That dawn had begun to open for daylight to come with all its lighting glories to channel the course of bliss on the paths of lives that be, city birds chirped around with each of their serrated wing flapping and shattering the atmosphere into somewhat, picturesque ultimate design. The city streets had started to bear the look, reddened with busy legs thronging the faces of the tiled street looking busy as well, approaching their destinations. She felt a bit paranoid and felt clear that by having some real chat with Barbara as the one of the agencies vital assets at the moment. She felt to shed some light to the some plausible misbelieves she might be having towards her right-hand person, the Assistant. Wilder was then around, she went oddly as she stabbed other necessary things she had to be doing and ask Barbara to accompany her to the nearest tea shop. She had planned that they go have some tea together for atmosphere for privy and time. I would want to tell you what you might not have heard from no one before about my Assistant. ‘Wait, why would you not call her by birth name? Barbara inquired. Wilder pretended she couldn’t get that. They sat and they were attended to. She began to tell about her --engines passing by had already begun to scream, begun to honk on and on begun to poke ears here and there. These activities began to wake her up in bed. She dizzily opened her blue which turns golden as she was hating real good as she muttered sickly ‘Oh…! For goodness sake.' She yawned… she looked 4 foot 11 in her bed. Someone knocked at her door. He knocked lightly at first, but as she would not come and open the door or utter a word to show she was on the inside, he continued to knock repeatedly, harder. Although, the sound began to expire before long. Her attention was latter drawn; she stood as she parked her white hair cut into a bob. She turned to the right and to the left reluctantly. She packed to the top right with her two pillow cases, the bed cover and the thick blanket. She held with her right hand feebly the header cap of her iron bed and helped her legs stand firmly by it. She sighed, and her face began to morph waspy as everything around she could see and hear at the same time begin to make her go vexatious. She wobbled towards the door to see who it was; ‘…and what is it you want?' She asked dizzily.

She was close to the door at that very moment but was giving the gestures she would love to know who exactly was there who knocked the door very early in the morning. She had few number of guesses to guess who the person really would be but she was not going to do that. No forms of reply were given. She moved a bit closer further to the tiny hole at the center of the door to peep. She loved to be observative. ‘What the heck! So it is you…? Why wouldn't you talk when I asked who it was?' She asked lousily. She closed the door immediately, against him and began to walk, firmly now, back to her bed. She changed her direction, with the intention to get close enough to the sill of the window to see for herself what the Saturday morning looked like on the busy streets. She knew it was going to look busy as usual of a cause but was just trying to engage herself in something to clear her head right in the room as she had just had a very awry night rest again. In the same charge, suddenly, she got a nudge it was her landlord who was at the door, she rushed back to the door like the way sea billows pull back in motion. She opened the door and stepped outside. ‘Sorry, for being rude the other time. I sleep-walked to you, so you do not mind the kind of my choice of words. Really, I cannot say I remember what I said. I am just apologizing in case I spoke disrespectfully' she expressed, innocently. ‘Good!' he responded, calmly.

* * *

He was a man of few words. Gossips on the streets had it that he fought in the two great wars – the great World Wars (nobody knew how true or factual that was though the deep scars on his rough face sure had some story untold) but ever since then, after his arrival, he had seemingly chosen to be a man of few words in his dealings with the peoples in the community. But when he talked, he could do it just as an ordinary civilian would, some other people had seen him talk directly, even with his few words and the ground creaked opened with quakes and all that. Wilder had concluded right in her mind he was one man who was highly unpredictably awesome. She looked deeply into his two weak eye balls. All she could read to them is lots of experiences about life buried right in them which had most plausibly affected the way he reasons and the ways he'd socialize.

He looked at her with diverse thoughts flooding up his mind. He saw an arduous entity striving real hard to ace through in life in spite the fact there lied many oddities on her paths. This drew in some amounts of considerations and reconsiderations into his heart. But he was good and always tried and could successfully design the kind of expressions he would want people to see on his face. He had trained himself so well that no one would know or get when he was happy or sad for real. He never looked sad nor happy. He maintained, always, a rigid stance between two notions. The thought that he could do that with his face seemed scary. He had come down to her to remind her house rent. But had just chosen to postpone that until next time he would be passing by or whenever he felt to pass by. ‘I have come, to check on you. You'd remember our agreements. But no worries will get back to you soon' he said whimsically and began to leave. ‘O…! Thanks. I have you right at the back of my… mind as well. I'll get to you before you know it' she shouted with the intention he gets all her message. ‘Oops! Damn, that was close" she exclaimed. She closed the door and walked back to sit in the lone seat in her room. And she began to think it through that they both know why he had come. But in exactness, the reason he had chosen not to utter a word about it confused her real good. She was broke at the moment and would not be able to afford the payment of the house rent. He was the landlord in charge of her place and had conversed with her over the phone two weeks past he would be coming around just because her payment was past due time. At a time, a very light time, she had a quick flash of her mother's image. That reminded her how she was so caring before she recollected her father –she had missed him very much but would not want to show as one part of her felt like he did not merit any good feelings from her as he would not turn back to check on her. Her death had become her drive to be a scientist and to find a way around despite any forms of challenges to be the best, all just for her mother. Before the demise of her mother, her father was doing fine but after she popped the cog, lost it alongside. He couldn't get himself together ever since then until that moment. She came back from the flashes she was having to the reality abound. Thus, she soliloquized ‘Oh God! What am I gonna do now… what if he returns in an hour's time? Then, I am doomed and done with. What alternative is left?" She expressed, rhetorically. "I don't… I don't know when… He said ‘soon, ' and that could be just any moment, maybe tomorrow or next week. If he is going to show up next week, there is no way in this world I would have been able to get around such resources' she expressed confusedly.

A lot came together to shape who we are and how people read meanings to us in defining us in any community. She had always been that good gentle girl who was astounding in brilliance and highly intellectual even right from infancy. But times are different now; it almost seemed all those valuable qualities were only rendering her ignobly as time advances only. Her mother's gone, and her father's lost it alive blaming himself for what happened to her mother –her dearly better-half. He had no time for her but spent much of his time and the little resources he has got on beers and sluts whenever he had good cash. They would let him have his way, and still, little resources left in his pocket and push him to one side. Rain and darkly hands of the night would beat him till would collapse to one wall, and that would be his resting bed space till sanity would return back into his cap, to run back to continue as he was a cab driver for the circle to repeat itself.

All these had come together and were reshaping her in the same community, into one strict, determined and young lass with the hope of better tomorrow for herself, better than her old folks’.

* * *

Then as she was already twisting forwards her right leg making a 90˚ circling to begin on her path along the next to the one where she stayed was, just to instinctively look back, she who she saw was his father, who had been following her for hours. He did not know how to approach her and ask for forgiveness and to continue together as a family just once again in years of being in talking terms. ‘I knew it, what are you doing father –I am not sure even if you are one anymore to me! Are you stalking me? He moved closer to her and drew her to where she would not be able to create a scene. She wanted to scream but would at the same time not want to fetch the father who already looked tattered much more trouble to deal with. It was surface enough even for anyone to know that he had beyond normalcy as looked like one who had been looking was out to get around redemption for ages. ‘Fuck you very much for that. Why would handle me like that? She said looking right into his face sadly and vexatiously. ‘I am still your father, whether you like it or not…' he said. That sank well reverberating in her brains. There was a prolonged pause as they were looking at each other right in the face. She began to blubber; they hugged as he muttered to her left ear ‘sorry.' ‘You have grown just to look exactly like her you know!?' She grinned in response to that. ‘So, why have you come, this hour…ffff…ff father?' ‘Yes, I have been keeping tabs on you; I have all the late to the most recent developments about you. I have helped you and settled your payment for rent. I paid him last week's weekend, and that was why he would not pester you nor talk about it when he came visiting the other day. I never left you for once my darling angel, no matter what, I am around just as it used to be.' She began to sob again as that was shocking and least expected, she felt sorry for all the negatives resolves she had had for him right in her psych and mind. ‘I have something to give and tell you. Take this card; you would have the scholarship, I pray so and hope so when you are done with your academics, I am not sure if I would be able to make it till then. That is the reason why I am doing this now, as it is just this moment I have left. Alright, take this card, keep it with your life; give it to the addressee addressed on it alongside with this, he would understand make sure he employs you. She owes me her life. Do this dear daughter and be committed to your studies as you used to be way back when… Mm… I have got to go now. Your dad is still a cab driver as you'd known. He smiled and faded within the crowd before she could know it. It was like some sort daydreaming as she was dumbfounded. She continued on her way down to the where she studies to continue to study as she would be tested before long.

Then, as she was going, she tried and imagined the other version of what had just happened twixt her father, Lenny and she herself:

‘Who's it, what's it uh…? And I responded as I turned backwards angrily. And he said he is Lenny. On seeing his face for real and disappointment rouses up and befogs my mind and I begin to yell at him and continues by adding don't ever, call me or my name again. Let us say I said that boldly and determinedly as I look close at his arid nose like I meant it.

And he said, please, do not create a scene, my dear daughter… responding in a pathetic way. And I said I am not your daughter, please… And I squinted away and looked at the street and stops a cab closed by to take me away from the scene. And he muttered please, don't leave me, let us have a… and his voice began to fade as I closed and locked the door and instructed the driver to light it and leave on time.' She thought…

‘Oh, if it were so, it would have been so cruel of me. I am happy really I couldn't do that… I really missed him.' she soliloquized.

After a few years, she had already finished well as the best students among her mates at the college and the same thing after she proceeded to the varsity for higher degrees under the same discipline. Her meritorious excellence all through after weeks of finishing fetched her a job of good pay with Paranormal Dating Agency which happened to be one of the bests in the States and which happened to be the place her father directed her to go to; there she was recognized as one off their best scientists which is committedly helping them up. ‘She merited the job on two grounds, the first she merited it as she was excellent and she merited on the basis of favoritism as I, the General Manage, owed her father one. It was on several bases that made me to make fill should always act in my stead. And, evidently, it is what we all know, she is doing great. You would only complain she is not being that informal as you could be at times.’ They both smiled.

Her father and I got to know each other way back when she was just nobody striving for a jackpot in life and then build something related to what he loved doing the most. She was a scientist of high rank, she finished the best from Harvard in discipline. She was believed to have some medical panacea which was bio related and was kidnapped in the dead of one night. None was there, except for her father, he caught them did that and followed them, risked his life and set me free indirectly.