Night kills

17

The traffic light at the intersection was a DON'T WALK, so Jill stopped and stood with a few other people waiting for it to change. Since she had on her sweats and Nikes, she began idly jogging in place on the sidewalk, her body revolving in a slow circle. She could feel a slight bouncing of her breasts, but she didn't mind. Let people look. Let them guess how happy she was. Someone passing in a car honked the horn and shouted something.

At me?

For me?

Almost certainly.

As she turned to face back the way she'd come, her mood suddenly changed for the worse. She saw a woman, a street person in filthy clothes and with unkempt dirty blond hair, standing about fifty feet away and openly staring at her.

What bothered Jill was that the woman seemed oddly familiar.

Then she realized why. Jill was sure she'd seen her across the street from Has Beans when she and Tony had emerged from the coffee bar. Jill remembered the pang of pity she'd felt for the woman, who'd been standing alone and motionless as if lost, clutching a wrinkled brown paper sack beneath her right arm.

The woman was staring at her now in a way that evoked more fear than pity. As if there was some kind of connection between them.

Jill didn't want a connection. With a little bad luck, she could be this woman. Maybe only her dwindling checking account was the difference between them now. Homelessness happened. This city was cruel and could crush.

The woman took a faltering step toward her.

Jill looked away, continuing to jog in place, turning her back to her.

The woman had to be close now. Getting closer.

Jill continued facing away from the sad specter of a horrifying future and stared hard at the traffic signal across the intersection.

Change, damn you. Change!

The light did change.

Jill lengthened out her foot motion and jogged across the intersection. After veering around an old woman pushing a shopping cart full of groceries, she accelerated into a brisk run. Her rhythmic arm motion and the strain on her thighs felt great, liberating.

The homeless woman didn't figure to be a runner. Jill didn't have to glance back to know she was leaving the ragged figure behind. Her bleak alternative future receding into her past.

Running faster made Jill somehow breathe easier.

On the way home from work the next evening, Jill saw the woman again. It was when Jill stopped to look at a shoe sale display in a small shop. There, superimposed in the show window over the red high-heeled pumps she was considering, was the woman's reflection. She had to be close, not more than ten feet behind Jill.

There was something about the woman's reflected image that horrified Jill to the point that Jill was faintly nauseated.

To be in this woman's thoughts, her intentions…

It wasn't simply that Jill knew for sure now that the woman had truly been following her, had for some reason fixated on her. It was more a creepy certainty that she'd seen the woman before, other than just that evening outside Has Beans.

How long has she been following me? Watching me?

Had they met? Did they somehow know each other?

Had she simply pegged Jill as a soft touch, wanted a handout and was too shy to ask? It was a possible explanation. Maybe the poor thing was driven more by hunger than malice.

Either way, Jill had to find out.

Better to face your fears.

Jill decided to turn around and simply ask the woman, get to the bottom of this nonsense. She'd look the woman in the eye. Force a smile. Force a question.

Do we know each other?

She knew from experience that when you confronted your terror, it could quickly dissipate.

And this woman, determined, homeless, terrified her.

This will all end in a moment.

She tensed her muscles and whirled to face what waited behind her.

The woman was gone.