A Woman's Best Friend by Robert Reed

The Gangly Man was running up the street,

his long legs pushing through the fresh unplowed snow.

He was a stranger, or at least that was her initial impression.

In ways that Mary couldn't quite define, he acted both lost and at home.

His face and manner were confused, yet he nonetheless seemed to navigate as if he

recognized some portion of his surroundings. From a distance, his feature seemed

pleasantly anonymous. His face revealing little of itself except for a bony, perpetually boyish composition.

Then a streetlight caught him squarely, and he looked so earnest and desperate and so sweetly silly that she found herself laughing, however

impolite that was. Hearing the laughter the man turned toward her and when

their eyes joined he flinched and gasped.

She thought of the tiny pistol riding inside her coat pocket, a fine piece of machinery marketed

under the name, a woman's best friend.

The stranger called to her,

Mary, he said, in a miserable aching voice.

Did she know this man?

Perhaps, but there was a simpler explanation.

People of every persuasion passed by her desk every day,

and her name was no secret.

He might have seen her face on several occasions and he certainly

wasn't the kind of fellow that she would have noticed in passing. Unless of course he was doing

some nasty business in the back of the room, behaviors that simply weren't allowed inside a public

...