If she needed anything, he said, he would try to help.
The next day when he returned to check on her, he found that her father,
aided in his spiritual pilgrimage by a fifth of tequila, had fallen from
the fire escape, and was now in a City hospital pending deportation.
That was why she had not returned to their room, but remained on the
front steps, freed from one hell but confident that another awaited her,
which no doubt it did: she had no money, and would soon be evicted.
William had bought her breakfast, stolen her a jacket and scarf, then
brought her to his mansion of rats, fallen plaster, moldering walls, and
warmed by a kerosene heater which only smoked dangerously toward
morning.
After waiting for three days to be put to work on the streets, she found
to her amazement that he neither demanded she sell herself to others or
perform sex tricks for him, and had not put a hand on her except in
awkward comfort and reassurance. That night she gave herself to him,
they made sweet and tender love; and he had done something even more
inexplicable. He had cried, and promised to protect her with his life
against the bitcheries of poverty and despair that he knew so well.
>From that time on they were inseparable, living where they could, doing
what they had to do, to survive.
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