Micro Fiction: "Wobbles"

She wobbled. She wavered. She doddered and staggered and tottered. The woman who was walking down the sidewalk in front of Ivan as he made his way home that afternoon looked as if she was about to fall over. She was tall, wearing high heels and dressed in a tight black mini-skirt and a black leather jacket. She had a wiggy-looking bubble of bright red hair. For a moment, Ivan wondered if she was a prostitute, but her pink vinyl purse, covered with plastic stick-on daisies, argued otherwise. The whole effect was almost like someone in a costume.

As she continued to stagger down the sidewalk, Ivan had to wonder if she was drunk or possibly sick. What would he do if she fell over? Help her up? Call 9-1-1?

So far he hadn't seen her face. But as other people passed her in the opposite direction and glanced at her, the expressions on their faces told him that something was wrong, or at least unusual, about the way this woman looked.

She started to walk more slowly, though she continued to wobble alarmingly on her high heels. Ivan had to slow his own pace to avoid bumping into her. He thought about speeding up and passing her, and then glancing back to see her face, but decided not to. He wanted the mystery to last a little longer. And as they were now entering his own block in his own neighborhood, he was curious to see where exactly this unstable damsel in apparent distress would end up. Maybe she was one of his neighbors. Maybe she was someone he would be seeing more often.

He just hoped she wasn't going to actually fall over. Ivan wasn't the type to want to get involved. He remembered the time, years ago, when he had helped an old lady get up when she tripped and fell on the sidewalk. The lady had not been especially grateful. She had clutched her purse tightly through the whole incident, as if she thought Ivan was a mugger who was about to rob her.

There had been another time, too, when he'd helped a man who stumbled on a moving escalator to get back on his feet. The guy had been too embarrassed to even acknowledge the help.

It wasn't just the wobbling that made this woman seem strange. Ivan had seen plenty of drunks doing the alcoholic shuffle. The way this woman walked was different. It was if she'd never worn high heels before, like a little girl playing dress up in her mother's clothes.

A car drove by with the windows rolled down, and the man behind the wheel, a shady looking guy in a white undershirt, did a double-take when he saw Ms. Teetering -- the name Ivan had mentally given to the woman for now -- and the driver snickered. Ivan wondered why. What was funny about someone who was apparently impaired in some way, unsteady enough to be having trouble just walking down the street?

Ms. Teetering started walking faster after that, and Ivan was sure she was going to topple over at any second. But she somehow managed to stay upright. He was only a few steps behind her now, and he wondered if he should ask her if anything was wrong. But he hesitated. He still had that "don't talk to strangers" command in his head, left over from childhood. And something about the woman's black leather jacket and tight skirt, and what he could now see were her muscular legs behind dark stockings, made him suspect that she wasn't exactly helpless, even if she was having a problem right now.

At last she stopped in front of an ordinary wood-frame house almost directly across the street from Ivan's own home. She bent over slightly to unlatch the iron gate that led to the yard.
For the first time, Ivan caught a glimpse of her face. It wasn't what he was expecting. He had imagined she would be pale, possibly crying, or looking as if she was about to throw up. Instead he saw a calm face with a large jaw covered with five o-clock shadow.

And Ivan had his first "a-ha" moment of the day.