On a warm August day, Janice Garber crossed the broad expanse of Portola Plaza, heading for Rosa Piedra’s market. She always enjoyed chatting with old Rosa. The artists’ co-op had been hectic lately, and Janice was tired of playing the dutiful granddaughter to Sturgis Antelope. They had grown uncomfortable with each other since her recovery, and their relationship tense. She wanted to get out where she could let her hair down.
     She paused to light up a cigarette as she approached the half-way point. Out here she didn’t have to listen to her grandfather’s sniping about her habit. Before going on, she stretched her thin, bony legs, cramped too long behind the counter, and reached back behind her head, releasing her hairclip and letting her dark hair fall free.
     Nearing the northeast corner of the plaza, she spotted Rosa seated on a bench in front of her market. Janice would have known that plump figure and unchanging grey hair bun anywhere. The older woman appeared to be enjoying her lunch, and apparently also the attentions of stout, balding Mike Mercadante, who was giving her the eye as usual. As Janice approached within hearing range she heard Rosa heave forth a loud, hearty laugh, which appeared to disgruntle her paramour.
     “You never told me you were married,” Mike accused.
     “You never asked me,” rejoined Rosa, somewhat smugly.
     Mike was about to reply, then noticed Janice, who had stopped to observe. “I oughta get back to the restaurant,” he said instead. “Afternoon, Miss Garber.”
     “Afternoon, Mike,” said Janice. “Hi Rosa.”
     Rosa nodded. “You take care of that heart of yours,” she admonished Mike, waving as he left.
     Janice, now that the field had been cleared, tapped the glowing ash from her cigarette and walked over to the bench. “What’s that about Mike’s heart?” she asked. “Wishing him better luck with the next woman to capture it?”
     “Wishing he’d take better care of himself,” Rosa said, matter-of-factly. “He’s looking at a heart attack if he doesn’t slow down, and sooner than he thinks.”
     Janice laughed and sat down beside the older woman. “Becoming a fortune-teller, Rosa?”
     “Don’t be silly. I see things; I tell people what I see. Simple as that.”
     “Really? What do you see for me?”
     “I see you ruining a beautiful voice and a healthy set of lungs if you don’t lay off the smokes.”
     Janice frowned. “You could have gone all day without saying that.”
     “You asked.”
     “I guess. Speaking of cigarettes, I could use a carton of Winstons.”
     “Let me finish my lunch. Then I’ll reopen the store and see what I can find for you.”
     “Fair enough.” While her companion unwrapped a sandwich and batted away a stray fly, Janice sat back, blowing a long plume of smoke from her nostrils. As she waited for Rosa to get through, she took in the sights and sounds of the plaza. To the south, on the opposite side of the square, Mike Mercadante had just reached the Muckraker, the restaurant he owned. He immediately started shouting at and interfering with the waiters, who were busy serving the noon inundation of hungry government workers from the civic center. She smiled at the squabble and let her gaze wander further west.
     There, around the Fountain of the Twelve Apostles, the crowd thinned out and left the cobbled surface of the square to the flocks of gulls wheeling about the monument, their base and sanctuary. She glanced briefly beyond, at the far end of the plaza from which she had just come, where the Shell City Artists’ Co-op Janice’s grandfather ran lay nestled between Santiago Church and the pleasant, cool depths of Discovery Park. Then her mind sheared off from the scene and she tested some new lines for a poem she had been writing about the birds of the plaza. It was having a hard birth, with the verses walking a delicate line between perfection and disaster. She had to choose the words carefully. The wrong one in the wrong place would sink the whole poem.
     The bells in the clock tower tolled the half-hour, scattering the pigeons browsing about it, as well as a rather promising phrase Janice had been constructing. The sounds of the world around her began to impinge on her brain once more, distracting and yet lulling, after the clock strike, emphasizing the stillness of the mid-day heat—the fading reverberations of the bell tones, the occasional coo or wing-beat of an odd stray bird, a dull murmur of voices to the south, and Janice’s elderly companion, fanning herself with her hand and chewing.

     “So, Janice, you having any luck in getting your father and grandfather back together?”
     The young woman came back to herself with a start. Rosa had paused in her eating, and was looking at her expectantly. “Sort of,” she said grudgingly. “They’re talking again, at least, and it did happen because of me—but only because I almost got killed. But they don’t talk about anything that matters. It’s like they’re two strangers, with nothing in common but me.”
     “Not how you pictured it, I take it. You wanted to be the heroine, didn’t you? Thought you’d wave your little wand and make everything perfect, eh?”
     Janice did not respond. It was too near the truth.