Two.

He really likes this time of day in June. The intent of the sun to set was clear, yet the sun was still bright and direct. Call it 4pm. The angle of the light cast distinct shadows of the mighty buildings around him. The shadows landed somewhere around the middle of the sidewalk on which this man was walking. His favorite thing to do as he left work was to straddle the light and the dark so that half his figure was shaded and the other half boldly lit. It made him feel like a ghost, balancing between life and death. It made him feel numb to the harsh reality of his pointless life and with that reality numbed he was deftly able to get in touch with something plain and simple. His most remarkable unconscious longing was for that plainness and that simplicity. But the pressures of his day job, his home life, and the frustrating amount of time he spends traveling between one and the other caused this unconscious longing to remain just that: unconscious. So he walked half in and half out, without really knowing why.

Walking pleasantly now, limbo'd between the light and the dark, the man was feeling strangley fine about just having lost his job to a younger model. He walks on. He passes the bus stop. He passes the train station. He passes his (former) coworker as she waits for the hotdog vendor to refresh his ketchup bottle. It occurs to the man that his coworker is much prettier when she's sitting behind the glass of her car door as they both sit stuck in traffic.

Glidingly confidently now, for confidence is all he feels he has left, he crosses the final street between himself and the parking garage that babysits his car all day. As the man steps onto the final block he sees a shadowed figure turn the corner up at the far end of the same block. The shadowed figure is alone on his end of the block and he keeps himself heavily invested in the dark half of the sidewalk. The shadowed figure, a man in his own right, appears to be equally alone. There's a show down now, at the city block corral. Both parties involved anticipate it as all but inevitable.

Will they each acknowledge the other's existence with a hello or a small short grin? Will they both deny the other's existence by suddenly looking down or away at just the right moment so as to avoid any eye contact? Will the shadowed man stay dark as the sunlit man stays shown? Or will one of them start to make a gesture of their shared humanity as the other tries to deny it, at which point a clumsy interchange will occur and the potential status of one man over another becomes temporarily eased? They might even giggle on the inside a little.

The man in the light continues forward. He does so without externally publishing his internal anxiety to all the people who aren't watching his posture anyway. The shadowed man does the same, but even fewer non-witnesses would be able to tell you so. They get closer to each other. They might connect now, but they don't. Instead they take turns assessing each other. Quickly, without making eye contact. The man in the shadow is a bum, nameless as everyone. The man in the light is dressed finely and carries a briefcase. The lighted man fears he will be bothered for money. The shadowed man fears he will be turned down when he asks. They are with in 20 feet of each other. The two men have somehow subconsciously connected and a course of in-action has been settled upon: they will each not acknowledge the existence, much less the humanity, of the other.

In a few seconds, it will all be over. They both know it. They both long for it. But still... in times like these there is just so little you can be sure of. Ten feet now and the action begins to unfold frame by frame. The bum feels a rush of inspiration and gets closer to the suit by stepping closer to the light. The suit gets nervous but his unemployed ego can't take the hit of moving closer to the road and out of the way of the bum. The bum... walks slower. The suit gets fidgety nervous. The bum stops walking altogether, turns directly toward the man and gives him the biggest, dirtiest, toothiest, silliest, most ironic and revealing smile of the decade.

The bum turns back to the direction he was walking and continues on his shadowy way.

The suit is at his car now, reaching for his keys. He's in his car now. He's paying the toll now. He's stuck in traffic now. He's got alot to think about... how's he going to pay the mortgage? How's he going to explain this to his wife? How will his kids fare in public schools? What will it be like to drive a car that doesn't turn heads, even if it just the occasional head of a teenager?


Instead of all that, he thinks about the bum. He thinks and he thinks and he thinks. He sees that same former co-worker that he saw at the hotdog stand, now stuck in traffic along side him and in a cold stone rush a wide variety of things occur to him. He let his money steal his own innocence. The society in which he exists values women that look more like aliens than humans. He let his pursuit of money steal his children's childhoods from him. He thinks of the complex billboards on the side of highways advertising new housing developments. The developments are named after the bits and pieces of nature that their very contruction detroys and he thinks further of the way that those same housing developments, should her purchase a lot, want to sacrifice the rights he doesn't use as it pursues the perfect little neighborhood. Again, he thinks of the way he let his pursuit of money steal the childhoods of his children from him.

He feels unstable, disconnected from the empty reality he calls his life. He wants to reconnect with something solid, something real. He will get his wish.

Tomorrow, when he should be out searching for a new job, he will be stuck in traffic. The top of his sandaled foot will be bitten by a mosquito and something that feels very solid and very real will connect with him.