Chapter 12

To those with an active imagination, the rain signaled the End of Days for poor 2007. The wind blew the cold droplets, sometimes stinging the face. I had missed most of the fury, having spent the day in my little office cave.

Now I shuffled through small piles of wet, mangled leaves - the little-noticed victims of time. In the day they had fallen from the trees, the collective sighs of the year. In the night, rain and human shoes had trampled many into wet smears on the sidewalk soon to vanish from time. Somewhere in the world, every day, war and famine made thousands of people vanish the same way.

With these cheerless thoughts, I hurried home but stopped short across the street from my building. There, at the door, a woman was struggling with her purse, looking for her keys perhaps. I could go there and open the door; we would both enter. But my face would be too close to her in the lobby's light. So I waited there across the street until she entered. The nearby streetlamp was the only moon tonight; the sky pitch dark.

Moon-faced, that is how I remembered him, standing there for one brief moment on the stairway before he delivered the surprise blow and ran away. I imagined his moon face walking along the sidewalk, talking to a friend perhaps. Passing me in the night, he would not notice. But I would follow, calling 911 and providing my police report number. In moments the police car would arrive and I would identify him, turning his words against him, "Hey, remember me?" He would be arrested and tried for assault. I would suggest that the federal prosecutor check Moon-face's immigration status, which would result in his detention for deportation to El Salvador.

I did not imagine a rock thrown at the back of his skull; I did not imagine tacking him to the ground in the dark. Nor did I imagine my shoe stomping his face, crushing his nose; again stomping, this time breaking his neck. Strangely, there was not enough anger for all that.

Finally, I crossed and entered the building alone, safely passing from one cave to the next. I opened the apartment door with my left hand, pinning the mail under my right arm, stifling the cries of the envelopes filled with pleas for donations to aid the victims of war and famine.