She had always thought life more unfair than it had to be. The price of being poor was too high, wasn't it? The price of being unable to deal with things?
She came from a family that had always prospered. Perhaps it was guilt that drove her to the streets to document the homeless people. How they lived. She interviewed and subdivided and wrote long thoughtful monographs and got them published in obscure journals. She began to see a career for herself growing from the dingey shelters and soup kitchens. Who knows, she might become adviser to a president and actually make a difference. Get elected to office. A Nobel Prize - But she was dreaming now. Now it was a Master's thesis that she must keep in mind.
It had never occurred to her to be afraid of the places she went. She did not consider the time of day. Its true there was usually someone with her. a fellow student, a case worker when she ventured to the garbage strewn places where her research material collected.
One night she listened for hours to a man who told of broken relationships and jobs lost out of anger. Of children never seen. He was an articulate man. Someone she could quote. A man with blazing hurt in his eyes. A good man who'd lost his chances.
It was two A.M. when she walked up the embankment to the street. No buses. She began walking down the empty street.
She sensed something moving behind her and she did not turn. Surely just another benighted soul - but fear clenched her hands in her coat pockets and tightened her shoulders. Now her fellow traveller was beside her and she turned her head, perhaps in greeting.
What she saw then would change her forever. Just a man in his forties who must have been born as ready to love and laugh as any of us. But now his face displayed no human quality. It was the face of a man who would kill without hesitating and without regret. The face of a man who had done just that thing and would do it again without a thought. A man who found himself at home with absolute evil and lived fearlessly among the rats and ruins.
``Nice evening,'' she said. He turned a hissing mask of a face on her and melted away between two buildings.
At the first pay phone she stopped and called her father collect. Warm house. Soft lights. Long established love.
``Please come and get me. I want to come home,'' she said.