At night, the novelty clothing store owner puts on a cow suit and stands in the window beside the mannequins.  She’s tried to be a chicken a few times, and once she put on a mask and wore nothing but a gold bikini with light-up breasts, but a cow is how she feels most comfortable, the dark streets, the soft light in the store window.  No one suspects there is breath and a beating heart beneath the black and white splotched fabric sewn together by someone in Taiwan.

She watches for patterns in the street.  Once watched a man get robbed by two kids under sixteen and a letter opener.  Sex workers working late and looking weary, the 2:15 rush when the paper bag people stumble from bars.

She waves to one man sometimes, only every third or fourth the week with no one else around.  He’s special because he’s shorter than anyone she knows, and he walks like it doesn’t matter at all.  Once when she waved, the man pressed his face against the glass.  She stood like she was invisible, the man looking into her cow eyes like he was looking for God’s eyes.  She wants him to want to believe in miracles as badly as she wants to believe in miracles.  She wants what they were promised as children if only for him, moving mannequins, talking cows, true love and a happily ever after, ever after, ever after, the end.