Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

The one woman, the prostitute, she didn’t leave that life. I think she probably wanted to, when she heard Torstein’s speech, but then the reality of it was: she was a junkie, and she couldn’t stop. Maggie invited her to come and see us in the park, but she lived a lot further away than Angel had, and I doubted we’d ever see her. One of the strippers, she just packed up and went back where she came from, which I think was Idaho or Iowa or Maine, something like that.

But the one thing Sig had warned us about seemed to be happening: the “administrative assistant” of Nikolai, Caroline, she came to find us. And brought her son. Nikolai’s son. He was called Van, but his name was Ivan Nikolayevich, the Russian way of saying “Ivan, son of Nikolai.”  Caroline was a nice looking woman, probably 40 or 45 years old, short dark hair, big blue eyes. She didn’t look like a stripper at all; she dressed conservatively and if she was wearing makeup it looked natural enough. You wouldn’t have suspected she was a madam or whatever you might want to all her ... and her little boy was nice, too; not at all what you’d expect from a mobster’s kid.

They were leaving Nikolai, she said, and leaving the business. She’d heard something she couldn’t forget on New Year’s Eve, and she wanted that something for herself and her boy.

“Don’t you think it’s something Nikolai wants, too?” Torstein asked. He liked the kid, and I think he didn’t like for a kid to be separated from his father.

“I tried to tell him,” Caroline said. “He won’t listen.”

“Won’t he come after you?” Ferdy asked.

“He thinks I’ll change my mind and come back,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll bother you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Of course I’m worried about it,” Ferdy said, as if she were crazy.

“I’m not,” Torstein said. “If he comes after you, maybe he’ll stay and talk and decide he’d like to join us, too.”

“I’d like that,” Caroline said.

They moved into the condo next door to Maggie, and Caroline went to work in a department store. She worked the morning shift, though, so she’d be home when her son came home from school. After doing his homework, they would come and find us on the street, or more often in the park, after Story Hour. Sully was happy to have a friend next door, and was impressed with Van’s superior third-grade knowledge of many aspects of reading and math. It seemed like the boys were always together.

One of our regular drunks in the park left one day. He went to live in a shelter, and he started going to AA meetings. Just like Sig! He would come back from time to time, sit with us, and encourage the other drunks to come with him to the meetings, and the shelter. The Salvation Army had given him a suit of clothes and helped him get a job at the dry cleaners. Not the best job in the world, but he was making some money, staying off the booze, and he looked about 200% better than we’d ever seen him. He was shaving and bathing regularly, which was an improvement.

Suddenly it seemed like whatever Torstein had been trying to do was beginning to happen. J. Clayton Berger and a few of the most talented Dunkers started a little drama workshop for kids and teenagers to practice performing and music at that mega-church Berger and his family attended. A few of the other Dunkers who had been playing games of touch football and pick-up basketball games in the park organized a intramural league for kids and adults. In my building, where my apartment was, a few of the folks who had come to the worst New Year’s Eve party ever had joined Torstein’s movement. They would come and visit with us in the park, but they had also started doing great things right there in our neighborhood. They adopted a nursing home down the way and started visiting with the old and sick folks and giving them things that their insurance didn’t supply like toiletries — the patients who were there on state funding with no families to help had no one to buy things like that for them. Who knew?

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