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I write because it makes me feel great. I hope some of my writing inspires others to dream and create their own stories. Feel free to take inspiration, but if you reproduce something from my website, please mention my name. Thanks, Jean

Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out

Jodie snapped the final clasp on her guitar case, put on her coat and searched for Mario, the club's owner. She knew the uninspired set she'd just played would be her last and wanted to collect her pay. Once her eyes adjusted to the dark side of the spotlight, she found him in a corner with an animated blond wearing a dress made for someone with a much lower body mass index. "Hey, Mario, I'm finished. You owe me $120 for tonight."

"I don't know if I should pay you for that last set. You were shitty."

"Yeah, I get that way when I have to dodge beer bottles."

"It was only one, and you could have ignored the jerk. He wouldn't have thrown it if you hadn't flipped him off."

"Can you pay me?" While Mario went to the cash register, Jodie studied the crowd. In the few years she'd played there, stiletto heels and sequence dresses had replaced jeans and tennis shoes. The style of music the crowd wanted changed, too. Not just in Mario's club, but all around Chicago. Acoustic guitars, banjos, harmonicas, and stand up bass fiddles faced fierce competition from electric bands and screaming groupies. The rest of Jodie's band had already seen the future and made the switch to rock instead of traditional folk and blues. Jodie could listen to rock, but she had no desire to play it. When they asked her to make the switch, she declined. It might have been professional suicide, but giving up the music she loved would have been a suicide of the soul. Now she wondered if she might have blown it. At forty, going back to school to start a new career wasn't likely. All she wanted was to play her music, but if bars and clubs no longer wanted acoustic bands, they no longer wanted her.

"Here." Mario handed her six worn twenties that probably contained enough cocaine to get her arrested. "I'll call you when I need you again." She stifled the urge to give the place a final unsentimental scan, shoved the bills in her pocket, and hurried out.

Temperatures had dropped drastically in three hours and an inch of snow coated every surface. The latter pleased her city weary heart. It gave the streets a rare look of untarnished calm and muffled a layer of noise. She headed toward the bus stop glancing over her shoulder at her lone footprints. If her cell phone took pictures she would have snapped one and called it 'Portrait of a musician out of step with the times'. As she turned back from the amusing distraction, her foot slipped on the slick cement and she hit the sidewalk.

"Ouch." Jodie laid her hand on the back of her head and looked around to see if anyone saw the down and out musician fall on her ass. No one was around, making the struggle to her knees a little less humiliating. She leaned on the guitar case and pushed herself to a standing position, brushing off snow as the bus arrived.

Her big box Guild guitar and the hard shell case weighed almost twenty pounds and took some effort to lift as she climbed onto the bus. The driver, obviously accustomed to driving in city traffic day after day, had a Zen-like calm. He smiled as she slid her transit card into the slot and watched the silent green light come on to urge her along. The bus was empty except for one other passenger. A large African American woman sat on the first side seat on the driver's side. She filled a large part of the bench and looked up as Jodie approached. "Ah, a musician. You any good or do you just carry that thing around for show?"

Jodie sat on the bench seat opposite her traveling companion and slid the guitar behind her legs. The woman had knitting needles in her hands and a colorful piece of fabric in her lap reminding Jodie of Madame DeFarge from 'A Tale of Two Cities'. That made sense since blues and folk music would soon join Madame at the guillotine. "I think I'm good." She told her. "Although the rock band they hired for the second half of the night had a bigger following."

"Oh, I hear you, honey. What kind of music do you play?"

"Blues and folk mostly. I play some contemporary stuff to get work."

"My name's Rosie and I sing the blues, too. I left the Delta and came to Chicago in 1945, right after the end of the Second World War. Back then, you could walk up and down the storefronts on Maxwell Street and sit in with musicians from all over the country, and 'til all hours of the morning."

"Glad to meet you Rosie, I'm Jodie."

"So tell me, girl, why are you so mournful?"

It surprised Jodie that Rosie knew how rotten she felt. "I guess I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve. I knew it would happen eventually, but most of the clubs I play are switching to rock bands and putting in dance floors. Acoustic music isn't much in demand."

"So you're givin' up." The knitting fell to her lap and a smile took up so much room on her face the rest of her features all but disappeared. Jodie sensed the words were a challenge. "Why don't you bring your axe out and we'll see if you have anything worth saving." They were a challenge. After her less than stellar performance at the bar, Jodie was eager to take her on and pulled out the 'axe', ready for battle. As she adjusted the strap and checked the tuning, she saw the driver smile in the mirror. His nod of support in the ghostly muted fluorescent bus light added to the mystical strangeness of the scene. She looked across at the woman who had returned to her knitting and begun to hum. It was a song Jodie recognized, written by Jim Cox in 1929—'Nobody Knows you When You're Down and Out'. Without taking her eyes off Rosie, Jodie's fingers squeezed the bronze strings against the rosewood neck and followed along. The hum became words.

Nobody knows you when you're down and out

In your pocket, not one penny

And your friends, you haven't any

And as soon as you get on your feet again

Everybody is your long lost friend

It's mighty strange, without a doubt, but

Nobody wants you when you're down and out

Jodie pushed, pulled, strummed, plucked, and pinched the metal strings, grateful for years of calluses on her fingertips. She did more than just keep up with Rosie's deep, powerful voice, she could not remember playing better. The bus driver added harmonies, though Rosie needed little backup, and Jodie even supplied a twelve-bar riff when the remarkable woman paused for a breath. She didn't sing the notes--they burst from her lungs determined to reach the farthest galaxies of the universe with a range that stretched octaves like rubber bands.

As Jodie's confidence grew, she tried to mimic Rosie's vocal style, but Rosie stopped singing and shook her head. "You're pretty good, but use your own voice. You got a fine one and your music won't be real unless you're the one singing it. So, do you still plan on givin' up? Gettin' into another kind of work--like workin' night shifts at a convenience store. That ought to give you good reason to sing the blues."

Before Jodie could answer, the driver yelled, "Hang on." There was a loud noise and Jodie thought the bus slammed into something. She tried to grab the bar, but instead, her head flew back into the window.

"Hey, are you all right?" Jodie heard a voice and found herself lying on the sidewalk in the snow. "Can you hear me?"

The question came from a man who knelt at her side. "What happened? Where's the bus?"

"What bus?"

"The bus I was riding. I think it hit something and I slammed my head against the window." She looked frantically at her guitar case. "Where's my guitar?"

Frowning at the large guitar case he pulled out a cell phone. "I better call an ambulance. I saw you fall when I was leaving Mario's and when you didn't get right up I came running. Did you hit your head on the sidewalk?"

"No, I thought I hit it on the window." She touched a tender spot on the back of her head. "How long was I laying here?"

"Only a few seconds. Your eyes were open when I got to you. Do you want me to call?" He held the phone in front of her.

"No. Thanks." Her voice trembled slightly as she climbed to her knees, holding the guitar case for support. Her rescuer stood and grabbed her elbow. "I think I might wave down a cab, though. I'm not ready for another bus ride."

When Jodie arrived at her apartment, she leaned her guitar against the wall and turned on the laptop. She had spent the entire ride examining what happened. Nothing made sense. Rosie's style was familiar, but it wasn't any contemporary blues singer. It must have been a dream or some strange kind of altered consciousness from the bump on her head. How could so much have happened in the few seconds she lay on the sidewalk?

The blues singer had said her name was Rosie and that she came to Chicago from the Delta after World War II. Jodie sat slumped on the couch, but shot forward, wide eyed. She entered 'Delta Rose' in the search engine and followed the first link to a blues women's website and swallowed hard as she looked at the face of the woman on the bus. Behind her, with his hands on her shoulders, was her son, Charles, the bus driver. Rosie died in 1963 and Charles in 1987. There was a quote under Rosie's picture--"I'm gonna spend the rest of my days and then some, keeping the blues alive."

"Wow, Rosie, you weren't kidding." Jodie traded the laptop for her guitar and smiled at the image of her friend. "Nobody knows you when you're down and out."

The Ring

"Fran, where are the clean towels?"

"I don't know, Mom? Where are they?"

Martha followed her daughter's voice to the living room where the twenty-two-year-old reclined on the couch and for a moment invoked the image of a lady of the court contemplating a book of poetry. The vision dissolved at Martha's weary sigh. The worn sofa was not a Louis XVI settee and the magazine half covering Fran's scowl was Hollywood gossip, not a book of sonnets. "I asked you to take the towels out of the dryer and fold them before they wrinkle."

"Mom, nobody in the world but you cares if their towels are wrinkled. You need to chill."

The response was neither an apology nor a surprise to Martha as she lowered herself in a chair and looked at her only child. She'd been young when she had Franny, just eighteen. She thought she was in love and when she realized she was pregnant, demanded that David marry her. It had been a stupid, childish mistake. They didn't love each other and only months after Fran's birth, the few threads that held them together unlaced and he left.

Her mother offered to care for the baby so Martha could work, but the price she paid was high. Every time she dropped Fran off or picked her up, she heard a lecture. Her mother had a cache of sermons that would have given the pastor material for years of Sundays. When Franny was old enough to take care of herself, Martha rarely stopped at her mom's house. She felt guilty, but not guilty enough to listen to the unending lists of her shortcomings. She had promised herself never to do to Franny what her mother had done to her, to make her feel worthless or stupid. She sometimes wondered if she'd taught her never to feel anything. "Fran, I know this is a difficult time for you, but we agreed that if you were going to live here, you'd help with the chores. If you don't want to do that, help with some of the bills so I can cut down on my hours at work."

"How can I help with the bills? I don't have any money."

"You might get a job." Franny's only response was to roll over and face the back of the couch, an attempt to end the conversation, which Martha was not buying. "You could stay with your grandmother for a while. She could use some help."

"You've got to be kidding. She's worse than you."

Had Fran risen from the couch and delivered a hard slap across Martha's face, the sting would not have been as great. Her words, though spoken flippantly and without thought, hit hard, mostly because Martha was afraid they might be true. Had she become her mother? From the day that David left and she went to work, her life was about survival--for herself and her daughter. The year Franny married and moved out was a little easier, but the bills still needed to be paid. When Franny's marriage ended, she returned home, unable to make it on her own.

Twenty-two years earlier, Martha found a job doing laundry at a drycleaners. She still worked there. Her life spent cleaning and ironing other people's dirty wrinkled clothes. Sometimes she resented it, but as her mother often reminded her--she'd made her bed. Early on, she'd considered taking night classes at the community college, but couldn't ask her mom for any more help. She didn't have the strength. Now, at thirty-eight, she thought of herself as an old woman, and sometimes an old and bitter woman. As she was about to get up to fold the towels, the doorbell rang. "I'll get it," she said. Fran hadn't moved. An elderly woman stood at the door, smiling. "Hi, can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Martha Turner. That's you isn't it?"

Martha's head drew back instinctively at the unexpected announcement that this stranger knew her. "Yes, I'm Martha, but I don't think I know you."

"I've been going to Young's Dry Cleaners for thirty years and I know you've been working there a good part of that time."

Martha stepped back to let her in. "Please come in, Ms…?"

"Call me Beth."

"All right, Beth. Come in. Would you like something to drink?"

As the two women entered the living room, Franny rolled off the couch and made a hasty retreat. She bypassed the clothes dryer and took the stairs to her bedroom two at a time. Beth declined a drink and as she accepted a chair, Martha sat on the couch. "Is there a problem with something at the cleaners?"

"No, quite the opposite." Beth lifted her hand. "Do you recognize this ring?"

Beth's hand was as light and fragile as a bird as Martha supported it to study the ring. "Why, yes. I found it in a coat pocket at the store. I knew by looking at it that someone would miss it. That's a very unique ring. Beth, I'm afraid I don't remember seeing you in the store."

"I usually sit in the car and someone goes in for the cleaning, but I'm a nosy old busybody and like to watch what's going on. I've seen you…well…I've seen you grow up. Your life hasn't been easy, has it, Martha?"

"No harder than most I suppose. My mom says that you get what you deserve and you're stuck with it."

"Do you believe that?"

The question stopped her. Martha had never considered whether her mother's words were true. Since her life was miserable, she believed she must have done something to deserve it. "I don't know, Beth. I don't want to believe I've been a bad person, or that I'm stuck with an unhappy life. It's funny you should ask though. I wondered earlier how I had become so unhappy, and if I could change."

"A person can always change, Martha, as long as they know what it is they want to change. My guess is that you're not your mother, nor are you your daughter. You're Martha Turner, an honest, hardworking person who would like a chance to have a life. That seems rather reasonable to me."

"That sounds reasonable even to me when you say it."

Beth smiled and pointed at her ring. "This ring was given to me by my mother, and had been given to her by her mother. The tradition goes back many generations. When I couldn't find it, I was devastated. I felt as though I'd let my entire family down. Your boss brought it to the car and I sobbed as I squeezed it in my hand. When I pulled myself together, I made him tell me who found it. That's how I discovered where you lived. I wanted to thank you, Martha."

"You're welcome, but you didn't have to drive all the way over here to thank me."

"I did. No one would have known if you kept the ring. I didn't even realize it was in the pocket of my coat I would never have thought to inquire at the cleaners. You could have made your life a little easier if you kept it."

Martha's head dropped. "I'm afraid that thought did cross my mind. I knew it must have been worth some money. Money I could use."

"I can't imagine anyone not thinking the same thing, but you didn't keep it. You knew you had to return it. I was going to give this ring to my daughter, but she died in a car accident. When that happened, I raged at God and screamed at everyone who wandered into my path. I came very close to throwing the ring and myself into the lake. I'm glad I didn't. I thought you might want it."

"You…I." Martha shook her head, hoping to arouse a more intelligent response. "I can't. It belongs in your family."

"I'm afraid that I'm it these days. There is no more family."

"Beth, I'm not a religious person, but if there is anything after this life, maybe you can give the ring to your daughter then. I think you should keep it. I'm grateful that you would want to do something that kind, but please, keep it." She wrapped her long fingers around the hand with the ring.

After Beth left, Martha sat back on the couch and considered her comment about knowing who you were before you could change. Who was she? She at least still had enough integrity to return the ring. That was a good thing, but she was also a person who without realizing it had become comfortable in her despair. Was that the ring her mother passed down to her, and the ring she had passed on to her own daughter? When Fran sat next to her, Martha put an arm over her shoulder. "Franny, I'm going to start taking some classes at the Junior College. Maybe a few general studies courses so I can see where I want to go, and next weekend we're going to invite your grandmother over for dinner. A dinner we'll both cook. You need to think about going back to school or going to work."

"What brought this on? Who was your visitor?"

"She came here to give me a ring, but gave me a much more valuable gift."

A week later, while Martha worked in the back of the cleaners, someone came in to see her. "Martha Turner?"

She glanced up from the ironing table at an official looking man in a dark blue suit. "Yes, can I help you?"

"You know Mrs. Elizabeth Bardwell." She shook her head, but he continued. "Mrs. Bardwell passed away and left a few things for you." He handed her a small box which she opened and immediately recognized the ring.

"Beth," she looked between the man and the ring. "She passed away?"

"Yes, ma'am." He pushed an envelope toward her. "This is a letter that she said would explain everything."

Martha sat and opened the envelope.

Dear Martha,

I hope you don't think me rude for doing this, but it seemed right. I know you will have already figured out how to start making changes in your life. You're an intelligent woman who needed nothing more than a slight push in the right direction.

I want you to have the ring. It is worth much more than the collected stones and metal. The act of passing on what we have learned to the next generation is more valuable than any bag of coins.

You did more for me by returning the ring than you could possibly know. Thank you for helping me continue our family tradition. I would also like you to have my home. As I told you, I have no other family and I am confident you can fill it with joy.

Sincerely,

Beth

Martha looked up at the man in the suit, who stood with his hands folded. "She wants me to have her home?" He nodded. "Where is it?"

"It's on the North Shore, but it is actually more of an estate than a home."

"Beth had an estate?"

"It's worth over eight million dollars." Martha returned to her work. "What are you doing? You don't have to iron anymore."

"For the moment, ironing is what I do."

Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out

Jodie snapped the final clasp on her guitar case and searched for Mario, the club's owner. She was reasonably certain that the uninspired set she'd just finished would be her last and wanted to make sure she collected her pay. When her eyes adjusted to the dark side of the spotlight, she found him in a corner talking to a scrawny blond in a dress more likely applied with a roller than pulled on over her head. A roller that ran dry before it completely covered a pink silk thong.

"Hey, Mario, I'm finished. You owe me $120 for tonight."

"I don't know if I should pay you for that last set. You were shitty."

"Yeah, I get that way when I have to dodge beer bottles."

"It was only one, and you could have ignored the jerk. I bet he wouldn't a thrown it if you hadn't flipped him off."

"Can you pay me?" While Mario went to the cash register, Jodie studied the crowd. In the few years she'd played there, stiletto heels and sequence dresses had replaced jeans and tennis shoes. The style of music the crowd wanted changed, too. Not just in Mario's club, but all around Chicago. Acoustic guitars, banjos, harmonicas, and stand up bass fiddles faced fierce competition from electric bands and screaming groupies. The rest of Jodie's band had already seen the future and made the switch to hard rock instead of the traditional folk and blues they'd played. Jodie could listen to rock, but she had no desire to play it. When they asked her to make the switch, she declined. It might have been professional suicide, but she thought giving up the music she loved would have been a suicide of the soul. Now she wondered if she might have blown it. At forty, going back to school to start a new career wasn't likely. All she wanted was to play her music, but if bars and clubs no longer wanted acoustic music, they no longer wanted her.

"Here." Mario handed her six well-worn twenties that probably carried enough cocaine to get her arrested. "I'll call you when I need you again."

Jodie stifled her urge to give the place a final unsentimental scan as she shoved the bills in her pocket and hurried out. Temperatures had dropped drastically in three hours and an inch of snow coated every surface. The latter pleased her city weary heart because it gave the street a rare look of untarnished calm and muffled a layer of noise. She headed toward the bus stop glancing over her shoulder, amused by her lone footprints. "Someone should take a picture of that and call it 'Portrait of a musician out of step with the times'." When she turned back, her foot slipped on the snowy covering and she hit the sidewalk.

"Ouch." Jodie laid her hand on the back of her head and looked around to see if anyone saw the down and out musician fall on her ass. She struggled to her knees, leaned on the guitar case, and pushed herself up to a standing position, brushing off the snow as the bus arrived.

Her big box Guild guitar and the hard shell case weighed almost twenty pounds and it took some effort to lift it and climb the narrow stairs onto the bus. She ran her pass through the fare box and watched the silent red light on the top turn green to urge her along. The satisfying 'kchink' of quarters dropping through the slot had met the same fate as her music.

She saw only one other passenger as she turned from the driver. A large African American woman sat on the first side seat. She filled a large part of the bench and looked up as Jodie boarded. "Ah, a musician. You any good or do you just carry that thing around for show?"

Jodie sat on the bench seat opposite her and slid her guitar behind her legs. The woman had knitting needles in her hands and a colorful piece of fabric in her lap reminding Jodie of Madame DeFarge from 'A Tale of Two Cities'. That made sense since blues and folk music would soon join Madame at the guillotine. "I think I'm good." She told her. "Although the rock band they hired for the second half of the night had a bigger following."

"Oh, I hear you, honey. What kind of music do you play?"

"Blues and folk mostly. I play some contemporary stuff to get work."

"My name's Rosie and I sing the blues, too. I left the Delta and came to Chicago in 1945, right after the end of the Second World War. Back then, you could walk up and down the storefronts on Maxwell Street and sit in with musicians from all over the country, and 'til all hours of the morning."

"Glad to meet you Rosie, I'm Jodie."

"So tell me, girl, why are you so mournful?"

It surprised Jodie that Rosie knew how rotten she felt. "I guess I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve. I knew it would happen eventually, but most of the clubs I play are switching to rock bands and putting in dance floors. Acoustic music isn't much in demand."

"So you're givin' up." The knitting fell to her lap and a smile grew to take up so much room on her face that the rest of her features all but disappeared. Jodie sensed the words were a challenge. "Why don't you bring your axe out and we'll see if you have anything worth saving."

They were a challenge. After her less than stellar performance at the bar, Jodie was eager to take her on and pulled out the 'axe', ready for battle. As she adjusted the strap and checked the tuning, she saw the driver smile in the mirror. His nod of support in the ghostly muted fluorescent bus light added to the mystical strangeness of the scene. She looked across at the woman who had returned to her knitting and begun to hum. It was a song Jodie recognized, written by Jim Cox in 1929--Nobody Knows you When You're Down and Out. Without taking her eyes off Rosie, Jodie's fingers squeezed the bronze strings against the rosewood neck and followed along. The hum became words.

Nobody knows you when you're down and out

In your pocket, not one penny

And your friends, you haven't any

And as soon as you get on your feet again

Everybody is your long lost friend

It's mighty strange, without a doubt, but

Nobody wants you when you're down and out

Jodie pushed, pulled, strummed, plucked, and pinched the metal strings, grateful for years of calluses on her fingertips. She did more than just keep up with Rosie's deep, powerful voice, she could not remember playing better. She and the bus driver added harmonies, though Rosie needed little backup, and Jodie even supplied a twelve-bar riff when the remarkable woman paused for a breath. She didn't sing the notes--they burst from her lungs determined to reach the farthest galaxies of the universe with a range that stretched octaves like rubber bands.

As Jodie's confidence grew, she tried to mimic Rosie's vocal style, but Rosie stopped singing and shook her head. "You're pretty good, but use your own voice. You got a fine one and your music won't be real unless you're the one singing it. So, do you still plan on givin' up? Gettin' into another kind of work--like workin' night shifts at a convenience store. That ought to give you good reason to sing the blues."

Before Jodie could answer, the driver yelled, "Hang on." There was a loud noise and Jodie thought the bus slammed into something. She tried to grab the bar, but instead, her head flew back into the window.

"Hey, are you all right?" Jodie heard a voice and found herself lying on the sidewalk in the snow. "Can you hear me?"

She looked at the man who knelt next to her. "What happened? Where's the bus?"

"What bus?"

"The bus I was riding. I think it hit something and I slammed my head against the window." She looked frantically at her guitar case. "Where's my guitar?"

"I better call an ambulance." He pulled out a cell phone. "I saw you fall when I was leaving Mario's and when you didn't get right up I came running. Did you hit your head on the sidewalk?"

"No, I thought I hit it on the window." She touched a tender spot on the back of her head. "How long was I laying here?"

"Only a few seconds. Your eyes were open when I got to you. Do you want me to call?" He held the phone so she could see it.

"No. Thanks." Jodie climbed to her knees and held on to the guitar case for support. Her rescuer stood and grabbed her elbow. "I think I might wave down a cab, though. I'm not ready for another bus ride."

When Jodie arrived at her apartment, she leaned her guitar against the wall and turned on the laptop. She had spent the entire cab ride examining what happened. Nothing made sense. She thought Rosie's style was familiar, but it wasn't any contemporary blues singer. It must have been a dream or some strange kind of altered consciousness from the bump on her head. How could so much have happened in the few seconds she lay on the sidewalk?

The woman said her name was Rosie and that she had come to Chicago from the Delta after World War II. Jodie had leaned back on the couch, but shot forward, wide eyed. She entered 'Delta Rose' in the search engine and followed the first link to a blues women's website. She swallowed as she looked at the face of the woman on the bus. Behind her, with his hands on her shoulders, was her son, Charles, the bus driver. Rosie died in 1963 and Charles in 1987. There was a quote under Rosie's picture--"I'm gonna spend the rest of my days and then some, keeping the blues alive."

"Wow, Rosie, you weren't kidding." Jodie traded the laptop for her guitar and smiled at the image of her friend. "Nobody knows you when you're down and out."

A Safe Distance

Alan felt a tug of guilt as he flipped on the heater and filled the car with a blast of instant warmth. Outside the safety of his Prius, people slumped against walls and slept on benches. People that would love to have a car, even if it didn’t run. The damp gray air and the predictable doom of his mission seemed determined to stop the flow of blood in his veins. His fingers felt cold even under black leather gloves.

He’d parked a half block from the stoop where JJ sat with his friends. Watching from what he hoped was an unseen post he went over the script again in his mind. Were they the words that would bring him home? Glancing again at the group, he caught a glimpse of his own face in the rear view mirror. Neat, healthy, respectable—did that face drive JJ away? Was it something that he’d done?

The sound of laughter came from the stoop and Alan wondered what they had to celebrate. They were penniless, homeless and owned nothing more than what they carried. What kind of life was that? They made little attempt to hide the brown paper bag they passed, and Alan shivered when JJ took a large gulp and made the face of someone swallowing kerosene. He wiped the almost black sleeve of his once tan raincoat over his mouth and passed the bottle to his neighbor.

Alan had seen him six months earlier, but life on the street had aged him, cruelly adding years in scant months. He’d lost a tooth, though it didn’t affect his smile. He always could smile, no matter what happened around him, but now the curve of his mouth seemed strained. Maybe he’d be ready to come home this time.

The surrounding neighborhood depressed Alan even further and he pushed the heater up another notch. Even as he felt the temperature rise, he knew a blast furnace wouldn’t melt the glacier that existed between them. A woman with stringy gray hair and black eyes pointed from the porch. Alan’s already pounding heart stopped. He wanted to put the car in gear and speed away, but couldn’t move as JJ staggered toward him wearing the same filthy rags he’d worn the last time.

“What do you want?” He shouted as Alan opened the window. The heater hadn’t thawed him enough to climb out of the car.

“I want you to come home.” Tears burned in his eyes and he fought to keep them from streaming down his face. “Please come home.”

“This is my home. Leave me alone.” JJ shuffled back to his friends and their shared life, as Alan forced his fingers from the steering wheel and climbed out.

He’d try. One more time, he’d try to bring him home. “Dad,” he shouted. “Please come home.”   

Her Feet Were Killing Her

Roxy pushed the heavy wood and glass door closed with her foot and grabbed a handful of mail from her box. She started up the stairs to the landing and released an almost silent groan when the door of her landlady's apartment opened.

"Hello, Mrs. Larkin. How are you this evening?" She had nothing against Mrs. Larkin, but as she walked home from the subway, she realized her new shoes hurt like hell. All she wanted to do was go upstairs, take them off, and relax.

"I'm fine Ms. Franks. Do you have a minute to stop by and visit?"

She already felt a touch of guilt. She had put off visiting the elderly woman for the entire two months since moving into the second floor flat. Previously, when she ran into her in the hall, she excused herself by blaming the pressures of learning her new job, but she owed her, big time. The woman had bumped another applicant to rent her the space-an incredibly affordable apartment in Lincoln Park. Though new to Chicago, Roxy had heard about the upscale neighborhood before she arrived. She’d never expected to live there. "Okay, just for a minute though, Mrs. Larkin, I really need to take these shoes off, my feet are killing me."

Mrs. Larkin ushered her into her home and to a chair. "Let me pour you a small glass of wine, Ms. Franks. That'll help settle you, and you can take your shoes off here if you'd like." She half filled two glasses on the table in front of her and gave one to Roxy. "Here you are, dear. How was your day?"

The wine, along with a growing awareness of her surroundings, convinced Roxy that she had journeyed back in time. Her grandparents decorated their house in the same style. Dark, heavy pieces of wood furniture filled the room, and a variety of silver picture frames and small figurines dotted their surfaces. Lace doilies covered the arms of the chairs and couch, and supported lamps and vases throughout. It was as dark and depressing as her grandparents’ house had been.

If there were a television in the apartment, it had to be in another room, because there was none that she could see. Roxy did notice a very old radio in one corner, and something else unusual, right in front of her. "What are these?" She pointed at an item on the coffee table. "They look like old fashioned nylons."

"They are. They're silk stockings. My husband, James, brought me three pair when he came home from the war. We married in 1945, but he died in 1947 and since I don't go out often, they've lasted a long time. This is the last pair though, and there'll be no more to come. Maybe when they're gone, my memory of James will be gone, too." Mrs. Larkin rubbed the fabric between her fingers and smiled. "Go ahead and feel them."

Roxy took a sip of wine and set the glass on the table. "Oh, these are wonderful, quite a bit nicer than these panty hose I'm wearing." She smiled at the small white haired woman who delighted in showing off her stockings.

"Yes, it's a shame they don't make them anymore, at least not that I know of. How's your wine, dear?"

She had forgotten the wine and retrieved it as she spoke. "I think it might have been just what I needed. I'm starting to relax. You haven’t had any of yours."

“Oh, I’ve had a couple sips, you just can’t tell. I’ll be nursing it all evening.”

Roxy nodded and returned to her study of the knickknack-filled room, until she spotted something that seemed completely out of place. "Do you lift weights, Mrs. Larkin?" She pointed the glass toward a small barbell and hand weights.

"Oh, no. Those were my husband's. I just haven't gotten around to putting them in the trash."

"How did your husband die, if you don't mind my asking?" She thought Mrs. Larkin said her husband died in 1947. That seemed like an awfully long time to get over someone.

"I don't mind, but it's not a very pretty story. A woman moved into the building a few months after we bought it. She called herself Stacey, I believe. They found her strangled and my husband lying next to her with a bullet in his head. The police said he killed her and then shot himself. It was his gun but I never believed that for a moment. She was a tall redhead who looked a lot like you in fact. If the police were right, the only thing I can imagine is that she enticed him with her charms. She was a beautiful woman. Once James was able to break free from her spell he may have been overwhelmed with guilt and anger, and thought that the best solution."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Larkin. It must have been awful for you. Why did you keep the building and continue to live here? I don't know if I could have done that."

The old woman shrugged and looked at the weights. "I wanted to keep an eye on James, I suppose."

Roxy thought that sounded a tad creepy, and realized at the same time that she felt strange. "I think I better go up to my apartment, I'm a little lightheaded."

"All right, Ms. Franks. I'm delighted you had a chance to stop by, and I'm sure your dizziness will go away soon."

As she climbed the flight of stairs to her apartment, Roxy leaned on the wall for support. When she unlocked the door and went inside, her shoes and the mail slipped from her fingers and she fell on the couch. "What the hell is wrong with me, I had less than a half a glass of wine and I feel drunk."

With the little energy she had left, Roxy looked up to see the door open, but she could not make herself move. Her vision seemed to blur and she thought she was imagining things when she saw someone standing in front of her with a silk stocking. Her body wouldn't move and all she could do was stare with her eyes wide as the silky stocking wrapped around her neck and tightened.

"Maybe this time you'll leave us alone for good, Stacey."

*

"What do you think, Sarge?"

Sergeant Borelli looked around the apartment and shook her head. "I read over the old files. This is the third woman strangled with a silk stocking in this building, and the first one was supposed to have been killed by Mr. Larkin, who then killed himself. These aren't coincidences and I don't believe in ghosts. If Mrs. Larkin had not had airtight alibis for the other murders, she’d be our best suspect. What did she say?"

"She didn’t have an alibi this time. She just said that she hadn't seen Ms. Franks for a few days. The last time she did see her, she said her feet were killing her so she couldn't stop in for a visit. Larkin's the only person who's been in the building the entire sixty years, but she's seventy-eight years old and a little thing. How could she strangle someone as young and healthy as Ms. Franks?"

"I doubt that she could."

The Greatest Gift

I’m a bartender at a North Side Chicago tavern. It has its share of friendly patrons as well as those who come in for a beer and want to drink it without company or conversation. I get along with all of them because my policy is to serve their drinks and talk if they want dialogue or walk away if they want to be alone. It isn’t difficult to tell which they prefer. If I were on the other side of the bar, I’d choose the latter. In fact, before I became a bartender, I did.

For twenty years, I worked as an accountant at one of the big firms in the Loop. I did it because I didn’t know what else to do. After all the years I’d spent at that company, I hardly knew anyone when I left. That was partly because the environment wasn’t conducive to making friends and partly because I wasn’t friendly. Everyone thought that everyone else was after his or her job, including me. During those twenty years, I married twice, divorced twice, and gave up on dating all together. Neither of my husbands worked at my firm nor gave up dating, even while we lived in wedded bliss.

One day after work, I walked into the bar and realized I was happier there than I’d ever been at the office. I’m not a big drinker, so it wasn’t the booze. I just hated my life, particularly the work part of it. I asked the owner if he'd let me tend bar. He knew me pretty well and decided to give me a chance. Of course, I don’t make anywhere close to the money I made before, but after twenty years at ‘the firm’, I’d made enough to buy a small two-story bungalow and pay off the mortgage. I rent out the first floor and live comfortably with a varying number of cats on the second.

I’ve been tending bar there for five years now, and in less than a month, I’ll turn fifty. My birthday is the day before Christmas. Approaching the ‘big five-O’ doesn’t feel that bad. It might if I was still an accountant, a job where numbers really matter. At the bar, the only age I care about is if my customers are over twenty-one.

When you grow up in a house that celebrates Christmas and your birthday is the day before, you feel sort of ripped off because of the gift thing. My folks didn’t have enough money for two great gifts at the same time, so I usually only got one and opened it the night of my birthday, Christmas Eve. I didn’t have brothers or sisters to share it with, but that got lonely sometimes. Mostly because I never learned how to make friends, and after mom and dad died, I didn’t have much family. I’ve noticed, too, and I can’t say I blame them, but people aren’t very trusting these days.

One Thursday night, a few weeks ago, I was finishing the three to eleven shift. It doesn’t get crowded until after midnight, which is why I like working second. That particular night I served a guy a vodka Martini. He wanted it chilled and made a comment about discretion being the better part of Vermouth, so I made it bone dry. This guy wasn’t a talker. He wasn’t rude, he smiled when he ordered his drink and after the half-hour it took him to drink it, he disappeared and left the change from his twenty on the bar. Twelve dollars is a nice tip, but I figured it was getting near the holidays, so people tipped better.

When I went to clean his spot, I noticed he was a tidy fellow, no spills or shredded napkins. I picked up his empty glass, my tip, and his neatly folded cocktail napkin, which I started to dump in the trash until I saw something written on it. ‘What is the greatest gift?’ That was all it said. The printing was neat, large capital letters, written in solid black ink. At the very bottom were dots with a curved line underneath them. I thought it might have been a smiley face. I don’t know why, but I slipped it into my pocket along with the tip and went back to work.

A few days later, I was in my bedroom gathering clothes to take to the dry cleaner when I pulled a pair of pants off a hanger. Something dropped to the floor and I realized I hadn’t emptied the pockets. I picked up the twelve-dollar tip and the note from the martini guy. I transferred the money to the pocket on the pants I wore and laid the note on my dresser, looking at it once more before I left. ‘What is the greatest gift?’ Philosophical questions, I admit, have never creased my brow. I’ve always been a rather pragmatic person. A person who would do well for twenty years as an accountant, but not a person who would figure out the meaning of life from the dregs of a tea cup. Still, I couldn’t get the question out of my mind.

Something happened after that. The more I thought about the question, the more I noticed things around me. I looked at people in line at the grocery store and wondered what they would see as the greatest gift. I hadn’t decided if the note was asking whether it was the giving or the receiving of the gift that made it great, so I wondered about that, too. I started asking other people what they thought the greatest gift might be. Many of their answers were expected—money, a house, good health, happiness, family—but some were more esoteric, and some folks, like me, didn’t have a clue. I made more new friends in a few weeks than I had in twenty years at the accounting firm. Some started coming to the bar to visit, some email, others phone. I even went on a date, but I hadn’t found an answer to the question.

This morning when I woke, I went straight to my computer to check my emails. There were the now common dozen or so quick notes from my new friends. ‘Have a great day’, ‘don’t sweat the small stuff,’ and one that simply said, ‘What is the greatest gift?’ At the bottom was the unmistakable colon and closed parenthesis of the smiley face. I matched it with my own as a light bulb engulfed my brain.

After lunch I showered, dressed, and stopped at a coffee shop on my way to work. I had a double latte and left a large tip. I put it under my empty coffee cup wrapped in the note I taken from the dresser, and watched the waitress pick it up to read as I walked out.

I’d been at work for a few hours when I saw the martini guy come in. I made him a chilled one and set it down with a blank cocktail napkin and a smile. "It’s the note," I told him and grinned from ear to ear at his pleased look.

"Did you pass it on?"

I can only imagine what our two nodding smiley faces must have looked like to the rest of the people in the bar.

Joe's Garage - 1 Mile

'Are you embarrassed by your size?' The email asked. 'Do you want to stay hard longer?' said the next one. "No," I shouted at the computer screen and shut it down. My size was fine. I was five eight, stayed in fairly good shape and felt comfortable with that. I could probably learn to be a little harder, but I had the feeling emotional strength wasn't what the message offered. Just as I doubted the first one was about my figure. Wasn't there anything I could do about this garbage?

I closed the door and went to the living room to sit next to my cat, Ginger, on the couch. "I think your mom is having a melt down. Give me some of that cat wisdom your kind is so famous for." Her guttural purr helped until I turned on the television. A gunman went berserk at a shopping mall and shot twelve people. Four more soldiers died in a mission we accomplished several years ago. A bomb exploded at a funeral in Iraq. He lied. She lied. The ones that told the truth admitted to stealing from programs for the poor and elderly, and the trailers they gave to people to live in after the disaster were making occupants sick. I turned off the television with a groan. "Where are we going? Everyday the news is worse and no one seems to have any answers. We're destroying ourselves, each other, and the environment, and I don't think anything can be done." Ginger nodded knowingly but offered no suggestions.

I work from my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico—Nan Sutter's Travel Agency. It's small, but I work long hours and manage a comfortable life. Last year I bought a used 2005 Mercedes SL-550, blue with a dark blue convertible top. It is too much car for a person who rarely travels, but I'd wanted a sporty convertible and got a great deal on it from one of my clients. "You know, Ginger. Maybe I just need to get away for a couple of days. No cell phone, no computer, I'll just get on the road and drive until I find a place to stay for the night. I can look for answers to some of these questions I keep asking." I looked at my unperturbed feline and smiled. "I'll ask Sandy to make sure you have food and water, and adequate attention, but no one else knows, okay. I'm sneaking off for a little adventure."

Six hours later my little adventure found me on the side of a desolate county road in my now quieter than usual blue Mercedes. I'd left Albuquerque and taken I-25 south. Somewhere on the other side of Truth or Consequences, I decided to be even more adventuresome and get off the interstate. The massive eighteen-wheelers hurdling by ready to suck me under their wheels where not calming.

When the car died, I managed to pull to the side of the road. Only as I reached for my purse did I remember I chose not to take my cell. Stupid. I could have turned it off. The wind had picked up and the sun edged its way behind the mountains. I looked around and saw a worn, barely legible sign. 'Joe's Garage-1 mile' and decided see if Joe and his garage are still around."

Blowing sand stung my skin as I trudged forward. I remembered reading about people who traveled west during the dust bowl. After they ate, they lined their dishes and pots up so the sand could blast them clean. I wondered what it would do to flesh and soon saw the answer to my question. The weathered face of the man who greeted me said he might have been doing dishes that way for years. He wiped his hands on the front of his grimy jeans and then swiped them through his thick mop. I figured that was why his gray hair looked lacquered to his head.

"Are you Joe?" He admitted his identity by raising his right hand, which held some kind of a wrench. "My car broke down about a mile from here. Can you help me?"

"Help you what?"

That seemed like a strange question from an auto mechanic but I supposed it was logical. "Get it running," I said.

"That depends on what's wrong. What kind of car is it?"

"It's a 2005 Mercedes SL-550."

"Well, I won't have any parts here if it needs them. Do you need a tow?" I was about to suggest I could push it in but he took a closer look at my dusty appearance and spoke again. "Are you east or west?" I had to point, because I didn't know. "Tell me what it did before it died." After I explained the way the car behaved, Joe nodded. "Okay, let me finish up in here and I'll get on it." He gave me that full body eyeball that men, no matter what age, seem to do without thinking. Some other time I would have been offended, right then I was too tired to care.

As Joe walked toward the garage, I found a long bench by the door and took a seat, grateful to be out of the wind. There was no need to look at my hair. I could feel the short brown strands pointing in all different directions. Joe didn't seem to notice, but then Joe didn't seem like the brightest bulb and I wondered if he’d be able to fix the car. I’d looked under the hood only once. The maze of wires suggested a few courses in computer technology. "What if nothing can be done?" I called before he went inside and was sure he heard the panic in my voice.

"You can always do something. Maybe it'll fix things, maybe it won't, but you have to try. If we didn't believe that, we might as well all just drop dead." He saluted with his wrench and went in. Maybe he was a little brighter than I thought.

Ten minutes later, a different man came out. I hadn't seen any other vehicles, but I supposed they could have been inside or in the back. "I'm Joe's brother, Dave. Do you want to ride with me to get your car?"

"I'm Nan. Sure," I told him and waited as he drove a tow truck from behind the shop. He reached over in the cab and opened the door so I could climb in the passenger's side. The car sat in the same spot, looking pitiful, but Dave wasted no time. He lifted the hood, jiggled a few things, and told me to try to start it. It started right up. "Wow, that's amazing. Should I follow you back to the garage?"

 "No, we better tow it and have Joe take a look. There may be a serious problem." He hooked it up and we went back to the garage. As soon as we got there, he went inside and drove out in an old Cadillac. "Joe went to grab some dinner. He said he'd be back in a few minutes to look at the car. I have to take off. Good luck." With that, Dave waved and drove away.

A few minutes turned into an hour and I still didn't see Joe. It was eleven o'clock and except for the dim yellow light above the door of the garage, the area was black. I couldn't see other houses or cars, and didn't want to wander off. I knocked on the garage door a couple of times but Joe must have still been at dinner. With no other options, I stretched out on the bench for a nap.

I might have been dreaming, because I felt something cover my face. It was wet and smelled awful. I fell right back to sleep. When I woke again, things were completely different. I knew I'd opened my eyes, but I couldn't see anything and what I thought was tape, covered my mouth. My heart raced to discover someone tied my hands, pulled them over my head, and seemed attached to something. I sat on the ground with my legs stretched out in front of me and my feet bound.

My fear turned to terror when I heard a door open, and heavy footsteps come closer. Who ever it was knelt next to me and fingered my hair and began rubbing my breasts. Was it Joe? Was he some kind of psycho? I began to scream through the tape and move around as much as I could, but he slapped me. Then I felt him untie my feet and begin unbuttoning my blouse. A rock formed in my stomach. I continued to scream. He grabbed my hair and smashed my head back against the wall as he unbuttoned my jeans. "Shut up," he said and smacked me again. "Save your energy, there's nothing you can do."

It was Joe's brother, Dave. Why was he doing this? As I felt him tug at my jeans, I wondered if he was right. Was there nothing I could do? I couldn't believe it and remembered what Joe said. We can always do something. You gotta try. I started fighting. His face was right in front of mine, I could smell his sour breath. Rape me, kill me you son of a bitch, but I'm not going to make it easy for you. I slammed my head into his face and heard him scream.

"You bitch. You broke my nose." I heard nothing for thirty seconds, then his voice again, almost laughing. "Well, Nan, I don't really care if you're alive or dead." His hands wrapped around my neck and he began to squeeze. I couldn't move but I heard a noise and suddenly felt Dave's fingers lift from my throat. He pulled away. I didn't know what was going on.

"Are you okay?" Joe pulled the tape slowly from my face and I saw we were inside the garage.

He held a knife in his hand and my eyes widened. Maybe they were in on it together, but then I saw Dave in a heap on the floor. Joe cut my hands down and removed the tape from my wrists. "Your brother, Dave," I said, pulling my clothes back on and trying to talk at the same time.

He looked puzzled. "I don't have a brother."

I pointed at Dave while I rubbed my reddened wrists. "He said he was your brother."

Joe shook his head. "I fixed his Caddy and told him he wasn't going to get much farther in it. I don't know if he planned on taking your car or not, but it'd be my guess."

"He got it running. How could he have done that?"

"I'm afraid that was my fault. He was in the garage and after you described what happened and I came back, I told him it sounded like a simple reset of a computer switch. Those engines don't die, but the computers are ornery. He must have reset it. I'm sorry, ma'am. After I told him about the car, he knocked me over the head with something and tied me up. It took me a while when I woke up to find a hand saw to cut the tape."

I stood and hugged him, surprising him as much as myself. "You don't have anything to be sorry for, Joe. Thank you."

The police told us Dave's name was Randy Mason, wanted in three states for murder and rape. When I saw him drive off, he had unloaded his gear in the garage and was taking the Caddy out to dump in the desert. He walked back and found me asleep on the bench. After tying me in the garage, he unhooked the Mercedes from the tow truck and packed it, ready to leave when he’d finished with me. The police told Joe and me we'd have to ID him Albuquerque in a few days. We said we would.

When I was free to leave, I climbed into the car and headed home. Joe assured me I wouldn’t have any problems, and I didn’t. I'd called Sandy, the neighbor who was watching Ginger. She agreed to wait at my apartment until I arrived. I didn't get home until seven a.m. and found her and Ginger asleep on the couch. "You look awful."

"Thanks, but I feel great. How's my little girl?" I reached down to pet the cat. She didn’t look at all perturbed by my experience. Once I explained my adventure and Sandy recovered, I asked her if anything happened there.

"I fell asleep watching the news and had horrible nightmares," Sandy said. "There are so many problems these days that seem impossible to fix. There doesn’t seem to be anything we can do."

"A friend recently told me, we can always do something. Maybe it'll fix things, maybe it won't, but you have to try. If we didn't believe that, we might as well all just drop dead. I think he might be right."

"Where did you learn that little bit of wisdom?"

"Joe's Garage. Where else?"

Honor Among Pigeons

During her seven years on the street, she had somehow forgotten her given name. There, people called her lady, or hey you. Others completely bypassed such formalities. That was okay, she never did care for people to know her business.

The streets hadn't always been her home. She grew up in a house the way most people did, with a mother, father, and an older sister. Later, she received an Associates Degree from a secretarial school and it hung on the wall in her own home. She lived in Chicago in a nice condo, not too far from Lake Michigan. Things were good then, and her boyfriend even asked her to marry him. Of course, she said yes and they planned a June wedding.

That was before her life fell apart. No, her life didn't fall apart. Someone tore it to shreds. Someone she dedicated twelve years to as an executive secretary. A man she had trusted completely, a man with connections to every big shot in the city—including the mob. She had not known about the mob or a great many other things until that final year.

Strangers began coming to the office and anonymous letters arrived. When she opened them, she was shocked. People threatened to kill her boss for the terrible things he had done. She decided not to show him, but instead kept a folder in her locked desk drawer. She also decided to do a little investigating on her own. Before long, she found out things that made her wonder how she could have been so blind. One word described him, crook. An attorney who advertised his commitment to help the poor and downtrodden and he stole from almost every one of them.

Not sure what to do, she finally confronted him. She took the folder from her drawer into his office and threw it on his desk. "You're stealing from these people."

He laughed. He looked at her and laughed. "That's right, honey, that's how you make those big condominium payments every month." She stared. Was he the same man she had worked for all those years? She told him she could not be a part of it and that she would go to the police. He found that even funnier. "You go ahead, go to the cops, for all the good it will do you." Then his face grew stern. "You tell anyone anything, and as long as I'm alive you'll never have a job in this city."

She left the office and went to the police. He had been right about their reaction and he made good on his threat. He not only fired her, but also slowly began to dismantle her life. He had somehow been able to have the two largest papers run a completely bogus story about her selling drugs from her home. With his power and influence, he convinced the condo organization to repossess it and throw her out. Another newspaper picked up the article but added another charge. They said she often entertained male visitors there to supplement her income. She was grateful her parents were not alive to see it, but her fiancé and her sister read the paper. Though they said they knew it could not be true, her boyfriend took an extended vacation, and her sister suggested she not come over. She worried about her kids.

 He had someone follow her, and that person thwarted every action she took. She answered a number of ads, but no one would even give her an initial interview. Living in hotels was expensive and she could no longer afford a room. Without an income, her wardrobe began to deteriorate. Within a few months, she found herself living on the street. She thought it would be temporary, that she would find work and be able to afford an apartment. She stayed at a women's shelter for a while, but most of the other women were in much worse shape and she gave up her bed.

For seven years, she wandered around the city streets. She climbed the steep sharp rises under viaducts, hauling her belongings and cardboard to make a noisy, exhaust fumed shelter for the night. The climb created thick calluses on her hands and delivering babies under those viaducts created thicker calluses on her heart. The hardships began to wear on her.

She imagined herself crossing back and forth between indefinable realities. There were days that she thought she might have been a pigeon. They were her only companions. The world she knew pushed her away and she had little strength to put up a fight.

Then she saw him, and as though it were yesterday, remembered his words—‘as long as I'm alive you'll never have a job in this city.'

He looked right at her and had no idea who she was. "Got a quarter, mister?" She asked, holding out a hand he would have only recognized if it were soft and pink with long red fingernails. He pulled a dollar from his pocket and threw it in her direction. She laughed and knew it sounded insane, but that was what she felt—completely insane. Now, she had a purpose.

It proved easy to follow him because she made an unlikely looking spy. She watched him leave the office every evening at 7:45 as he had done when she worked there. He climbed the stairs to the LaSalle Street Station and waited to board the 8:01. The elevated trains were very punctual. Not only was her boss a precise man, he was also a skinflint. He wouldn't drive to work or take a cab. He took public transportation almost everywhere.

She knew the man. She knew he hated dirt and could not tolerate being touched. That would be to her advantage. For nearly a month, she followed him and worked on her plan. Then the time arrived to carry it out.

On Fridays, many of the people waiting for the train were zombies. Few did anything but look down the curve in the track, anxious to hear the sound of steel wheels screeching to take them home for the weekend. She sat on the far end of the platform with all her worldly possession around her. He always boarded the last car. She looked around at her pigeon friends on the ground and up on the railings. Some just floated along overhead. She winked and then smiled as he approached. "Got a quarter, mister?"

When he pulled out his wallet with his back to the tracks, she stood and faced him. "Do you remember me?"

He looked at her blankly. "What the..." His wallet fell from his hands and his eyes went to the shoulder of his jacket where a pearly white line of pigeon shit rolled down the dark blue material.

"Here, I'll wipe that off for you." She took a piece of clothing from her bag and walked toward him. He stepped back and leaned over the tracks to keep away from her touch. She came even closer.

"Get away from me." His eyes opened wide in sudden recognition. "You're...Ahhh," was all he said as the train pulled into the station.

"I'm Katherine, you bastard." She smiled.

"Officer, I don't know what happened. A pigeon pooped on his suit and I offered to clean it off. All of a sudden, he screamed and fell back as the train came. I couldn't help him."

"All right, lady." The officer looked at her and shook his head. "You can go. We won't need your testimony. We get a lot of jumpers up here."

"I'm Katherine," she told him and walked to the park, stopping for some bread on the way. The pigeons were at the bench as she sat down and flipped his wallet in the air. "Lots to eat tonight, kids. Tomorrow, I buy some clothes and rent a room at the Y. I have to get ready for my job interviews."

The Lonely Neighbor

In the winter, my dreams often fashion themselves around the clang of radiator pipes. I wander through a dimly lit alley and the sound of an intruder knocking into a nearby dumpster fills me with fear, waking me from an uneasy sleep. I open my eyes, anxious and irritated at the cast iron steam-breathing beast, but grateful that it shares its heat. Chicago winters can be harsh. Temperatures hover around zero and many absentee landlords leave the repair of faulty boilers and furnaces until warmer weather brings cheaper service calls. In the spring, no one complains about the lack of heat.

Last night, somewhere during the climb to wakefulness my brain registered that it wasn’t winter. It was August and radiators had no hand in my dazed state of consciousness. Voices seeped through the loosely threaded blanket of sleep I’d woven only minutes earlier.

A heat wave gripped the city and the eighty-year-old building I called home lacked most modern conveniences. Air conditioning units poked through a majority of apartment dweller’s windows these days, but not ours. In this part of town, the choice was between refrigerated air and food. I chose food and that meant a direct connection to the world outside. Before I went to bed, I opened both of the studio apartments wood framed windows hoping to attract the cooler night air and avoid swimming laps on a soaked mattress. The air was still better suited for a fish bowl. When voices disturbed my sweaty slumber, I waded through the darkness and sat near the open window.

Without the buffer of glass, even normal conversations drifted in from neighboring apartments. I resigned myself to the unexpected entertainment and listened as though to a neighbor’s too loud television. Both voices belonged to women and their conversation sounded familiar. I was sure I’d heard it the previous summer—the same two women, the same conversation. Neither sounded angry, but the first, the loudest, was deep and troubled. Her words intermixed with stifled sobs and expressed bitterness at an unfair universe. “Why me?” she protested. “Why does this keep happening to me?” More anguished, incoherent phrases followed.

“Don’t do this, Marla. It doesn’t do any good.” The second voice attempted to soothe Marla’s misery. “Have a glass of wine, and try to sleep. You won’t do yourself any good if you don’t sleep.”

“How can I sleep?” Marla shouted. “I can’t sleep alone. I’ll never sleep again.”

I wanted to sympathize with her but recognized that if Marla never slept again, I probably wouldn’t either. Should I have pointed out to my neighbor that sleeping alone wasn’t so bad? Would it have helped her to know that after a while she’d move to the abandoned side of the bed and find the extra room a comfort, especially in sweltering heat? I didn’t tell her. I waited and listened.

“All these months I was a good companion, an adequate lover. What happened? Why can’t I hang on to a partner?”

“People change, Marla. It happens. They want something different than they wanted before. It isn’t you.”

More muffled cries drifted in and I guessed that Marla’s friend held her, letting her sob on an already wet shoulder. Eventually the voices grew silent and Marla’s light flickered off. I hoped she would follow her friend’s advice and try to sleep.

As I listened to the now silent night, I wondered if I should have told Marla to be careful. Shouted across the way that one day her friends would tire of leaving her with wet shoulders and ringing ears. Perhaps I could have explained that losing a lover was not the same as being alone. That losing her friends would be a thousand times worse. I didn’t. I crawled back to my empty bed, suddenly very tired.

Half-Asleep Accomplice

In the end, it would be those things done when she first crawled out of bed—the ones that received little thought because her brain had not yet engaged—the simple chores, feeding the cat, and making a pot of coffee to kick start lazy neurons. She could do them with her eyes closed and often did. Those things that she would not even remember having done, would threaten to be her undoing.

Sunday morning held the promise of peace and quiet. Many of her neighbors remained tucked under the covers, not likely to see the streets until noon. No garbage trucks roared behind the apartment building beating heavy dumpsters in a kind of symbolic gesture of power. Yes, the morning promised peace and quiet.

Annie fed the cat and pulled open the utensil drawer to find the scoop for measuring coffee. Half asleep, she pulled a little too hard and the drawer crashed to the floor scattering various pieces of cutlery around the kitchen. She grumbled as she cleaned up the mess and made her coffee. In a short time, she poured a cup, took it to the living room, and climbed into her favorite reading chair. She watched the rear end of her cat who had finished breakfast, march out the kitty door without even a 'thank you very much'. "I'd like to be a cat," she sighed, reaching for the mystery she'd been reading.

An hour later, someone pounded on the door and she jumped two feet. "Who is it?" She yelled through the thick wood. She never could identify anyone in the stupid little peephole.

"It's the police. We'd like to talk to you."

"The police?" Her brain kicked into high gear. "What do the police want? Oh my god, something happened to Tucker. No, that's stupid. They wouldn't send the police for a cat accident."

"Open the door, please." A different, but equally gruff voice yelled.

She unlocked the deadbolt and lock and pulled open the door as far as the chain allowed. "What is it? What do you want?"

"I'm Officer Ferriday and this is Officer Brown. Do you mind if we come in?"

 She looked at the identification badges on their chest and then at the tee shirt she wore. "Let me put on my robe and I'll be right back." She pushed the door to close it, but someone shoved a foot in the bottom.

"Go ahead and get your robe. We'll wait right here."

What was that about? Annie ran to the bedroom and grabbed her robe, slipping into it as she returned to the door. "Please remove your foot so I can unhook the chain." The shoe disappeared and she let them in. "What is it, officers?"

"Where have you been for the last hour?" asked the one who called himself Ferriday. Annie thought he looked familiar but she was no less surprised at his question.

"Right here, reading a book."

"Can you prove it?"

She stared at him. "What do you mean, can I prove it. Of course, I can't prove it. I was here alone, reading. My cat wasn't even here to testify."

"If your cat were here, would he be able to testify?" Officer Brown asked.

Good lord. He thinks I'm crazy. "She. No, my cat would not be able to testify. I meant it as a joke. Could you please tell me what this is about?" The solemn faces of the two officers frightened her.

"Do you know the dog next door?" She nodded. "Do you have a grudge against him?"

The dog Ferriday referred too was a large, vicious animal, which her neighbor kept tethered to the front porch. It scared the hell out of Annie every time she walked out the front door. "I don't like that it snaps at me all the time and stretches the chain until it looks like it'll break. What about the dog next door?"

"That's my dog," Ferriday told her. "My wife and I live next door and she told me she's seen you yelling at Brutus. Is that true?"

That's why he looks familiar. "I've told Brutus to shut up on occasion. I wouldn't say I yelled at him, and I certainly wouldn't say I had a grudge against him. Officer, why would two policemen come to my door to accuse me of yelling at a dog?"

"Someone killed him about a half hour ago. My wife put him out only a few minutes before that and when she returned with a bowl of water, found him lying on the ground with a steak knife in his chest. It looks like they buried the knife blade up, and the dog leapt as far as his chain could reach and fell on it."

Annie never wanted to see an animal hurt, but Brutus was a monster. She'd seen little children run away, terrified of the frightening beast because his chain reached to within a few inches of the sidewalk. He terrorized all the neighborhood cats and sent more than one individual flying off their bicycle as they went over the curb to escape. "I'm very sorry, Officer Ferriday, but I had nothing to do with Brutus's death."

Hours later Annie thought about her visitors. If it hadn't been Ferriday's dog, she wouldn't have been talking to the police at all. She was curious as to who did the dog in, but not really surprised. "Hi, there, Tucker." The feline swaggered in through the kitty door. "Hey, I'm cooking myself a filet. I'll bet you'd like a little piece. Let's go see if it's ready."

The Measure of Time

As the sand slid through Nicki's fingers, she wondered how anyone could have imagined using it to measure time. How had they known that the tiny grains could represent moments passing cool and detached through the narrowing hourglass? She grabbed another handful and studied the three streams escaping through her flattened fingers. That was easier to understand. She'd barely noticed sixty years of life slip away. As the last grains trickled, the sun touched the horizon, beginning its own slide and taking with it another day. The center of the solar system was no more than a grain of sand in the vast universe and would leave as quietly as the years.

She was only five or six the first time she'd come to the beach. She recalled the same sand, sun, and water, but there was something more—a sense of hope, a promise of life and accomplishments. Tomorrow she would turn sixty and that was her sole accomplishment, she had survived.

"Hi, can I sit with you?" The voice of a young girl interrupted her thoughts bringing Nicki quickly to her knees. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you,” the girl said. "Do you want me to go?"

"No, please don't. I'm afraid I was daydreaming. Go ahead and sit down. What's your name?" Nicki looked around the beach but didn't see anyone else. "Are you here alone?"

The question confused her. "I'm here with you."

"Yes, but I mean…" Nicki stopped. She seemed capable enough and probably lived nearby. "My name is Nicole, but most people call me Nicki. What's your name?"

Her shrug said the question wasn't relevant. "You can call me Sissy if you like. What are you doing out here?"

"Just thinking about things, life, I guess. Take my advice, Sissy, and do everything you want to do. At least give it a try, or your life will be over and you'll have done nothing."

"What are you going to do with your life?"

"Me?" Was she serious? "It's too late for me to do anything. I'm going to be sixty tomorrow."

"What if you live to be ninety? Will you spend the next thirty years feeling bad that you never did what you wanted to? I'm ten, but if I was to die at fifteen, should I just sit around for the next five years waiting to die?"

Stunned, it took Nicki a second to answer. "You're not going to die when you’re fifteen." The girl's next statement made Nicki wonder if she'd fallen asleep or lost her mind.

"None of us know when we're going to die, so how can we decide when it's time to stop living? What did you want to do when you were my age?"

Despite having decided that she'd lost her mind, Nicki felt herself smile. "I wanted to write books. To make up stories about people and places and make them real for others to share." She saw Sissy open her mouth and held up her hand. "I know what you're going to ask. I didn't do it because other stuff came up that I had to do instead. There wasn't time to follow my dream. There wasn't money, either."

"Does it cost a lot of money to write?"

Her questions were sincere and not at all childish. "Well, writing doesn't cost anything, but to publish something, unless you can find a publisher to pay for it. And, of course, I had to work." Nicki stopped and considered the comment. She had come up with excuses for not following her dream her entire life. Was she afraid to fail or just afraid to try? "I always came up with reasons not to start." She looked out at the dimming red sun edging deeper into the ocean. She'd not even noticed the sky growing dark. "Sissy, you better go home. Your parents will wonder where you are."

Sissy had folded her bare feet under her when she sat, but now she stretched her long thin legs. "How will you celebrate your birthday tomorrow?"

"I hadn't thought about it. Maybe I'll stay here a few minutes longer and reflect. You really should be getting home, honey. Thanks for your advice." She watched the girl hold up a handful of sand. The stream seemed impossibly thin and as slow and thick as molasses. Nicki watched until her hand emptied. "Who are you, Sissy?"

Again, she shrugged, and then stood. "It's who you are that matters. The sand will always be here for you to measure the length of your life, but it can’t measure the quality."

As Sissy walked away, Nicki lay back and put her arm over her eyes. She had only a short time to walk back to her car before it became completely dark, but she needed a minute to regroup, or wake from the dream she was having.

"Hey, Lady." A voice sounded above her. "You can't sleep here all night. Do you have somewhere to go?"

Nicki looked up a young police officer and realized she must have fallen asleep. She climbed to her feet, brushing the sand off her clothes. "Yes, I do officer. I live nearby. I must have dozed off. Where did Sissy go? The blond girl?"

"I didn't see any kids. Is she yours?"

"No, I thought…." She looked around and didn't see any lights on neighboring houses. "Her parents must have come for her. I'll be fine officer, but could you walk me back to my car please?" As they followed the beam of his flashlight, Nicki saw a set of smaller footprints along the edge of the ocean. She shook her head and wondered if it had been a dream.

"You sure you're going to be okay?" He pushed her car door shut.

"Yes, I'm sure. I turn sixty tomorrow and I plan to have one hell of a celebration. Thanks." She looked to the beach and thought she saw someone waving. "Thanks, Sissy." Avoiding the officer's look as she drove off, she took one last glance at the deserted beach and merged onto the highway. "What a birthday present. Not only did she give me the encouragement I needed, she gave me my first short story. Thanks, Sissy."