No Good Deed

Bernadette Peters was nice.  Beyond sharing her name with the talented star of stage and screen, Bernadette had little in common with the celebrity.  Her complexion was clear, but not fair.  She was a brunette, but didn’t have the ember-like red highlights the star did.  She also couldn’t sing, dance, or tell a joke with effective timing.  But she was nice.

Bernadette held the door open for people and let people with only a few items cut ahead of her in the grocery store checkout lane.  She returned library books on time and always silenced her phone in the movie theater.  Her biggest concerns in life were keeping people around her comfortable and happy, which sometimes led to her being taken advantage of, but that was life sometimes.  It was important to be nice.

This innate value made Bernadette good at her job as an executive assistant.  Her boss, Mr. Manfredi,  was a regional vice president in a fairly large insurance company and he often couldn’t keep track of his meetings, obligations, or anniversaries without her attentive help.  She felt good about keeping his professional life in order, even if he was not generous with his praise or appreciation.  The daily good deeds and job well done were enough for Bernadette.

She often walked to the Starbucks at the end of the block with Carol, the office manager.  Carol could easily have taken the coffee order from Mr. Manfredi herself, but Bernadette enjoyed the time away from the office, walking and talking with Carol.  Carol was working on an MBA in the evenings and looked forward to having an office manager work for her someday.  She occasionally went out with girlfriends to dinner and drinking and came back with interesting, amusing, and occasionally embarrassing stories she shared with Bernadette, but she never invited Bernadette to go out with them, which was fine.  Clubs and bars weren’t Bernadette’s scene, and she was happy to listen to Carol’s anecdotes, always showing just enough interest and empathy to show she cared, but not so much to hint of any envy.  Envy wasn’t nice.

These daily walks also gave Bernadette the opportunity to see Ezekiel. The emaciated, bearded man of indeterminable age was usually camped out on a mat of flattened cardboard boxes just inside an alley between the cafe and the florist next door.  He wasn’t always there, but when he was Bernadette would tear her muffin or bagel in half to share with him.  She would stop and listen to him tell about leads on new jobs that never panned out, the family up the coast he might go live with soon, and other detailed stories of doubtful veracity.  It took only a couple of minutes each day, but Carol never stood with Bernadette for these exchanges.  She would wait halfway down the block, impatiently sighing and wishing she could scroll through her phone and still balance the two cardstock carriers of caffeinated beverages, but she learned the hard way months ago this was not a practical option.  That was an expensive day for the office petty cash fund.

“You really shouldn’t get so friendly with that guy,” Carol cautioned her colleague.

“Ezekiel?  Oh, he’s harmless.  He’s just had a hard time.”

“Well, the more handouts you give him the more he’ll stick around with his hand out.  He’s like a lost dog or the pigeons in the park.  No matter how much you give him, he’ll always want more.”

“He’s never asked me for anything.  I’ve always offered and he just accepts.  It’s fine.”

Carol huffed her disagreement but let the debate end there.  Bernadette caught Carol’s eye roll, but said nothing.  It’s her bagel, after all, so it doesn’t cost the office any extra, and it doesn’t cost her anything to be nice.

Back in the office, Mr. Manfredi was not in a patient mood.  “What took you two so long?”

Bernadette checked her watch to confirm they didn’t take any longer than they usually did while Carol threw her under the proverbial bus.  “Bernadette stopped to talk to her favorite stray.”

“Your what?”  Mr. Manfredi took his coffee from her and compulsively checked his phone for his stock updates, signaling that his interest in her response to his question was already low and decreasing with each flick of his thumb across the glass.

“It’s just a homeless man, um, an unhoused person that I usually see near Starbucks.”

“What, was he bothering you?  I can call the cops if he’s causing trouble.”

“No, no!  He’s not a problem.  I talk to him and share my bagel when I see him, that’s all.  It’s fine.”

“Hmph.  Those people don’t deserve your help.  They’re all junkies, criminals, and runaways, and they deserve what they get.  It’s just the consequences of their choices that put them where they are.

“Well, I don’t know about that…” Bernadette began, but when she saw she was talking to her boss’ back as he marched to his office, she let the matter drop.  Carol was already distributing everyone’s morning doses, so Bernadette sipped her green tea and walked past the copier to her desk outside Mr. Manfredi’s office.

“I think it’s nice that you help that man.”

Bernadette’s head popped up from her drink at the unsolicited opinion.  She hadn’t even seen Harmony standing there by the stacked cases of printer paper.  Her “shades of beige” ensemble blended quite well with the walls of the office.  “I’m sorry, what?”

“The homeless man.  I think it’s nice of you to help him out.”

“Well, thank you.  I appreciate that.”  Her eyes were drawn to the gold crucifix Harmony always wore with every outfit.  It looked like real gold and was showing signs of wear from Harmony’s frequent rubbing of the thing between her thumb and index finger.

“You know, we’re all children of the same God.” Rub, rub.

Bernadette had not been raised in a religious family of any persuasion and knew no such thing, though she understood many other people did believe it to be true.  She also knew religion could be a touchy topic for many, so she selected a non-committal response. “Oh?”

“Yes.  God made everyone on Earth and He loves them all, even when they make bad choices.  Kind of like we love our children even when they get in trouble.  We may not be happy with them, but we still love them.  It’s the same with God, and when people pray for help or relief, it’s not always a miracle with angels that God sends.  It almost never is.  He usually sends people like you.”

“Oh, um, thank you.”  Bernadette had never been told she was a miracle or the answer to someone’s prayer before.  It gave her a warm, effervescent sensation in her chest that ascended to her head and was about to leak out of her eyes.  She turned away from Harmony and made an obvious show of arranging the papers on her desk until Harmony departed.  When her face was back under her control, she opened her computer and set to her business of appointments and emails and didn’t think about Harmony, Carol, or Ezekiel for the rest of the day.

Bernadette didn’t see Ezekiel for most of the week.  His cardboard mats were gone, so she guessed he made it into a shelter or other safe place.  When Friday arrived Carol took a personal day off, and Bernadette made the office coffee run alone.  She saw Ezekiel’s mats, backpack, and sleeping bag in their usual place at the mouth of the alley, though Ezekiel wasn’t there when Bernadette entered Starbucks.  When she left the cafe, she peered down the alley to see if he was looking through a dumpster or maybe just relieving himself.  Indeed, he was peeking from behind a dumpster and ducked out of sight when she saw him like a child playing hide-and-seek.

“Ezekiel!”  She tried to wave at him, but with her arms laden with drinks and baked goods, she just flapped a little like a penguin.  He popped up like he had been pinched, and darted back down the alley.  As he neared the end of the litter-strewn space between buildings, he turned and beckoned to her.

“Bernie, come here!  I need your help!”  He waved again at her, the pale skin of his scabbed and smudged arm starkly contrasting with the dank of the alley walls.  At this time of day in this part of the year, the sun shone almost perfectly down the alley.  Despite the light, Ezekiel found shadows to stand in as he called to Bernadette again.  “Back here!”

Bernadette’s eyes darted up and down the sidewalk.  None of the passersby were watching her or seemed to care what she was doing, only that she was taking up space on the pavement.  She paused for a second longer to ignore her intuition and stepped boldly past the dumpster and Ezekiel’s makeshift bed.  The sunlight warmed her shoulders and gave her confidence that she was making the right choice, being nice, and doing a good deed, whatever it might wind up being.  Ezekiel popped in and out of vision as he crept along the shadowy wall where the light didn’t quite touch.  It was only when she arrived at the end of the way that she finally met her acquaintance face-to-face.  He scratched compulsively at his arms with trembling fingers.  His eyes dripped with desperation, and his haggard mouth blurted out, “I’m sorry.” 

He lept at her.

More than fifty dollars of lattes, cappuccinos, strained leaves, and frothed milk alternatives hit the ground as Bernadette flailed pointlessly.  She might as well have been shooing away a moth from her face with all the skill she wielded against Ezekiel’s lunge.  He grabbed her arms and shook her left and right, seemingly trying to knock her from her feet, but he, too, seemed to lack any degree of martial skill.  The awkward dance of a man who didn’t know how to attack someone and a woman who didn’t know how to defend herself could have been comical were it not so sad.

They circled around one another, crushing cups both plastic and paper underfoot until Ezekiel finally tackled her to the ground.  Rather, through the ground.  Bernadette hadn’t noticed before the wooden cellar doors at the end of the alley leading beneath one of the older buildings of the city.  Wet and rotten with age, they gave way beneath their combined weight and dropped them painfully down a half dozen equally aged wooden stairs.

In the twisting plunge, Ezekiel caught the brunt of the fall, cushioning Bernadette from the most damaging aspects of the obstructed gravity.  She tumbled and rolled off him onto a chilly concrete floor.  Ezekiel groaned and squirmed like a child who doesn’t want to get out of bed for school, and Bernadette leapt to her feet.  She lost a shoe somewhere and had a nasty gash down one leg, but adrenaline was clearing her mind, and she cast her eyes around her for something to use as a weapon.  She saw wooden shipping crates and barrels.  She saw steel shelves with moldering cardboard file boxes.  Her one bare foot squelched a thin layer of moist dust and dirt from the floor between her toes.  She and Ezekiel occupied a large rectangle of sunlight that followed them through the doors as if it wanted to see how this all played out.

A scraping shuffle from a darkened corner prodded her heart with a steel needle of fear.  A rat?  Poke, poke.  She whipped around, trying to see through the gloom.  A rabid raccoon?  Poke, poke.  The sunlight from above ruined her ability to see through the darkness, and the basement refused to reveal what was creeping towards her.  Another junkie bum?  Poke, poke.  Her heart skipped beats erratically, adrenaline turning from friend to foe in her veins.

She yelped when the pale, naked figure came into view, inching sideways towards her from the gloom.  She assumed it was a man until she could see its face.  Black, bat-like eyes and large, ragged ears tracked her every flinch.  An enormous, lipless mouth grinned rows of needled teeth, forcing Bernadette to think of the paper shredder in her office and what this horrid orifice ground up instead of paper.  Its skin was the color of a tombstone, grey and mottled, with patches of filthy black hair swinging from its forearms, a gnarled finger exposing a blade-like nail pointed at her.

Bernadette backed up, keeping the distance between herself and the creature until her back was against the wall beside the cracked stairs.  Ezekiel remained oblivious as he moaned and rolled to his hands and knees.  With mute intent, the ghoul twitched its inhuman face from Bernadette to Ezekiel and back.  It lingered with eyes locked with hers before flicking back to the man on the ground.  It lowered its hand until Bernadette was sure it was pointing no longer at her, but at Ezekiel.

“Him?”

The ghoul shuffled another inch closer until its clawed hand was just outside the ray of sunlight encasing the human pair.  Blood flowed freely from a wicked gash across Ezekiel’s scalp, a gory river glistening across his unwashed, matted hair.  The ghoul reached for the man, but yanked its hand back from the sunlight and growled.  Bernadette’s frantic imagination likened the creature’s guttural sound to a muscle car’s idling engine and throbbing, oversized tailpipe.  She shook the imagery from her mind.

“Not me,”  Bernadette had no idea if her words meant anything to this being, but it seemed to be waiting for something.  “Him?”

Ezekiel finally lifted his head from the ground, hands full of hair and blood.  “What?  Who are you talking…?”  His question was cut short by the sole of Bernadette’s remaining shoe crashing into his ribs, robbing him of his breath and sending him sailing out of the protective canopy of daylight.  The ghoul caught the wounded man with feral precision, sinking rows of piercing teeth into Ezekiel’s shoulder and dragging him backwards toward the corner from which it emerged.  It watched Bernadette as it backed away, and she watched Ezekiel’s blood flee from the bite like it was hoping to escape the cellar without the rest of him.  His final words might have included “no,” “please,” and “help,” but Bernadette couldn’t quite make them out through the blood and ichor clogging his throat.

When the only sign of the ghoul’s continued presence in the basement was wet chewing sounds in the darkness, Bernadette climbed up the splintered stairs to the surface.  Among the mess of ruined Starbucks cups she found her other shoe and replaced it on her foot.  Straightening her dress and blouse, Bernadette walked out of the alley.  She resolved to keep these events to herself, though she looked and smelled like she had lost a fight with a trash compactor.  She was disappointed in Ezekiel’s choices, but pitied the circumstances that drove him to them.  She would come up with some explanation for her appearance by the time she got back to work.  She would take the rest of the day off, at least, but she wouldn’t tell them about Ezekiel.  There was no point and, besides, it wouldn’t be nice.