A California Online Magazine with Local Focus and Global Appeal
Her name was Evie Adams and she lived up the street from me. The house wasn’t much, mostly covered by an overgrown garden and an enormous shade tree. I used to see her sitting under it occasionally when I passed by. She even waved to me on occasion.
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Sally Miller ker-plunked her nickel down on the marble counter top and waited for Mr. Klopman to finish with his customer. He wore a red wool stocking cap to keep his bald head warm, but the strangest thing about him was his eyes. Each one pointed toward his nose and he wore eyeglasses as thick as coke bottles which made them look even bigger.
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The old man hunched over the battered grocery cart sought nothing more than protection from the biting wind. It was late afternoon, getting colder and he badly needed a place to spend the night. A graffito covered dumpster filled one corner of the alley, directly behind Donaldson’s Furniture Store. The usual trash and litter covered the frozen ground around it, but today something else caught his eye, something he had been hoping for. A large shipping carton of heavy cardboard, big enough for him to sleep in.
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Buddy woke Mike Williams at four-thirty in the morning, during a cloudburst. The hands on the glow in the dark alarm clock on the nightstand said it was past the point of no return. By the time he let the little Cairn Terrier out, it would be useless trying to go back to sleep. No, like it or not Mike Wilson was up to stay, facing another jobless day.
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The little creature slipped in through a keyhole in the bedroom door. Her gossamer gown floating about her on the air. Silver moonlight through an open window, fell across the bed, illuminating a sleeping child and her golden ringlets.
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She was tired of being robbed every morning. I could tell by the way she looked at me with those blinking eyes when I entered the chicken coop. She was the only white hen in my grandmother’s flock of twelve hens and one large, very mean, red rooster.
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The creature was magnificent, its blue and green plumage spread out in the large glass case resting on a rosewood pedestal in the center of the library. Every time Elizabeth Chalmers looked at it she felt claustrophobic. How can it breath in there she thought, knowing full well the bird was dead and stuffed seemed to make no difference. She still wanted to smash the glass and set if free. They had no right to do this to you, or to me.
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Agnes Valentine dipped her jelly donut into the coffee cup, and then bit down on the soggy delight. A glob of raspberry filling oozed out, traveling slowly down the front of her white blouse.
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“Great,” he said, “someone left the door open.”
“Boy, what a swell pad,” he thought, as he walked around. “Just look at all that glass and light and in a hi-rise too!”
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It was warm on the veranda. A few rays of sunlight had broken through the white lattice work and danced over my leather slippers. The rest of my outfit included blue and white striped pajamas and the maroon bath robe with my initials embroidered on the pocket.
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Manny D’Angelo, dropped the air mattress on the roof. A pillow followed on top of the mattress. “Hot as heck,” he groaned, his fifteen year-old body reflected in the moonlight, naked except for his jeans. He looked over the edge of the roof, five stories down to Demato Street, in the center of Little Italy. People were resting on their front stoops and he could hear faint radio music wafting on the hot sultry air. “One hundred and one,” he recalled the weather man saying that day, “and more expected tomorrow.”
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Radio music drifted across the lawn on the humid air. Occasional lightning flashed in the distant swamp and rumbles of thunder could be heard rolling over the dark lake. A yellow Lab dashing near the water’s edge barked at his companion
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My pizza arrived in the little Italian restaurant and looked tempting. Fair to say I’m not usually a pizza lover, but having exhausted the somewhat limited menu of pasta dishes on earlier visits, I decided to take the plunge. The first hot bite was a howling success, followed by a healthy chug of wine. Halfway through the second bite, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. The best mental description at the time was, “It tastes like a used litter box dipped in the Great Salt Lake.” The anchovies! Needless to say, I carefully removed each one, leaving no trace behind.
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The rat came every day, taking its place before Nora on the damp stone floor. The drabness of the rodent’s coat melded so well with his surroundings that he sometimes disappeared even while she was staring at him.
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