Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

Our old friend Ariel Prince was interested in what had happened since New Years, and she came back, looking for Torstein. “I told you your ideas had legs!” she said. “I’ve been all over the city, and talked to dozens of people who claim you gave them the idea to feed the hungry, visit the sick and elderly, rescue dogs and cats, give more generously. It’s great what’s happening! I’ve got amazing footage of so much good work being done. I’d love to at least do a feature on it, for the news.”

“You can put whatever you like on the news,” Torstein said. “I just don’t care about being on television myself.”

“One interview,” she said. “I mean, why not, you’re not wanted in another state or something are you?”

He laughed. Torstein had been doing his dragonfly thing around the park, fluttering from group to group to meet with all his friends. I’d been walking with him, but at this moment, across the way, I saw some guys I hadn’t seen in five or six years, fraternity brothers from the couple years before I dropped out of college. Greeks! I ran over to them, shook hands, asked what they were doing there.

One of them said, “C’mon, Andy, we want to meet Torstein.”

“How do you even know about him?” I asked.

It turned out, they both worked at a law firm in the Rurhs building, several blocks away. They were first-year grunts, and they were both trying to date this same paralegal, a babe a couple years older than us who had been showing them the ropes around the firm. After the world’s worst New Year’s Eve party, this babe had turned in her resignation and said she was taking a job with that Food for the Poor charity Torstein liked so much — they didn’t know, she might even be going to Haiti where he was helping feed a hundred kids for a nickel or whatever it was.

“She’s going to be working in some hell-hole for peanuts,” my frat brah Conny told me. “And she’s all happy, like it’s the best decision of her life, like it’s a promotion!”

They were both mystified, and when they pressed her for details, she told them about this amazing guy in the green coat who was starting a new way of doing things downtown.

“So, you know, we thought we better check this out for ourselves.”

“Yeah, c’mon,” I said. “I’ll introduce you.”

They followed me to where Torstein was still talking to Ms. Prince.

“Torstein, I have some people I want you to meet — couple old fraternity brothers of mine.”

Torstein turned to us briefly, then turned back to the TV news lady and suddenly said, “OK, yeah. The time is right. This is it. Let’s do it. Bring your cameras. Let’s get this ball rolling.”

“You’ll do it?” she said.

“Now or never,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “in the daylight, what time will you get here?”

“Two,” he said. “After lunch. See you then.”

He turned to me, shook hands with my friends, and then said, “Listen boys, you’ve come at an important time. Tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, this whole city is going to hear about what’s been going on in this park and all over downtown — it’s going to be crazy here for the next little while. But the timing is right. I’m glad you’re here now.”

“What — like we’re getting in on the ground floor?” Conny said, laughing, shaking Torstein’s hand.

“No,” he said, “no, you’re getting in on the very tail-end. Or maybe a new beginning, depends how you look at it.”

He was shaking hands with Robert, my other frat brother now, and he said to me, “Your frat brothers, right? Greeks?”

“Yah,” I said. “And Conny is Greek Greek, too.” He was some kind of Greek extraction, had the curly black hair and swarthy skin.

“Perfect,” Torstein said. “That was the sign. The Greeks. Perfect.”

Then he went flying off to shake hands with some other folks, and left me and my buddies standing there mystified. “I don’t know,” I told them. “No idea what he was talking about. That happens a lot. But I’d say you better stick around.”