Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

For one thing, too many people showed up. There were no formal invitations to the wedding. Everyone who was part of our crowd just knew when and where it was going to be and about the reception. But all these new people who just kept turning up in Patriots Park every day, they didn’t know this particular Sunday was anything unusual. They turned up, and they started eating all the pizza and drinking all the sodas.

It wasn’t a huge deal. Those of us who actually knew the happy couples had sort of formed our own little group off to one side of the park with a cooler and a few pizzas. But the bigger group of people we didn’t know particularly well, they ran out of pizza. And things got ugly. As I said, many of these folks turned up looking for a hand-out. I guess some of them had no idea at all what Torstein was all about; they just heard that there was a guy who gave away sunflower seeds — and sometimes money or food — and they happened to have come down on this Sunday afternoon and felt like they missed out on the pizza party.

It was not a Torstein kind of scene at all: several low-lifes were facing off against some of our own bums and drunks who, honestly, probably hadn’t liked the way the park was filling up with other free-loaders these days. There was a nasty shouting match going on.

Torstein, instead of going over there and trying to set things straight, just called Jack, Jazz and Pete to go with him for more pizzas and sodas. He and Pete headed for the pizzeria, Jack and Jazz to the bodega for more drinks. It happened that as they came back with the boxes of pizza and crates of sodas, a bunch of little kids from the projects came running along with them, screaming about the pizza, pizza, pizza! At the same time, Ariel Prince and her camera team had arrived. She’d been at the wedding — she told us if she did a follow-up story on Torstein, the wedding footage would be a nice touch, particularly considering how the brides’ lives had changed since they met him.

So, here comes Torstein, and Pete behind him, with his arms just full of pizza boxes. They must have bought every one the pizza man had ready. And behind them, Jack and Jazz with more colas. And around them, these little kids shrieking about pizza. So the crowd in the park started parting to make way for them, and what with the little kids running along cheering about the free food, it started to be like a parade. Everyone who had been so het up about the disappearing pizza started cheering like mad as Torstein came walking through the park.

And Ariel was getting it all recorded. It couldn’t have been any more perfect if we had choreographed it: the scene looked amazingly like a scene from days gone by, a conquering hero being hailed by vassals, or a new prince approaching the throne where he’d be crowned king — this huge crowd of people parted as Torstein strolled through, flanked by his men in waiting, and everyone cheering and screaming his name. It was unbelievable.

Ariel Prince put the feature together that afternoon, and it was on the news Sunday night. How Torstein had transformed the lives of two ladies of the night, and there they were, being married in white to decent men who were dying with love for them — and then how Torstein had attracted hundreds of people to Patriots Park to celebrate a new way of bringing hope and compassion to the mean streets of the city. The way her crew had taped that march of his through the park, it looked like a crowd of thousands cheering for him rather then just a couple hundred.

I’d been there in person, and I was impressed!

Torstein watched the news with me, at my place. He’d come back to my house after the reception. He shook his head after Ariel’s feature was over, and he said, “My coat really looks good on television, don’t you think? The whole key to that piece was the coat.” Then he laughed.

Read Chapter Sixty-six

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