She decided to give herself up to her fate.

What should she resist for? Nobody would wait for her, no one would keep a candle lit on the window ledge, might she return one day.

What's the use of putting up a fight, if your body has no fight left in it and if your life has no one to fight for?

"Have you lost your way?"

The voice was uneasy and gruff, masculine, but it didn't have a lurking threat.

She raised her head. A cool breeze hit the wet trails on her cheek which reddened as she registered the moisture. Tsk, tsk. Such a sign of weakness in such a self-entitled tough cookie.

"What's the problem? Lost your way? Hitch a ride with me if you can tell me where to drop you."

She stared for so long at the middle-aged man standing before her, he must have thought she had frozen.

"Hello! Anybody home?" The man had spoken with irony, with one curled up corner of his mouth.

He was of middling height, of a stodgy built, the puffed skin of his neck pudgy with abuse of the bottle. But that must have been his history or a back-home habit, for he had no signs of anything liquor then. He was ungroomed and gave an icky unwashed vibe. She winced but very subtly. She could only imagine him as Uncle Fester.

What should she tell him though?

"See, I'm about to leave and my home is a few hours away from here. And then I've to be back here by seven in the morning." He flicked his head in the direction of the next lot that housed a shed like structure with some company's logo on it.

The look in her eyes was still glazed even as she tried to focus on the company logo. Why was she trying to focus on the company logo? And why did everything seemed to be treading at a snail's pace inside her head?

"So I better get going then." The man turned and it was the note of impatience in his voice and in his hurried shuffle along the floor that turned her head.

"Wait." Her instinct of self-preservation finally kicked in. The man stopped and faced her again.

"Where are you going?"

The man blew air up at the sky, ruffling the mop on his head further and replied with a perfect eye-roll:

"I told ya. Heading home."

"Home where?" She was pleased as the note of irony appeared in her voice this time. It was a sign she was back from the dead.

"If you wanna hitch a ride, jump on my bike and I'll tell you where." The man had flicked a thumb towards Dequindre Road where a battered Yamaha could be seen parked on the opposite side.

"You must be kidding, right? You're going to tell me where you're headed and then give me time to make up my mind."

Both the girl and the man were clearly surprised at the note of authority in her voice, though she hid hers well. Only time would tell how much she had aged this day. To continue with the theme, she took two firm steps forward, placed her feet just that apart on the concrete, and slowly but surely folded her arms across her chest.

"So, tell me where."

The man seemed taken aback, as if she had grown a cape and was ready for takeoff.

"K-Kalamazoo." His tongue had caught on itself for the split of a second.

She made up her mind. He may have ulterior motives in inviting her but his moral fiber was not the only thing weak about him.

***

Caught up with her younger self and her troubles, the grown-up girl hadn't even noticed reaching a stop and getting on the bus. With a surprise, she realized that the pain from years ago was still fresh, the edge of the knife hadn't lost its bite. Fate just kept finding new ways of twisting the blade deeper.

She took a deep breath as she closed her eyes and pushed against the back if her seat, looking for comfort.

Her latest run couldn't have tired her. It was the reliving of that first trauma, the fear for life, the mind-shredding panic. The feeling of watching her whole world, whatever was left of it, disintegrate before her eyes.

Instead of serving up a distraction, the same old squalid views outside the window had the knife twisting again.

A thought made her sit up straight then.

What if another batch of Monopoly Men was going through the town she was headed to? She would be more visible to them her working conditions to be. What if the ones patrolling that town were aware of her? What if they were all had been on a general alert about her?

She had felt relatively safe in the squalls but the poachers were coming for the smaller prey in dirtier waters … What did she rank on their list for prime catch?

This won't do... this won't do. Her nemesis might be already on to her despite her best efforts to elude detection. Being passively vigilant wasn't doing any good. She had to be more proactive, take things into her hands ...

With determination, she stood up as the bus to a halt at the next stop and ran back to where she had come from but through a longer circuit.

It was twenty minutes past when she'd seen the monops last last; they must have cleared the area by now.

She casually approached the front of the cutlery store and feigned interest in a few wooden utensils hanging alongside helical paper ribbons and rainbow paper dragons.

"You buying some?" the old Chinese man running the shop asked her.

"I was just curious about the flunkeys who were all over the place a while ago. What were they asking for?"

The slang for the Monopoly Men may have not yet reached the old ears of the Asian shopkeeper. He just stared at her and blinked.

"The Monopoly Men? Those estate patrol people, sharp-dressed."

"Oh, yes. They were showing a few pictures around. One heckled Camila for a bit. Not seen none of them in the photos. Not me" The old man shook his head as if he was ridding himself of something unpleasant.

She tried similarly at a few other shops, but got similar answers. A few shopkeepers had already forgotten the well-dressed strangers and had a hard time recalling or sharing anything useful.

At last she came upon a respectable looking shop, it was a pizzeria, right across from the plastics store she had hidden at. She went inside and immediately caught the eye of a well-groomed person, may be the owner of this or another shop on the street. He had a notebook out in front of him on the table and seemed to be going through his accounts while sipping his Italian brew.

"Excuse me, can I talk to you for a second?"

"Be my guest." The man took off his Harry Potter glasses and inspected her briefly.

Uff! Why it's always the men giving women a once over? Why don't women ever do it? Guess what... they're no creeps!

She sighed. "The man standing over there has sent me to inquire." She pointed in a random direction beyond the shop windows.

"I don't see anybody there." The man was sharp.

"He's hiding behind that angle of the wall. See there?"

Luckily a piece of fabric flutterd in the air from behind the angle she had just pointed to. Maybe someone had tied a scarf from a window that couldn't be seen from here. It was somewhat higher than where the hem would be if a man was wearing a rather flowy frockcoat. Or maybe it was a woman who wished to pose as a man.

"Okay?"

"Well, he wants to know what those people from the other side were inquiring about a while ago."

"They were chasing a few defaulters that had evaded them for too long."

"And?" Something told her there was more he was keeping.

"And they were inquiring about a homeless girl running about town..."

"Oh... any pictures? He said be sure to ask of pictures." She pointed again though her heart was beating fast.

"Sorry, no pictures." The man looked dramatically back at the flapping piece of fabric.

"I hope he or she is satisfied with my answers." He gave her a glib smile. The fabric was multicolor--a summer print, she now realized.

"Thank you, sir."

She could barely keep her legs from shaking and tripping over the doorstep as she made her exit.

As soon as she got out, the man noted down something in his book, took off the page, folded it and carefully put in his pocket. Then proceeded to send a text on his phone.

***

Sitting on the bus to Tatter Town, Harry tried his best to lose his mind in the succession of images swiping by the window screen. And yet, the teasing notes of that persistent thought steadily worked itself into a crescendo...

Will I... will she... can I expect her to be there?

As he got off the last bus, his frenzy propelled him into long strides. Sure, he was late than usual today, but was that why he was in such a hurry to reach Dane Street today?

His mind kept telling him there was no chance he would find her on stage. It must be some new actress, another trial-hire, for she was a random walk-in. She could only turn out to be a lone appearance, a one-hit wonder. The way she pissed Caleb off, no way he would hire her as a permanent replacement for Susan, the actress who had left for another state on a family emergency.

There was no need to be so worked up over the issue of would she or would she not. He admonished his own mind that was acting as a child hoping for candy at the end of a long set of chores. What did it matter if the boring regularity of life in the streets was interrupted for forty minutes by something new, something different, something exciting? This boring regularity of life was the peak he had been working towards for the past five years, hadn't he?

Yes. This was not a subject worth wasting thoughts on. Other than a death at the junction, everything was cool as usual. On the balance, things were looking up. This street theater gig added a few more trickles to his slowly collecting pool of savings. Maybe in a week's time, he would be able to buy a bicycle again. It would be very useful, cut down on all the walking, and save bus money for shorter trips. He had enough to buy a hoverboard now but it would delay a bike which is always handier.

He pushed forward through the crowd at the busy marketplace, the last few blocks of the route. He had to run at full speed as soon as he cleared ahead into a relatively free part of the Dane Street or he would have been late. Again he pushed through another smaller gathering, this one for the benefit of Caleb's theater, and climbed up the rattling makeshift stage made out of cheap fifteen dollar plastic tables.

By this time, he had indeed forgotten about who he was gonna be playing against. He called out Caleb's name to let him know he had arrived on time and took the script out of his jacket to remind himself of the drift of the play. He had rehearsed it enough during the bus journey here.

The audience around him was sizeable, especially for a Thursday. On top of it, there was a hum of excitement among them. Caleb must be happy with the ticket sales, though, he wasn't gonna share the extra money with the crew.

What's the excitement about, he wondered, when, thrusting the script back into his jacket which he now took off and threw over to Alijah, Caleb's assistant, he came face to face with the one person he had been avoiding thinking of...

Standing upright, hands in the pockets of her loose-fitting pants, the sides of her cardigan flapping gently with the lift of wind, she was staring at him with an unflinching gaze.

The gong was about to sound, Caleb's dramatic way of announcing the start of a performance. It brought the dilly-dallying ones lurking in the streets rushing to this corner.

He drew himself taller, took one deep breath and braced himself.

***

She had been at the top of her game these past few years, never staying at the same place three nights in a row, never holding a permanent day job, finding random places to eat, always digging into the deepest, most rundown corners of impoverished-looking local markets to buy her supplies. The only reason she wanted to do the gig with Caleb was that he partly knew of her situation and would agree to her terms. For instance he would never tell her name to anyone.

***

She, of course, couldn't see any of that. There'd be no point walking all the way back to the farther bus stop. Instead, she reached the one just around the corner just in time as the bus to Tatter Town was pulling in.

The hour's journey flew by with the suffocating feeling of a gas chamber. Someone had locked her inside a narrow watertight compartment, strapped the contraption to a space-bound rocket and reprogrammed the software to the setting of no return.

Her never-ending quest had just been extended indefinitely. The verdict of the gathering clouds was clearly against her. She was the goat left on top of the hill waiting to be thunderstruck.

Soon, her anxiety leavened into physical discomfort. As she got off the bus, two streets from Dane Street, she was nauseous and clutching her chest. Her desperation threatened to splutter all around her on the people walking by.

Where doeth the comfort lie? In knowing or not knowing?

***

And now, standing on the stage with that dumbstruck boy again, who looked as if a thunderbolt had lit up the ends of his hair already, she wondered how in the world would she storm through tonight's performance just like last night, when her whole world seemed to be going down all over again ...