I never do things like this.

I don't know why I did it today.

Maybe I was sick of being complicitous with the military-industrial complex that created such a proliferation of homeless. Maybe it was something in her eyes.

"Can you spare some change, señor?" she asked.

Good god, how old was she? She couldn't have been more than seventeen. Why was she on the street?

"Come with me, I'll buy you a meal."

Normally, I have a rule. I can't help everybody, so I can't help anybody. That's my rule. Look away. Don't get involved. It's not something I enforce zealously; it's not a principle, but my own rule of thumb. Because I just can't take it. It hurts too much to feel pity.

For her, I'd break my own rules.

We went in to Capone's, the old pizza parlour with the 40's gangster theme. I got some slices for both of us, and we got a seat.

This was the first time I got a good look at my new friend. She was maybe not quite as young as I'd thought before. They say that the street'll age you, but this was the opposite. She was probably in her early twenties. But there was something about her big, blue eyes; something exquisite. And her lips. Scarlet. And her soft, brown hair. I estimated now that her volumes of layered flanel concealed a slim figure. She was dirty, but I knew she'd clean up to be beautiful.

That could mean trouble for me.

"Thank you so much, señor," she ventured between mouthfuls of pizza. "Most people, they don't even look at me. Like they're scared, you know? You, you're different."

She couldn't have known how backhanded that compliment really was. I knew I wasn't different from them. She was the one who was different.

"Where are you from?" I asked. She was far too fair to be from Latin America.

"España. Leon."

"When did you come to this country?" I asked.

"My father brought us here when I was sixteen," she replied. There was something about the way she said those words, "my father," that dripped with contempt: as if they represented years of embittered domestic combat and resentment.

"Your father: he's not a good man?"

Her eyes began to well with tears, and I realized I shouldn't have brought it up. Her voice, though, was steady. "He made me leave his house when I was eighteen," she answered. "When he no longer had any — how you say, deber? Obligación?"

"Why would he want to do that?"

Tears began to roll down the young woman's face, but she otherwise maintained her composure. "Soy un poco loca, señor. Soy loca. Oigo — I hear voices sometimes. He said he didn't want to pay for my medicine."

The woman's confession of lunacy startled me. I guess it showed on my face, because she began to sob terribly, dropped the last bit of uneaten pizza and got up to run out of the restaurant. I ran after her, and outside I caught her wrist, and spun her around back to me. "Wait!" I said. "You don't need to be embarrassed. Please, let me take you out to lunch like this again. Tomorrow."

My new friend sniffed, and then demured. "Okay," she said, wiping the last tears from her cheeks with her dingy sleeves. Then she smiled. "But I have to give you some colateral, so we can make it a guarantee, no?"

I began to protest, but before I knew it she had taken my hand, and in the center of my palm, she placed a small iron ring. "This is how you know my name," she said. "Anita. When I was a little girl, my mother gave me this ring, and she called me Anita Anillita."

"Anita," I repeated. "My name is...."

She put her finger to my mouth to silence me. "We need to have something to talk about tomorrow, no?" she giggled, sniffing back the last of her now-forgotten tears. "You know where to find me." And with that, she left.

I rolled my new souvenir between my fingertips gently as I watched her walk away.

I had a feeling we'd have a lot to talk about anyway.