Watchers

Chapter 4: God was the original surveillance camera

Jane shows Sasha over to a cafeteria-style line of serving trays, where she is given a bowl of chili, a cornbread muffin, and a glass of milk. It's hearty food that will keep her satisfied much longer than the usual thin, gray hamburgers she eats, and it smells incredible.

Sasha's mouth is watering by the time they get back to the table, and she wolfs down her first home-cooked meal in weeks. She is almost to the bottom of her bowl before she even notices the other people sitting at the table with them.

It's a small card table, the type that folds up and can be easily stowed away between meals, so she's practically sitting elbow-to-elbow with her dinner companions. Across from her is an old man - he must be in his seventies, and he doesn't seem particularly in tune with his surroundings. He eats the kidney beans out of his chili and leaves the rest, muttering almost under his breath, "God was the original surveillance camera."

To Sasha's left, there's a younger man. He looks like he's in his twenties, around Sasha's age, slightly heavy and very bedraggled. For a homeless shelter, this room is filled with people who are remarkably well-groomed, but he's by far the roughest-looking person Sasha has seen here. His dark hair is greasy and wild, standing up in places and smashed down against his head in others, and his features are slack. He looks like he's been hit by a truck sometime in the last twenty-four hours.

"Sasha, that's Daniel," Jane says when she notices her looking at him. Then she nods to the old man, who repeats the same line again - God was the original surveillance camera - and says, "I don't know what his name is, or if he's even living on this planet."

Daniel puts out his hand and Sasha takes it. Their eyes meet and she's surprised to see emotion and intelligence in them - not something she was expecting based on the rest of his appearance. She's also surprised to find that he speaks hoarsely when he says, "Nice to meet you, Sasha."

"What happened to you?" she asks, then realizes too late that this isn't polite dinner conversation with a man she's just met. Sasha has always had trouble keeping herself from blurting out the first thing that comes into her head, but Daniel doesn't seem to mind. He gives her a look that says he's used to this question.

"Heroin," he says simply, and then looks back down at his tray. He hasn't eaten much, mostly just breaking apart the cornbread, but he has managed to drink some of his milk.

Sasha glances at Jane, raising an eyebrow at her. If he had said meth or even crack, she wouldn't have batted an eye, but a junk habit costs money. She hasn't met very many heroin addicts because the drug is almost always out of reach for people of their socio-economic status, or else it's so impure they don't live long enough to become addicted.

He goes back to methodically picking apart his cornbread. The old man mutters his strange catchphrase again, and Sasha spends the rest of the meal catching up with Jane while Daniel listens lethargically.

She fills Sasha in on her last couple of days, and tells her that the shelter is able to offer so many services to its residents because it operates like a commune. "Everybody has to do their part and contribute if they want to stay."

"My contribution so far has been limited to sweating and writhing my way through withdrawal," Daniel quips. He seems to have perked up a little bit since the beginning of the meal, and Sasha assumes that what little sustenance he's managed to get down has helped with his energy levels.

"They're going to start me in the kitchen tomorrow," Jane says. "I'm sure they'll give you both a job once you get acclimated."

"Wonder what he does," Sasha says, nodding at Mr. God-the-Surveillance-Camera across from her.

"Food critic," Daniel says, gesturing at the mound of uneaten chili meat in the old man's bowl, and Sasha can't suppress her laughter.

Toward the end of the meal, when people at the other tables have begun to take their trays back to the kitchen and fold up their tables and chairs, a nun comes over to Sasha's table. She isn't one of the two Sasha has met, and she puts her hand on Daniel's shoulder. "Are you feeling well enough for a shower, dear?"

Daniel nods and gives Sasha and Jane a salute as he gets up from the table. He looks a little shaky on his feet, and he follows the nun out of the room.

Sasha turns to Jane and asks, "So are you really going to just stay here indefinitely? What do people even do around here when they're not working?"

"I'll tell you what we don't do," Jane says. "We don't freeze our butts off, we don't go hungry, and we don't have to sleep with one eye open. Oh, and we don't have to suck any-"

"God was the original surveillance camera," the old man mutters as he picks one last kidney bean out of his bowl and pops it into his toothless mouth.