Nocturnal Landmarks

"Hey, have a cigarette?" The armless black man gingerly crossed the street and approached Sparky and myself at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday. "No, no cigarette," I replied. He then asked, "can you tell me where the light rail is?"

Turned out, he was simply lost, tired, and confused. He asked about the carwash and the liquor store and the Safeway. He said the liquor store was near a Shell station. When I replied that there was a liquor store nearby, but that it was near a Chevron station, he said "Shell, Chevron, it's all the mothafuckin' same." He had arms after all, he had just kept them under his shirt for awhile, for some inscrutable reason, and he slowly brought them out. After I launched into a tedious disquisition about why E-W thoroughfares are Avenues and N-S thoroughfares are Streets, I could tell he was becoming deeply frustrated.

So, I pointed him back to Broadway, the direction from which he had approached, and he shuffled off, muttering obscenities....