Short fiction for guests of the Wordfeeder
Saturday, October 1, 2011
The street was busy that evening, as usual. Three narrow, unmarked lanes, one of them for alternate street parking, the one on the other side blocked by a delivery truck here and a service truck there. The pavement was still damp from the late afternoon rain, just a bit of steam rising where the sun breaking through the clouds was doing its job. There was still and hour or so of daylight. People, mostly young in this neighborhood, were coming and going in between and around each other, avoiding garbage bags that wouldn’t be collected until late that night, and the occasional piece of throwaway furniture left at the curb. Racks of fruit, flowers and other stock protruded from the front of stores that were thriving on the flow of locals coming home from work. It was noisy with the sound of traffic and of people talking, too many to hear what any of them were saying.
Stepping quickly across the street, between two badly parked cars and onto the sidewalk, she walked up to the door to the right of the Gyros place that was in the bottom of the converted tenement where she lived, five tall flights up. Without looking left or right, she put her key in the lock, the key with no chain to help find it, turned it, pulled back the heavy metal door and stepped into the dimly lit hallway, looking ahead to a brighter light at the bottom of the staircase.
Continue…
