Anyway. I'm as bored with all of this as you probably are and if you're not, if you're still interested, there's always Zero Hedge, The Economist, Financial Times or any other of hundreds of sites.
So, no financials, no econ, no baseball. Done, done and done, so what's left?
I dunno, so I think I'm going to punt (<= Sports Term!). Here's a flash piece that was well received last week.
The prompt was 'Apartment Block'
Stories at Meadow Park
Ed and Midge were new to the Meadow
Park Retirement Community. Just moved in brand new and trying to squeeze in, to
make themselves at home among the more senior members. It wasn’t hard, because
most people were friendly, but it wasn’t easy, either.
Midge busied herself playing tennis
and bridge.
Ed busied himself playing golf and
sitting around the clubhouse, sipping tonic water with a fresh slice of lime.
No one needed to know it didn’t have gin in it. It just was there to give the
appearance of a convivial fellow.
“Yep,” Tony said with a shake of his
head over his beer, “I could tell you stories that’d make your hair curl.”
“Sounds like you had quite the time.
Forty years, you said?”
“More’n. Closer to forty-one, but” a
shrug, “who’s countin’.”
“That’s a long time to be in one
place. You must’ve been pretty happy.”
“Ye-ah. Ya might say we were,
mostly, but there were some pretty rough times, too.” Tony’s sky-blue eyes
looked over the table. “Had a gal, prettiest gal you’d ever see, tall, slim…
She lived on the top floor. Had lots of fellas comin’ round but nothin’ out of
the ordinary, no complaints from the neighbors or nuthin’. Just a lot of
visitors, sometimes women, too, for the parties she had.” The lids crinkled in
a smile and Tony leaned closer, “Didn’t know it for the longest time, but she
was a call girl. Runnin’ her business outta her apartment.”
“No!”
“Yep. Ada found out, by accident;
heard someone talkin’ about it when she was at the market one day. One of the
other girls was there, chattin’ with a friend and mentioned this gal’s name,
said, ‘you should go see her. She knows people and can get you set up, too’. We
started payin’ closer attention after that and, ‘bout six months later called
the cops.”
“Why? Why’d you wait so long?”
“No reason to, before, but one night
she had a party. It got loud. A coupla guys started fighting, throwing things
and all. Neighbors called and…” a shrug. “Cops said they’d been lookin’ for her
for a while.”
“Huh.” Ed turned his glass on the
ring of condensation, watching as it smeared on the plastic tabletop.
“Yeah, that was pretty tame. We had
plenty of other things, worse things. We had one couple that carved each other
up, blood everywhere. Dunno who started it but by the time the cops got there,
he was dead and she was right next door to. All because of money. At the trial
Ada and me were called as witnesses. That gal said he spent their rent money on
booze and a dame and she wanted to teach him a lesson.”
It was Ed’s turn to smile, wryly,
“Pretty rough lesson.”
“Yeah. Some other guy, oh… ‘bout
twenty years now I guess – he tipped his lady friend down the garbage chute.
From the eighth floor that was. She was still alive when she went it and it still
gives me chills now to remember; made my hair stand on end for days to hear her
screaming. Not as bad as the sudden silence, though.”
Ed stared as he imagined. Tony
didn’t seem to notice, he was looking morosely at his glass which was almost
empty. “After that we sealed up the chutes and folks had to haul their trash
downstairs. That was a mess in the elevators but it just seemed the best thing
to do.”
“Yeah, yeah I can imagine.” Ed slid
his chair back, “I’m ready for a refill, would you like another?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” The
glass was pushed across the table and Ed carried the empties to the bar.
“He’s quite the talker, isn’t he?”
Joe said as he pulled Tony’s next beer.
“Yeah, he sure is.”
“He’s a funny old thing, too.”
“What’s funny?”
Joe leaned on the bar, as if to
share a confidence. “He never managed an apartment building. He was a writer,
wrote a book about one but no one ever picked it up.”
The rag came out and went to work as
Ed turned away, a glass in each hand and a bemused smile on his lips.
* * * * *
Have a lovely day!
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
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