Stick To It

Stick to it like old glue to... basically anything. Really, old glue is a b*tch.

Valerie never knew what to do with them.

No, that's a lie. She knew exactly what to do with them. She just didn't particularly want to do it. "Eh, so what," she'd say if asked, "the blind folk in Hell's Kitchen go through their sticks like old Gary through flophouses, what's new." She'd scoff and talk about the weather instead, distract the person with her last traces of Britishness - and no, Brett, we're not getting into that conversation again - and that would be it.

That is if someone (other than Brett) would actually ask.

But no one did on the morning she had fished out the first white cane from underneath one of the filthy dumpsters behind McDonald's (and if she calls it filthy it's saying something). And then nobody asked when she found the next one. And the next one. And then when she couldn't fit them all into her rucksack anymore and had to stop carrying them around altogether. So no, nobody asked where she'd hid them. It was only as well - they wouldn't be able to take them, anyway. Not from there.

A startled student glares at her before the evening crowd swallows him again as she muffles a sudden coughing fit. Right. She shouldn't laugh that hard. Not at her own thoughts, anyway - at least that's what the social worker said when they discussed her current shelter situation.

No, she muses and ducks into an alleyway on her left, nobody would dare to go search that place.

Crap. She really shouldn't laugh this much.

But, really. What was there not to laugh at? Back when she came here, it was all dreadful jobs and tons of cheap dye to cover her ginger hair. She'd been just trying to shake off the cops and, when she didn't succeed, shake off the bad memories from her prolonged jail sleepover. Oh, how the times have changed.

For one, she stopped dyeing her hair. After the Clinton Mission Shelter became her home, she got her hands on some old, discarded sewing machine and started mending clothes. It wasn't much but she became quite popular with the poor. It paid the expenses if nothing else. Helped the shelter. Gave her something to concentrate on when nothing else helped. After the terrible Murdock accident happened (and she had been there, she saw it on her way from another failed job interview), the press went crazy. For a while. Then things calmed a bit, though. For years afterwards, Hell's Kitchen went on. It wasn't good, not really. Her life went on, somehow, dull as dishwater and tasting the same. Her health had been gradually worsening, too. But it wasn't bad, either, and who was she to complain? So when she started finding white walking canes in random dumpsters from time to time, nobody could blame her for enjoying this new, interesting development a little bit too much.

Since the first white cane, a lot of time has passed and there's been bombings and fellows in black climbing the walls at night and then fellas in red latex doing the same and mafia bosses bleeding out on the streets so she supposes her little collection can't really compete with that. Even though she's gathered quite a nice one, she thinks. Amy would have been impressed.

For instance, there's a stick with the initials M.M.M. carved into the handle and a smiley face hidden underneath it, so small you'd easily miss it at first (and even second) glance. And even though the handle carvings are barely legible, smoothed out with use, the smiley face still has sharp edges if you brush it just the right way.

"Hey, Val! Still haven't given up on that religious bullshit?" A man calls to her when she's nearing the crosswalks on the 42nd.

Sighing, she throws a tired "Get stuffed, Lou" his way, knowing that's the end of it. At this point, it could be almost called their Sunday tradition. Smirking, she stops for a moment to catch her breath. He didn't notice she's early today. Wanker.