professor’s excursion

Walking on the street, the professor had left his office between his morning classes, staging the long awaited appropriate conclusion for his manuscript; the young actor-wannabe killing time nursing a cappuccino while waiting for his orphaned audition; the recent graduate wearing the new suit that he bought on sale and that he was planning to return in case the interview did not go well; the mom grocery shopping before going to school to pick up her toddler at the nursery; the nurse coming back home from her night shift very late; the new employee on his way to lunch for the first day at that new underpaid job. And then: She appeared, the writer, hunting for a plot, looking at all the pedestrians' faces, listening to the leaves hitting the sidewalk, concocting a plot, pleading for sense among this chaos, shedding a justification here and there for their expressionless faces.. No one saw her: but she saw them all.