Austin Nights

passengers has a baldpate. I decide right then and there that if I ever have the same affliction I will immediately shave my scalp with a razor. Baldpates look vulnerable in the harsh Austin light. They shine like mercury wafers.

  I don’t want to stand too close to this busy man lest I contract his genes. While he waits on the corner to cross Congress Ave, I back into the shade of a knobby tree. Sitting in the same shade is the bum Bridget and I saw last night with a scary looking gash on his temple. I guess he lived. There’s no remnant of the wound. He has a cardboard sign propped next to him that reads:

  PEASE FEED

  GOD BLESS

  AM HUNGY

  I wish I had a beautiful apple to give him.

  When the cobalt pedestrian signals from the other side of Congress Ave, a steady beeping also sounds to alert the blind it’s safe to cross.

  A woman passes me. It’s difficult to say if she’s walking faster, or if the dog on her leash is pulling her along at an uncomfortable rate. On the opposite corner, a bum standing in the biting sun asks her pointblank, “Can I trade places with your dog?” She doesn’t hear him at first, or at least she thinks she doesn’t catch his brazen plea, so he repeats himself in the same dreary voice. He asks, “Can I trade places with your dog?”

  “No!” she says. I slow down to listen further. “No!” she says again. “It’s not my dog. I think the owner would kill me.”

  Two male buskers make twangy music outside the Twin Oaks Public Library. A gaping guitar case with green velvet lining panhandles while they play. One strums, the other sings elegiacally about the disgusting wars this country fights.