Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

Torstein did that to people, the unlikeliest people. He would turn on the Irresistible Charm, and suddenly they wanted to be the people he believed they could be. Mostly the transformations were amazing. The stripper, Tawny, when Franz had brought her to us, she’d been so sorely lacking in self-esteem, she’d thought the only reason anybody would ever care for her was her rocking body. Now, though, she still knew she had a rocking body, but she carried herself differently, and saw herself and others differently. It was a heartache for Franz. He still wanted her. I don’t know if he loved her. I don’t know if he was sure what love was. But he knew now that he wasn’t getting anything from that girl until he put a ring on her finger — and he wasn’t sure if she would say yes, even if he asked.

Franz had been transformed in his own way, too. He’d believed his greatest strength was that he could ferret out facts, sell the information, or use what he learned to manipulate people. It was a good ability, to be able to get the truth out of a twisted situation, but it was a small thing on which to stake your existence. He was learning, maybe not as quickly as Tawny was, that he could be valued for the sake of his heart, which was a good one, all things considered. He hadn’t gone back to work for Nikolai since he’d made his initial report on Torstein. And he’d helped Tawny get that kid Marigold out of the strip club, despite that he was afraid what might happen to him because of it. And that day we’d given out the coats in the projects, he’d been like a kid himself, clowning with the little boys and girls.

Bruiser, of course, had changed a lot. He was about as far now from a mob guy as he could be. He’d made friends with several of the business owners he used to threaten. He’d become like a big teddy bear for the kids at Story Hour. Where once he had seemed thoroughly menacing, now he seemed like the Jolly Green Giant. Albeit not green. Pete and I, and Jack and Jazz, I suppose we had changed in our own ways, too, although I didn’t notice it as much.

Jack seemed to get Torstein more and better than the rest of us did. We all loved him, but I think we were just amazed by him, and didn’t really understand what he was trying to tell us in those days. Jack, he seemed to know. He hepped right away to the idea that love had to be stronger than hate; that you couldn’t stop somebody hitting you by hitting him back ... for my brother Pete, in particular, it was a foreign idea. He’d always been quick tempered and able to take care of himself in a fight. The notion of “not fighting” being stronger than fighting was crazy to him.

But I think in those days, “crazy” was what we lived and breathed. If you took yourself out of it and looked back in like a stranger, the way we were living and what we were doing was crazy. Who sells their business so they can spend their days on the street with a homeless guy who gives away sunflower seeds to strangers? Who invites strippers to live in their home, or takes in the child of a crack whore? When you looked at it that way, it was crazy.

The crazier thing was, we didn’t care. We felt like the little bit of good that was being done was bigger and longer-lasting than the craziness. Angel was getting off crack. Sully was going to school. Some poor kids had coats before the winter started. And Phyllis was actually enjoying life (and I guess, enjoying her marriage, too) — something I would never have believed possible.

Jack was the only one who didn’t, at some time or other, deem what we were doing madness. He seemed to sense, intuitively, that what we were doing was really the only way to live, and the rest of the world was mad. And he was a kid, maybe he was turning 20 that year. He, his brother Jazz, and my brother Pete, they were like Torstein’s inner circle. If he were going off on his own, sometimes he would say, “You, you and you!” to them, and they’d go with him.

One of those days, they went to visit Torstein’s father.