THE 33 KEYS: Key 2 - ANSWER THE CALL "Listen for that Perfect Beat"

CHAPTER 15: GIFTS FROM ANGELS

Hazel calls around eleven to say an angel bought us lunch again. Funny, how I never meet any of those angels. It is always Hazel-the-Holy they choose to communicate with. Whether it is because her heart is pure or that she is a Rubrum, I will never know. But, God! If you are listening, this will be the perfect time to assign me a personal angel. I am at the end of my rope and waiting for you to prove that I have not been going mad talking to myself all these years.

Then I pack my makeup on, to 'cover the ugliness that is my true face', like Ebony taught me, and take my time getting to the dining room. As usual, my trek is delayed by trying to decipher the many symbols on the hallway walls. Some I now understand through the accident called research. But others are still Aramaic to me.

Thirty minutes later, I enter the grand building that houses the office, dining, ironing and oval rooms, and the Matron's quarters upstairs. Lunch is trapped in the poisonous prison of a white Styrofoam box. And I surprise my own self by not complaining. As usual, I struggle with the two clips until one of them breaks. It is a basic rice and codfish, not even seasoned the right way, and looks almost no different than when it had left the package.

"Smells great," I offer with as much enthusiasm as the hypocrite in me can drum up.

"Tastes good too," Hazel says, and really means it.

I dig in hoping hunger will deaden my taste buds. But each spoonful goes down like cement mix. Well, find me that guy who said never to judge a book by the cover. You dig the hole and I will make sure he is good and dead. My eyes stray to Hazel's almost empty box. Is this a case of one man's meat and another's poison, or just someone who has never had a good meal in her life? She shoves the last of it into her mouth and I give up trying to understand.

When the entire ordeal is over, I follow her to the sitting room like a programmed robot. It is an oval-shaped room with benches attached to the walls, four dark wooden single chairs in the middle with a solid coffee table and pictures of past Matrons on the weathered green walls, each trying to see who can outdo the other by following us wherever we go.

I plonk down on to the burgundy leather cushion and dredge my mind anew, flipping pictures behind the windows of my eyes, stopping only to examine potential saviours. One album down; nothing to show for it. A flurry of emotions take turns trampling my face. Sorrow, anger, fear, despair. There is really no one left to call, no friend, relative or lover.

"You look like two wrestlers are about to execute a tag team in your head."

"Zero." I flash a weak smile. "Just got some bad news, that's all."

Hazel leans forward, a strained look on her red face, her pink floral dress exploding with colour.

"How bad is it?"

I dig into my pocket and hand her the red slip of paper. Yes, I have been carrying it around with me to make sure I wasn't imagining; that, like everyone else I knew, Matron Malika Caine had finally had enough and wants me gone.

Hazel narrows her grey eyes as she reads. The marked triangles around them change form.

"Twenty-one days? Why not until the end of the month?"

"Don't say it out loud," I say in sarcasm. "It might start to make sense."

"How much?"

"Four months I think."

"Jesus! When's the last time you paid?"

"April maybe."

"It's May for me," Hazel says, then sinks into the realization that she is next. "That's three months at a hundred a month."

"Damn! We're in the same boat. Two blind mice. All we need is a third loser to join up."

"Says who? I'm no loser. I'm not the one who threw away five jobs in two years."

"You of all people should know better."

"What? You're still on that immigrant woman? She's probably dead for all we know."

"She should've died when it mattered, her and that asshole bank manager she put under a spell."

"Mary, look how long it's been. Just forget about them already."

"I can't! I can't, all right," I shout. "I was doing great for the first time in my life and they destroyed that."

"I was there, listening to you whine every day. So I know what happened. But right now you've got to leave their old, dead asses in the past and focus on paying this rent."

"How? I've got no real money left."

"That's just for now. Between us, you're the lucky one. A job's bound to find you. Just keep it, for goodness sake."

Suddenly I realize who is giving me advice.