Alyson pulled her backpack out of the lockers in the back of the store and
stepped out into the twilight. The manager locked the door behind her and
she sighed. She trudged out of the alley behind the store and looked at her
watch. She glanced back at it, disbelieving.  The last bus was 15 minutes
ago.  Again. She grumbled to herself. She'd made the manager promise to get
her out on time and he hadn't even bothered to start helping her until she
had missed the bus.

The orange light of the street lamps made it hard to see more than a couple
hundred feet in front of her.  She walked past the stop and pulled her coat
around her. A man in ragged clothes stepped out from behind the bus shelter
and seemed to reach for her. She walked faster, and he stumbled past her,
seemingly not seeing her.

He fell, an arm and a leg sprawled into the street.

She panicked a little. She considered just leaving and running toward home.
She thought she might recognize the man. She had always tried to ignore the
beggars on the street outside the store. She never had money and felt guilty
whether she gave them change or not. Not that she had money to spare. She
never had spare money. She looked back and saw his bare arms, and wondered
what he was doing without so much as a coat in the chilly November weather.
Then she noticed the pad of gauze pressed against his arm and held on with a
strip of dirty cloth. Heroin.

She couldn't take her eyes off him and tried to figure out what to do. He'd
probably overdosed. She nudged the hand that was dangling into the street
with her toe, and he didn't move. She shuddered. His breathing was shallow,
and how still he was began to scare her.

She tried to remember where she could find a pay phone. She hadn't noticed
any for a long time. She shivered and stared at the man on the sidewalk for
a minute more, then hurried down her road home and kept her eye out for
payphones.

She passed the drugstore, just closing for the night. There was a faint
outline of a long-gone phone box on its walls. Her heart raced and she tried
to look ahead in the orange light of streets after dark, hoping to see the
familiar but dissapearing shape of a phone on the side of one of the
buildings. She didn't see any.

She jogged up the road, huffing as the road went up a hill. She passed a
tailor, a greek cafe, then an italian one, a sandwich shop, a little chinese
pastry shop, a bakery, a coffeeshop. She loved this part of the city because
it was alive early. She realized how silent it was even in the early
evening, how the moment the sun set there was hardly a store open.

She passed a bar, instinctively pushing her shoulders up in her beaten
leather jacket, trying to look as large and tough as she could, always
afraid some man would burst out and see her there. She didn't like feeling
vulnerable. She could hear what sounded like music from inside the bar, and
see neon lights through the slits at the top of the wall that passed for
windows. She saw the same faint outline of a long-gone phone, and sighed.
She walked, trying to look confident as she passed, and started to jog when
she was past the bar's entrance and she was still the only person on the
street. She got a hundred yards away when she realized that the bar would
have a phone.

She jogged back down the hill and stood in front of the door to the bar.
She'd never been in a bar. The town she grew up in was too tiny to have more
than a general store. She was used to having her wits about her, and alcohol
terrified her. The idea of people without their usual senses, slow, stupid
with intoxication. She never felt like she could predict drunk people.

The door was heavy and black metal. The sign on the door read "NO MINORS" in
heavy red letters. She realized she had no idea whether they checked ID at
the door or at the bar. She tentatively reached for the door. She hesitated.
She shrugged her shoulders, trying to convince herself that she didn't need
to look tough to go inside.

The door swung open with a bang and three men in hockey shirts pushed out
and nearly ran her over. They said "Sorry" in unison as they passed. She
felt suddenly self-conscious with her short cropped hair, her well-worn
leather jacket and her patched corduroy pants. She touched her nose ring
self-consciously before she stepped through the now open door.

There weren't many people inside. A couple young asian men at the bar,
laughing and alternately punching each other on the arm. A couple
middle-aged women in a booth by what would be windows if the bar were a
diner. A jukebox was playing music from somewhere in the back.

The bartender looked up from a sink where he was washing glasses. He looked
her up and down, and she touched her nose ring again. She stammered a
little. "Uh. Uh... Can I use the phone?"

She tried to imagine what he'd say. She cringed inside when she imagined
"Sure, sweetie" and then wondered if he'd say no.

"Sure." He handed her a cordless phone and pressed a button on it as he did.
She heard the low moan of a dialtone and relaxed slightly. She panicked a
little as she had never called the emergency number before and wondered if
there was a regular phone number to call for things like this. She hesitated
before the last digit, then took a breath and pressed it. 

She put the phone to her ear and heard a surprisingly reassuring voice on
the other end. "Um, there's a man unconscious outside the bus shelter on
13th and Brook street." she paused a moment "Yes, he's probably homeless.
There was a bandage on his arm." another pause. "No, like you get after you
donate blood. No, he wasn't bleeding." she sighed and looked crestfallen.
The dispatcher's voice seemed less urgent after she'd said the word
homeless. "No, he stumbled toward me, fell, and wasn't responding. I nudged
him with my toe. He's not wearing enough to be out right now. No! Not the
police! He needs an ambulance!" She sighed. "Thank you."

"What was all that about?" the bartender asked. 

"There's a man lying half in the street, a couple blocks away. Over on 13th.
He looked like maybe he overdosed or something. Heroin maybe? I think he had
needle marks on his arm."

"Probably just some junkie."

"I know, I think I've seen him. Maybe one of the panhandlers I see every
morning." She tried not to think how close she'd come to not being able to
pay rent a couple months before, before she'd finally found the job. How
she'd played with the idea of asking for money on the street. Or not having
the money for rent and ending up homeless.

"I .. I just care. He's a person." 

"Let's go take a look." said the bartender. She looked at him, surprised. He
took the phone from her and pressed a button. A moment later, he said "Will?
Yeah? Can you come down for a moment? I'm going to walk up the street with a
young lady and see if I can't help her with something." He hung up and
nodded. He reached under the bar for a jacket and pulled it over himself.
The door in the back of the bar banged open and a thin man stepped in and
pulled off a jacket and shivered a bit. He called to the bartender "I've got
it. Go ahead."

The bartender nodded to him and then to Alyson. He motioned her to the front
door and they walked out. She jumped as he touched her back. "This way?"
"Yeah." she shrugged her jacket again and tried to follow his gait down the
sidewalk. 

They got to the corner of 13th. They could see the sprawled figure in the
bus shelter, still hanging off the curb. A police car pulled down the block
slowly, and got to the still figure just before they did. They looked at the
officer in the car as he peered out his window at the man on the sidewalk.
He fiddled with something in his car for a moment. Then he drove off.

Alyson and the bartender looked at each other, a little puzzled.

"That was strange" she started to say, and laughed a little, nervously, when
the bartender said "That was weird" at the same time. Alyson sighed and sat
down in the bus shelter. The bartender watched the man for a moment, saw a
faint breath, then he nudged him with a foot and got no response and then
sat down next to her. They waited a few minutes. No ambulance came.

The bartender pulled out a cell phone and dialed the emergency number and
put it to his ear. Alyson decided that she liked how casually he could do
it, like he was calling his sister or a high school buddy.

"Yeah. I'm sitting next to a man I found unconscious on the sidewalk." he
paused a moment. "On Brook street, near 13th. By the bus shelter." Another
pause. "Ten minutes. I'll wait." He turned to Alyson and said "Ten minutes.
The ambulance is coming." Moments later they heard sirens, and an ambulance
arrived a moment later. 

The paramedics loaded the man curtly. They had come and gone in the space of
fifteen minutes, and Alyson was surprised at how quickly it was over. She
leaned back against the grimy wall of the bus shelter. She closed her eyes
and breathed a little. The bartender turned to her and watched her for a
moment. She felt the silence and turned her head toward him and opened one
eye. He laughed as she did, and she relaxed. "Thank you." she said at him.

"Of course. Hey. Come get a cup of coffee and get warm."

"I'm only nineteen."

"Hey, it's okay. This time of evening, it's quiet. It's a Thursday, we'll
probably be closed by ten anyway. Besides, if you order alcohol, I'll just
say no." She laughed a little, half nervous and half relieved.

"I missed the bus today. Then the homeless guy stumbled almost into me and
passed out. I worked a double. I didn't really get a lunch break, even.
They're supposed to let us, but the way the business is set up, it's almost
impossible to get one. I'd love that."

They walked back to the bar. The middle aged women were gone, and Will was
behind the bar finishing the pile of glasses. The two young asian men were
putting on jackets. 

"Will! I think this young woman needs a cup of something warm."

"Decaf or regular?" he asked her.

She yawned as she tried to answer, and had to stifle a giggle. "Regular, I
guess. I have to walk home."

Will poured her a cup of coffee. "Anything in that? Sugar? Cream? Irish
cream?"

She looked alarmed for a moment, then said "Just cream, please"

The young men left the bar, and Will followed them with a key, locked the
door and flicked the open sign off. He seemed to relax visibly.

"I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm Bill," said the bartender. "And
this is Will. We're both named William, that's about as well as we can do to
be different, I guess."

"I'm Alyson." Alyson sipped her coffee, feeling suddenly very out of place.
"Is it really okay that I'm in here?"

"Yeah, it's fine. We're closed anyway, so this is really more like an
extension of our house now. We live upstairs."

"So tell us about yourself!" Bill said.

"I ... There's not much to tell. I moved here a few months ago. I'm from out
east, in the mountains. No work there unless you're a miner, so I moved
here. I just turned nineteen."

"Any boyfriends?" Bill watched her as he finished "... Girlfriends?"

Alyson felt her face flush as he did. "I. Uh." she stammered "No. I've been
a little lonely since I moved here. I only knew one person here. A friend of
my mother's. Other than my coworkers, I don't talk to people much." She
wondered if everyone read her that easily. She worried what people might do
if they knew that easily. She thought of the news articles she'd read,
someone killed, someone dragged out of a bar and beaten. She shivered.

Bill regarded her for a moment. "Any hobbies?"

"I like to play music. I used to play the guitar a lot. I couldn't bring my
guitar with me when I moved though. It's still at my mother's. Mostly I just
work. It's so hard. I looked for a job for months. They don't pay enough. I
can make it. It's just so hard. I don't have time for anything."

Will nodded agreement from the end of the bar where he was doing paperwork.

"You live far away?" Bill asked. 

"About an hour, since I'm walking."

Bill looked surprised at the distance. "I wish I had my car still. I'd drive
you home if so. Want to stay here? We have an extra room upstairs."

She shook her head. As much as her apartment was cold and lonely, she was
proud that she managed to keep it.

"You sure? It's safe and quiet and warm. It's no trouble. Besides, you look
like you could use a couple friends."

She decided that she liked them. She had a deep distrust of men, bars,
alcohol. Something though made her like them despite her misgivings. The
fact that she was so misanthropic stung, she had never had a solid reason to
mistrust so, though she was wary of bars for good reason. The stories she
heard of some couple dragged out and beaten for loving each other were too
many to count, and she always imagined it was some quiet bar with no
witnesses where it happened. Now she was alone with two strange men twice
her age. She wasn't slight, but either one of them could weigh double what
she did. The fact that she was sizing up two people who had never shown the
slightest inclination to be violent unnerved her. She realized how tired and
paranoid she felt. She pushed aside the fears and shakily said "I.. I guess
that would be nice."

She caught herself thinking of the bar as homey and comforting, and the
thought shook her. Her earlier fear and the unfamiliar environment were
becoming comfortable.  Bill smiled at her, looking cheerier than he had all
night. Will looked up at him and caught the grin. She thought the two of
them looked like they belonged together for a moment, and she shook her
head. They must have worked together for years, she thought.

Will stacked his paperwork neatly and tucked it into a folder. He looked at
Bill and said "I'm done. You coming upstairs?"

Bill glanced at Alyson and she shrugged. "Sure."

They trudged up the stairs in the back of the building, ducking outside and
back in at the top of the stairs as quickly as they could. The temperature
had fallen and they shivered as they entered the apartment above the bar.

They pulled their jackets and Will took Alyson's and put it with theirs on
an oversized and somewhat gaudy coat rack. Bill smiled at her and said
"Well, this is where we live. Living room and kitchen here, Will's room is
at the end of the hall, mine's on the left there. The guest room's on the
right. Bathroom's the other door there."

Bill led her past his room and opened the door to the guest room, and he
realized Alyson wasn't following close behind. She stood just outside his
room and was looking at the rack of guitars on the wall. He smiled at her
and shuffled his feet enough to break her rapture. She shook  her head and
mumbled "Sorry."

She shuffled into the guest bedroom, and sat on the bed. She heard Will's
door shut, and Bill's voice say "Good Night". He poked his head in and said
the same to her. She turned just to see him retreat into his own room and
close the door. She stood up and closed the door, and sat on the bed. She
tried to think over what had happened today, but the exhaustion began to
overwhelm her. She pulled back the covers and tried to decide how much
clothing to leave on. She hadn't spent the night at someone else's house in
a long time, and certainly not in a house with two men ever. 

She opted to leave her shirt on, and to pull her damp jeans off. She dumped
them in a pile by the bed and pulled the sheet over herself. She was asleep
within seconds.