My unwilling audience passes me by running from the open viola case laying at my feet like it threatened to pull the masses in and turn them into chum but I digress. It is November and the threat of winter is on all of us who work the street, but we keep working, resin powder coats my fingertips and covers the front of my once pressed suit. And the day begins to come to a close.

It wasn't that long ago that I moved to new york city in hopes of making it big in the grand symphony but after four years working the major parks and corners my hopes faded to glowing embers when I was struck down by a cab driver who decided he was going to run on the sidewalk for a block and now I have to wheel my broken ass all over the city. This seemed to be the end of my dreams until three days ago I was leaving my regular bar the flat string and was approached by a man draped in green from his startlingly tall top hat to his shiny velvet tap shoes, bending down this faceless emerald enigma spoke four words. “What would you give?”

All manner of things rolled behind my eyes including my soul, and I knew that moment that he could give me whatever I wished. Then he smiled and began to walk away his hat falling from its precariously tall perch and from inside a deep vermilion fog erupted filling the sidewalk and my lungs and in an instant, I was in complete darkness.

My eyes fley open to the image of my conductor waving his baton at my face and in a moment of recollection I pulled my viola under my chin and began to pull my bow across its strings and a low moaning release began to pour across the stage the green smoke filling my wheelchair and the conductor began to disappear and once again I was in the alley facing the tall green clad man. He pulled from the deep recess of his coat a long purple batton . and breaking it above my head he said “ now you are cursed with the gift of giving, you can grant any wish but your own.” and from that night all of my clothes have become purple and I walk the streets granting wishes, because when he asked me what I wanted all I could think of was his legal standing tall over me and wanting to walk like him. So now my words are punctuated with purple smoke and staring faces. What did I pay.