wizard-of-the-pigeons

understand how he could not.
“Lunch, then?” Her cool fingers touched his wrist, numbing it. She snatched
them back with a cry of dismay and gripped her own wrist. “Oh, look at the
time. I hate it when I’m on afternoon shift. Just about the time I start to enjoy the
day, I have to rush off to work. Look, I’m sorry. I have to go now if I’m going to
be on time, so I can’t take you to lunch.”
He stared up at her miserably as she rose. She looked deep into his eyes and
misread them. “Hey, look. It’s not that way! I wasn’t teasing you. Look, take
this,” she dug in a bottomless purse and came up with a folded green bill. “Take
this, I mean it, and get a bite to eat. You really look like you need it. And meet
me here, tomorrow, early, and we’ll talk and have breakfast. You can tell me all
about yourself. Now, don’t shake your head at me. You take this.” Boldly she
tucked it into the chest pocket of his jacket. Wizard felt strangely powerless
before her insistence. “You eat something, you’ll feel better, and I’ll see you
tomorrow. Don’t look so surprised. That’s how I am. I can never turn away from
someone who really needs help. And I can tell a lot about people Just by looking
at them, maybe cause I been waiting tables for so long. Now you get something
to eat. I mean it, now. See you later.”
She left him buried in the avalanche of her words. She looked back once as
she hurried away to give him a friendly little wave and an admonishing shake of
her finger that cautioned him to obey. It was all he could do to stare after her,
totally unmanned.
When he looked away from her diminishing figure, the square looked
unfamiliar. The light seemed dimmed, and his eyes would not focus as sharply as
he wanted them to. Like waking from a nap you hadn’t known you’d taken. He
blinked and felt the wetness of his lashes. Rain. It was raining very tiny drops,
millions of them. like a determined mist condensing on him. Wizard sat in it for
a long time, feeling the money in his breast pocket where she had jabbed it in,
feeling the emptiness in his coat pocket where the popcorn bag had been. His
birds were gone, abandoning him to seek shelter in treetops and on window
ledges. He was alone in the gray rain, caught between numbness and a creeping
cold. Just like bleeding to death, he thought to himself; once the shock takes
away the pain, you just get colder and sleepier and dimmer. He turned his eyes
down. His coat and slacks were dark and wet, but this time it was only rain. Only
rain.
He dragged himself to his feet, forced himself to move. The square boasted a