tHE aLMS wOMAN*

The shamble leg man took a sulk off his cigarette, smoke issuing from the hole in his face, his eyes squinting to make sense of things. He seldom made sense of things and preferred it that way, as it made his life simple, less ambiguous, easier to mind and tolerate. He knew the alms woman, having met here at a rally for the homeless and destitute. He knew all too well that she kept a paring knife beneath her skirts, sharpened to a fine edge on the strop of her leg, where the skin was leathery and tough, a graft of stitch marks and scaring, tissue crosshatched and serrate.