“You are the concept immaculate,” caroled a Jammer, shoving her/his hollow face up close to mine. The skin, between streaks of gray paint, was opaque and flaky-looking; the breath the words came out on was eerily sweet. “You are the flesh made word. Whatchoo gonna do about it?”

“Which way you gonna step?”

“This is the step, this is it, right here.”

I folded my arms around my head, as if to protect it from angry birds. “Go away!” I screamed, and now even my thinking mind, cowering in its comer, didn’t care if every living soul on the bridge saw me, and knew I was afraid.

“Step!” “Step!”

I was closed in by a fence of bones singing in the voices of crows, and if I didn’t get out now it would club me to my knees with my own secrets. I shut my eyes and punched.

They whooped, and it was a moment before I realized I hadn’t connected with anything. I opened my eyes. There was a gap in the circle, so I bolted through it, through the forest of pedestrians and parasols, and if I hadn’t stumbled over a blanket full of pots and pans and tripped on the curb, I wouldn’t be writing this. Or perhaps I would. Those levers, those pulleys… Amid the ringing of aluminum and cast iron, I hit the pavement on my backside, inches from the path of the tri-wheeler that was scattering foot traffic to either side. The driver honked, swerved, and slewed to a halt.

The Jammers were yelling and — cheering? Who knows what Jammers cheer about? Had I just taken the going-home step, or the no-home-at-all step? Or did it mean anything?

The trike carried full touring kit and weather shell, and had a mud-and-dust finish from someplace where there used to be roads. When the hatch popped, clots of dirt cracked away from the seam and fell to the blacktop, and the driver unfolded out of the opening with startling speed and economy. It was hard to tell what pronoun properly applied under the tinted goggles, the helmet, the crumpled coveralls, and the dust. She or he was squatting next to me before I had a chance to think of standing up.

“Are you hit?” Quick, sharp-cut words, the middleweight voice cracking out of roughness into resonance. The skin on the angular jaw, under the dirt, had never needed shaving, and when the stained leather gauntlet came off the right hand, the battered fingers seemed relatively light-boned. I hazarded a “she.” Those fingers grabbed my chin before I could dodge them.

Everything tilted forty-five degrees. My vision was clear, but for a moment I felt as if I were sitting on a slant with nothing to hold on to. Then the world snapped back to true. The driver’s dark goggles showed me two views of myself, slightly bug-eyed. What was this hangover from?

“No,” I said. “You didn’t hit me.”

She peeled off the goggles, snapped them closed, and dropped them into her breast pocket. Her eyes were black, and surrounded by clean tanned skin where the goggles had sealed out the dust that the tri-wheeler’s shell hadn’t. She was frowning, as if I’d confessed to something more offensive than not having been hit by the trike. Then bland and lazy good nature replaced the frown — no, was held up in front of it like a mask on a stick. “I could make another pass, I suppose,” she said thoughtfully. “No? But you seem so offended.”