Amazing Grace Read online

  Chapter 4

  Melanie stayed on the street outside the Ritz-Carlton for a long time that night, helping people, trying to get paramedics to them. She found two little girls who were lost and helped them find their mother. There wasn't much she could do. She didn't have the nursing skills of Sister Mary Magdalen, but there was a level of comfort and reassurance that she could give to others. One of her band members followed her around for a while, and then finally went to join the others in the shelter. He knew she was a big girl and could take care of herself. No one in her entourage had stayed with her. She was still wearing the dress and platform shoes she had worn onstage, and Everett Carson's rented tuxedo jacket over it, which by then was filthy, streaked with dust and the blood of people she'd assisted. But it felt good to her to be out there. For the first time in a long time, despite the plaster dust in the air, she felt like she could breathe.

  She sat on the back of the fire truck, eating a doughnut and drinking a cup of coffee, talking to the firemen about what had happened that night. And they were shocked and pleased to be having coffee with Melanie Free.

  “So what's it like to be Melanie Free?” one of the younger firemen asked her. He had been born in San Francisco and grown up in the Mission. His father was a cop, as were two of his brothers, and two more were firemen like him. His sisters had all gotten married right out of high school. Melanie Free was as far from his life as anyone could get, although watching her sip coffee and eat the doughnut, she looked just like everyone else to him.

  “It's fun sometimes,” she admitted. “And sometimes it sucks. It's a lot of work and a lot of pressure, especially when we play concerts. And the press are a huge pain in the ass.” They all laughed at her comment as she reached for another doughnut. The fireman who had asked her the question was twenty-two years old and had three kids. He thought her life sounded more interesting than his, although he loved his wife and kids. “What about you?” she asked him. “Do you like what you do?”

  “Yeah. Most of the time. Especially on a night like this. You really have the feeling you're making a difference, and doing some good. It beats having beer bottles thrown at you, or having someone take potshots at you, when you show up in the Bay View to put out a fire they started themselves. But it's not always like that. Most of the time, I like being a firefighter.”

  “Firemen are cute,” Melanie commented, and then giggled. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had two doughnuts. Her mother would have killed her. Unlike her mother, Melanie was permanently on a diet, at her mother's insistence. It was one of the small prices she paid for fame. She looked less than her nineteen years as she sat on the bottom step of the fire truck, chatting with the men.

  “You're pretty cute yourself,” one of the older firefighters commented as he walked by her. He had just spent four hours getting people out of an elevator where they'd been trapped. One woman had fainted, the others had been okay. It had been a long night for everyone. Melanie waved as the two little girls she'd found walked past her with their mother on the way to the shelter. Their mother looked stunned as she realized who Melanie was. Even with her long blond hair uncombed and tangled, and dirt on her face, it was easy to recognize the star.

  “Do you get tired of people recognizing you?” one of the other firemen asked her.

  “Yeah, a lot. My boyfriend hates it. He punched a photographer in the face, and wound up in jail. It really gets on his nerves.”

  “Sounds like it.” The firefighter smiled and went back to work. The remaining ones told her she should go to the shelter then. It was safer for her there. She had been helping hotel guests and random strangers all night, but the Office of Emergency Services wanted people in shelters. There was falling debris everywhere, pieces of windows along with signs and chunks of concrete off buildings. It really wasn't safe for her outside. Not to mention the live wires that were a constant danger.

  The youngest of the firefighters offered to walk her the two blocks to the shelter, and she reluctantly accepted. It was seven in the morning, and she knew her mother would be worried sick by then, and would probably be having a fit about where she was. Melanie talked easily with the young fireman on the way to the large church auditorium where people were being sent. As it turned out, the whole building was full to the rafters, and Red Cross volunteers and church members were serving breakfast. When she saw the size of the crowd, Melanie couldn't imagine how she'd find her mother. She left the fireman at the door, thanked him for providing her an escort, and threaded her way through the crowd looking for someone she knew. It was a massive group of people talking, crying, laughing, some looking worried, and hundreds of people sitting on the floor.

  She finally found her mother sitting next to Ashley and Pam, Melanie's assistant. They had been worried about Melanie for hours. Janet gave a shriek when she saw her and threw her arms around her daughter. She nearly crushed Melanie in her embrace, and then scolded her loudly for disappearing for the entire night.

  “For chrissake, Mel, I thought you were dead by now, electrocuted, or hit on the head by a chunk of the building falling off the hotel.”

  “No, I was just helping out,” Melanie said softly. Her voice always shrank to next to nothing when she was anywhere near her mother. And she noticed that Ashley was looking very pale. The poor thing was scared to death, and had been completely traumatized by the earthquake. She had sat huddled next to Jake all night, while he ignored her, and slept off everything he'd been drinking and smoking before the quake.

  He opened an eye and glanced at Melanie when he heard her mother shriek. He looked massively hung over, as he looked quizzically at Melanie. He didn't even remember her performance and wasn't sure he'd been there, although he was sure he remembered the rock-and-rolling of the quake.

  “Nice jacket,” he commented as he squinted at her in the filthy tuxedo jacket. “Where you been all night?” He looked more interested than concerned.

  “Busy,” she said, but didn't lean over to kiss him. He was looking very rough. He had been lying on the floor, sound asleep, with his jacket rolled up under his head like a pillow. Most of their roadies were sleeping near them, as well as the guys in the band.

  “Weren't you scared to be out there?” Ashley asked her, looking terrified, as Melanie shook her head.

  “No. A lot of people needed help. Lost kids, people who needed paramedics. A lot of people got cut by falling glass. I did whatever I could.”

  “You're not a nurse, for chrissake,” her mother snapped at her. “You're a Grammy winner. Grammy winners don't run around wiping people's noses.” Janet glared at her. It wasn't the image she wanted for her daughter.

  “Why not, Mom? What's wrong with helping people? There were a lot of scared people out there who needed someone to do whatever they could.”

  “Let someone else do it,” her mother said as she lay down next to Jake. “Christ, I wonder how long we're going to be stuck here. They said the airport is closed because of damage to the tower. I hope to hell they still send us home on the private plane.” Those things mattered a lot to her. She was very big on taking full advantage of the perks they were offered. She cared a lot more about all that than Melanie did. Melanie would have been just as happy on a Greyhound bus.

  “Who cares, Mom? Maybe we can rent a car and drive home. Just so we get back eventually. I don't have another gig till next week.”

  “Well, I'm not going to lie around here on the floor of a church auditorium for the next week. My back is killing me. They've got to put us up somewhere decent.”

  “All the hotels are closed, Mom. Their generators aren't working, they're dangerous, their refrigerators are out of commission.” Melanie knew that from the firefighters she'd talked to. “At least we're safe here.”

  “I want to go back to L.A.,” her mother complained. She told Pam to keep asking when the airport would open, and Pam promised that she would. She admired Melanie for helping people all night. She had spent the night bringing Jan
et blankets, cigarettes, and coffee that was being prepared on butane stoves in the mess hall. And Ashley was so panicked she'd thrown up twice. Jake was out like a light, drunk out of his mind. It had been a terrible night, but at least they were all alive.

  Melanie's hairdresser and manager had both been at the front of the auditorium serving sandwiches and cookies, and handing out bottles of water. The food ran out quickly, from the church's enormous kitchen where they usually fed the homeless. After that they were handing people tins of turkey, deviled ham, and beef jerky. It wasn't going to be long before there was nothing left. Melanie didn't care, she wasn't hungry anyway.

  At noon, they were told that they were being taken to a shelter in the Presidio. Buses would arrive for them, and they would leave the church in shifts. They were given blankets, sleeping bags, and personal supplies like toothbrushes and toothpaste, which they carried with their own belongings, since they wouldn't be coming back to the church.

  Melanie and her entourage didn't make it onto a bus till three o'clock that afternoon. She had managed to sleep for a couple of hours, and was feeling fine when she helped her mother roll up her blankets, and shook Jake awake.

  “Come on, Jakey, we're going,” she said, wondering just what drugs he'd taken the night before. He'd been dead to the world all day and still looked hung over. He was a handsome guy, but as he got up and looked around, he was looking very raw.

  “Jesus, I hate this movie. This looks like the set for one of those disaster epics, and I feel like a dress extra. I keep waiting for someone to paint blood on my face and put a bandage on my head.”

  “You'd look great even in blood and a bandage,” Melanie reassured him, tying her own hair back in a braid.

  Her mother complained all the way to the bus, and said the way they were being treated was disgusting, didn't anyone know who they were. Melanie assured her it didn't make any difference, and no one cared. They were just a bunch of people who had survived the earthquake, and no different from anyone else.

  “You shut your mouth, girl,” her mother scolded. “That's no way for a star to talk.”

  “I'm not a star here, Mom. No one gives a damn if I can sing. They're tired, hungry, and scared, and everyone wants to go home, just like we do. We're no different.”

  “You tell her, Mellie,” one of the guys in her band said, as they boarded the bus, and then two teenage girls recognized her and screamed. She signed autographs for both of them, which seemed ridiculous to her. She felt like anything but a star, half dressed and filthy, in a man's tuxedo jacket that had seen better days and the torn net and sequin dress she'd worn onstage.

  “Sing something for us,” the girls pleaded with her, and Melanie laughed at them. She told them there was no way she would sing. They were young and silly and about fourteen. They lived near the church with their families and were on the bus with them. They said part of their apartment building had fallen down, and they'd been rescued by the police, but no one was hurt, except an old lady on the top floor who broke her leg. They had a lot of tales to tell.

  They arrived at the Presidio twenty minutes later, and were escorted into old military hangars where the Red Cross had set up cots for them and a mess hall. A field hospital had been organized in one of the hangars, staffed by volunteer medical personnel, National Guard paramedics, doctors and nurses, an assortment of volunteers from local churches, and Red Cross volunteers.

  “Maybe they can airlift us out of here by helicopter,” Janet said as she sat down on the cot, utterly horrified by the accommodations. Jake and Ashley went off to get something to eat, and Pam offered to bring back food for Janet, since she said she was too tired and traumatized to move. She wasn't old enough to be that helpless, but she saw no reason to wait in line for hours for disgusting food. The band and the roadies were outside smoking, and after everyone else left, Melanie slipped quietly through the crowd to the desk at the front of the room. She spoke to the woman in charge in a soft voice. The woman at the desk was a National Guard reserve sergeant in camouflage fatigues and combat boots. She glanced at Melanie in surprise, and recognized her immediately.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, smiling warmly. She didn't say Melanie's name. She didn't need to. They both knew who she was.

  “I played a benefit here last night,” Melanie said quietly. She smiled broadly at the woman in camouflage fatigues. “I got stuck here like everyone else.”

  “What can I do for you?” She was excited to be meeting Melanie in person.

  “I wanted to ask what I can do to help.” She figured it was better than sitting on her cot, listening to her mother complain. “Do you need volunteers?”

  “I know there's a bunch of them in the mess hall, cooking and serving food. The field hospital is just down the road, and I'm not sure what they need. I can put you to work at the desk, if you want. But you may get mobbed if people recognize you.” Melanie nodded. She had thought of it herself.

  “I'll try the hospital first.” It sounded better to her.

  “Sounds good. Check in with me later if you don't find anything there. It's been a zoo here since the buses started coming in. We're expecting another fifty thousand people in the Presidio tonight. They're busing them in from all over the city.”

  “Thanks,” Melanie said, as she went back to find her mother. Janet was lying on her cot, eating a Popsicle that Pam had brought her, with a bag of cookies in her other hand.

  “Where've you been?” she asked, glancing at her daughter.

  “Checking things out,” Melanie said vaguely. “I'll be back in a while,” she told her mother. She walked away and Pam followed her. She told her assistant that she was going to the field hospital to volunteer.

  “Are you sure?” Pam asked, looking worried.

  “Yes, I am. I don't want to sit around here doing nothing, listening to my mom bitch. I might as well be useful.”

  “I hear they're pretty well staffed with National Guard and Red Cross volunteers.”

  “Maybe so. I figured at the hospital, they might need more help. There's nothing much to do here except hand out water and serve food. I'll come back in a while, or if I don't, you can find me there. The field hospital is just up the road.” Pam nodded and went back to Janet, who said she had a headache and wanted aspirin and water. They were giving that out at the mess hall. A lot of people had headaches from the dust, stress, and trauma. Pam had one herself, not only from the night, but from Janet's demands as well.

  Melanie left the building quietly, unnoticed, her head down, her hands in the tuxedo pockets. She was surprised to find a coin there. She hadn't noticed it before. She pulled it out as she walked along. It had a Roman numeral one on it, I, with the letters AA, and on the flip side, the Serenity Prayer. She assumed it belonged to Everett Carson, the photographer who had lent her the jacket. She put it back, wishing she had different shoes on. Walking along the cement road with pebbles on it was a challenge in the platform shoes she'd worn onstage the night before. They made her feel unsteady.

  She was at the field hospital in less than five minutes, and there was a hum of activity there. They were using a generator to light the hall, and had an amazing amount of equipment that had been stored in the Presidio or sent over by hospitals nearby. It looked like a very professional operation, full of white coats, military uniforms, and Red Cross armbands. For a minute, Melanie felt way out of her league, and foolish for wanting to volunteer.

  They had a desk at the entrance to check people in, and as she had in the hangar they'd been assigned to, she asked the soldier at the desk if they needed help.

  “Hell, yes.” He grinned broadly at her. He had an accent straight out of the Deep South and teeth that looked like piano keys as he smiled. She was relieved to see that he didn't recognize her, and he went to ask someone else about where they needed volunteers. He was back in a minute.

  “How do you feel about working with the homeless? They've been busing them in all day.” So far, many of
their injuries had been among people who lived on the street.

  “Works for me.” She smiled back at him.

  “A lot of them got hurt sleeping in doorways. We've been sewing them up for hours. Along with everyone else.” Their homeless patients were more challenging, as they'd been in bad shape before the earthquake hit, and many of them were mentally ill and hard to manage. Melanie wasn't daunted by what he said. He didn't tell her that one of them had lost a leg when a window sliced through it, but he had been taken by ambulance somewhere else. Most of what they were dealing with at the field hospital were minor injuries, but there were a lot of them, thousands in fact.

  Two Red Cross volunteers were in charge of checking people in. There were also social workers on hand to see if they could help in other ways. They were offering to help sign them up for city homeless programs, or permanent shelters if they qualified, and even if they did, some had no interest in signing up. They were at the Presidio because they had nowhere else to go, just like everyone else. And everyone at the Presidio got a bed and free food. There was an entire hall set up for showers.

  “Can we give you something else to wear?” One of the volunteers in charge smiled at her. “That must have been quite a dress. You may give someone a heart attack when the jacket opens.” She was smiling broadly, and Melanie laughed and looked down at her voluptuous chest, which was exploding through both the jacket and the remains of her gown. She had forgotten all about it.

  “That would be great. If you've got any, I could use some shoes too. These are killing me, and they're hard to walk in.”

  “I can see why,” the volunteer commented. “We have a ton of flipflops at the back of the hangar. Someone delivered them to us for all the people who walked out of their houses barefoot. We've been taking glass out of people's feet all day.” More than half the people who'd arrived had come without shoes on. Melanie was grateful at the prospect of flip-flops, and someone handed her a pair of camouflage pants and a T-shirt to go with them. The T-shirt said “Harvey's Bail Bonds,” and the pants were too big. She found a piece of rope and tied it around her, to hold up the pants. She put the flip-flops on and threw away her shoes and dress, and the tuxedo jacket. She didn't think she'd see Everett again, and she was sorry to toss his jacket, but it was a mess anyway, covered with plaster dust and dirt, and at the last minute she remembered the AA coin and slipped it into the pocket of her new army pants. It felt like a lucky token for her now, and if she ever saw him again, she could give it back to him in lieu of the jacket.