Ellie stirred her son’s coffee. She was wearing a white T-shirt with ‘I love NY’ on it; a T-shirt tourists always wear when they’re not in New York. ‘Love’ was portrayed by a heart and was distorted because it was stretched over her breasts. Her light brown hair seemed greasy. Probably you won’t turn your head as she’s passing you by, but she had a thing that made her extraordinary beautiful.
    “You can drink it now,” she said while she tabbed the stirring stick on the edge of the coffee cup.
    The boy blew the heat steam away from the cup and grabbed the cup with his two small hands.
    “Still too hot.” he said and waved his hands.
    “It isn’t, Nathan. Drink it now.”
    Now the boy took the cup ostentatiously by the edge, but this time only used his index fingers and thumbs. He sipped.
    “Sugar,” he said and stared at Ellie, but she didn’t react. She was leaning on the table en rested her head on her left hand. Once in a while she pushed her cheek downward and thus her lower eyelid as well, making it seem as if her face paralysed.
    “I’m off to the toilet, ok.” she said en left without waiting for an answer. Emotionless she walked to the door stating “ladies room”. Doing that, she kicked one leg before the other, as if she was walking a fashion show.
    “Anyone in?” she yelled, it remained silent, and locked the door. She grasped a piece of folded aluminium foil out of her pocket and opened it on a grey sink. Out of her other pocket she took her keys and searched for the keychain, a miniscule metal snowboard. She swooped it through the coke, brought it to her nose and took two hits, each in another nostril.
    Her mobile phone vibrated.
    Ellie folded the aluminium back, put it away and took her phone out of that same pocket. She looked at the screen, put the snowboard in her mouth, pressed it to her palate and opened her phone with at swing.
    “Wif Ewwie,” her voice sounded childish, “hi, Awice.”
    “Did you sniff crystal? You did sniff, didn’t you! Damned, Ellie. Where are you now?” Alice sounded enthusiastic. “Listen to this, I’ve got a shoot at Vogue, Robert is doing it. Robert Farber! All that shit with FABmag yesterday, and today Vogue wants me. Are you working now?”
    Ellie walked to the toilet and set on the lid. “No, no work. Nothing, nada, squad, nienté baby.” She tossed her head in her neck and slid her tongue across her top gums.
    Where did you get your snow? From Emile? You didn’t get it from Emile, did you, Ellie? Did you hear I got a shoot at Vogue? Julio is giving me snow and a job. Ellie?”
    Ellie squeezed her left breast. She squeezed her breast more often. Sometimes it seemed as if air escaped from her nipple. Her breasts were bigger thanks to her child. Even after she stopped lactating, they stayed bigger than before.
    “Alice, how big are your breasts?”
    “30AA”, answered the girl on the other side.
    “Right, right.” Ellie closed her phone and put it back in her pocket, together with her keys.
    A man in a blue vest stood in front of her.
    “I am sorry to have forced into the ladies room, Miss, but are you alright?”
    She pushed the man aside and walked back to her table with a fast pace. The boy was hanging over his cup of coffee, a thread of saliva dangled on his mouth. In his cup the saliva had formed a layer of foam.
    Annoyed Ellie stirred the foam away and put the cup on the boy’s mouth. She held her left hand under his chin and tilted the cup. The boy swallowed.
    “There’s no sugar in it.” he said and started crying.
    Ellie took him by his upper arm and pulled him behind her. She hailed a cap and ordered him to drive to Central Park.
    The boy cried the whole time.

    “Look, look at me” Ellie screamed. She was standing on a bench and had pulled her T-shirt upwards.
    The boy sat on his knees in front of Ellie and banged his fists on her feet. He screamed and couldn’t breathe.
    Ellies breasts were tensed.
    “Look! Look, goddamned.” she started crying and squeezed her breasts. The blood under her skin around her hands disappeared and gathered at her nipples.
    Men jogged and lifted their eyebrows as they passed her. Blue suites with leather briefcases held still and smiled. A tramp bit his under lip and hissed ‘Yes, yes’.
    Ellies phone vibrated.
A certain serenity fell over Ellie. She took her phone out of her pocket. The T-shirt rested above her breasts and turned red as the blood searched its way back.
    Alice had text-messaged her: ‘you forgot to congratulate me. it doesn’t matter that much. x alice’
    Ellie dropped her phone and stamped on the bench. The boy had stopped crying and looked at her.
    Ellie pulled her jeans over her hips without unbuttoning. Between her legs there was a fuzz of dark pubic hair. People, who had been standing watching, now fled watching back over their shoulders.
    “Go back! Go back!” she screamed. The scream came from deeper within her stomach, it almost sounded masculine. She’d pulled the boy towards her and rubbed his head against her genital organ. “Oh please, go back.”
    Nathan sobbed.

A policewoman took Ellie’s hand and helped her step off. She pulled Ellies pants back up, the T-shirt down and guided Ellie to the siren.
    A woman in a suit picked up Nathan and walked –while Nathan’s mom got driven away on the backseat of a police car- to her brown Buick. The doors stated “New York State Office of Children and Family Services.”