I first saw her on the train. She was wearing a baseball cap and eating two pancakes stuck together with jam. I sat one seat behind her, and watched my stop go by. I followed her all day before I realized she wasn’t going anywhere. By then I was already in love.
I approached her at the McDonald’s where she was trying to score free food. I bought her a Big Mac and a shake. She kept her eyes lowered. I thought she was shy around someone like me, with my suit and my briefcase and my nice haircut. She asked me what my job was.
“Just drifting, like you,” I said.
“Yeah right.” She had ketchup on her chin.
We spent the night under the highway interchange. A bum came to bother us, but I ran him off. At first she was suspicious, but I thought I had gained her trust. I thought she would recognize that, despite my clothes and the pictures of my family in my wallet, I was just like her.
In the morning I woke ecstatic.
“What are we going to do today?” I asked her. “Can we take the train to Seattle?”
She told me she wanted to go to the shelter on 18th St, see if she could get a shower.
“You don’t need a shower,” I said. “You’re beautiful.”
She looked straight at me for the first time. She was older than I’d realized. She had cool, weary eyes.
“You’re going to like me for about five more minutes,” she told me, “So you better give me all your money now.”
I realized I was a type she’d seen before, and would again. I lowered my eyes, opened my wallet and gave her three twenty dollar bills. Then I went home to my family.
August 25, 2007 at 7:52 pm |
[...] The stories are to novels what The Far Side is to Achewood. They quickly draw you into a world that is familiar and yet bizarre. Sometimes the mailman corresponds with your family for you, and other times city dwellers live out their somewhat bohemian fantasies. In a few hundred words—a minute or two of reading—the story of someone’s life has come and gone, you’ve met and lost a friend, given in to hope, and felt despair at the human condition. [...]
August 25, 2007 at 7:52 pm |
[...] The stories are to novels what The Far Side is to Achewood. They quickly draw you into a world that is familiar and yet bizarre. Sometimes the mailman corresponds with your family for you, and other times city dwellers live out their somewhat bohemian fantasies. In a few hundred words—a minute or two of reading—the story of someone’s life has come and gone, you’ve met and lost a friend, given in to hope, and felt despair at the human condition. [...]