The old woman, pleased that someone had finally responded to her question in the affirmative, took a moment to grin with satisfaction.  Allowing the girl an opening, however, proved to be her undoing.

“It’s like, all my life, I’ve felt that I was different, you know?  That I was special.  That maybe, just maybe, I was put on this Earth to accomplish something.  Something real, you know?  Not like being an actuary or a dentist or a mailman or a . . .

“My psychiatrist says that I’m just using fantasy to explain why I was picked on so much as a kid.  But I’m all like, what the hell does he know about my destiny?  He’s just some moron who flunked out of med school and now gets paid a hundred bucks an hour to pass off his psychoses onto other people.  And anyway, I totally started learning Elvish before they stopped inviting me to their birthday parties, so really he’s just completely full of . . .”

At first the old woman remained calm.  She needed time to think—it was obvious that she hadn’t planned what to say if she ever got this far.  Once the tirade passed the five-minute mark, however, she looked more and more exasperated, waiting for any gap long enough to get a syllable in edgewise.  Eventually the patient lioness was rewarded when the flying gazelle stopped at a water hole.

“Good!  Good.  I can, uh, sense that your . . . spirit is ready for your quest.  But first I must ask: can you play a musical instrument?”

“Huh?  No.  Mom was always trying to get me to learn piano, but I was like, ‘No, Mom, I’m not going to be the perfect little girl you always imagined I’d be.’”

“Oh . . .”

Escobar was becoming an expert at recognizing when the old woman was disappointed.  This was no mere tropical depression: this was a full-blown Category 5 crestfallen.  “Well, in that case, I—I sense that your destiny lies elsewhere.”

The gazelle, spotting the lioness for what she really was, fled.  As she left, she made sure to get in a few parting shots.  “Okay.  I get it.  Fine.  You mystics are all alike.  You’re all like, ‘Sure, you’re special, but your destiny lies elsewhere.’  You know what?  My destiny does lie elsewhere.  And when I figure out where that is, oh man, you’re totally going to wish that I let you in on it.  You sylrehy-rydehk cyjyka!”

The lioness, wounded and perhaps upset at her own lack of good taste, limped back to her pillar to lick her wounds and wait for another unsuspecting antelope to pass by.

Day 3:

After a night that involved much more thinking than he preferred to get into in a non-work environment, Officer Escobar decided that he was no longer going to try to approach the woman.  He had no reason to believe that she would say to him anything other than what he had already heard the past two days (thankfully she at least seemed to have given up on the dead hair).  Or she might react differently because he was a cop, and when there are two versions of a story, the one you tell to the police is never the more helpful one.  The best approach was to observe and be prepared to respond to new developments.

Escobar was not a fan of hands-on policing anyway.  He saw his job as mostly symbolic; his role was not enforcement but prevention.  Most people weren’t stupid enough to pull anything with a cop watching, and the ones that were often took care of themselves.  He could stop crime before it started, simply by existing.  He wore the badge so that he need never use it.

Since his beat still happened to be the subways, he chose to continue wearing his badge in Simon Park Station.

He took up a position leaning against his pillar—the one that afforded the best view of hers—and sipped his subway stand coffee, which was foul but hot (the Dough-Re-Mi was always mobbed on weekends).  It had not taken him long to figure out what to look for.  Whenever someone separated from the pack, the old woman would pounce, like an ancient lioness, who has to rely on strategy rather than speed.

Her current target was a young woman with a backpack, probably a university student.  She wore a sweatshirt with a picture of an improbably-proportioned woman holding a battleaxe and something written in one of those made-up languages where all the letters seem to come with dots.  “Don’t you feel that there’s something missing from your life?”

The girl turned toward her, eyes wide.  Like most of the old woman’s prey, she had not noticed her until she spoke.  Most of the time this stealthy approach caused mild irritation in the subject.  In this case, however, it led to excitement.  “Ohmygod I so do!”

Seeing her in motion for the first time, he noted that the woman was short, but not as hunched over as he had expected.  She moved quickly despite her awkwardly long and shapeless garment, quickly enough to catch up with the speed-walking man.  She reached out but stopped just short of seizing his jacket sleeve.  “Don’t you feel that there’s something missing from your life?”

She was loud enough to be heard throughout the busy passageway, but her voice appeared to have an effect on only two people: her target and Officer Escobar.

“Uh . . . no, actually,” the man said, after giving the question far more thought than Escobar would have predicted.  “No, definitely not.  I’ve got a great life.  I love my job, my beautiful wife, my three spunky daughters.  Here, I’ve got pictures.”

The man set down his briefcase, took the woman by the shoulder, directed her away from the line of traffic, and reached into his pocket.  A rookie cop might have thought that she was about to get mugged.  The woman might have thought the same, though the look on her face was more surprised than afraid.  Escobar knew better; the only thing that came out of the pocket was a cell phone.

He flipped around to give the woman a better view and promptly started pushing buttons with the eager glee of a child.  “This is Briana, our youngest.  Just turned two last month.  She’s a bundle of energy.  It’s all we can do to keep up.  Taylor, on the other hand, just started middle school, and I’m sure you remember what that’s like . . .”

Whether out of petty revenge for the attempt to waste his time or a genuine belief that she was interested in his family, the man proceeded to share his entire photo library.  The woman, trapped in a perplexed daze, could do nothing but nod politely at appropriate intervals.  Escobar waited, unsure if she should be laughing or trying to rescue her.

Thirty minutes later the slide show ended.  The man returned phone to pocket and picked up his briefcase, which anyone could have easily lifted if Escobar hadn’t been keeping an eye on it.  “Thanks so much, miss!  That’s just what I needed to cheer me up after a long week at work.”

The man departed, waving cheerfully.  The woman waved half-heartedly back.  Then, as though someone had just pulled a chair out from under her, she slumped to the ground.

Escobar wanted to go over and talk to her, to finally figure out what her deal was, but he refrained.  She looked tired, and after the ordeal she had just been through he couldn’t blame her.  Besides, how would that conversation go?  In his experience, “I’ve been watching you” is never a particularly good ice breaker.

The walk home was more troublesome than it should have been.  For the first time since his own experiences in the horrifying era we call middle school, Escobar ran into a wall because he was trying to figure out what to say to a girl.

Day 2:

“Meet a man three different times and you will meet three different men,” may have been a famous quote by Ben Franklin.  Or Officer Escobar might have made it up himself.  He wasn’t sure.  Either way, he felt it was true.  In the morning, when baked goods are at their freshest, he was pleasant, cheerful, occasionally even buoyant.  Later on, typically around 8 PM, which just happened to be closing time at the Dough-Re-Mi, his mood tended to droop.

Wondering if it might be the same for the woman who uttered macabre gibberish late at night and practiced persuasive speaking in the morning, he decided to try hitting Simon Park Station in the afternoon.

The traffic was worse than during the morning rush.  Commuters on their way to work are tired, but they’re also orderly, trying to get into a business frame of mind before getting to the office.  People coming home are even more tired, and if you’re the only thing standing between them and the freedom to fling off their ties, kick off their shoes, dump their briefcases and plop down on the couch, you can hardly expect them to be polite.

Escobar waded through the eager crowd of people, most mere minutes away from blissfully mindless, television-induced inactivity.  Once inside, it took him only a few seconds to locate her pillar.  He appreciated consistency.  Whether they were perps, informants, or just persons of general interest, the easiest people to deal with were always the ones that never moved.

Naturally, as soon as he thought this, the woman stood up and strode purposefully toward the nearest pedestrian.

Officer Escobar was not prepared for this situation.  Unpredictable women, while fascinating, have the problem of being difficult to predict.  He had no idea what would come of the encounter.  He did not know if she would talk of bees, mysterious adventures, or both.  What he did know was that, as a cop, his patience and his tolerance for the weird were much higher than those of the average citizen.

Dying to find out what was going to come out of the strange woman’s mouth this time, he edged closer, positioning himself to prevent any disturbance.  Whatever she had to say, he doubted the commuter would be interested.  The only reason the average telemarketer doesn’t end the day with a broken nose is that you can’t punch someone over the phone.

Since verbal communication had failed miserably at their first meeting, he tried a different approach.  Opening his bag, he waved it past her crooked nose.

No response.

Escobar was confused.  Surely only the most devout monks had powers of self-denial great enough to scorn that smell.  He opened the bag a little wider before making another pass, this time shaking it to emphasize the delicious rattling of excess sugar crystals.

Nothing.  The woman was unbreakable.  Far less breakable than Officer Escobar, anyway, who was forced to give in and eat one.  Then, because you don’t go to Paris just to look at the Eiffel Tower and fly straight back home, he ate two more.

As he licked his fingers, he stared at his indomitable opponent.  He wondered if she really was dead, but no, there was the breathing.  And it wasn’t just breathing.  She was muttering to herself.  Curiosity beat out concern for the woman’s privacy in a heartbeat, and he leaned in to catch what she was saying.

“Everyone could use a little adventure now and then . . . something to spice things up . . . something to let you break free of your daily routine . . .”

In some ways these words made a lot more sense than the ones she had spoken before.  In others, however, they were just as crazy, and maybe even a bit dangerous.  Escobar recalled a man from his childhood, whom the neighborhood kids called “Almirante Loco” because he generally looked like he had just fallen off a boat.  The Almirante had informed them that the moon was not to be trusted, that it had struck before, wiping out the dinosaurs and the Roman Empire simultaneously, and that it was biding its time until it was ready to come back and finish the job.

The woman frowned and shook her head, clearing her mental Etch-a-Sketch.  “Have you ever considered a career as a romantic fortune seeker?  The pay’s not always great, but there are fringe benefits . . . you get to set your own hours . . .”

But Escobar remained unconvinced that she was as crazy as she appeared.  These were not random, fevered mumblings; she was planning, maybe even plotting something.  Her voice, though soft, remained as clear as ever.  As he thought about it, he remembered that even the Almirante’s words had eventually found a sort of rhyme and reason, as he revealed that the only way to stop the moon was to donate to his Stop the Moon Fund.  Escobar had even given him a quarter once, and, in all fairness, the moon had yet to fulfill its cataclysmic ambitions.

It sounded like a sales pitch, though not a very appealing one.  A woman twice his age had no business using words like “romantic” and “fringe benefits.”

The woman seemed to agree, for she shook her head again, slapping it lightly against the pillar for inspiration.  Or perhaps not so lightly, for her voice picked up a few decibels as she said, “Don’t you feel that there’s something missing from your life?”

Officer Escobar decided to leave her alone.  He had other stations to check on, and she wasn’t in a conversational mood.  Besides, with a bag of donuts from the Dough-Re-Mi in his hand, there was nothing missing from his life.

As he leaned back and stood up, the woman said (possibly to him but most likely to herself), “Who am I kidding?  No one’s ever going to buy this.”

All the folks down in Netville liked KYPC (pronounced “kih-pick” or “kye-pick,” as you like) a lot

But the Wordsman, on his Wordsman website, did NOT!

Driven off of his nut by all those KYPC needers

He stood there on Monday Eve hating the readers

Staring down from his site with a sour Wordsman frown

At the warm lighted comments below in their town

Then he growled, his ‘man fingers nervously drumming

“I MUST find some way to keep KYPC from coming!”

Then he got an idea!  An awful idea!

The ‘man got a wonderful, awful idea!

He decided to be lazy and not do anything the day after Christmas because he was tired.

THE END

Day 1:

The next day dawned over Crescenton, chilly and overcast.  People got up, groaned, sampled their favorite hangover remedies, threw the newspaper away unread in a fit of anger.  Everyone agreed that it would be best to forget about the events of the previous day as soon as possible.

Everyone except Officer Escobar.

That brisk morning found him hustling down into Simon Park Station, clutching a bag of warm pastries close to his heart.  There were several reasons why he had stopped in to buy a bag of mini-donuts on his way to work.  One was as insurance, in case he ran into Larry again—the man’s ability to be across town when you wanted to see him and right behind you when you didn’t had led to speculation that he was not only a ninja but a ninja with a twin brother.  The second was as a gift for the mystery woman, who, presuming she has spent the night down there, would be in need of warm food.  The third, of course, was that resisting those deep-fried rings of soft, faintly crunchy, brown sugary goodness required feats of will of which Escobar was, quite frankly, not capable.

The station looked different in the morning.  In the eight or so hours he had been away, the place had woken up.  A steady trickle of passengers-to-be flowed past him, punctuated by the occasional surge in the opposite direction whenever a train arrived.  Shops had come to life, offering everything from coffee to coffee with sugar; the quality was poor, but the price—and, more importantly, the time investment—were right.  Officer Escobar, who had already had two cups of fine French Roast and was holding a bag containing more than his Recommended Dietary Allowance of sugar, ignored them.

Though the morning rush hour had passed, he worried that the sharp upswing in hustle, paired with the accompanying increase in bustle, would prevent him from finding the woman again.  Even more disturbing was the idea that she might no longer be there at all.  He could not say why he was concerned; the idea of her vanishing was just somehow unsettling.

After fifteen minutes of searching, near the end of which he half-seriously considered abusing his authority to evacuate the station, he spotted her.  She was sitting against the same pillar, on the same side, outside the primary flow of traffic but still at some risk of being stepped on (or tripped over).

Escobar approached.  Her head was down, just as it had been the night before.  For an instant he panicked, thinking that she had passed on, that he had left an old woman to perish all alone, and that it was only the mingled foul odors of the subway station that had covered up the corpse-stink and prevented her body from being found.

She was breathing.  Escobar shook his head.  He was not normally much of a worrier, a fact his wife reminded him of almost daily.

Though he had neither address nor phone, Larry was not a hard man to track down.  It just took a while.  So Escobar cut straight into Simon Park, skipping his patrol car, where he might have been distracted by reports of mild rioting near the university.  He strained his eyes until he spotted one of the people he usually could not see.  He inquired after Larry, and the man on the bench simply pointed north.

Escobar nodded curtly and followed the directions, looking for the next link in the chain.  It took all his focus to seek out those he had trained himself not to detect, so he remained oblivious to the shouts and the sirens—while still a far cry from Rome in 44 BC or Paris in 1848, Crescenton that night was a city of discontent.  But Escobar was single-minded.  Following the fingers of those who, like him, had much bigger problems than the ones who were making all the fuss, he went east, then southeast, then east again, then south, then east, then, aggravatingly, back west, until he found who he was looking for.

“Evenin’, Officer,” said Larry, though by that point it was closer to morning.  He was smiling broadly, but with Larry you could never tell if a smile was genuine.  The cap he was never seen without seemed designed to droop down and cover his eyes.

Escobar, out of breath after nearly an hour of walking, took a moment and then explained that he wanted information about a presumably homeless woman living in a subway station.

Larry chuckled.  “Whaddaya think I am, King of the Bums or somethin’?”

Larry, the self-proclaimed King of the Bums, was the leading expert on the city’s “free” population (he chose to refer to them by what they had rather than what they lacked).  He could tell you everything there was to know about the free people of Crescenton, unless of course you actually wanted information, in which case his normally overactive mouth snapped shut and could only be pried open by the careful application of money, foodstuffs, or spirituous beverages.  Since Escobar did not have any cash, baked goods, or booze on him, he resorted to Larry’s other favorite thing: flattery.

“I dunno . . . you say she’s in the subway?  I don’t go in much for that public transportation.  Not that I can’t afford it.”  Despite his steady business as an information dealer, he probably couldn’t afford it, at least not on a regular basis.  Though he never left the city, his job called for a considerable amount of travel.  “A man’s not a man unless he can get where he needs to go on his own two legs.”

This may have been a crack at Escobar, who was built much more like a shotput than a javelin, but he did not have time to crack back.  If Larry was in a philosophical mood, the conversation could last until sunrise.  Escobar repeated his query, and his faith in Larry’s omniscience, and this time he threw in a promise that next time they met he would be carrying a bag of goodies from his favorite bakery.

“Hmm.”  Larry stroked his beard.  The condition of the beard, like that of all the other elements of Larry’s appearance, was remarkably consistent: unkempt, but not dramatically so.  Like all kings, he spent a great deal of energy maintaining his appearance.  “What does she look like?”

Escobar gave the best physical description he could, which, despite the fact that he had been standing only a few feet from her, was not that good.  “And what’d she say?”  Escobar repeated the phrases, which, despite their seeming meaninglessness, he remembered perfectly.  “Eh, I’ve heard stranger, but not much.”

Larry flashed his ambiguous smile.  “I gotta say, I’m surprised.  I don’t think I know this lady.  And here I thought I knew everybody in our fair city.  Maybe she’s a visitor.”

This explanation did not ring true with Officer Escobar.  Something about her had made him feel that she was a fixture, a part of the station, that she could no more come and go than the pillar she was slumped against.  But questioning Larry’s judgment to his face was often an expensive move, so he did not share his misgivings.

“I can try to find out more if you want—as long as I’m compensated, that is.  You want me to keep an eye on her?”

Escobar thanked him for the offer but said that he would be taking care of that himself.

Luckily Escobar was able to regain his balance, because the floor of the subway station was something he wasn’t entirely comfortable walking on, let alone meeting face-first.  As he turned around he dove into a standard cop apology, the kind designed to make you think the whole incident was mostly your fault.

The woman slowly lifted her head to look up at him.  She looked as dazed as if someone had just flung her off the subway without so much as a “No ticket,” so he had trouble telling whether what she said was a statement or a question: “Buckets of dead hair.”

Her words unsettled Escobar.  In his line of work—at least as it was conducted by officers with less powerfully selective senses—hearing a homeless woman muttering gibberish to herself was, sadly, not that unusual.  This woman, however, was not talking to herself.  Her wandering eyes had latched onto his face like he was the only man at a high school reunion with whom she had not had a messy breakup; she expected an answer.  And she was not muttering.  The woman spoke with perfect clarity.  Escobar wished she hadn’t, so that he could convince himself she had said something different.

Rather than attempt a response, he decided to take advantage of his new perspective on the woman’s face to get a better look at her.  His first impression was that she looked like an old witch, but not one who could afford ruby slippers, castles, or armies of simian aviators.  She had a face ravaged by age, though she lacked the warts and other skin diseases children come to expect from practitioners of the black arts.  Her hair, most of which was stuffed into a shapeless hood, could have been any color, especially under the unnatural lights of the subway station.

The rest of her was covered in filthy, faded, frayed garments that would make a fashion designer cry and a germaphobe gag.  Escobar could not tell if she was wearing one layer or many, and her figure was a total mystery (a mystery he felt was probably best left unsolved).

After sizing up his opponent, Officer Escobar took another, friendlier stab at conversation—making sure he hadn’t hurt her, asking who she was, why she was there, etc.

The woman’s eyes narrowed, as if it was finally dawning on her that what they had here was a failure to communicate.  “Satan’s zoo of bees?” she asked, this time in a decidedly questioning tone.

Escobar decided that this was as good a point as any to give up.  The woman was clearly nuts, but she seemed like one of the harmless ones.  After her second errant serve, instead of yelling or attacking him, she put her head back down and began speaking rapidly under her breath, like an orator who had gotten lost in the middle of a speech and was trying to find her place again.  Mere insanity was another thing Escobar believed did not merit police intervention; he himself had been known to lose it from time to time when he arrived at the Dough-Re-Mi only to discover that they had run out of their Minuet in Glee cookies (three quarters dark chocolate chips, one quarter white chocolate chips, one hundred percent sinfully delicious).

Still, something about the woman bothered him, and it wasn’t just her fondness for grim imagery.  He wanted to find out more, and if she wasn’t going to tell him anything useful, then there was only one place to go.

Officer Escobar gave Simon Park Station one last sweeping glance.  Satisfied that it was safe for another day, he set out to find Larry.

My apologies to anyone who was expecting the next installment of the Jenoviad.  I was all ready to post it, but then I discovered that no one had remembered to write it.  Rather than scramble to write up a few new lines, however, I have decided to post this instead.  It is the beginning of a story whose future remains uncertain.  I make no guarantees that it will not end abruptly.  Read at your own peril.  Comments are, as always, welcome.

Day 0:

Officer Escobar hated the subway beat.

He preferred policing places that had no obvious need of policing.  His normal route took him past the Dough-Re-Mi Café, whose only use for the men and women in blue was to have them drink its coffee.  Some officers might have believed that such a quiet place was not worth stopping at and moved on to more typical trouble spots.  Officer Escobar saw to it that the Dough-Re-Mi received the full benefit of local law enforcement, stopping in two to three times a day.

Subway stations, on the other hand, were problematic.  Things happened.  In Escobar’s ideal world, the only things that ever happened were visits from Rita, his favorite waitress, coming to ask whether his mug needed to be topped off, or if he wanted to try a free sample of their new Ebony and Ivory Chocolate and Vanilla Swirl Croissant.  Subway stations had fights, muggings, drug deals, and—God forbid—someone could even fall onto the tracks.  And they never had free samples of anything.

He braced himself for the smell as he walked down the steps into Simon Park Station.  The people of Crescenton took the “public” in public transportation to heart; they took full advantage of the space, safe in the belief that cleaning up was someone else’s (often, no one’s) job.  You could eat there if you were in a hurry, sleep there if it was too cold outside, go to the bathroom if you were really drunk, and engage in intimate relations if you were willing to risk someone recording it on a cell phone and putting it online.  When you combined the full range of human activity with the ventilation problems inherent to any underground location, you got a stink that could rival some industrial farms.

Simon Park was by no means the worst.  That honor belonged to Rittner Street, famous for the “Rittner Street Dash” people made to avoid having to take a breath before they were back in the open air.  But to someone accustomed to the mixed scents of baking, glazing, and frosting, it was agony.  Officer Escobar reminded himself once again never to agree to a shift swap until he knew all the details.

The station was quiet.  It was late, so the thunderous rumble accompanying a train’s arrival and departure only occurred a couple times an hour, and if there were any citizens currently treating the place like home, they were doing a good job of keeping it secret.  Escobar enjoyed the quiet.  It allowed him to focus on his thoughts, which were of his favorite café, rather than on his surroundings.  On that particular night, he might have expected more civil unrest, but then again he never had been good at keeping up with sports.  Luckily for him, most of the disturbances were above ground, because it is much more difficult to overturn a subway car than it is to upend a compact.

Officer Escobar felt that one of the most important parts of being a cop was to be adept at both seeing and not seeing.  Of the two, his more notable talent was the latter.  Escobar believed in the spirit of the law, not the letter, and he understood which crimes were best left unprosecuted.  When operating a speed trap, he was a natural at sneezing at precisely the moment when a car doing 59 in a 55-MPH zone drove past the radar gun.  He was legendary for the faith he put in obvious graffiti artists who said, “It was like that when I got here,” so long as he thought the new paint job was an improvement.  And the homeless were all but invisible to him.

He felt particularly strongly about this last point.  Everyone deserves a place to live, he thought, and those who could not afford a traditional residence had every right to look at rent-free areas.  So, when he walked along alleyways, through parks, and even in subway stations, he took no notice of people residing in areas that certain city ordinances considered off-limits.

Perhaps these feelings can explain why he tripped over a woman sitting on the ground as he walked past a concrete pillar.  Surely that’s the reason.  The idea that the woman simply had not been there an instant before was absurd.