It's a great mystery

Martha stood in line on the gray steel subway escalator, the stench of dried urine on the homeless man in front of her overpowering and revolting. She covered her nose and face with her red winter scarf, turning around, looking down the stairs toward the platform, from where a cacophony of passengers' voices rose to meet her. At the top of the escalator, the homeless man, dressed in a heavy, faded gray-brown parka, turned right to walk out of the station into the bright white winter's sun. She turned in the other direction, eager to escape the sharp nausea that the urine odor brought from her nose to her stomach to her mouth, though once outside she knew she'd have to turn around and head to the right. But outside the pungent smell of dried urine wouldn't assault her body the way it had on the escalator. An undeniable urge came over her as she came outside to a crowd, a street performer juggling to the beat of Sheena Easton's 1980s disco diva songs. She wanted to know what brought this homeless man with the long red-white beard to this nadir of his life, this collapse and degradation.