Once, from behind shower curtains, her grandmother and she had performed plays, complex creations of a small child, written for the two-part harmony of old body and young.
Greta undressed, stepped into the tub, uncovered, exposed, and cleaned herself.
Outside, a man stood on top of the failing bank and threw words that ricocheted off the apartment building and assaulted Greta's ears. Bearded, arms outstretched to Greta's stiff shoulder, he shouted about love.
She moved past, turned the corner at a bookstore, and arrived at the coffee shop. With coffee and a warm bagel, Greta sat at a round, two-person table next to a wall covered with cork and pinned with layers of printed, typed, handwritten posters.
A man entered, dark, bearded, with eyes that roamed and captured what they landed on. He mumbled something to the woman at the counter, then huddled in a corner, stared at Greta. She moved her chair so her back was to him. She didn't want anyone watching. This was confusion, not performance. She wasn't familiar with the plot, she'd forgotten to memorize her lines.
On paper wavy with humidity, Greta wrote:
The old man asked why I came.
She paused, drew curling spirals, cycles, on the edge of the page.
I gave her tangibles: biscuits, hats, poems. She gave me intangibles, and when she died, her memory could be anchored to nothing concrete. No place, no thing. That's why I came here. To find an anchor for my grandmother, for her past, my future.