Extenuating Circumstances Read Free Page B

teenage drug abusers. Ira started the thing by personally soliciting contributions. He even got me to pitch in. Eventually we got the commission to fund the place. It's a step toward cleaning that damn street up."
    "What's so special about Monmouth?"
    "There's a good deal of drug trafficking and prostitution around the bars there. And that upsets a lot of people, not just Ira. Of course nobody did anything but complain until Ira came along. He paid the bills for the clinic out of his own pocket for almost a year. Still pays a few, when the grant money runs low."
    "Why so generous?" I asked.
    "Ira thinks the city should look after the street kids -and all the other folks who haven't had the advantages that we've had." Although he said it with the sort of light irony that you'd expect from a guy like him, the irony was mixed with something respectful and fond.
    "He sounds like an old-fashioned do-gooder," I said, smiling.
    "That's exactly what he is," Geneva said. "Ira can bore you to death with facts and figures. I mean, he's a stickler for detail. But under the bow tie and pressed shirt, he's got a heart of gold and everyone knows it."
    His face fell. "Look, if there's anything I can do to help find him, don't hesitate to call me. Here or at home. I really mean that."
    "I'm sure the Lessings will appreciate your offer."
    "I just hope it's a false alarm."
 
 
    4
    Before returning to the Lessing house I caught a cab to the Lighthouse Clinic on upper Monmouth Street. On the way uptown I took a look at the bars that Geneva had mentioned -little brick boxes, with light bulbs flashing around their doors and sandwich signs on the sidewalks advertising the most beautiful girls in Kentucky, all nude, all the time. And of course there was the street traffic that had apparently upset Lessing. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls in Madonnaware, with their spikey hair spray-painted purple and their eyes made up like Halloween masks.
    Twentyyear-olds in leather minis and tube tops, their breasts oozing out of their bodices like squibs of toothpaste. They schooled together in groups, according to their ages, wandering up and down the blocks in front of the bars, occasionally darting out into the street, getting swallowed up by a passing car and speeding off. I'd seen that kind of thing so many times before in so many different cities that the bars and the whores seemed like part of the urban landscape now, like fireplugs and phone lines. I guessed Lessing had seen them differently.
    The Lighthouse was a half mile north of the redlight district, a brick storefront in the middle of a commercial block. The front window had been boarded over with painted plyboard, and a sign had been hung above the door picturing a lighthouse. A teenage girl was sitting in the doorway, looking very stoned and very lost. As I got out of the cab she walked over and panhandled me for change.
    "Why don't you go inside?" I said to her, pointing at the building.
    "Why don't you get fucked?" she said, stalking off. "I ain't ready to be saved."
    Judging from the thinness of her arms and the sallowness of her complexion, I gave her a few more weeks. Then she'd be ready for anything.
    I walked through the open door into a reception room filled with folding chairs. A half-dozen spacedout kids sat there, nodding off. There was an unmanned secretary's desk at the rear of the waiting area, with a sign on its corner saying "Counseling." A long aisle ran from the back of the waiting area to a pair of swinging doors with the word "Clinic" printed on them. Behind that door a kid was screaming holy murder. The junkies on the folding chairs didn't seem to notice, but it got my attention, all right. After a few minutes the screaming subsided into sobs, then stopped altogether. A young nurse, looking ashenfaced, came through the swinging doors and up the aisle. She sat down at the counseling desk.
    I walked over to her.
    "You all right?" I asked.
    She nodded slowly, as if she