Beauty & Pain

I don't know who this woman is, but she kindly let Figgy take her photo, no questions asked, on Fashion's Night Out in New York. I guess no questions asked when you are 15 and wielding a camera? I do like her style.

There's a fellow who often mans the desk by the front door while I'm in the business center scrambling on a dreary deadline. He does the overnight shift. [Isn't that called the graveyard shift? Now that is one depressing term.]

Tonight he had tears in his eyes when I was passing by to say goodnight at 1:20 A.M. One of my kids is missing. He can't find his 15-year-old son. He didn't stop home after school today. Figgy is 15, too. I remember one day last year when we didn't know where she was. It was scary. I was less scared than other people involved, but it was still scary. 

I trust that the fellow will find his son. He seems like a good person, so I have to believe with all my heart that nothing bad will happen. [The boy lives with his mother--and I think his Dad recently got married.] If only all of life worked that way, that if we're good people, nothing bad would befall us. The fellow and I speculated that maybe his son is with a friend, or a girl. Maybe he fell asleep at someone's house. Neither one of us wanted to imagine anything worse. I remember my mother lying awake in her bed till I got home safely. 

This is his middle child of three. May he be safe and sound. May he know that his Daddy is crying, saying he can't stay and man the desk, can't sit and do his job, if the boy does not turn up. I offered to help him out--I would even have sat there for him--but I think he was going to call in one of the other guards. He was even dialing the local ER on his cell to make sure his boy wasn't there.

Go home, boy. Go home. Or at the very least, call your mother.