It was by pure coincidence, so I initially thought, that I learned of the death of my best friend with whom I had been estranged for several years. I received the news from a mutual acquaintance of ours, who I encountered in a part of town nearly 15 miles from where I lived. I only visited that part of town on rare occasions to shop at one of the local thrift shops that usually had some incredible bargains. It was a magnet for those of modest means like myself.

After leaving the thrift shop I stood on the street corner nearby in the scorching heat waiting for the light to change to cross to the other side. It was a busy intersection at a major thoroughfare so the light was taking longer than usual. I looked around for cover from the merciless heat, when I noticed a group of people crowded into a small umbrella of shade under the canopy of a news stand near by. Unfortunately there did not seem to be room for another living soul, so I begrudgingly accepted my misfortune.

I noticed that the group of individuals huddled together, did not appear to have anything in common, except for their instinct for creature comfort, offered by the sliver of shade that darkened the sidewalk like a painted canvass. Among them was a bald headed man whose eyes were sunk deep into their sockets on a narrow emaciated face. He was obviously undernourished and either homeless or not far from it. He looked like a man of either Southern European or Hispanic origins. Next to him was a young white lady of petite statue, attractively but not fashionably dressed with short brown hair and evenly tanned skin, who had her hands full with several bags of merchandise while trying to contain a wailing and unruly toddler. Next to her were several smartly dressed individuals, two white men and a black woman, whose appearance reminded me of colleagues, who had just emerged from a Corporate board room. There was one other person standing behind the others whose features I could not make out other than he was a man and taller and darker than the rest and seemed to be the most mysterious of them all.