“Inner windows on the divine, a synchronous sea of mind. The metal so cold that newspapers help, why, if God knows that I’m here, does he leave me in the night alone?
Guilty! they charge, As her own indiscretions fly to the four points of the compass with the shouting sound of her gavel. She was dead? she wasn’t going to need it anyway, for no better reason than a parking place – a truly infinite blindness.
Walking from bench to bench, news behind the wire all that I can afford. A struggle for cold from cold – under the trees are better. 2000 dead, almost a better risk than being here, but not alive – at least not entirely. But then, I’m not welcome, or so I’m told – no one tells me why.
Tough decision, spend the last I have on something to eat, or on a place to get a shower, then maybe some kind of work that I won’t be turned down for. I choose to eat. I don’t bother with what little change is left over from that, it’s not going to be good for anything anyway.
I’m not sick, or tired, but I throw up anyway. I’m not sorry I bought food, even if most of it is now on the sidewalk. I’m supposed to be scared, but somehow I’m not, not in a synchronous sea of mind. A fortnight of five benches. Why, if God knows that I’m here, does he leave me in the night alone?”

“Henry, what happened here?” he didn’t move or show any sign that she had interrupted his reverie, he lived mostly in his own mind now.
She looked at him, on his knees in front of a body hung in an alley by it’s heels. His camouflage coat and pants were old, she knew that he had worn them in a war, and couldn’t be separated from them without violence.
“Henry,” she repeated.
“I knew it”, he spoke without stirring, “ but I counted them anyway just to be sure, but I knew when I first looked.”
“Like you know the Sox, Henry?” she said.
“Yup! I could see it as he turned in the wind Tracy, one thousand on the button, not one more, not one less.”
“One thousand what Henry?”
“Cuts!” he said under his breath, “the eyes were first, or pretty much, see the blood run over the gook, seen that with napalm. Yup, one thousand exactly, very methodical. Didn’t die of the cuts though, none of them are deep enough, and there isn’t enough blood. Died of the cold – or fear.”
“Do you know who he was Henry?”
“Yup, hit man named Jiles; very bad, very smart, very careful; doesn’t make sense this doesn’t. Someone had to have brought him here while he was out, you couldn’t beat him in an alley by hitting him in the back of the head – look at that knot.”
“I gotta go Tracy!” he finished.
“Who do you have for the game Henry?”
“The Sox,” he said, his camouflage pants made a crinkling noise in the cold as he got up, frozen from the time, who could guess how much, he had spent on his knees. “Willis’s gut is swollen, so is his neck; whatever it is, no one has caught it yet. Even if they do, it won’t be in time for the game.”
“Do you miss anything Henry?” she tried to smile, and get it to show in her voice.
“People that its alright to kill,” stopping for a moment to look her full in both eyes.
“But not like that Tracy – not like that,” he said as he turned to leave.
She looked down at where Henry had been kneeling, he’d been kneeling in his own vomit, kneeled long enough that it had frozen; like the pool of blood beneath Jiles.
…
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Body hanging in an alley, probably not an emergency though, he’s frozen solid as the hamburger in my freezer. He’s in an alley south of Main, between 8th and 9th.”
“May we get…”
She cut the call short and turned to leave, looking back only for a moment as she left the alley – but it was enough to see a shadow slide silently back into the darkness.