from "Personal Safety Device"

Smoke billowed by the doors as I exited the hall. The hair hat man stood there among a small group of fellow smokers. His hair was shaped like a hat. It was. I looked again, though wet eyes, and said, So there. You see. It is. The stone steps were slippery as I scurried down them.

"It's a personal safety device," he was saying, tapping a pocket. "There are evil people even among us."

"What's the cost?" said someone. It was the weedy-looking kid, framed in the doorway, neither in nor out.

I scurried and scurried over wet slabs until one nipped up and bit me. There was the skidding of a foot—mine— the lurch, the gasp, the fall, the crash, the hoarse expletive. Arse over teakettle, I imagined writing in my diary; and, the horror, the horror. Elbow banged and bookbag swatted the ground. Inside the bag, a glass bottle of iced tea shattered. Prone, I opened the top of the bag and had a look inside. It was ruin; ruin on a small scale, but ruin nevertheless.

Placing his cigarette almost formally upon the ashtray, the hair hat man came toward me. He was ripe with dignity. I could see it coming off him in waves. His hand curved under my arm as he lifted me up.

"Tell me," I said. "Tell me—would your personal safety device protect me from a situation such as this?"

"This is nothing," he said. "Years from now, you will laugh."

"So that's a no."

"Your bag, my dear."

"Thanks." It tinkled as he passed it to me. Everyone else had turned away, dispersing. They were lousy with previous commitments: telephones ringing, email unwritten, notes unstudied, friends guffawing, teachers flirting, beer to drink, girls to rape, lies to tell. They could not care less about my clumsiness, my efforts and attempts, my foolish, foolhardy falls.

His hat had brushed my cheek as he bent to pull me upright. It smelled of some ancient room, mint and cinnamon, just opened and released into modern-day air. It knew of nothing new and awful, only the old and other-worldly, spices and dusty roads and deep shadows thrown at dusk. The shadows of two figures on horseback, one in a hat, looking for something, searching and seeking and hopeful.

I would carry this home, too, but I would not share it. I did not know how.

What strange romance, I would write in my diary. What places impossible to travel.