Lost and Found

His first impulse was to remove her shoes.

Her left knee was scraped raw and her right ankle was folded underneath her rump at an odd angle.

The fingertips of her left hand rested lightly on her thigh as if she had casually reclined for an afternoon chat. But her eyes were closed. Her lipstick was smeared and her lips slightly parted, mostly because one flushed cheek pressed against the brick wall. Sweaty hair matted to her forehead, she had the appearance of a child exhausted by crying. Or sickness. He wanted to press a cool, wet cloth against her face the way his mother did, when he was ill.

Her right hand lay palm up, next to her propped up body.

He thought it was odd that she was upright, that she must have almost slid down the wall from a standing position, in an attempt to maintain composure. The sitting up, kneeling pose was somehow more dignified than a prone, or fetal position. Definitely more dignified.

The skirt of her dress was pushed up high on her legs, but still covered her undergarments. One weary strap fell from her shoulder and here again, he wanted to … It couldn’t hurt to hook his index finger underneath the cotton strip and help pull it back into place. He still wanted to remove her shoes.

Instead, he picked up the tiny handbag that had spilled open in front of her. The reason he found her to begin with was all because of a rolling bus token that emerged from this alley as he walked home. It was rolled so steadily, so confidently, that he turned his head to find its source. That’s when he saw her. The purse had fallen into a sphere of overhead light in the narrow darkness, but she remained mostly hidden by shadow, a good fifteen feet away.

It wasn’t until be came closer that he noticed her pretty face.

Inside the silk purse were two broken cigarettes, lipstick called ‘pink lemonade’ in a shiny silver tube, a nail file, and three one dollar bills. He picked up a cell phone and credit card that had escaped with the bus token.

Her name was Grace.