One day, I absent-mindedly let my gaze slide toward the subway platform and saw things how Milk must have seen them every time I got out of the train on my way home from work. I watched pushy people shove past each other, and remembered how they used to curse at me for standing immobile between them and their destination. All I'd wanted was to watch that strangely alluring girl in the beanie hat.

I felt a tug at the invisible thread I'd sewn between us. Accidentally, I must have anchored the first few stitches to my heart. I wasn't good at drawing or sculpture or sewing or knitting. Milk would have sewn a lovely line with impeccable craftsmanship. I sighed to myself. As the travelers from the latest subway train dissipated, the thread sewn to my heart twinged again.

Alone, came a single figure in black jeans and a fitted dress shirt. The ambiguously-gendered traveler stood mere feet from me. The thread I'd sloppily sewn must have worked as a fishing line, for it caught a beautiful girl with big eyes and bright smile. My knees wobbled. This person was gorgeous. It was a different gorgeous than I'd known, but it was definitely -- without a doubt -- my Beanie Girl.

I suppose because I was speechless, she made the first move by encircling her arms around me. I felt swathed in a warmth I couldn't put into words if I was the most loquacious writer of love poems and sonnets. "Milk," I mumbled into her shirt. She smelled of gardenia and fabric softener. She rubbed my back and hugged me tightly. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to say so many things, but my voice was choked out by my emotions. Thankfully, she spoke first. She apologized for making me worry. She said she would've crawled back on all fours had she been able to. She told me her version of the story the old man had shared with me. It seemed the two bullies had managed to trip her behind a darkened delivery dock of a grocery store. The area had been deserted and no matter how loud she screamed and how hard she struggled, nobody came to help. Looking at her more thoroughly while she explained, I noticed a ghost of a bruise on her cheekbone. I hadn't seen her in nearly two months and if this bruise was a souvenir from that night, she must have looked a fright the night it happened. 

She explained that the guys had badly roughed her up but tired of beating her before it could escalate to worse violence. She said she was glad they only physically hurt her. At the time, she was sure they would or kill her. But they seemed more dumb than criminal. She had twisted an ankle when she'd tripped, and broken her fall on her knee, which was how the thugs had managed to keep her relatively still while roughing her up.

She lay there taking kick after kick; in the shins, in the gut. While she was incapacitated, one of the guys gave her face a light pounding, saying that if only she'd been a real man, she would have fought back. They seemed to despise her simply for her lack of long flowing locks, because she didn't show off her long legs or wear an extreme push-up bra. I thought it was ridiculous. "You're a freaking homeless person -- did they expect a fashion plate, salon-coifed bikini model?" I blurted angrily. These guys sounded like real winners in the brains department.

"Was a homeless person!" Milk smiled.

It's true she didn't quite fit the description any more, what with her crisply-ironed shirt and her gardenia scent. I wanted her to fill in the gap between dark grocery store loading dock and the new duds she sported today. She looked stunning. Confident. Happy. The slouch of her shoulders was gone and the sadness in her eyes was much more subdued.

She had passed out that night when her attackers had left and she could no longer feel her face. The next thing she remembered was waking up in a hospital bed. A nurse had let her know that she'd been found at dawn by the driver of a fresh bread delivery truck. No stitches, no internal wounds, Milk had only been a mess of superficial injuries. The intent was to discharge her after three days, but when they understood she had no help at home -- and in fact, no home -- they let her stay for an extra two days. Once she was more mobile on her bum-leg, they said they had to let her go to vacate the bed for patients with more severe ailments.

When released from the hospital, Milk hobbled to what seemed like the safest alley in close proximity. She refused to go out into the public and start begging for change in her current state. After two days without washing, she fled the alley not from hunger but from paranoia about her healing injuries getting infected in such an uncleanly environment. She'd been thankful to locate a twenty-four hour fast food joint, where she borrowed the bathroom, and dumpster-dove in the back of the restaurant. When she'd felt fed and as clean as she could get under the circumstances, she pocketed the meager dimes and quarters she'd collected  -- off of sidewalks and the twenty-four hour dining room floor -- and hobbled as far as her body would take her in her weakened state.

It made her cringe, but she started panhandling hard-core. She was desperate to type up a CV and print out some copies in order to get a job as soon as possible. But without a phone, she only targeted jobs that might hire her on the spot. If a potential employer wanted to wait and phone her to come in for an interview, she'd be out of luck. After collecting enough change to do the deed, she introduced herself to ten potential employers in two days. She knew her chances were limited looking disheveled and roughed up from her assault, but she had to hope someone at some point would overlook that.

And someone did on the second day of her job hunt. Two weeks after she'd disappeared from her subway station, she was working a very part-time job mopping floors in a hardware store. Her boss varnished and sanded wooden furniture in the back room and the fumes and sawdust made her sick. But it was all she had and she only needed to work twice a week. She'd begged to have her first few pays in cash, and with her earnings she upgraded her tattered clothes. Luckily, she could dress casually, even sloppily for this job because all she did was get dirty anyway. The new clothes she bought were in case she landed a better job. She stored them along with her newly replenished supply of toiletries at work.

With more of her earnings, she bought herself a cheap pen and notepad. It served as an appointment book as well as a replacement for the sketchbook I'd given her. She stopped telling her story for a moment to pull something out of her jeans back pocket. In a moment, a small notepad was in my hands. The edges of the pages were bent and worn. I looked up at Milk for further insight.

"I drew all of these for you. I didn't know if I could find my way back to you so easily, but it gave me hope that if I filled enough pages, that I'd eventually be able to give them to you," she said.

I was very touched. Milk had sewn her own invisible thread to me, and she'd stitched it from ink on cheap recycled notepaper. Cross-hatched and shaded, her sewing as I imagined, was far more beautiful than my shoddy workmanship. I flipped through the pages in awe. How she made quick still-lifes of hammers, screws and saws look alive and enchanting I'll never understand. Among the numerous still-lifes inspired by her place of employment were also portraits and memos like "buy subway tickets" and "Tuesday =  work @3 instead of 4".

She asked me to skip to the last drawing. It was another from-memory portrait of me. I was as stunned as I was when I saw the one she drew in her first art book. She'd really captured my essence; the way I'd been feeling since she'd disappeared. In the sketch, my eyebrows were furrowed and my gaze faraway. Milk said, "I drew that today before boarding the subway to come see you. I knew it was a long shot, but I figured if I showed up around the time you usually head home from work, that I'd be able to find you. You made it even easier by standing in my old spot."

"I've stood here for half an hour almost every day since you left," I said, biting back tears. She drew me close and hugged me tighter than she had the last time.

"Thank you for not giving up. Can we go somewhere more comfortable for the rest of my story?" she asked. I said I didn't even need to hear the rest of her story. She was here now and I was so happy. She linked arms with me and started to walk away.

"Oh, wait!" I slipped out of her grip and grabbed her old sketchbook from the ledge it had hibernated on for so long. Its dusty cover now matched its surroundings. I gave it to her and watched her face light up.

"I know I've been drawing daily in the notepad I just gave you, but...I like this one better," she smiled.

"Of course. It has nicer paper," I reasoned.

"No, it's because you gave it to me," she clarified. It was corny, but I loved that she said it. I loved it even more because she actually felt it.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* 

As we made our way out of the subway station, she asked if she could take me out for a coffee.

"Is that you asking me out on...a date?" I teased. She shrugged like it didn't matter, but her pink cheeks suggested otherwise. Instead of gracing my remark with an answer, she revealed that she'd promised herself she'd only return to see me once she could have a shower and the prospect of a real job. Though in the long run it was expensive, she stayed at a hostel a few times per week. It gave her time to refuel and a phone to make job-related calls. She was waiting on news from a potential job drawing storyboards. I was excited for her. If she got hired, she'd be putting her talent to good use. She'd also be working enough hours to put a real roof over her head. I wanted to offer her my sofa, my bed, my kitchen, my shower. I was convinced I could trust her but when I suggested it, she politely declined.

"I don't want to put you out. You've already done more for me than you know," she said.

Leaving the station, we ran into the old man panhandling to an uninterested audience.

"Oh! You founded your friend!" he shouted at me.

Milk smiled, "Hi Bruno. Nice to see you again."

I nodded at Bruno and squeezed Milk's arm happily. "She found me," i told him.

He smiled at us both and said, "Good, good!" Milk fished in her pocket and pulled out two dollars in coins. She placed them in the old man's dirty hands and said, "I'll see you around." Bruno seemed unable to come up with an adequate comeback, either to the two dollars or to Milk implying he'd inherited her favorite spot near the security railing.

We walked up to our usual coffee shop and before we could enter, Milk made us stop. She dragged me to a dimly lit corner of the building and thanked me for being there to greet her as she'd walked off the subway car. I smiled up at her large eyes and felt my sloppy sewing tug at my heart again. The thread between us grew very short as she gently moved me against the coffee shop wall. She bent her head to kiss me. I'd missed her lips.

When she broke off the kiss, she held me near and said, "Thank you. Just...thank you. I promise I'll make you proud to know me." As I'd come to understand, Milk's promises weren't empty.

I inhaled the clean scent of gardenia and said into her shirtsleeve, "I'm already proud of you."