Daisy, future Hollywood star and current member of the Red Hat Society, trudges along the edges of crumbling adobe walls, pushing her shopping cart filled with all her worldly possessions: sleeping bag, bits of food, knickknacks picked out of trash bins, clothes.
Graffiti and iron grates scar what's left of this onceflourishing side of the city. The streetlights flick on. From the shadows, she looks both ways before turning sharply and slipping down an alleyway. The smell of rotting garbage doesn't bother her a bit. Why should it? She's seen and smelled far worse things than decaying waste. Like that transient last month, new to the streets, beaten until every rib was shattered, blood seeping everywhere. She smelled fear while she watched him die. That smell is worse than a few whiffs of garbage. . Well, she doesn't allow herself to think of things like that for too very long. It can drive you insane, thinking too much.
Once the talent scouts find her, she's out of Phoenix but fast.
Daisy misses Nacho, her lover and friend. Has he abandoned her for the San Francisco streets, or will he return to the desert? Her life is like a soap opera. He'll come back; he always does. At least he found her a safe place to stay while he's away. An old storage shed behind an abandoned building. Nacho even installed a lock inside the shed so she'd be protected from the elements. The human elements, that is.
The young druggies are the worst. They are far more dangerous than anything Mother Nature can throw her way. Ready to beat you and stick you in the heart with knives just to steal the smallest bit of spare change. Anything for their next fix. So many threats on the streets: gangs, crazies, cops, druggies.
She has flyers in her shopping cart, pictures of the most deadly ones, circulated by the homeless, for the homeless. Stay away from that one, the posters say: like wanted posters, only these people aren't wanted by Daisy and the others. Daisy is at the hub of the action, as always. She knows everything that happens on the street, and she's extremely wary. That's why she's still alive while most of her old friends are dead.
Maybe it's time to pay her good friend Gretchen a visit, clean up, sleep in a real bed, get the jitters under control. The doll repairer was a real find, her and her aunt, and all those little doggies.
But what about her career as a Hollywood star? The street is where it's happening.
Glad it isn't July. How many of her kind died last summer from exposure to extreme heat? No water, the pavement steaming at one hundred and thirty degrees, burning her feet right through her shoes. She swam in the irrigation canals to survive.
Daisy jerks her head around at a sound behind her. A moan. Coming from the Dumpster, or behind the Dumpster.
Get inside the shed and bolt the door. She hears this in her head and knows it for what it is: good advice. But. . what if? What if it's someone in distress?
It's only the sound of despair. You hear it every day.
But. . what if it's Nacho?
Daisy pulls an aerosol can from her pocket. Pepper spray. She refuses to carry a concealed gun or knife. Wouldn't the cops love that? They're more interested in finding an excuse to arrest the victims than in solving all the homeless murders.
Another moan.
Leaving her shopping cart by the side of the shed, she edges along, flattened to the walls, always in the darkness, hiding from the streetlights and the rising moon. She hears another sound, but it's only a coyote in the distance.
A dark shape on the ground behind the Dumpster shifts slightly, and Daisy catches the movement. She has night eyes, cat eyes, she likes to think. Another reason she beats the odds.
The pepper spray acts as a buffer between Daisy and whoever is crumpled on the ground. She already knows it isn't Nacho.
"Help me." The whisper is so low and weak she almost misses the words.
A hand reaches out for her, and she sees who it is. The man writhing in pain is Ryan Maize.