The Vanishing Pages
A woman set down her porcelain coffee cup, pushed back her chair, and stepped inside the street-side café.
Moments later, a young man wearing an olive jacket walked quickly toward the vacated table. He pulled a small pair of metal scissors from his jacket pocket and unfolded the fresh newspaper resting on the mosaic tabletop.
With quick, practiced snips, he excised a neat rectangular section right out of the printed page. He folded the paper clipping, slipped it into his coat pocket, and walked down the sidewalk before anyone came back outside.
When the woman stepped back out onto the patio, she picked up her newspaper to read. Her brows pulled together as she stared directly through a wide square hole cut into the center of the sheet.
Following the Sidewalk Trail
The next morning, she stepped inside the café doorway and turned around to watch through the glass panel.
Sure enough, the same young man approached the outdoor table, pulled out his scissors, and began snipping away at the daily paper once again.
Her lips parted in surprise. As soon as he tucked the paper cutting into his pocket and turned to leave, she pushed the glass door open and followed him along the pavement.
He walked past several storefronts, carrying a worn brown backpack over his shoulder, completely unaware of the footsteps trailing a short distance behind him.
He finally turned a corner and stopped alongside a long red-brick building near the main street.
A Gallery on the Wall
The woman slowed her pace, stopping beside a streetlamp to observe from a distance.
The young man reached into his coat, retrieved the fresh comic clipping, and smoothed it flat against a patch of brick wall. Taped along the masonry were dozens of comic strip pages, lined up neatly like artwork in an outdoor gallery.
Sitting along the base of the brick wall on flattened cardboard boxes were several men and women wrapped in heavy coats and thick knit scarves.
The young man sat down directly on the pavement beside them, pointing to a colorful cartoon panel in his hands.
An elderly woman wrapped in a colorful scarf leaned close to look at the drawing, her face breaking into a wide laugh that brought deep wrinkles to the corners of her eyes.
The men sitting nearby leaned over each other’s shoulders, laughing together as they passed around the freshly clipped comic pages.
Standing on the sidewalk nearby, the observing woman’s posture softened. She smiled quietly to herself as she watched the group share the comics along the brick wall.
A Special Delivery
The following morning, the young man was sitting against the brick wall with his back resting against the red masonry.
The woman walked up to him carrying a brown paper bag filled with food in one hand and a thick stack of brand-new comic books in the other.
She knelt down beside him, setting the paper bag in his lap and offering the fresh stack of comics with a warm smile.
He looked up, his jaw loosening as he smiled back and accepted the books.
He immediately turned to hand a brand-new comic book to the woman in the colorful scarf sitting beside him, who unraveled the cover with a grin.
The group gathered closer on the cardboard sheets, flipping through the glossy comic pages together as the morning sunlight hit the brick wall behind them.
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