Alma Road

There was a man's shirt on the dresser. It was all she could see out of the corner of her right eye. Feeling for her skirt she was relieved to find herself inside it. Carefully peeling back the comforter she found her blouse and cloche hat on the floor. Looking around the room for the first time she could see he was a suit man; vaguely recollecting from the night before something he said about engineering, no matter; there certainly were a lot of right angles and straight lines to the room. It was cold outside the comforter and she pulled her red sweater closer to her chest in a gesture that mocked her for its false assurance that the night was over. Tip-toeing across the room she felt for the door without glancing back toward the bed, hopeful she could slip out like the slim shadow of a figure she had become. Once on the opposite side of the door she looked down to her feet to find her patent leather Mary-Janes absent and her now laddered stockings staring defiantly back at her, in their place. With so much caution she began to turn the door handle back, feeling at once his lips upon her neck, her breasts heaved against a heavy, lustful heart. Then faster than she could manage her heels were in her hands and her body moved back toward the door once more, not glancing, staring this time at the bed where everything and nothing had happened. Stumbling slightly over a briefcase she heard his breath and saw his shoulder, strong and terrifying, it turned toward her. Unsure whether his eyes were open or not she closed her own defending herself against her own actions and insecurities.

*****

Outside on the street the world looked unchanged. People went about their business as if nothing had happened, as though today were no different to yesterday. Incensed, she stepped quickly into the side street hoping to hail a taxi and have it return her dignity. She fumbled four or five times trying to light a cigarette wondering all the while if he'd even notice when he woke that she were gone. Unable to answer her own question and tortured by her inability to stop asking, she glanced back to the street corner, her eyes settling on the sign 'Alma Road' immediately she was back in England, not minutes from her old Edwardian mansion, its sash windows romantically and indubitably calling to her, begging her to sit by the fireplace with her reading, looking up only occasionally to smile at her husband and to wonder at his thoughts as she immersed herself in literature she wasn't certain he'd understand 'Alma Road' she had been here before but it was England and it was winter; though the leaves along with the streets had turned; it was Autumn now, she mumbled to herself, how suddenly things change, she thought, yet how much colder this place, that person, had become.

Tara Kaye