Occupy Wall Street, Part 3

Swift liked to consider himself a people person.

The fact was, as soon as he'd become successful, he'd preferred to distance himself from actual people as much as possible. It just seemed easier that way. It wasn't just physical contact, but emotional contact. He did what he needed to so he would maintain a healthy lifestyle, but other than that, the only person he answered to was himself.

Still, he liked to consider himself a people person, even if he was a little out of practice. He would never have even noticed her if he hadn't taken a slight detour from his daily walk. He normally kept to a strict routine, to minimize digressions from the routine that had proven so beneficial to him, but on that particular day, and he couldn't even have explained it if pressed to explain, he ended up off his particular beaten path, and stumbled into Zinn.

He assumed immediately that she was homeless, but that wasn't the first thing he noticed. Simply put, she was breathtaking. The fact that she was unconscious or otherwise passed out in an alley was a detail he took in stride. She roused almost as soon as he saw her, and he saw that as a sign that he was meant to intervene.

"You look like you could use some help," he said, in his most charming tones.

She accepted gracefully, and he interpreted it as an apology for her situation, and found it endearing. She quickly corrected his assumptions, insisting that she wasn't homeless, but that she otherwise could not explain her situation, a disorienting event having otherwise obscured her memories. He took her word for it.

He only wanted to help her, felt compelled to help her, because of her beauty, which was so utterly foreign to the circumstances he'd found her in. He said he could help her, and he in fact did everything he could, but she made it difficult by insisting that she felt some kinship with the struggle in the street. Her insistence on this point almost made him sympathetic. He couldn't explain why, but he continued to help her, and that's how he came to know of Gabriel Bell.