother them, Bays. This is my father's calling card; we'd never see him if he didn't break in from time to time to steal from us. Why do you think I hid most of the money in the mattresses? I never left the house till you came along. He couldn't steal out from under us while we were sleeping!" She sighed, "The mess is only a problem for me, but they are not safe on the streets if what he took wasn't enough."
He stepped closer to her, trying to put his arms around her, but she shied away, "If they ain't back by the time I finish the kitchen and the sitting room, I'll head straight out and find them."
She glared up at him, not liking being negotiated with. "The wedding dress, is the dress ok?" she murmured.
"It's fine," he assured, leading her back to the sitting room and holding it up for her to touch and see. She gripped the cushion to her chest and started looking around like she was trying to decide which way to go. Hugging that humpbacked pillow to her body, she tried reaching her cane out. "Whatcha lookin for?" he asked quietly, "Let me help, Vie."
She shrugged off the gentle hand he put on her shoulder and hugged her work harder. "Where's my chair?" she asked in a flat whisper, still trying to figure out for herself where she was and which way to turn. Normally, she could make her own way around the small space with no help, but her safe place was gone. He put his elbow on her hand and waited for her to take it, but she pulled away from that too. "Where is my chair?"
He sighed, "There's a chair to your left." She moved to her left, shuffling her feet to push anything in her way away until her cane hit one of the armchairs. Her hand reached out and felt the rough upholstery before pulling back like she'd been burned.
"No, my chair! I work in my chair so that the sun can tell me when to stop. I need you to stop trying to make this easier for yourself and just do what I say! I don't sit here, I sit in my chair! Why don't you know anything? I have work to do and you're always here, always making me go walk around and leave my work!" Her voice got higher and more panicked the more she talked and she dropped to a low squat around her work pillow. "I need to do my work. I need to do things my way. You made me forget," she said her voice turning soft. "You made it so this could happen."
His stomach hurt at her words. She hated everything she was doing with her? This was why he didn't stick around things and places. What he did was never the right thing, never enough. He looked around the room and saw her little three legged stool knocked over in the middle of her work area and shove the rubble aside clearing a path. There were grooves in the little rug showing him where to set the stool. "Right here, Vie," he mumbled, "clear all the way over." She stuck her cane out and moved slowly, shuffling, tapping checking every step. Her lack of trust in him hurt worse than her insistence that this was his fault. She sat on her little stool and stared down at her work, gently arranging her spools of thread and checking her pattern with her fingers.
He tried to lean over and kiss her hair, but she shrugged away and shook her head. "Not now, I can't do that now. Please, don't touch me now," her thready unsure voice whimpered. "This isn't your mess to clean up, it's ours. We don't need anyone else for Tomas to get to. I can't worry about someone else getting hurt by him." He looked at her for a second.
"You are my mess, and I'll clean you up if I feel like it. Now, who's Tomás?" She shuddered at the sound of that name rolling of his tongue and shook her head. He sighed heavily. "I ain't going nowhere, Vie," he said stubbornly and started cleaning.
They worked silently, though he couldn't help passively throwing things and making a racket from time to time. Her attempts to get rid of him and push him out hurt and he was upset that her own father would do such a thing. He was so busy stewing that he didn't hear the high heeled boots clicking down the steps. "Elvie!" Annabel called. "Mrs Fredericks sent me home early, so I came to help you out!" The door swung open and the red head gasped as she looked around. "Oh! Elvie? Are you all right?"
Elvie had thrown herself into her work and didn't respond. "She wasn't here," Bays said, sweeping up broken pottery in the kitchen. He dumped the bits and pieces into the trash barrel and went to Annabel, "I need you to do me a favor. Go find Adrienne, she should just be out by the school and then find Andy and send him uptown. He needs to find Joey and go to the hotel, tell Blink what happened here and ask him to send me some help for dinner. She won't forgive herself if them kids go hungry. Then, take Aide and go to Beth, Aide knows where to go. Beth will know what the right thing to say is and she'll make sure the scumbag who did this don't come back for more." Annabel didn't gush or question, she just turned and went to run back up the stairs, but paused.
"Bays, did you find the package that sits here, normally?" she asked quietly, not wanting to disturb Elvie. Her blue eyes looked up at him, wavering with worry.
"What package?" he asked, coming up behind the girl.
She put her hand on the shelf next to the door. "She puts brown paper here after I pick up the order for the week and as she finishes things, she puts them on the paper and keeps them nice until I pickup again. It was here when I left last night and she was almost done with the order." Elvie's lace cushion fell to the floor with a thunk as she stood from her stool and struggled to get across the small room to them. Looking with her eye, feeling with her fingers and muttering under her breath, she searched the shelf, before dropping to the floor and feeling around, but there was no paper. He took off with all of their savings and her order for the week.
"He wouldn't," she whimpered. Bays gestured for Annabel to get going and find the others while he knelt down to lift Elvie to her feet.
"It'll be ok. You can remake those things," he soothed, rubbing up and down on her upper arms, doing everything he could think of to be comforting and encouraging.
"I can't remake a weeks worth of work in two days!" she wailed angrily. "Even if I worked all day and all night, I couldn't. It takes time!"
"I know it does. I'll take you to the shop in the morning and we'll explain what happened. We'll get more time."
"Stop helping!" she snapped. "There is no more time! She quotes her customers a time and I have to have it there so that it can be put on the clothing, if I can't keep up, she'll give my business to someone who can! That's always been the way of it. I need that contract and I can't even hire someone to come and help me because I have no money! I have nothing!" Her body was shaking so violently with the force of her yelling that he could feel it from beside him.
"Fine," he gritted. "I won't help no more."
Her hands gripped and clawed at one another as she looked around the room. "Can you...will you help me back?"
A smile fought its way through his hardened, annoyed expression. "Course I will," he answered and led her back to her stool. By the time he had the whole front room cleaned, about an hour had passed and there was a knock at the door. Elvie cringed, and though he wanted to go and hold her, he stayed back. "It's ok, Vie," he soothed. "They's friends, coming to help. Ain't no one gonna hurt you while I'm with you." He opened the door and never thought he could be so happy to see David Jacobs' serious, drawn face. "Boss? Nice of you to come out."
Dave stared at him hard, his blue eyes searching deep as he thought about what he wanted to say. "We're a family at the Benjamin, we take care of each other." His eyes flicked over his old friend's bruised face and a subtle, sardonic smirk curled his mouth, "You look terrible. You ran into her face while she was trying to kiss you?"
Skittery's ears burned. "Not on purpose."
"And...which one of you is blind?"
"Shut up, bossman!" On an odd day full of strange happenings, joking with David was a welcome oddity. It reminded him of old times when things might not have been better, but they sure were more simple.
They grinned at each other for just a moment before remembering what brought them together away from the hotel. "Bernard is setting up a table and brought a crock of soup big enough to feed an army. He wanted you two to have these, though." He handed in plates covered with room service cloches. "Sarah and Edward will be here with bread soon and Race and Blink are here to help." He paused and peered past Skittery. "How is she?"
His hair fell in his face as he let his chin fall to his chest. "She's shook up," he answered truthfully. "She ain't said much except to give her some space."
David nodded and put a hand on his shoulder. "Do you need any help in here, cleaning up, or do you want me to stay outside?"
Skittery sighed again and looked back at Elvie, who was running her fingers absently over the head of her cane, her work put to the side and her glasses resting on her legs.
"Stay out for now, I think. I dunno. I dunno what I'm doing here, Dave. Mostly I'm just waiting around for someone to tell me what I'm supposed to do." He swallowed hard. He wasn't the leading type, he didn't know where to start. "Beth will come when Adrienne tells her. She'll know what to do."
Dave nodded and clapped him on the shoulder again. "There's a plate there for you too. You're no good to her if you don't take care of yourself."
The guys outside were yelling in alarm as the sound of running feet neared the front door, but the runner ignored them. "Elvie!" Auggie yelled, bombing down the stairs and shoving carelessly past David to get to his sister. "Are you ok? Did they hurt you?"
"The house..." she said, "We came home and everything was on the floor. Auggie, if he's that hard up, he might be in real trouble and Tomás might come back."
Auggie stared hard at her, his dark brow furrowing on his elfish face. "Elvie, what are you talking about?"
"Rob! Pop! Whatever you want to call him," she answered. "They only send him when Pop bets too much, but we need to get the kids inside. He can't have them. He can't take them if he can't get them. We have to get Adrienne and Joey home, we can't let them out where they can get them!"
He sighed and seemed to deflate, wrapping his arms around her tightly as if his narrow frame could hide her from the rest of the world. "Elvie, Pop's been in Sing Sing for two years, remember? He's in for at least six more months. This isn't Pop and Tomás only came that one time. He ain't coming back for any of us. You're safe. The kids are safe, Adrienne is with Beth and Andy is with Joey. They're safe." She stared blankly at him and then down at the lace in her lap, as if the knots and patterns had some sort of answer for her. She didn't move, Skittery wanted to make sure she hadn't somehow willed herself to stop breathing a few times. Suddenly she started twisting her bobbins again, checking her positions with her fingers and going on. Her brain needed to work. She had to keep going or all of this stress would drown her.
"Auggie," Skittery said, watching the boy try to talk to his sister. She ignored him, closing her eyes and putting all of her focus on the lace in her lap. "Come help me put the girls' room right," he said lowly, jerking his head at Dave to tell him to wait outside. Auggie looked back at Elvie, trying to get her attention one more time before reluctantly following.
Skittery hauled the mattress right and stuffed the straw ticking back in. He'd have to get a needle and thread to close it up, but for now he just wanted Elvie to be able to walk in her own home. "My sister ain't crazy, if that's what you're thinking," Auggie gritted, sniffling and wiping his face on his sleeve. His eyes were red and swollen from trying to be tough and hold back tears.
"I ain't thinking that," Skittery answered quietly, even though he was, just a little. "I'm thinking that I need to know what's happening right now so I know what to do and say next. She's telling me not to fix things, that I can't touch her when we were just kissing a little while ago...gimme a clue here Auggie." He shoved his hair back, accidentally brushing is nose with his wrist and wincing. Was that really just a few hours ago that they were kissing in the hotel kitchen?
Auggie sat down hard on the mattress and hugged a pillow to his bony chest. "When Pop would get into trouble with his bets when Mama was still alive, he'd raid Mama's hiding places. She saved everything she could to keep us safe, to keep the money away from him before he could gamble it away, to try to get us out of this shitty apartment. She moved the money each time he took it, so that he had to really look and really think about what he was doing before he took it. After Mama died and Elvie was hurt but working again, she was always a little more nervous than Mama ever was. She hid a little bit in each spot, and most of the time he would assume that what was there was all there was. He just thought he got better at guessing which spot to check. It made it so that he didn't make such a mess and we weren't cleaned out."
"Ok, so your Pop is a sleezebag, but what does that have to do with now if he's in the pen?"
"He IS in the pen! I took Adrienne and Joey to see him a few days before we met you and he had just gotten his parole denied. He's there for at least another year, but she always does this after he comes through! I thought maybe after going so long and meeting you and being... so...so much better than she was that she'd be ok. She's gonna lock us in here and not let us out for days! She's sure some guy, some guy with brown skin and blue eyes is going to come and steal us off the street." Skittery's hand closed tight around the hairbrush he picked up off the floor. He knew of someone with deep olive skin and blue eyes. "Can you believe that? You ever heard of anyone with brown skin and blue eyes?"
"Just once," he gritted, barely stopping himself from throwing the hairbrush to the floor.
"Really? I thought she was seeing shit or something because they hurt her so bad." Auggie put the pillow down. "She obsesses about Pop not having enough money to pay off the sharks, about them taking us the way they did her."
"But who else knows about her stashes? And who else would know to take her order for Mrs. Frederick's? Most loan sharks ain't gonna know the difference between the stuff they turn out for a penny a yard at a factory and what Elvie makes."
"They took her order?" The kid gulped. "She'll never make up all that work in time."
"Yeah, so she said," Skittery scratched the back of his head and started gingerly gathering delicates off the floor. At first he tied to just pitch them back into a drawer, but the more he thought, the more he slowed down and attempted folding them and setting them in carefully. "Who else knew?"
"Just us, and now you, I guess," Auggie answered shrugging, but paused and started rubbing at his mouth with the flat of his hand, before the tears started again. "Holy shit, Doug. He ain't hardly been home since that first night you came when she kicked him out." He took a shaking breath and looked at the man folding his sister's underwear carefully. "Don't leave her, Bays," he said quietly. "I know she's acting nuts and pushing you away and I know that we got more luggage than Grand Central around here, but she's so much better when she's with you. Even when you aren't here, she isn't so afraid anymore. You can't leave her! You can't leave us." His voice broke and big tears ran down his cheeks. "Don't let her push you out."
Skittery set down the chemise in his hand and pulled the kid into his chest and held him tight like he would his own little brother. "I ain't going no where, Kid. Even if she tells me to. You ask Andy, or my boss out there. Telling me what to do is basically telling me what I should try not doing. Even if I stay away because I respect her and care about her, I'm always there for you guys. You just gotta come find me." He pushed Auggie away to look into his red face. He saw so much of himself at the same age, finding himself suddenly responsible for an eight year old boy, so much of Andy when all of the concerns for his newsies got to be too much. It was the look of a boy being asked to be a man before he was ready for it.
In the front room, the door flew open and Elvie screamed, but Skittery just rolled his eyes, "That'll be Beth," he said, resting his hands on Auggie's shoulders. "I'mma go make sure your sister isn't on the ceiling, you stay here until you's ready."
Beth sat huddled in the armchair with Elvie, holding her friend's hands so that she couldn't do any further damage with her nervous scraping and wringing. He watched them, Elvie sitting vacant and Beth murmuring softly in her ear, trying to coax her back and anger boiled up inside of him. It was strong and fierce and like nothing he'd ever felt before unless he was protecting Andy. His eyes moved to Brendon, who was gently rocking the pram where Seamus slept and watching Skittery right back. One of his dark brows was raised, poised with interest.
Brendon worked with Carlos from time to time, acting as muscle when necessary for the skip trace turned private eye and no one but Race knew the Spaniard better. "Beth," he said abruptly, pushing forward and grabbing Brendon by his shirt, "taking your husband for a walk."
"Keep him as long as you need," she called as the men walked out, "Auggie and I can handle things here. Keep him on a tight leash though!"
Together they climbed the six steps and stepped out onto the street where the boys from the hotel were setting up a meal line fit for brunch at the grand dinning room at the Ben more so than a lower east side street corner. "What are you thinking, Bays?" Brendon asked.
Skittery raked his hand through his hair and undid the top button of his shirt. "You ever met a guy with a brown face and blue eyes who might call himself Tomás if the mood struck him right?" Brendon stopped in his tracks, his hazel eyes drilling into Skittery's profile as he rolled the sleeves of his shirt up. "Yeah, me too. We got a visit to pay." He stomped past his friends who were carrying on and bantering with Edward Harkins, Sarah's husband as he delivered dinner rolls. "Race, with me!" he barked as he went by.
Race stared after him a few steps before yanking the apron off of his uniform and discarding his hotel jacket as well with a big grin on his face. "Skittery's fired up and giving orders! It's enough to make a girl all tingly!"
"You'd know all about that, right?" Blink called after them.
A/N: Race decided to say that last line and I didn't stop giggling to myself for nearly an hour. I'm so excited for this next chapter, Skittery is not so excited to confront Carlos, but I'm pumped. This chapter came to me like a jigsaw puzzle and putting the pieces together was not easy, but it's finally done! Hope you all enjoy it! Read and review please!
