"You have such pretty little toes."

  His booming voice was hoarse from manning the parking lot of the auction.  But his eyes flickered, registering beauty.  The woman seemed even shorter to his tall.  She looked at her feet in sandals.  "Oh thank ya Mr.  Had 'em refreshed at the salon." 

  "Is it local?" 

  The pair worked through gay, straight; married, single;  sober, social drinking...all the how to navigate this conversation cues and pokes against the backdrop of actual backdrops being moved from place to place on the street.  The sun slid farther set and blazed an alleyway into a shaft of keeping on the sunnyside.  So they walked that way.  Both determined not to let "a turning point day" just end. 

  On the other side of the alleyway his friends raised eyebrows at the sight of him with someone.  The more cantankerous men quipped and belched.  "Thought you had more sense than that David." Young kids whapping each other with golf bag towels and removing packed for the thrift shop items from cardboard boxes for mangos stopped what they were doing.  They sidled over. 

  "You still adopting us Mr.? 

  The man looked at the sky, then the dirt of a road only partly asphalted.  The town couldn't just send someone at that time to repair tore up.  "It's runt." A girl in too-big-for-her clothes told of the street.  "Yes it is darling.  Lot of things around here need fixing." 

  The woman did the slightest throat clearing, then asked, "Are all these, uh, yours?"  The man blushed. 

  "Somes." 

  "I'm Nita!" A put-together girl called out. 

  "Alex.  Nice to meet you." A white tee-shirted boy stepped forward and held out a hand to shake.  The woman took her hands out of skirt pockets and shook the boy's hand.  "We've got no place to hang our hats.  You got a house?" 

  "I do." Some smiles alighted faces.  "But it's far away from here."  People stooped, shoulders slouched, at that news.  Everyone sat on the mixture of furniture and farm equipment rustled up by day's end. 

  "I already owe two mothers too much money to adopt any more of ya." The man said it like buttoning the top button of a shirt.  The story to that point a nothing new like no neck tie in the mirror's reflection.  "But we should stick together again tonight." One of the girls handed him a giant Tootsie Roll.  "Did you already lick it?" The man asked.  The girl showed still wrapped and giggled.