Stitch

The mattress was covered with a new blanket Dorrie had borrowed from Rose. It was her favorite color, orange, and it looked good under the lamp.

Dorrie was now playing Queen Margaret and Clarence in the play. She knew the lines. She knew the whole play. She sat wrapped in her new blanket, reciting,

By heaven, I think there is no man secure
But the Queen’s kindred and night-walking heralds.

Dorrie sat in her room late one night when the noise was loud, gunshots, voices, and was frightened. She wrote a poem. There was no one to take care of her. Only Shakespeare. The effluvium of Shakespeare could so easily become a demiurgic poem. Night-walking heralds. Security. Queen’s kindred. It was the night-walking heralds who would do you in every time. She looked out the window and saw the night-walking heralds, neighborhood drug dealers, barreling down the street.

Emporium of adjectives and verbs!

Her poems were...words borrowed from Shakespeare. Brooked imprisonment, patience, enemies.

The gangs were not always of her race. The dealers of other races hated her the most. She had brown hair and pale skin, the crooked teeth of the old aristocracy. The white drug dealers talked to her. Greetings and salutations! Sometimes they offered to sell prescription drugs at cut rates.

I get those from my doctor, she said vaguely. Not enough, of course. The government pays for only half the dose I need.

We can get it for you cheaper.

No, thanks. I’m too old to buy drugs.

She walked around the neighborhood, a witness to the deals. She caught whiffs of marijuana from porches. Other drugs, who knows what.

It was Wolf of Cry Wolf Books who told her about the gangs. Don’t go there, he would say. It looks like a park, but I’ve walked there. I’ve seen terrible things. Get out if you can.

Dorrie paid little attention. She walked where she walked. She wasn’t sure what Wolf really knew. He was an ex-policeman. He seemed scared of everything. She knew the people in her neighborhood and they knew her.

Wolf seemed like an actor to her. He reminded her of someone. Sometimes she thought he was really there to keep an eye on things. An ex-cop? Maybe. Maybe something else.

He had this obsession with Ed McBain. Other detective novels, too. Cop novels were popular. He also bought ‘30s and ‘40s "cozy" mysteries at estate sales and sold them to suburban women.

I would never read Agatha Christie, he said coolly.

Oh. Why not?

Dorrie didn’t read mysteries, either, but she pretended to. Everybody in her apartment building read mysteries. Dorrie sometimes bought a few when she was depressed and gave them to her neighbor. Her neighbor, always drugged out on something, usually heroin, was in stitches over Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie’s world seemed so safe compared to theirs.

No, this is too much. I’d like to see Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple here.

Dorrie barely knew who they were. She had skimmed one or two to be polite. She usually said something in French, her imitation of Poirot.

One night at rehearsal she was poring over an Agatha Christie, something about anonymous notes and hoaxes.

What are you doing? We’ve got stuff to do, Ben said, annoyed.

Yes, sir. She was irritated.

Ben didn’t want her in the play. He especially didn’t want her to play two parts in the play. But he had decided it was too much trouble to take over Clarence’s role. He had too much on his mind.

I didn’t mean to snap. I’m worried about the election. And Rose says she’s not voting.

Dorrie said it didn’t matter. The drug dealers were all voting.

What? He barked with laughter.

They care about this one. I know the signs.

You’re wrong.

Tell Rose.

Why does it matter? She’s not on drugs.

She’ll laugh. And wonder. And then she’ll vote. It’s psychology.