I wander the city streets, alone.  If you've seen one city, you've seen them all, and I've seen a lot of cities.  There's minor differences that make up their character, you've got to look for them.

Basically, you see, I'm a traveler.  I don't travel alone, much to my annoyance, but I am nonetheless, alone.  I'm a stage hand, often the only woman on the job among many men, but that's not what makes me alone.  I link up with touring shows and travel the world.  But, I'm never around long enough for anyone to pay attention to me.  I find another show I want to do, and off I go.  It's a living.  I have no place to really call my own, yet I can call anyplace my own, because I've been there.  I know the people through their reactions to whatever show i'm doing currently, through their tastes in theatre, through the city streets.

This city, for example.  I like to call it the Broadway of the Mid-West.  Right here on Hennipin Avenue some of the best shows that tour the US have played.  And you know it, even on the other side of town.  There's a liberality, an acceptance.  You can see it in the way people walk.  Their personalities, even the air itself seems to radiate and air of theatricality.

But, there's another side to the city, there always is.  If Hennipin can be compared to broadway, Minneapolis can be compared to the rest of New York with crime, and just plain strangeness to match.  I was mugged up the street from here, not today, but  several years ago.  I was working with Phantom then, I think.  There, on the street corner is some poor hooker, shivering in a tiny mini-skirt.  And there, in the alley, some poor street bum, passed out in a heap.  I wonder if they, too, are alone.

I sometimes wonder how many people acknowledge that they are alone.  Not losers wailing and crying.  "No one likes me!" or, "I have no friends!"  I have friends, and yet, I am still alone.  I acknowledge the fact, and it's not so bad as everyone thinks.  It actually give you sort of a. . . well, sort of a lift, knowing that you only have to worry about yourself, no one is dragging you down.

I wander into a little coffee shop to escape the March chill and order a cup with a shot of Irish Cream flavor.  You've got to give yourself those little treats now and then.  Picking up a newspaper I really don't have any intention of reading I settle into a comfortable chair near the window.  I'm sure that this is normally a favorite spot for the regulars, you can watch all the people go by.  But today, it seems, the heat is out and the chair has been abandoned for warmer seats near the little hearth which I'm sure made some designer cringe.  I relish the cold for the isolation it provides me.

I sip my warm drink, enjoying the contrast with the cold air and watch the people in the street outside.  The all look in a rush as if anxious to get away from the cold and into their nice warm homes, cars, maybe even go to bed.  Go to bed. . . doesn't sound like a half bad idea.

I finish my coffee and am just about to get up and go, when a man passing the window catches my attention.  It is not his face or clothes or his hair that catches my attention.  It is the way he carries himself.  There's something so familiar in it.  It actually reminds me a bit of the way I must look.  He glances into the shop and walks inside.  Instead of going to the counter and making an order, he walks straight over ot me.

"Good evening, Madeline!" he says.  "Don't you remember me?  It's James!"  His smile and the name ring a bell.  "We worked on Les Miserables together?  You taught me how to watch out for myself, to take care of me first.  I heard you were in town with that revival of Camelot."

I remember him now.  He was a gawky kid, working on his first real show.  The poor fool fell in love with the actress playing Eponine, who was a major bitch and a diva to boot.  I took him under my wing in an uncharacteristic gesture.  I showed him how not to care.  It's a fine skill in a cold and cruel world.  It keeps you from being hurt.  I just nodded and smiled.

"Well, you helped me a lot when you taught me not to care.  And, I would like to return the favor.  I'm going to teach you how to care."  He takes my hand and, despite my resistance draws me out of my seat.  Then I stoped resisting.  I may as well go with him as sit in the chair, or go back to the cheap hotel that Camelot provides for its roadies.  It' s really all the same to me.

As we walk down the street he holds my hand tightly as if afraid that if her were to let go I would dart away down some side street and disappear forever.

"I'm not some street urchin who's going to run away at her first chance," I hissed at him as I wrenched my hadn out of his grip.

He sighed, and turned to give a hooker some money.   I was shocked, not that James patronized hookers, but that he would do so right in front of me., but then I caught what he was saying to the poor girl.

"Go home, get some warm clothes, then go to this address."  He handed her a slip of paper.  "They will help you survive until you can get some safer work."

The girl looked at him in anger for a moment, wounded dignity, I bet.  but, then she broke down.  Tears began to flow down her face, smudging the heavy makeup, and she thanked him.

"I don't want to be doing this," she told him.  "But, a girl's got to survive!"

"I know," was all James said.

And that was the way it went.  James didn't have much, but what he had, he gave.  And, he explained it to me.

"You once told me that I shouldn't care for anyone but myself," he said after he had walked me back to my motel.  "But not everyone is like us.  Not everyone knows how not to care.  When you don't help, people feel hurt.  but I found that when you do care, you do help, you do love, the pain you sometimes get in return is worth it.  Think about it."  and with that he left me at the door to my shabby motel room.

The next morning I began to look for him, but couldn't find him anywhere.  He seems to have disappeared, just like the winter snow in May.  but his influence did not.  I found myself doing things, little things that I had never done before.  I smiled at my co-workers.  I dropped a quarter in the Salvation Army's bucket.  I picked up an empty soda can I found on the street.

I still to this day keep my cynical attitude, and I am still wary of others.  but I no longer allow this wariness to keep me alone.  I've lowered the shield that I'd kept up for so long and found that mostly, it was unnecessary.

Now, many years after that little coffee shop, I'm smiling down at my little daughter asleep in her crib.  I smile a lot.  I smile because somewhere there is an old roadie named James who somehow in one evening taught me to let my guard down.  Without that I never would have found what was missing.  I never would have found my husband, never had my daughter.  I never would have found love.