Lori

Somewhere from outside of the city limits a deer made its way up the tracks without getting squashed, crossed the yard and wandered through the parking lot in a panicked state of fear. Lori had her back to it. I saw it first through the window and pointed with locked interest as it jumped without elegance toward open space. We looked from the inside out; from the office just inside the façade of the building facing north along Main Street which remained in shadow through the winter when the ice and wind make the asphalt cracked, slippery and unappealing. When Lori finally did see, she gasped with unexpected alarm. Semi-hysterically she called for something to be done. “Oh god, the poor thing, she’s going to be killed.” I thought she was too as she headed toward the morning city traffic; my heart dropped but I watched calmly. “Call the police, oh my god, call the police.” Esparanza, Lori’s secretary, called the police and handed off the phone in dutiful response. “There is a deer about to cross Main Street and she’s going to be killed if you don’t send an officer to slow traffic.” By this time the Doe had made it gangly across the field of vehicles, narrowly avoiding a resident exiting the lot in a suburban, to stop briefly in the shrub lawn flanking the east building, also in shadow. By now Lori was crying and noticeably upset. “She’s going to be killed!” she shrieked into the phone. The response through the earpiece was not to her liking, duty set in and she managed a composed refrain. “No ma’am, there is a wild deer in the city who is in jeopardy of running into traffic which would be dangerous to motorists and the deer. We need you to send a police vehicle immediately to the main street entrance of our building. Am I clear?” Additional formalities were exchanged; Lori hung up the phone, placed her hands in her palms and sobbed just a moment. I thought it was a good thing she had done. Lori has lived lifetimes.