Hooligan ch. 2

Michael found Lory tucked in and stood next to her. He knew she was not asleep but said nothing. The two shared a single mattress, hardly big enough for Michael alone, which Chamberlee had left on the floor but was quickly moved on top of boxes full of old books and spare tiles. It cleared much of the space and made the place that much more liveable, as the higher position also sheltered from draft. The two had also put blankets and sheets above and below the old mattress to make it softer and at least bare the resemblance of a bed. There were no pillows but neither of them seemed to mind. Perched on her tall bed Lory seemed an empress, fast asleep at the top of the world. Had he been on his knees, Michael would almost have touched the mattress with his chin. He had, however, no interest to share a bed with Lory that night. He smoked again, turned toward the open window and gave a long silent sigh that did much to lift some of the weight off his chest. “It’ll pass...” he thought. None of the four different psychologists that had seen Michael throughout his years at the orphanage could come close to an agreement on his character or temperament. He was melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric and sanguine, depending on whom you asked and his actions seemed to always contradict his attitude. When the time finally came to leave, the staff and other children knew as little about Michael as they did the day after his arrival. Many times it was impossible to determine what he was thinking. Most people just assumed he was upset and urged Lory, who was the only one he paid any mind to, to say something to cheer him up. On this night, however, Michael was not upset, nor was he mad or even detached the way he usually felt. It may have been the full moon, the clear sky which flooded the room with light, or the pale wind that summer usually brought, but Michael was indeed in a good mood. He even held the cigarette with two fingers, barely touching it with a third, in a way that only utmost relaxation could induce him to do. Leaning out the window, taking in some of the night air and forgetting all but the present, Michael felt indeed free and, in spite of the near-darkness, an observer that might have broken the veil of solitude during those fleeting moments would have noticed, after some close observation, the unmistakable beginnings of a smile. The next day, Lory awoke more tucked in than she’d been. Michael had eaten his share of whatever food was left and was reading an old book taken from one of the boxes. Of the title, she barely made out the word “catch”, before Michael noticed her and uttered “Good morning, Your Majesty!”, putting the book away. Lory rushed to check the time and replied furiously “You know, it’s not even late!”. Michael was wishing she had picked-up the humour in his tone but her eyes had seen enough sadness, and he let it go. She began to change. Any person who might have seen how many clothes Lory had accumulated over the years would never have guessed that the two had grown up in an orphanage. Every year, for Christmas and on other occasions, the children would receive donations of clothes, food, toys or sweets from charity or private donors. Thus, Lory would stockpile as much as she could and preserve the things she had for as long as possible so that, by the end, she had more things to take with her than any other child could have expected. She did, however, lack a decent pair of shoes. She had used the one she had for over three years, having never outgrown them, but the wear was quite visible. Because people kept shoes until they became unwearable, gifts of the sort were rare. Michael himself had the same pair for at least two years, and had often glued each of them in place. Still, for him it did not seem as much of a bother. He only left the orphanage with a few undershirts which he wore around the house and some loose pants which were too big to fit anyone else. The rest of his outfit was made up of some old t-shirts that the janitor had used to mop the floors but which Michael found were surprisingly wearable after some careful scrubbing, and a gray hoodie with wide pockets he got from a hobo who’d left it to dry after pissing on it in his sleep, in exchange for stitching his other clothes and letting him use their makeshift bathroom to shower and trim his hair and beard. All of these items needed work, but he was sufficiently skilled with the needle to fashion something that was practical, if not exactly pleasing to the eye. His old clothes he had either left in their usual place or had sewn into new things which, across different nights, he would slip into Lory’s stash among the rest. He was sometimes caught sneaking into the girls’ room and was often punished for this indiscretion. Many girls thought him a pervert but others were intrigued by his boldness, especially in later years. The previous summer, the orphanage had received a donation of old clothes from a second-hand shop which had closed down. Clothes were sorted out as usual and each of the nearly hundred and twenty children received a share. Lory had not had time to go through everything, so Michael took his chance. He cut up two of his shirts, stitched an inner white layer to an outer striped one, added elastic cord where needed and consolidated the work with double stitching to remove the sense of handicraft. The work thus completed was a two piece bathing suit, very similar to the ones the mannequins wore in the stores the two walked by every day on their way to school. Hoping the discovery of such an item would persuade Lory to abandon her prudence and accept an invitation to go swimming at the community pool, where orphans had free access, Michael attempted to place it among Lory’s other things that very night. Luck, however, was not with him. Miss Prim, who was on duty that night, was well aware of his habits, and discovered the ill-fated attempt at infiltration. She was not kind. Thinking the bathing suit to be stolen from one of the girls, she snapped and furiously slapped Michael repeatedly, causing his left eye to swell and his lower lip to bleed. He neither tried to resist nor explain the true purpose of his being there. All he did, when asked who the swim suit belonged to, was to say “Give this to Lory...” and return to his bed. She did not receive any invitation, as Michael was forbidden to go out the entire summer, following miss Prim’s complaining to the director about his behaviour. “Too bad...” Michael thought, seeing Lory’s young body arching to get into her day clothes. He found the change in her curious. She was tougher now, in spite of her meagre frame and small size. Her confidence had grown and she seemed harsher and more mature. Her gaze no longer seemed lost and worried as it had every day before. And, try as he might to avoid it, he noticed her breasts had grown firmer and her body rounder, gaining all the appeal that an eighteen year old could possess. She was becoming a fine young woman, albeit terribly thin and small for her age. Rules at the orphanage were simple. Children were divided into two groups, one with teenagers, and the other with children below age thirteen. Boys and girls were separated as they reached adolescence. All were housed and fed in the same building, but schooling was different for each group. The pre-teens received basic tutoring on the facility, while the teenagers were assigned to different crafting schools and taught different trades to prepare them for future employment. At age eighteen, all were released from care. To make the process easier, there was a fixed release date each year, which coincided with the end of the school year, roughly in late June or early July. It had, thus, been only a few weeks since Michael and Lory had taken the first steps into a new life. Michael sat remembering the unsure feel that went through both as they held hands and stepped out of the courtyard for the first time without the expectation to return. He still remembered the grip they shared, still not sure if Lory’s or his was tighter, and the paleness on her face the instant the gates permanently closed behind them. Nothing of that showed now and Michael hoped it was because whatever fear had brazed her face back then had done all the harm it could. “Your hair looks better when it’s loose” he meant to say but his lips were halted by a lively yet calm knock on the door. Lory rushed to open. “Heey!” sounded a cheerful voice, and Michael’s expression lightened. “I came by earlier but I guess you were asleep” she continued, stepping gracefully into the room and approaching Michael. He noticed how well the lemon-yellow dress she wore fitted her. It was tight fitting around the waist but otherwise lose and very casual, with large white lilies part of the design on the bottom portions. “Not everyone could pull off the look” thought Michael, yet she seemed every bit as fresh and warm as a summer morning after a stormy night. She was by no means beautiful, certainly not as stunning as even the most modest appearance on magazine covers, yet she had a rare mix of youthful flair and confidence that gave her an air of wholeness. “How are you two, did you get something to eat today?” she asked, eyeing him especially with an inquisitive glare but continued to smile. “Yes, mother...” he said jokingly and wrapped his arm around her waist, resting it on her right hip, pulling her closer. Lory always found their bantering ridiculous but didn’t feel like acting cynical or saying anything at all for that matter. She took an old brush and ran it vigorously through her hair, turning as far away from the two as the crammed space would allow and left them “to their own devices in their own world”, as she often put it. “What did you do to her?” Adelaide japed in whisper, “Every time I see her she’s upset”. “Maybe it’s something I didn’t do” Michael shrugged smirkingly and felt Adelaide’s hand slapping his gently, although she did laugh and snuck a giggling “Don’t be an ass!”. Michael had been in love with Adelaide almost from the day they’d met. At fifteen, all adolescents gained the legal right to work, and St. Andrew’s was careful to employ as many of the orphans as possible in whatever jobs could be found for them. Officially, this was to help children integrate on the outside, in preparation for adult life, getting them used to holding down steady employment and improving social skills. Unofficially, most of the jobs on offer had little or no pay and even less paperwork. The twenty hours of work per week were often exceeded by a hefty margin but few complaints were ever registered. Most orphans did not understand the link between the black cars and fancy suits in the director’s big office where papers got signed, and the nature of their employment. Most were just happy to be allowed out into the world, learn a trade and meet new people. Michael himself relished being away from St. Andrew’s and asked to work seven days a week rather than the usual four. Staffers knew he was a troublemaker and had been for years, so having him away of his own accord did not bother them the slightest. They agreed, in addition to his regular job, to allow Michael to do volunteer work at the local library, so he ended up spending the majority of his time away from the orphanage. Around this time, his disappearances began to happen. At the best of times he used St. Andrew’s as no more than an available bed. At the worst, he would go missing for days. Though there was cause for alarm, and several children did bring up the issue to Ms. Prim, the reasons why the staff at St. Andrew’s made no efforts to find and bring Michael back never became apparent to them. His nightly wonderings became the stuff of legend in the orphanage. Of all, only Lory seemed to stay clear of the hype. She would ask no questions and ignored or refused to answer any that were addressed to her. Like Michael, she too wanted nothing to do with that place any more than was necessary but, unlike him, she never took any steps to pursue this yearning. Her acts of rebellion were never as bold or as tangible as Michael’s. Indeed, she was not even sure Michael saw his gestures as rebellious or cared much if they were. She did not know whether his acts of walking away abruptly were, as the rumours told, motivated by a desire for freedom or a sense of adventure, or by something else altogether. She did not even seriously pose the question if the same amount of freedom could be allotted for her as well. She had often imagined just walking out the large oak-wood doors into a vastness of beaming light beyond which lay many a wonderful thing. She saw herself in a colourful new dress, ankle-high boots and a large summer brim hat with a long ribbon, running toward the end of the hallway toward a slit of white light growing ever wider and drowning all of the darkness on the halls of St. Andrew’s in torrents of bliss. The feeling was intoxicating, beaming and radiant, the breaking of the shackles that bound her into place. Yet she would always reach the end of the hall and go no further. The blinding white light that signified freedom and an escape from the cage of walls dispersed, yet her eyes could not pierce beyond the confines of her world. She could not see the wonderful things her mind wished to place in the endless void of light. So she stayed, to shut herself inward and reject any acknowledgement of the outside world. To all events inside St. Andrews and beyond she was oblivious, living inside her own mind, where pieces could be made to fit in place without the edifice of the world collapsing all around. She lived inside a cage of thoughts, built inside a cage of walls, built inside a world of lies. ----- Michael’s chores at the library seemed simple enough – mostly gathering books and placing them back on their shelves – but the seriousness with which he carried this out on the first day drew some amused comments from the ladies relaxing by the coffee machine. “Don’t look so angry, you’ll scare the books!” said one. “I wish my husband handled me that roughly” commented another and was shushed amid chuckles and loud laughter. Michael knew they were joking and felt good about being accepted so readily into the group. He was, after all, part of a minority group of men that spent time around books for more than the few minutes it took to loan whatever it was they needed, and he was also the freshest face in the workplace. He’d met Adelaide during the brief tour the boss had assigned the previous intern to give him. She was not among the group that took special notice of him but felt sorry to see how much he struggled to make a good impression. She remembered how lost she had been among the shelves only a few months before and amused herself seeing his naive pathos for the first time. The older women joked and had him run errands every time he asked if there was something that needed to be done. The first few days passed without Michael and Adelaide sharing any meaningful contact. Indeed neither of them could remember if they’d said hello, though probably Adelaide had been far more conscientious of this than he. Traditionally, Wednesdays had always been the slowest day of the week and much of it was spent chatting by the coffee machine or wasting whatever time one could get away with. Michael soon learned this and, by noon, had selected a number of titles that interested him and sat on the floor behind the information booth, with his head rested on the edge of the helpdesk, facing away from the entrance and busily reading Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality. His size and rather curious position meant that the hair on top of his head peered over the desk and was visible to anyone coming from the entrance. It was at the moment Adelaide’s fingers gently tugged the tips of his hair that their first genuine contact occurred. The gesture caught Michael absorbed in reading and he replied with an inquisitive glance that Adelaide felt compelled to respond to. She smiled and put a pile of books on the desk, enough to cover the visible puffs of hair that stood out, and asked what he was reading. Michael closed the book, keeping his index finger between the pages and lowered it so she could read the title. “You know the boss’ll see you if you read anywhere else” he said, looking to see the colour of her eyes. “Yea?” she exclaimed, and then came a realization. “So that’s why you sat down here uncomfortably!” she said. “Not that bad... the carpet here’s quite soft. Have a seat!” invited Michael. “Mmmm... I’ll stand” said Adelaide, not yet comfortable enough around him to accept such offers. Michael raised his eyebrows in a shrug. “You do know this is the only place in the building where the cameras can’t see you?” he asked knowingly. “Really, you actually checked to see?” she asked with amused curiosity. Michael muttered affirmatively and fixed his large eyes somewhere in the distance, following her with the edges of his vision, adding “Unless you like reading on the loo” and returning his eyes toward her again, repeating the invitation wordlessly. Adelaide looked around without much subtlety, then said “Move over!”. They spent the last few hours chatting, teasing and throwing quick glances to see whether any of the higher-ups were approaching. After closing-time, the janitor found them sitting in roughly the same place, numb and ignorant, and asked whether they’d like the keys themselves, provided they came early the following day to let everyone in. Michael was in no real hurry to get anywhere, but Adelaide jumped and felt the sting of thousands of needles in her legs and thighs, as blood began to run properly through them again. She looked at the time worryingly and almost cursed aloud that she’d missed the time her mother usually had dinner ready. The two walked out together and agreed to share a cab, although Michael at first resisted. In the end, Adelaide got her way and paid for his leg of the journey as well. They both got on, rode to her place and Michael carried on to some random point on the horizon, where he thought the nearest looking star was pointing. He did not make it home that night. From then on, the two sought each other’s company as often as time afforded. Adelaide often brought lunch for them to share and the rations grew larger every day, although she didn’t seem to notice and Michael never brought it up. He disliked charity but had grown resigned to it at St. Andrew’s. Had there been enough trees and wilderness outside of the city for him to hide in and live off of, he would have gladly forsaken it all – everything he had ever received for the sole “merit” of being alive and abandoned. Yet, with Adelaide it seemed different. She did not try to care for him any more than for any other human being. She did not pity his condition or even pay it any special attention. Instead, she found the best she could find in Michael and openly appreciated it... when, of course, there “weren’t too many ears around”, as she put it. Michael found this attitude comforting, all the more so because it did not seem forced. Adelaide behaved like that toward everybody and, needless to say, it won more than a few people over. The opposition between her laid-back enthusiasm and genuine concern for others, and Michael’s almost oppressive mood-killing seriousness and ‘spectator’ attitude garnered every joke the minds of a dozen other employees could concoct. They became “the beauty and the beast”, “hop-scotch diva and the Frankenstein”, “the ying-yang couple” and so on. Pretty soon, Adelaide had “monopolized” Michael so much so that she received a leash from her supervisor for her seventeenth birthday, “to make sure he never strayed too far”. Both found the joke distasteful and tacitly agreed to repay the deed in kind. Michael put the spiked collar around his neck whilst Adelaide loosed her hair and the first two buttons on her vest, grabbed his hair and bit one end of the leather leash, wrapping one leg around his waist. The supervisor froze and turned red. “Is this what you want to see?” asked Adelaide in her most provocative voice. Sadly for the supervisor, the event did not take place in one of the few corners the security cameras didn’t cover. He left. Michael and Adelaide laughed about the episode for days and, even after it had stopped being a hot topic, she still admitted to walking around with the leash, “just to mess with him if he ever gets on my nerves again”. Things between Michael and Adelaide seemed to flow with the rhythm of a stream and it always seemed to those around that, every time they met, there was far more communication than what was said. “Untold words” one of the elder ladies commented “are oftentimes more powerful than spoken ones”. In their case this was most likely true, and rumours of romance began to spread, to the indignation of some and the joy of others. “You two are going to marry one day” Michael kept being told, and he neither confirmed it nor ruled it out. Marriage is a far away thought for a sixteen year old, although, whenever Michael considered what that would be like, Adelaide always found her way by his side and he reached the inevitable conclusion that the two of them would make a pretty impressive team. Adelaide took care to remind Michael of his chores and made sure he acquitted himself of all tasks in due time. This unofficial supervision gave her higher standing in the workplace and among the people in charge, but Michael himself was not thrilled to be bossed around by someone only a few weeks his senior. He’d rejected discipline before, as the staff at St. Andrew’s could very well testify but Adelaide’s ‘orders’ he accepted, knowing well that behind the firm commanding tone was an almost childish desire to spend more time in each other’s company. Still, he replied to each of her new demands with a jokingly defiant “Yes... mother!”. She seemed to hate it at first, coming from the mouth if an orphan with undetermined emotions toward their biological parents, but there was no ill will in his voice or bearing so, in time, she learned to ignore the slight jabs at her authority and embraced the role of caretaker. Adelaide got particularly upset when Michael lazed around and was hurried by the bosses close to lunchtime. She disliked eating alone almost as much as having to share the same table with the other women. They were not a particularly unlikable sort but the two who most often monopolized the conversation talked nothing but innuendos and their sexual exploits or lack thereof. “I don’t mind the sex talk” she confessed to Michael one day “but that’s all they talk about” she said, stressing the word with exaggerated gravity. “That and gossip” she added. “Why would I want to know about her boyfriend’s new oral sex technique?”. “Maybe you’d like to take advantage of his skills” Michael said chuckling. “Eww, no!” she replied “I’m eating! Yuck!”. In truth, Michael had no idea why Adelaide enjoyed his company. She was well educated, caring and had, by his standards, impeccable tastes when it came to her appearance. Although not rich by any stretch of the imagination, she seemed to make the most of what she had, and presented herself as of a slightly higher class than her family could afford. Also, she was not like most other girls he’d known, that had fallen like fruit flies in love with him. She was not weighed down by her uncertainties, though she herself admitted to many, and never sought his approval or appreciation. Those came as an obvious consequence of her demeanor and ‘no-bullshit’ attitude. She was quite warm and motherly but never accepted excuses for being late or failing to get the job done. Instead, whenever chores seemed to pile up, she calmly insisted that Michael “Grow a pair and get it done”. Michael liked that about her the most. To Lory, who had asked him details about her after she’d first heard of her existence, Michael said “If you ever fall, she’s the one to kick your ass back into shape”. The description did not please Lory, so when the two finally met, her attitude was cold, and remained so ever since. Michael walked Adelaide home after every shift. She did only part-time work, cramming four hours on Friday evening and eight on each weekend day so as to not interfere with school. It was intense work, but the knowledge that Michael had the same routine and a second job did much to improve her confidence. “I don’t get how you can do this voluntarily” she said referring to his job at the library “You basically have no time at all for yourself. I mean I sometimes gussy up in the mirror in the restroom here or on the way, but you, I don’t even know when you have time for anything else but sleep”. Sleep, she had not yet found out, was not Michael’s main concern at night. Still, she silently admired that none of it ever seemed to faze him. If anything, Michael claimed to enjoy keeping busy, although his face was as detached as ever, to the point that it was doubted he was indeed serious about his tasks. For Adelaide, Michael seemed a pillar of unshakable calm and composure. She confessed to numerous worries and pressures she faced nearly every day, chief among which was a pressure to succeed and help everyone around who relied on her. “A good student” she said “a good girlfriend, a good daughter, a good employee, a good everything... I have to be!...” and it was the only time Michael could remember her smile going away. This was, he thought, the reason they had grown so close. “How’s Julien?” asked Michael, after gently glancing in Lory’s direction and back again. Julien and Adelaide had been together since before she began working at the library. He was several years older, already enrolled in law school and came from a respectable well-off family. He knew about Michael and his mutual attachment to Adelaide as much as Michael knew about him. Adelaide had been open enough to discuss things as they were, and trusted each of them in turn to respect each other. “He’s downstairs, waiting for me. We’re going to his cabin for the weekend. He got this idea that he wants us to go fishing” she laughed. “Do you realize what me fishing will be like? I’m a catastrophe! I don’t even know to handle a rod” she protested slightly amused at her perceived incompetence. “I bet you do” Michael replied, raising one eyebrow, and Adelaide laughed hysterically. The “love triangle” left many folk frowning, although neither Michael nor Adelaide had made any attempts at intimacy of any physical nature. Of this, and in spite of the obvious attraction between the two, Julien could be certain. Still, he preferred to give them space to manifest freely, partly as a sign of trust and partly because he did not want his presence to instil more formality between the three than was necessary. “Not the case...” had said Michael and Adelaide almost in unison on the only occasion the three had met in person. Julien had come to pick her up for a Saturday night show “and late night action on the backseat” joked Michael, staving off sharp pokes between the ribs where Adelaide had found him to be ticklish. By then the situation was more or less clear for all three of them, so the awkwardness the other employees were expecting to see never became manifest. Even so, Julien and Michael kept themselves out of the other’s affairs. “Anyway” said Adelaide and placed a firm hand on his arm “I have something to give you. You remember Julien took an internship at the R&R law firm, right?” “Yeah” replied Michael “he’s training to become a lawyer you said. How’s that going?” Adelaide grew more excited “He’s fine but listen... A few days ago he went to St. Andrew’s Hope orphanage and asked some things. Just casually, after mentioning the word ‘audit’ a few times” she paused and winked “and some of the people there do have some recollection of the day you were brought in”. He said nothing, so she continued. “It seems that the person who brought you drove some type of car, I don’t know what kind, but it was a very old model, something reconditioned. So Julien and I went to the local archives and looked up some papers to see what reconditioned cars had been registered to run on public roads, because you know that these old models need special approvals. You can’t allow any crock to run free” she said chuckling. Michael had lit up another smoke and was watching her silently, resting against the wall. “Anyway, so...” she continued heartily “we found some models and called and asked if they had any idea about you or your parents. And this is what we found...” She turned and reached into her bag, pulling out a plastic folder which she handed to him. The folder had many small bits of paper, mostly photocopies, printed-out text and maps, all arranged chronologically and sorted by relevance, each in its own foil. She had clearly made this herself. “Here” she resumed “you have everything we were able to find out about your father”. Her voice stiffened “You might not like it...”. Michael stared at the pages and scrolled through each one, his mind visibly in some other portion of reality. “This legal?” he asked and received a giggling “Pfff... Everyone takes copies”. He closed the folder and released a resigned yet genial “Thanks...”. She tried to direct the merit toward Julien, who had, in fact, done most of the research, but instead uttered “I know you didn’t ask but it’s obvious you want to know and I think it would give you some measure of peace”. He did not seem upset by the initiative. If anything he felt embarrassed that somebody had gone through the effort of piecing his life together.