Prodigal

Flash Fiction by Laura Turzo

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Jake knew he was finally home, though he had never lived here before. He liked collecting stories, so New York City was the place to be. Just one subway ride was worth its weight in gold. Everyone was a character here, some more unusual than others, naturally, but each one fascinating to him.

On this particular evening, on his train ride home, he spotted an extraordinary example. She was to his right, just a few seats away across the aisle, in the corner by the door between the train cars. He found himself unable to look away. She was a disaster— and her appearance gave enhanced meaning to the term: a nest of matted hair, river-like relief streaks running over the landscape of a face caked with city grime, and hands wearing a variety of stains of indeterminate, though disturbingly suspicious, origin. But there was something so compelling about her that it bypassed his habit of refusing to make eye contact to avoid interaction, which usually prevented an exchange on any level since his only aim was observation.

This time, there was an involuntary exchange of something deep and familiar to him. He was caught by her profound sadness. He felt caught in it, really. Though in her stillness, some blessed state of distraction, she seemed to have no connection to it, as though she were carrying a package from one point to another without ever knowing its contents. Instead of his usual knee-jerk reaction of distancing, and in this case, what could have been disgust, he was wounded by her grief.

He had to know more. He held her gaze and boldly approached. After a few steps that seemed to take forever, he slowly said “Hi.” in an upbeat and curious tone. Then suddenly, what seemed an ominous shadow of grief evaporated into nothing and left a sense of space. There was a brief lapse of momentum before the shift into confidence that openness can bring took hold. Unwavering, she offered a crooked smile and said one word, “Baby.” She seemed certain that this was the exact and perfect answer to his “Hi.”

He had met some very strange women in surprising and possibly inappropriate places, felt a spark, and even felt budding connections of various sorts with them. But this was different. This had a surreal sense about it, as though this interchange had a designated time and place already appointed for it in the continuum of time. It seemed both whimsical and absolute, like a Through The Looking-Glass dream. In a word, it was weird. She was hardly a person he could relate to in general, let alone as a woman, due to the unsettling fact that her identity, not to mention her appearance, was so fragmented by living on the streets. And yet he felt a gentleness and a warmth towards her. It was not pity. Pity made him nauseous. It was unconditional...kindness. And it felt very new.

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Laura Turzo is a writer of poetry, fiction and narrative non-fiction. She currently lives in the Berkshires in Lenox, Massachusetts.