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Lunchtime Encounter with an Invisible Woman
by Bryan Doe

Copyright (c) 2000 Mister Doe's Invisible Girl Files. All rights reserved.

I was on my way back to work after lunch. About a block away, I came up behind a very intriguing-looking woman. She wore a longish double-breasted jacket, or maybe it was a short jacket-dress, I'm not really sure. Either way, it didn't appear that she was wearing anything like a skirt underneath it. 

What I did see below the jacket, though, was just fine with me (fine period): long, shapely, stockinged, chocolate-brown legs. The jacket stopped at about midthigh, and what lovely thighs they were! Now, normally, that would have been fine with me. Today, though, it was just a little disconcerting, because as far as I could see the woman was otherwise invisible. 

There was nothing above the "v" neckline of her dress/jacket, and when she reached for the door of the lawyers' offices next door to my job (I might have known, with that short jacket, that she was going to the lawyers') there was empty space between the end of her sleeves and her glove openings. For all the world she appeared to be a jacket with gloves and legs. 

I blindly followed her into the building and up the stairs. When she reached the third floor, she turned around and presumably saw me for the first time. "Can I help you with something?" she said, in a flat voice, not inviting or threatening. 

I stared at those thighs and legs for what seemed like a day. I couldn't help it. My eyes just kept going back and forth between thigh and leg, leg and thigh, thigh and leg... When I finally snapped out of it, I could not think of a single thing to say to this woman. The shock of seeing a jacket with legs seemed to have wiped my mind clean. Finally she pointed towards the top of her jacket with her seemingly empty gloves, as she said, "Excuse me, I'm up here," as though she was unaware that I couldn't see her face. However it had happened, she didn't even seem to be aware that I might find something wrong. I briefly wondered if someone could become invisible and become so jaded about it that it wouldn't occur to them that others might find it odd. 

I tried to humor her lack of self-consciousness by looking where I thought her face might be. I tried hard. I'm pretty sure, though, that I must have been staring at her nose or her forehead. Before I could reply to her, though, a familiar voice whispered in my ear, "You'd best let her go, guy. No telling what's she's up to, or what happened ot her, walking around like that. For all you know, she or her bosses are setting a trap for someone." 

With every ounce of will I had, I said, "Um, no, I think I made a wrong turn somewhere," and turned to leave the building. My mind was reeling from the possibilities I had turned away from, but as I reached the front door Val said, "You did the best thing. These are defense lawyers, you know, and some of their clients are... let's call them 'criminal businessmen.' You might not have walked out of there." 

"Thanks, Val," I said, still pushing myself with all my might to keep moving away from that woman. "Good looking out." When I got outside, there was a news van in its usual spot, right outside the county office building, but its remote broadcast antenna was in pieces on the ground beside the van. A crowd of at least a dozen people, mostly civilians, but with a few White Plains police, were milling about. Some of the civilians seemed ot be taking inventory of the broken antenna. 

Before I could find out what had happened, two of the county health department's Environmental Cleanup trucks pulled up. Four orange-jumpsuited people jumped out of each truck, each carrying some kind of high-tech scanner the likes of which I'd never seen before. I asked one of the crawling people what had happened. 

"Some crazy girl threw something at the antenna, and when it hit, the thing broke off the van and came crashing down," the man said. "You see that dish at the end? Well, when that hit the ground, there was a flash, and the girl vanished. I don't know what happened to her. People are looking all over the place for her, but they don't expect to find her. It all happened so fast..." 

I don't think they'll find her, either, though I didn't tell the man that. As it turns out, the news van had been there for what hindsight identifies as an unwise press conference, at which the district attorney was going to announce an investigation of one of the owners of the restaurant on the first floor of the lawyers' building. The restaurant is owned by some of the lawyers (and, it's rumored, some of their clients). I'd bet anything that the woman works for one of the restaurant owners. I'd love to know what it was the woman threw at that van, or what it was that flashed when the antenna hit the ground... 

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Kind of convoluted, I know, but there it is. And if you're wondering what would inspire a story like this, you'd only have to see some of those women to understand...