I ran my fingers through my hair a couple of times huffily and took some deep breaths before I continued around the corner.
I started to realize, as I crossed another road, after taking some more yoga breaths, that I was going in the wrong direction. The little foot traffic I had seen was going north, and it looked like the buildings were mostly warehouses. I decided to turn east at the next corner, and then loop around after a few blocks and try my luck on a different street on my way back to the boardwalk. I thought it was a pretty solid plan, and I had no idea I was in for danger until...
A group of fourteen men turned around the corner I was heading for, dressed too casually to be heading home from the office, but they were too grimy to be tourists. As they approached me, I realized they weren't too many years older than I was. They were joking loudly among themselves, laughing raucously and punching each other's arms repeatedly. I scooted as far to the inside of the sidewalk as I could to give them room for their homoerotic foreplay, walking swiftly, looking past them to the corner.
"Hey there!" one of them called as they passed, and he had to be talking to me since no one else was around. I glanced up automatically. Two of them had paused, the other two were slowing. The closest, a heavyset, dark-haired man in his early twenties, seemed to be the one who had spoken. He was wearing a flannel shirt open over a dirty flannel t-shirt, cut-off flannel jeans, and thong sandals. He took half a step toward me. You better not get any closer, you hobo, I thought, wondering if he had robbed one of those clothing-collection boxes. Where else could he have got that outfit?
"Hello," I mumbled, a knee-jerk reaction. Then I quickly looked away and walked faster toward the corner. I could hear them laughing at full volume behind me.

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Chapter 8

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