"Luck"

Listen: That's the sound of Lorna Lane's footsteps after dark. There's someone behind her, maybe twenty feet behind, with shoes that make sharp whispers on the concrete. Lorna crosses to the other side of the street and looks over her shoulder.

She catches a glimpse of an older man, with white hair and long arms, as he crosses the street to follow her. Follow her. Yes, he's definitely following her. After six zig-zag blocks through downtown, she knows it's not just coincidence that he's still going her direction.

For the first time since July, she regrets leaving her boyfriend Chester. Now she has no one to walk her home at night. Now she has a dark, empty apartment to come home to. A dark, empty apartment in a building full of strangers.

Sure Chester had his problems. For one thing, he loved his cat more than he loved her. He even said so. He'd been standing in the shower brushing his teeth with her toothbrush when he said, "Lorna, I will never love you as much as I love the cat. I'm sorry. That's just the way it is."

But at least Chester was big. Big enough to protect her, to save her.

Lorna quickens her step. Four more blocks to her apartment. Four more blocks and then what? Does she want this stranger, this stranger with the long arms and the quiet footfalls to know where she lives? What if she can't jam her key into the lock fast enough? What if she can't get in the door before...

What had Chester said the day she left, the day she packed the answering machine and the dishes into paper grocery sacks and left forever? He'd smiled out of the side of his mouth and said, "Good luck, baby. Good luck."

That's what she needs right now--a bit of good luck. A police man to wander by. A super hero in a red cape to fall out of the sky.

She's almost running now. Her pretty, leather shoes bite into her heels as she dashes across the street. Chester. She misses him. She needs him.

She steps onto the sidewalk just as a car speeds around the corner, headlights out, stereo blasting. A sudden screech of tires. A heavy thud of metal meeting flesh. The radio keeps playing, but Lorna doesn't recognize the song.

Looking over her shoulder one last time, she turns to see the man with the long arms lying in the street, belly-up and bleeding under a street lamp. Nothing moves. Not the car, not the man, not Lorna.