colateral networking

She was all retro-sassy - another devotee of fashion icon history, belly shirt and one black glove. Hair propped to one side with a ribbon so that it almost obscured one of her heavily mascaraed eyes. I heard her boots thumping asphalt even before I could see someone against the fog. some kinda creaky light blew out from an old street-lamp half a block away, and it reflected like a knfie rack off those piercings. In her hand a skateboard and a brown bag, around her neck was a vintage minolta '16'. She looked like a total bad-ass, like she'd already been recovered for years; and having nothing interesting to say I asked her for a smoke. Without even making eye contact she jammed her free hand inside her baggies pocket and threw a pack at me. Camel. I fumbled and almost dropped them all out onto the ground as she kept cruising by only pausing ten feet away, raising her hand wordlessly and wigging her fingers. My throw sucked,.... too high, but she floated imperceptibly, launching from her tip toes a sharp snag, caught the pack. We stared at each other for 3 beats and then she blew me a kiss through a haze of insecure sarcasm, softening for a moment. I saw her again about a week later standing in line waiting for the free clinic to open. I was walking to work and she looked like she mighta been drilling invisible eye lasers into the sidewalk. Rounding the corner at 7th the one armed underpass guy and his smell crippled me. I safely arrived in my little computer world and spent 90 minutes researching the mars missions on google and randomly closing email accounts.