A Flower with a Price Tag

By late afternoon, June could walk without holding the clinic chair.

A volunteer gave her water. “You’re steadier. Don’t go off alone yet.”

June nodded, watching Celia.

The volunteer handed her a folded slip. “Huckleberry House is at One Broderick Street. They help young people who need somewhere safer than the street. They may have a bed, or another referral. I can’t promise.”

June took it without opening it. “They’ll treat me like a child.”

— They’ll ask questions. You can answer them.

— I’m nineteen.

— Then tell them that.

Marcus looked toward the door. “It’s better than trusting another fellow with a knitted cap and a maybe.”

June flinched.

He lowered his voice. “Sorry. Still true.”

Celia checked the clock. She had been gone from Mnasidika nearly two hours. Her thirty-five-minute break had become an absence Peggy could not ignore.

— I have to go back to the shop, she said.

June gripped the clinic slip. “You said you’d stay.”

— I said I’d stay while you were frightened and sick.

— So now I’m not your problem.

— That isn’t what I said.

The waiting room hummed with coughing and low voices. Celia wanted to stay until the whole matter had a neat ending. There was no neat ending.

Marcus said, “I’ll walk June to Mnasidika. She can wait outside while Celia talks to her boss. Then I have to get back to the Panhandle and help clean up.”

— And Huckleberry? Celia asked.

— I’ll meet you at Haight and Broderick at six. If I’m not there, don’t wait. Take June in.

June looked between them. “Everybody has somewhere else to be.”

— Yes, Celia said. That’s why we make a plan.

Fog had pushed in by the time they reached Haight Street. June wore only her thin dress and shivered.

Mnasidika was crowded. A man held up altered jeans while Peggy faced him across the counter.

— I’ll give you ten.

— They’re eighteen, Peggy said.

— They’re used.

— They’re altered.

— They look used.

— They are both used and altered. That is why they cost eighteen.

Celia almost smiled. Then Peggy saw her.

— Back room.

Celia told June, “Wait on that bench by the window. Marcus will be outside.”

In the back room, dresses, denim, and fabric crowded the walls. Unfinished hems lay beside Celia’s sewing machine.

— You were gone two hours, Peggy said.

— June had a bad reaction to something she took. Marcus and I got her to the clinic.

— I knew it was serious after the first hour. Peggy crossed her arms. The second hour cost me a fitting, a telephone order, and a customer who tried to leave with three belts.

— Did he get away with them?

— One. Peggy looked tired, not angry. That was worse. Mrs. Bell’s jeans are finished. I did them. The commission is mine. And you don’t get paid for the hours you missed.

Rent was due next week. Celia had counted on that money.

— I understand.

— Do you? I cannot have you disappear whenever Haight Street produces an emergency.

— I didn’t disappear.

— You left on a break and did not return. That is the same thing to a clock.

Celia saw a thick brown cardigan on a wall hook. One cuff was torn, and a dark stain marked the buttons. It was too plain for the display, but it was wool.

— Can June borrow that?

Peggy followed her glance. “No.”

— She’s freezing.

— It can be repaired.

— It has a stain.

— Then it can be sold cheaply.

— She has nowhere to sleep tonight.

— And I have a shop to keep open. Peggy stepped closer. The clothes came from somewhere. Rent comes due. You need wages. I need staff who show up.

Peggy was not wrong. That made arguing harder.

— I’ll pay for it when I can.

— With what? I just took two hours from your pay.

— Put it on my account.

Peggy lifted the cardigan and ran a finger over its torn cuff.

— You may take it to her for tonight. It is a loan. If she leaves town, it comes back. If it does not, we talk about what you owe.

Celia breathed out.

— And finish those hems before you go. You leave at six, not before.

— Thank you.

— Don’t turn one cardigan into sainthood.

— I wouldn’t dare.

For the next hour, Celia worked fast. Customers asked where to find “real hippies” and whether the bells on a dress came free with it. June sat by the window in Marcus’s canvas jacket. Once, Celia saw her watching a tourist point through the glass at the beads and dyed denim as if the shop were an exhibit.

At five forty-five, Marcus appeared. He had washed his hands, but bread still clung beneath one thumbnail.

Peggy caught Celia’s eye. “Finish that seam.”

Celia did, then carried the cardigan to June.

— Peggy gave you that? Marcus asked.

— Loaned it.

— And docked her pay, Peggy called. For anyone keeping score.

Outside, June pulled on the cardigan. Marcus said quietly, “I used to see people behind counters and think they had chosen the easy side.”

Celia buttoned the torn cuff. “Don’t make my job noble.”

— I’m not. I’m saying you paid for today.

— So did you.

— Not in rent money.

He shifted his canvas sack. “I’ll stop calling your apron a surrender.”

— That is almost an apology.

— Don’t get greedy.

June gave a small laugh, the first Celia had heard since the park.

At six, Celia walked June two blocks north to the divided Victorian where she rented her room. Marcus waited at the corner while Celia went inside.

Ruth Kaplan stood in the front hall with grocery bags.

— Is that the girl?

— Yes. We’re taking her to Huckleberry House.

— Good. Ruth returned with a folded gray blanket. She can use this if they have no bed. But she is not sleeping in this hallway, and she is not going upstairs with some man who says he has a mattress.

— I understand, June said.

Ruth pressed the blanket into her arms. “Understanding is cheaper than learning it the hard way.”

They walked west as the light thinned. Posters covered poles and windows: rooms wanted, work wanted, bands at the Straight Theater, political meetings, invitations promising more than paper could deliver. Near the theater, music spilled into the street with traffic and laughter.

At Haight and Broderick, Marcus checked the clinic slip. “This is it.”

Huckleberry House looked ordinary from the sidewalk, with worn paint and a clean doorway.

June stopped at the steps. “What if they tell me to go home?”

— Then you decide what to do next, Celia said.

— And if they don’t have a bed?

— Then we ask what else they can do.

June held the cardigan closed at her throat. “You make everything sound less romantic.”

— It usually is.

A staff member opened the door.

— June?

June nodded.

— We can talk, the woman said. Come in. We’ll see what is possible.

— Do you have a bed?

— I can’t promise before we speak with you.

June looked at Celia, then Marcus. Neither moved her toward the door.

At last, June carried Ruth’s blanket and the clinic paper across the threshold.

Celia stood outside after the door shut. In her pocket, the Mnasidika receipt crackled beside a loose paper flower someone had handed her near the theater. She tucked the flower back with the receipt and turned toward Haight Street.