Clarion West

Ebenezer was a small woman, five foot four and frail as newspaper against December. The snow blasting down 94th and West End made her walk at angles and huddle deeply in her parka—torn, dirt-flecked and handed down like a family history of depression, it had seen far better days. Cabs were too expensive, subways and buses too close, and Ebenezer had a fear of all those bodies, and the eyes placed in them. The streets being no less populous but far more open, she walked each day to her collections job, rain, shine, gale or, in this case, ice blizzard. The wind ripped through her mud-brown hair, even the babies’ fists of tangles, squinting her already slitted gray eyes even further in a face the color of winter itself. She was shivering cold all the time, and something bad was following her.