Watchers

Chapter 3: The Haven of Salvation welcomes all!

The shelter is in one of the city's oldest buildings, a church that looks like it came straight out of the dark ages with gothic spires and pointed arches. It is in the heart of downtown, in an area that was once the center of industry and has now become a ghetto.

Sasha takes a deep breath as she approaches the towering building, then wrinkles her nose. Even the air in this neighborhood is bad.

She switches to breathing through her mouth and she feels nervous as a couple of surveillance cameras mounted high up on the walls swivel toward her. Her hair has gone stringy and damp, and her clothes are beginning to freeze - she has arrived just in time.

She goes to the door and sees a plaque identifying the building as the Haven of Salvation, along with an engraved message, "The Haven of Salvation welcomes all."

She opens the large, heavy door and finds a large oak desk in the vestibule, a pair of elderly nuns sitting at it.

One of them smiles at her and stands up as she says, "Welcome, dear. Are you looking for a place to get some rest?"

"No, I'm looking for a friend," Sasha says, and then she adds sheepishly, "I heard people can get their clothes cleaned here, too."

Sasha has never been the type to take charity, and in her three years on the street, she only ever stayed in a shelter on nights when the temperature was below freezing and she didn't have a nice Kia Motel to sleep in.

"Oh heavens, you're soaking wet," the nun says, coming closer and leaning in to sniff Sasha's clothes. "Is that cherry cola?"

Sasha nods miserably and the nun at the desk says, "We'll get you all fixed up. Can I have your name for the register?"

"Sarah Jones," Sasha lies. Even though these women seem perfectly nice, she has learned early on not to trust anyone, and that it's always better to err on the side of caution any time someone asks for your information.

The nun at the desk jots down the name in an old-fashioned paper ledger, and the other one puts her hand on Sasha's back, not minding the dampness as she guides her to a hallway behind the desk.

"Come, now, we'll get you showered and changed and you'll feel much better," she says in a comforting, matronly voice. For a second, Sasha feels a pang of guilt at having lied to them. "After that, we'll see about finding your friend."

"Thank you," Sasha says.

They walk down the hall, which is quiet and lined with doors that Sasha assumes must lead to small bedrooms, like in an old-fashioned convent. If that is where the poor sleep, there's no wonder the Haven has such a good reputation - Sasha has never been in a shelter that offered any degree of privacy.

About halfway down the hall, the nun points out a small alcove where a group of five or six people are sitting around a television. Their clothes are too shabby for them to be employees of the shelter, so they must be its beneficiaries. One of them takes the remote and changes the channel, while another asks, "What are we watching?"

"What do we always watch at this hour?" the one with the remote asks with a roll of her eyes.

"We shouldn't watch this show," a man at the back of the room says. His arms are folded across his chest but his eyes are locked on the screen as the show's logo flashes across it. It says The Elimination Game - Sasha has heard of it, but she's never had an opportunity to watch. "They killed that one contestant, you know."

"They did not," the girl with the remote says. "When people look up the word 'gullible' in the dictionary, they find a picture of your face."

Sasha notices as the nun shoots a judgmental look at the girl, and then she guides Sasha further down the hall, leaving the group to continue their argument unobserved.

They go into a washroom with multiple toilet stalls and a large communal shower, which reminds Sasha of the locker room of her middle school. She used to hate the indignity of showering with every other girl in her class, but now she's all too happy to use the space. She takes the first hot shower she has enjoyed in months. She scrubs all of the dirt of the street off her body and rinses the sticky cola out of her hair.

She emerges feeling like a new woman and wraps a towel as modestly as possible around her waist. The nun is waiting just outside of the shower with a small bundle of clothes.

"We don't have anything from this decade, but these should be your size," she says. "I hope you don't mind that I looked at your clothes tags while you were in the shower."

"No," Sasha says, taking the bundle gratefully. Could this place really be as good as Jane and the radio advertisement said it is?

The nun walks away, saying, "I'll wait for you outside the washroom."

Sasha gets changed into a pair of khaki pants and a white t-shirt, and then a gray zip-up hoodie that is impossibly soft and warm. She notices that her own clothes are gone, and when she comes out of the washroom, she asks about them.

"They're being laundered, dear," the nun says. "We'll get them back to you in the morning."

Being over-protective of her belongings was another thing that Sasha learned quickly on the streets, so it doesn't sit well with her to not know where her coat is, but the nuns have treated her well so far and she knows it wouldn't do her much good to demand to have her clothes back while they're sticky and wet.

They go through two large, heavy doors that lead into another hallway. The nun points out the laundry facilities and an outdoor garden that has very little growing in it so late in the year. There's a barbed wire fence around its perimeter, and the nun tells Sasha that it acts as protection from the outside.

"There are quite a few people who would rather steal our harvest than come inside and eat it rightfully," she says, and Sasha knows that to be true. The world is full of unscrupulous people, as well as cynical ones like her. "Oh dear, it's dinner time. You don't want to miss your meal, and I'm sure you can find your friend in the great room."

She takes Sasha to a large room the size of a gymnasium, where there are folding tables set up all across the floor and far more people than Sasha originally assumed the place would hold. It had been silly to assume that the ones watching television in the other hall were the shelter's only residents, and there are at least two hundred people in this room.

One of them stands up and screeches, "Sasha!"

She spots Jane looking better than she has since they met two years ago. She's cleaned up and wearing shelter-issued clothes, and Sasha runs to her, throwing her arms around Jane.

"I was worried about you," she snaps as they release their hug.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't wait. Hey, you're resourceful. I knew you'd find the place," Jane says. "Well come on, let's get you a plate."