Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

we weren’t alone.
    He lifted his hand to shield his eyes when the overhead light came on. I stood there, mute, Venus’s keys in my hand, too surprised to think of how I could explain my presence here. That’s when I noticed he had been crying.
    “Please don’t tell anyone I was here,” he said.
    Dashiell approached, his tail going in circles now.
    “I didn’t want any of them to see me crying. They get upset too easily.”
    I went and sat next to him on Harry’s big leather couch. He had a wad of tissues in one hand and wiped his eyes with it, but the tears kept coming.
    “I don’t understand what’s happening. And I’m afraid. I don’t know who’s going to be hurt next, but sure as we’re sitting here, Rachel, someone is.”
    “You may be right,” I told him, looking at his small, polished shoes, his feet side by side, as if he were sitting in church. Then I looked back at his face. “What can we do about it?” I asked.
    “You and me?”
    “Exactly.”
    “What could we do?”
    “We could pool our information, for one thing.”
    “I don’t—”
    “If you don’t know what’s going on here, Homer, who does?”
    “Well, I hear some things, but—”
    He sat up, looking at me critically now, probably wondering what I was up to, if he could trust me.
    I was already in it up to my chin, but I was wondering the same thing about him.
    Sometimes you just have to take a chance.
    “You heard some things yourself, didn’t you? This afternoon, for instance, outside the dining room. You were listening to them in there, weren’t you?”
    “I was.”
    “How come?”
    “Because something funny’s going on here, don’t you think?“
    “I think it’s not so funny.”
    “That’s what I meant.”
    “I never said,” he told me.
    “What didn’t you say?”
    “That I saw you listening.”
    “How come?”
    Homer turned away from me.
    “Why didn’t you tell Eli what I did?”
    “Venus brought me here twelve years ago. She took a chance on me.”
    I looked at the little man’s face, the flush across his nose and cheeks.
    “You met at AA?”
    He nodded. “I didn’t think I was ready for no responsibility. The cleaning, okay, I needed the money. We both knew that. And that was something I could do. Because, see, I don’t clean one night, I won’t disappoint anyone so bad I can’t hardly stand the sight of myself in the morning.
    “But Venus said I was here for the kids first, to help Molly with the bedtime, to do the bed checks, to sit with any of them when they get bad dreams or night sweats.
    “I told her, no, I can’t do that. I can’t be counted on. I never could be. ‘You can now,’ she told me. ‘I would trust you with my life.’ I’ll never forget her saying that to me because the way she did, I knew I had to make it true. She went to Mr. Dietrich and worked it out. I don’t know what she told him, but knowing Venus, I’d say it was the flat-out truth. That’s how she is, you know.”
    I nodded, thinking about how she’d hidden the truth from me. Or rather, eked it out. For Harry’s sake, she’d said.
    “When I seen you listening in on them, I figured maybe you was doing it for her, to find out what was happening here.”
    “That’s true. I am trying to help Venus. And I think you can help me do that, Homer.”
    He looked at those polished shoes of his, the laces even, tied just so, as if by paying careful attention to the minutia, that and going to meetings, you could keep your life from falling to pieces.
    “I never mean to—”
    “But it happens, right? You’re cleaning, and you hear someone on the phone, or you hear an argument. The way you saw me snooping today, by happenstance.”
    He nodded.
    “You see, this here building, it was a seaman’s hotel originally, before Mr. Dietrich bought it, got it fixed up so it would be right for the kids. It was meant for short-term visits, people staying here by themselves, not a place for lots of families, thick floors and walls you can’t hear through. Voices carry here. Mostly, it’s a helpful thing. The princess, she cries a lot at night, but she doesn’t get up and call me. From anywhere except the kitchen I can hear her, or any of them that needs me. I know to go to her, make things better. That’s my job. That’s what Venus hired me to do. She said I could understand them, because I’d been down. She said no one would ever wish to be where I spent a major chunk of my life, no one would ever choose to