Built as a monument, round at the base with something perpendicular rising from its center, it had as its head an arrangement of five basketball-shaped lamps that called attention to the name of the town painted in black down the columnar edifice.  He stood at it as if he had just knocked on a door and was awaiting to be asked in.  It is why he then heard a woman's voice ask, Want to come in?  His head didn't have to move to find the source of the voice; he had had his eye on the sole figure then on the streets.  As she stepped under a street lamp down from the monument, he heard from under an oversized floppy hat, We call where you are standing the fork in the road.  He watched her turn away even before she stopped speaking.  Had she spoken at all?  Regardless, he had heard what he needed to hear.  He called a Thank You out to her.  How gracious he felt she had been for one way or the other reminding him that even a dead end can be a point from which two roads veer off, one away and one closer to home.