Lego took the long way because he wanted to see if the girl who played violin in the Public Garden was out. He really liked her shoulder length black hair that she did not tie up, and how the hair would dance when she played, especially when she really got into it. When it got dark, she had a fiberoptic weave that would kick in, so you got a light show with the Mozart. It was a good gimmick to get people to actually stop, think twice about dropping that coin. Lego’s instinct was to avoid parks, really any place with large open spaces and groups of people—these were residual preferences from his former military career. When he left the ‘stans for the last time, he was required to participate in a 100 day observation that included sessions about the importance of winning little victories every day. Hearing a beautiful concerto in the park, this is what made life worth adapting for. Other notables: his rig and Spooky the dog. The former lay on his kitchen table in pieces, the later, probably asleep underneath it.

Lego crossed the Arlington Street intersection and entered the Public Garden through a wrought iron gateway—original, from before the drought, when the water table had dipped so low, most of the Back Bay and Beacon Hill crumbled on dry pilings. Some pockets retained the traditional brownstone look and feel, but most blocks in the neighborhood re-associated under new corporations who rebuilt with changed visions. This was most evident on Marlborough Street, which shared a common ceiling and maintained a closed-circuit sewage system whose only output were dried tan bricks that were then sold to pharmaceutical manufacturers. When crushed, chemicals were extracted from the brown dust, estrogen and the like, and re-manufactered under generic names, mostly for export to Africa.

Inside the public garden, the water fountains had been drained, though not the duck pond. Lego headed for a bridge that crossed the pond. As he walked, he saw a man in a red parka enter the gate behind him. He had a silver model Toyota Hilux the size of a small dog under his arm, and he wore a backpack that bulged at the bottom, like there was something heavy inside. Probably the remote control.

It wasn’t too dark yet but the air was chilly and the wind had picked up. She usually played on the bridge and he craned his neck to see if she was there. Then he watched the man with the red parka step down inside an empty fountain and start up the truck’s gas engine with a pull cord. The little pick-up truck drove around in tight circles a couple times, so fast it was up on the sides of the fountain about to fly off the lip. Then Lego caught the music drifting over the water and he walked a little faster towards the bridge.

Foot traffic through the garden slowed on the short suspension bridge as people stopped to hear her play. Behind him, two teenage boys in skateboarding gear were moving toward the empty fountain to watch the guy race his car. Lego found a spot across from her and leaned up against a waist-high wall of hand cut stone. The bridge had been entirely rebuilt a few years earlier with the portraits of famous Boston philanthropists carved in relief. It made a great spot to play.

She had just finished a song to a smattering of applause. She bowed, took a deep breath, and started a new song, slow and melancholy, classical something or another, her breath smoky around her scarf and the fingerboard. He heard the toy truck gunning its engine and people jumped out of the way as it drove more or less straight down the path, swerving around frozen feet. Some guy yelled, “what the hell!” as his ankle was clipped. There were a lot of people on the bridge.

Something clicked inside Lego Joe and he found himself
pushing through the crowd to get to the violinist and kind of tackled her backwards over the side. It wasn’t a long drop, maybe ten feet. The water and the mud helped break their fall, just as a loud explosion ripped through the air.

Lego pulled her up sputtering water and duck shit, half her face covered in slime from the bottom of the pond. Lego had to wipe goo from his own eyes to see and without really thinking about it, again, sort of instinctually taking over, pushed her up under the bridge. The ducks and swans had gone nuts, taking off in all directions, a storm of feathers and honking. Above them people were beginning to wail. The violinist looked at Lego, this expression of he didn’t know what. Sort of half-surprise and maybe even anger. Lego thought about taking off and trying to find the guy in the red parka, but something told him he’d be ducking into a T station and stripping down to something else, losing the back pack, whatever. “Mother fucker,” he said. They stood there for a couple seconds leaning against the stone foundation of the bridge, and then Lego forcibly convinced the violinist to follow him out of the park, and he half pulled, half carried her to the Four Seasons.

“What about the people?” she said through pale lips.

“Let the paramedics handle it. We got to get dry.”

They walked right into the lobby leaving muddy footprints and a very concerned concierge made a bee-line for them. By now half the hotel had their noses pressed up to the glass, but the concierge, a Latino fellow with a pencil thin chin-strap beard, turned out to be a pretty decent guy and took them right to a storage room behind the front desk. He ripped open a plastic sack of white towels and wrapped one of them around the girl. Plush, over-sized terry, three inches thick.

A bell hop in an immaculate uniform entered the store room and the concierge tossed the bag of towels at him and ordered him to go to the park as quickly as possible. “Now!” he barked, and then said to Lego, “Are you okay here?” Lego and the girl nodded dumbly—the shock was starting to hit Lego—and the concierge grabbed another bag of towels and headed out. As the door swung shut, they could hear the sirens coming down the street.

“My name’s Joe, by the way,” Lego said, starting to shake.

“Rebecca,” the violinist said, and sort of crumpled backwards into some canvas laundry bags.