I think she sort of liked the simplicity of her lifestyle. And now she had entertainment too. Something she could scribble in if she saw an inspiring altercation between passersby or fellow homeless people. Being new at the whole street-living thing, she tended to keep to herself for the most part, but she'd mentioned there were a few nice people also strapped for cash and a comfy place to rest. Everyone fended for themselves but they all quietly looked out for one another.
Simplicity indeed had its place. Milk and I kept things simple and light too, until the day I went to meet her after work and she wasn't there.
Suddenly, things got a bit more complicated.
I waited half an hour, went to buy myself a coffee, came back and waited an extra half hour. Still no sign of Milk. I wrote a note in her book on the blank page after her last drawing, saying I'd waited to no avail and finally went home, but that I'd be back the next day as usual.
But the next day, she wasn't there either. Days went by and I started wondering if I'd done or said anything to offend her. But would she have left her book behind? Maybe she would have if it reminded her of me and she was trying to forget me. I drove myself batty with all the scenarios that found their way into my worried head. Where could she be? After two weeks, I opened her abandoned book to see if maybe she'd visited at an odd hour and left a note in response to mine. But the pages were as I had left them.
Missing her very much, I leafed through the previous pages. She'd doodled funny creatures and old men. Kids and stray dogs. A few random words were scattered among the drawings. Enthralled, I sunk to the floor where she used to sit and went through every page one by one. She really was talented. Among the more recent entries in the visual diary, I nearly jumped when I saw myself staring back. She'd efficiently captured my likeness. My eyes, my smile; as if I'd been laughing when she had me pose for the sketch. Only I'd never posed. She'd done this from memory alone and the resemblance was striking.
Something clutched at my heart and I wished she was there sitting next to me. I stood up to touch the safety rail she often leaned on. As if hoping to find her, I looked down at the staircase below me. She wasn't there.
She wasn't here.
Yet holding onto the railing, I felt like I could somehow feel her presence.
Sadly, I flipped the page in her book. On the back of my portrait was scrawled "♡ Chris " and a date. She'd dated this picture two days before she'd disappeared. It made me hope and pray and try to believe that she hadn't left because of me. That thought relieved me. But another notion worried me. If she hadn't purposely left me -- and her book -- behind, then why had she disappeared?
Leaning on Milk's favorite railing, my eyebrows must've been furrowed. Or my overall expression must've been very grave, because I heard someone's gravelly voice say, "Eh, Miss."
I turned to find an older man staring at me. I didn't want to be disturbed. I dismissed him saying I was fine, but he continued talking to me, "Oh, you're replacin' your friend," he said. Despite not wanting to converse with him, this caught my attention. I asked what he meant and I looked at him more carefully. He seemed to be a street person, judging by his attire, his overgrown beard and the faint stench of urine. Standing so close to him, I wished all homeless people took up Milk's habit of borrowing public restrooms to wash up regularly. Or is this what would happen to Milk in a year or two? Would she just stop caring? Would it become a daily burden to brush her teeth or to wash her hair in the sink of sundry wheelchair-accessible private bathroom stalls?
He said in his toothless old-man slur, "You the tall girl's friend, right? She gone so I say a joke that you replaceded her." This man knew Milk. He knew she was absent. I asked him what he knew and how he knew it. While he rambled, I clutched Milk's book to my chest as if it could act as a shield for my heart. According to the elderly stray, Milk had been removed from the premises.
"I sawd it happen! I knewd she didn't steal nothin' from no one. But the big dudes picked on her good cuz she's a girl dressed like a boy," the man explained. I didn't quite grasp what he meant but I let him finish speaking before asking for clarifications.
"An' they removed her hat and said Oh it's a girl! Does she have s? I interrupted cuz maybe they could rough her up real good or touch her, you know...them ies. She never did nothin' bad to me or to no one. Just sit in her same spot mindin' her business. Nice girl. She run off. They runned after her. I din't never seen her since."
Uneasily, I clung to my chest shield and demanded more information. Had she really stolen something? He swore that she hadn't and that the two men -- other strays apparently -- had accused her simply to get on her nerves; maybe provoke a fight. They said she'd stolen their food, but I knew Milk wouldn't do such a thing, especially knowing she'd be meeting me soon and that I'd make sure she was well-fed. Or maybe I didn't know her at all.
But according to the old man, she was innocent. What reason would he have to defend her honor if she'd actually done something bad? He didn't seem to have a motive to lie. He didn't ask me for anything in exchange for his information. I had to believe he was telling the truth.
He assured me if I wanted to hang around to wait for my friend that he would keep an eye out for me. "You isn't as big as your friend. Maybe you can't win if those two big guys come back and try to hurt you."
"Have they been back?" I asked. He shook his head. I think he told me all he knew. I couldn't squeeze any more out of him and had to assume those guys had chased Milk into a dark corner somewhere. An alley, a dump, an abandoned lot. Why hadn't she nor her pursuers resurfaced by now?
The old man left me alone once he knew I'd be okay, but swore he'd keep watch over me. He felt he owed it to the friend of the "nice tall girl".
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The days that followed had me conjuring up every hypothetical answer to Milk's disappearance. Unfortunately none of them were very positive. Had she and the two men run out into traffic and gotten hit by a bus? Had one man held her down while the other tore open her shirt to find the ies they'd talked about? Maybe they'd beaten her and left her for dead. Maybe she was so scared that she just ran and ran and ran until she was in another town. Maybe she couldn't claim her art book because she was so far away. I decided to hold onto the distance theory over the one that had her dead in a dumpster, bruised, beaten, ...
My poor, beautiful Milk. I told myself she was just visiting the scenery of her new neighborhood. That she was laughing at me for crying into her book. That maybe she's even been panhandling so she can get change to board the subway and come back to see me and doodle more pretty things. With that hope, I stood in her spot for half an hour every day. It was a token really, because I couldn't be there all day and I realized she could show up while I wasn't there. But it made me feel close to her. Like I'd sewn an invisible thread between us.
I sometimes leaned on the security railing with my chin on my arms, looking down the staircase she used to stare at. I wished she'd materialize on those steps; feel my presence and look up at me with that bright smile of hers. I wished she'd outrun those guys who tried to attack her. That she was somewhere far away and safe from harm. But mostly I just wanted to know she was alive. Even if she never returned to this station, as long as she was alive, somehow I could accept never seeing her again. But I missed those big, sad eyes terribly.
Some days, the homeless old man waved at me from a distance. I started to realize that waiting for Milk every day would never bring fruit. I suspected if I just went back to how things were before I'd noticed her sitting on the tiled floor in her parka, that I'd eventually forget about her. But I didn't want that. Besides, she wasn't really forgettable.
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