Just beyond the elevator doors she paused, turning in all directions looking for…for what, she suddenly wondered. Some stereotypical grinning, leering moron in a raincoat?

The elevator emptied its cargo of perfectly ordinary-looking people, most not even glancing at her. Perhaps she’d been mistaken. Perhaps it hadn’t been anything more than a momentary, accidental contact.

With an internal shrug, Elgin joined the lunch crowd pouring out of the building and into the early April sunshine.

Quickly, she crossed the crowded sidewalk toward the cabstand, glancing at her watch as she stopped. If she could catch a cab and the traffic wasn’t too horrendous, she could make it home, grab a salad on the terrace, and get in a couple of hours at the keyboard. After all, for a writer, one finished book simply meant the start of another.

The start of another book.

Elgin frowned and felt the familiar pang of every author’s worst nightmare in the pit of her stomach. That nagging, aching terror that tugged at a writer’s very soul. The lurking fear that all the words had been spent, used up. That this time, “The End” had truly been reached.

She knew authors who seemed full and running over with an endless stream of new ideas. Always a work-in-progress (sometimes two or three at a time) and characters literally vying with each other for the writer’s time and attention.

But for her, stories only seemed able to come one at a time and then, only after much anxious coaxing. The overwhelming delight she felt at the end of a book was always edged with the stark terror of those words, “So, what’s next?”

“Hey!” someone shouted a few feet to her left.

Several heads, including hers, turned at the sound.

“Gimme money!”

A street person, tall and skeletal, stuck a large, grungy, dilapidated plastic soda cup in the face of a well-dressed young man, slightly shorter but stockier than his own six-foot frame.

“I…I don’t have any change,” he mumbled, turning his head and body a little.

“Don’t gimme that shit!” the beggar screamed, his mop of matted, greasy brown hair moving reluctantly with the violent shaking of the thin skull. “A course you got money! Dressed real pretty,” he put a grimy, fingerless glove on the young man’s lapel. “Gonna eat a big lunch at some fancy place. You got lots a money…way more’n you need. Gimme some!”

Gaunt cheeks flushed red, a spray of spittle flew out from the thin lips, a few droplets landing in the ragged whiskers clinging tenaciously to his pointed chin. Fire blazed out of dark brown, bloodshot eyes.

Quickly, the young man stuck his hand in his right front pocket and emerged with a fist full of coins that he dropped into the cup. With the beggar eagerly examining his prize, the young man made a hasty escape.

Elgin turned back to the street and anxiously scanned the traffic, hoping by sheer force of will to materialize a taxi. She’d lived in the city long enough to know that everyone around the man was evaporating as quickly and inconspicuously as possible and she wanted very much to do likewise.

Her gaze traveled up and down the block but no cab.

A ripple of apprehension fluttered in her stomach; not fear exactly, just a strong desire to avoid confrontation.

With a last hopeless sweep of the traffic, Elgin decided to cross the street to the safety of the cabstand on the opposite corner.

“Hey! You! Bitch!” she heard the angry shout almost in her ear. Instinctively, she gripped her briefcase more tightly, wrapped the fingers of her left hand around the strap of her shoulder bag and took a step.

Instantly, he blocked her way, the stench of body odor, filthy clothes, and alcohol-soaked breath creating their own barrier. At five foot nine in her three-inch heels, she could almost look him in the eye, and with her weight of a hundred and thirty pounds, he probably didn’t outweigh her by more than about twenty pounds. He might be a street bully but she was not some frail, anorexic fashion model. In her thirty-six years, she’d learned to cover fear in many situations, even while shaking like a leaf inside.

“Please get out of my way,” she told him calmly, his smell making breathing, let alone talking, almost impossible.

“Gimme money, bitch!” The cup rattled so close under her nose she could feel the rough edge.

Cold fear warmed a little with a tinge of anger. Elgin stared into his face, her black eyes empty.

“I haven’t got any money,” she replied flatly. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

Stepping to the side, Elgin intended to go around him but he moved nimbly, blocking her once more. Leaning down, her whole view seemed taken up with him.

“Gimme money, bitch!” he repeated, his rage bellowing out with a force that surprised her, shaking the confident facade.

“I told you, I don’t have any money,” she continued, still trying to remain calm. “But if you don’t let me pass, I will start screaming, and with all the cell phones around here, someone’s going to call the police and I’ll have you in jail.”

Glancing quickly around, he saw several people were slowing to gawk, many of them with phones at their ears, eyeing him suspiciously.

But there was more to his rage than just her refusal to give him money. This was his corner; these were his marks. He knew those who gave freely, from real generosity. And those who gave from a guilt born of too much wealth paid for by others. Most caved in to his dirty, smelly intimidation. If he let this pretty woman, smaller than him, with short, almost boyish black curls and red lips walk away, how much of his power, his livelihood would go with her?

Taking advantage of his momentary hesitation, Elgin took another hurried step and scooted by him. Just as she started to exhale with relief, fingers like a steel vise closed painfully around her left arm between her shoulder and her elbow and spun her backwards.

“Come back here, bitch!” he roared, shaking her like a pit bull with a rag doll. “You give me my money or so help me God, I’m gonna break your skinny little arm!”

Elgin never knew exactly what happened next or even how. Her mind filled with terror, pain, and a hysterical urge to run but almost by themselves, she felt her fingers clutch the handle of her briefcase, her arm raise and her whole body swing forward. As if aimed, the sharp corner of the case drove into the crotch of his baggy, filthy pants.

Another roar erupted, this one of surprise and pain. Dropping to his knees and grabbing his injury, a torrent of obscenities mingled with howls of anguish.

For an instant, Elgin stood there, dazed, even the pain in her arm driven temporarily out of her mind by fear and disorientation.

Another figure appeared at her elbow. Flinching, she raised the case again.

“Hey lady,” she heard a nervous voice beside her, “it’s all right. I’m on your side. I got my hack over here by the curb. I don’t think you wanna be here when Junior comes up for air.”

“Look at that,” Elgin fumed, waving her suit jacket in front of her, “just look at it!” Needlessly, she pointed to the greasy black smudge where her attacker’s big hand had grabbed her and the open gash of shoulder seam.

“As filthy and disgusting as he was, I don’t even want to think what this might be,” she snarled. “God knows, though, whatever it is, it’ll probably never come out.”

“I can’t believe you’d even think about wearing it again,” the other woman replied, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “If I were you, I’d just call the Hazardous Materials Disposal Team and have it hauled away.”

“Do you know how much I paid for this suit?”

“Probably about ten books, retail.”

“Ha, ha,” Elgin told her sarcastically.

“I don’t understand why you just didn’t give the guy what he wanted. I mean, I can’t believe you’d risk your life with some crazed junkie street bum over a handful of change. Suppose he’d had a gun or a knife. Did you think of that?”