#20 - Dierdre’s a Good Girl
The Missionary is surprised to see Tisha’s Eldorado pull up to the curb outside the shop. He can’t remember another time when she’s dropped in this late. Or twice in the same day. He is unpacking an order of pipe tobacco and trying to figure out which ones to put in the sample containers for customers to sniff when the – uh -- barge rolls up.
There is always that mental stutter step during which he excises the blasphemous first word of the car’s name.
Tisha is not alone. Oh, that would explain it. He throws the deadbolt on the front door and goes into the back room to open the alley-side doors of the Mission.
Tisha enters first, followed by a young girl in cutoff jeans and a tee shirt, wearing high-top Cons without socks and carrying the ubiquitous battered Jansport. She is blond, well-grown and dangerously pretty. He takes a moment to make sure that the stab of fear and annoyance he just experienced are surrendered to God before he greets the newcomer. It’s pretty clear what this young stray is being rescued from. He’s not set up for it. The legal ramifications are byzantine. And it almost never works, not for long. Stupid and vulnerable and easy to market for profit, kids are almost never tired and beaten down enough to accept help and shelter. And then, there really isn’t a good long-term solution to offer them. Most leave home because home is worse than the street.
But only until the last pimp decides that they are no longer worth keeping in heroin or meth. Or they trade a blowjob for a meal and wake up in a plastic packing crate bound for Bangkok.
Oh, Jesus, he thinks (and it is not a pejorative). Here’s another one. Help, please.
Dierdre covers his lapse in manners by taking over as greeter. "Dierdre's a good girl!" She says.