Ragged Company by Richard Wagamese

carry around,” I said. “How did you manage to get hold of that? Been sneaking off to pull a few robberies, have ya?”
    She grinned. “No, these are my tips.”
    “Tips?”
    “Yes. Over the years I’ve been tipped for the runs I made for people. Nickel here, a dime there. It adds up.”
    “You mean to say you saved that money?”
    “Well, yes. I had nothing to spend it on and I knew there’d come a day when it was gonna come in handy.”
    “You never spent any of it?”
    “Oh, sure,” she said. “Every now and then there’d be an emergency. Someone’d need socks or shoes, someone’d be really sick and need a bottle. Those kinds of things. But mostly I just held on to it.”
    “Let me get this straight,” I said. “All these years, all the winos you ever made a run for tipped you for the run and you just put it in your pocket for a rainy day?”
    “Yes,” she said. “That’s the big secret.”
    “Why?”
    “Why?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well,” she said, “I guess there was a part of me that knew that somewhere, sometime this money would come in more handy than it would have if I was going to spend it on something at the time. And there was nothing that I needed.”
    “Nothing that you needed? Look around you. There had to have been something?” I asked.
    “No,” she said slowly and looked at me kindly. “There wasn’t.”
    She was always a straight shooter, and hard as it might be for me to believe that any one of us with a mittful of loot wasn’t going to spend it on whatever, wherever, I gave her the benefit of my doubt. Still, it bugged the bejesus out of me.
    “Not even the smallest kinda thing?” I asked finally.
    She laughed then—a laugh like the tinkle of wind chimes. “Well, sometimes I’d think of something, a scarf maybe, some kind of thing that a girl would like and maybe I’d let myself think about how nice that might be. But I got over it.”
    “Got over it?”
    “Yes. See, Timber, money’s got nothing to do with my life one way or the other. I choose to be here. I choose to live the way I live. I don’t know how to be any other way than street. Tried it years ago but it just didn’t take. I guess it’s how it’s supposed to go for me and I don’t have an argument with it. This is my life—and money, well, money won’t make any difference. Ever.”
    “No room even, get off the bricks?”
    “No. Me ’n walls parted company a long time ago. You know how that is.”
    “Yeah. I know. But wouldn’t it have made things easier for you?”
    “Easier how?” she asked. “I don’t smoke. I don’t drink anymore. I don’t need to ride the buses because there’s no place for me to be at any particular time. And besides, it’s not enough. It’s a few dollars, that’s all.”
    “But it’s a roll!”
    She laughed again. “Yes, it’s a roll. But it’s a roll of ones. I think there’s a twenty or two in there somewhere, maybe three.”
    “Still.”
    “Still, what?”
    “Still … I don’t know.”
    So we settled into the movies. It was the feel of the place that got to me. Sure, the lights and the sound and the story were amazing after so long in a life where there ain’t no light and it’s just one long bleak tale, but the feel of it always made me wanna get back. Expectation. That’s the word I’m looking for. It’s all about expectation. From the time we picked which show we’d see during the walk in the cold to the paying for tickets, which got easier once we’d been a few times, to the stroll through the lobby, into the theatre, into our seats, to the settling in before the lights began to fade, I don’t think I even really breathed. Only then, only when those lights slid off did I allow myself to exhale. Only then. Then it was like the sound and light filled me, like I was hollow up till then—and I guess I was. Junkies know that feeling real good. Junkies know the rush, the flow of juice to the brain and then the smooth roll of comfort through