I sit on the curb in front of the post office and watch her, in the window of the junk shop. She sits in the middle of the floor and changes the bits in a screwdriver. Pieces of cardboard boxes and Styrofoam packing blocks scattered all around on the floor. She builds a shelf, a piece at a time. Screwing brackets into tall wooden sides.

I want to stop everything and go in there. See what she’s up to. Stop everything like in the school Christmas play, when the angel shows up to give her speech: all the kids in the shepherds’ bathrobe costumes freeze, their mouths wide open, their arms up and their hands all spread. Those bathrobe shepherds are pretty good at holding still – they stretch out so it’s really hard, and one of them, he’s probably the best shepherd, he stands on one foot. I want to stop everything like that. Run across the street while she’s frozen there putting a new bit in her screwdriver. I want to look in all her drawers, in her desk, under her table. I want to run up the stairs: does she sleep up there? Is there a little bedroom, up above the junk shop? Is she settled in, or is that all in pieces too, like the main floor? Is there furniture, a toothbrush on a shelf, a reading light, clothes hanging in the closet?

She looks up from her shelf at me. I duck under my comic book. After a while I peek up and she’s still watching me. She sits there across the street, watching me, and after a while I put my comic book into my backpack and walk away down the street. She watches me go.