| The Young Lady on the Window's Edge |
[Nov. 19th, 2006|10:56 pm] |
Title: The Young Lady on the Window's Edge
Type: Short Story
Written: September 2004
Copyright Brian Lelas (c) 2004, 2006
The Young Lady on the Window’s Edge
by Brian Lelas
As the sky was swept clean with the overpowering light of a bright new morning’s sun, the young lady sat with her legs dangling out of the window of her city apartment, four storeys from the ground. She sat well perched on the windowsill and watched the blank city streets fill with traffic. Cars flooded down the highways and would bottleneck together only a stone’s throw from her window. Cyclists would weave their way through the network of wide cars and long trucks, becoming the envy of many of the drivers behind the wheels of the vehicles too large to do the same.
The young lady was wearing her favourite shoes, a pair of pink pumps. As she looked below at the pedestrians walking briskly along the paths into the city centre she thought about their shoes. Surely those men dressed in their fancy suits and heavy briefcases would gladly trade their polished black shoes for a comfortable pair of pretty pink pumps? Maybe not. On the far side of the road she watched a young man with dark hair run frantically for a bus on the opposite side of the road. Maybe he’d come all this way into the town and realised it was his day off. Maybe if he got home quick enough his bed would still be a little warm and he could get a few more hours sleep. Or maybe he left his belongings on the bus? Who knows? Either way, he missed the bus. He passed a young girl wearing a wet jumper and black skirt. It looked a lot like her own jumper, but the skirt was a little short to be like the black one she was wearing. Otherwise they’d have been wearing the same clothes, and that would be a disaster. So much for her original taste. The young man seemed fairly annoyed over missing the bus, and disappeared into a newsagent’s. Not to buy pink pumps, the young lady would bet. The young woman with the clothes that resembled her own was talking to a man with grey hair and a brown leather jacket. He seemed like a friendly sort, at least from this high above.
A little blue car was trying to pass a bus in the wrong lane. The young lady watched it with some interest for a few moments, imagining an elderly lady behind the wheel, afraid to pull out too far in front of the bus in case of an accident. She imagined the elderly driver talking to herself, probably about how it was easier to drive in her day because cars weren’t invented yet and the roads were empty. The little blue car found its way past eventually, and disappeared around a corner.
The young lady looked up again at the brilliant sun and shielded her eyes with her right hand, holding herself tightly in place with the left. Her pink pumps dangled gracefully down at the end of her legs, keeping her feet warm. She reached a hand into the apartment and grabbed a paperback book that was sitting closed on the inside window ledge. After picking up where she’d left off, she began to read, her eyes following the lines, her mind taking in the words, but her head wasn’t putting them together. After about twenty minutes, this fact dawned on her, and rather than put the book back or read over it again, she decided to drop the book out of the window and see what happens.
And so she did. It drifted slightly away from the building and landed soundlessly on the edge of the path. Three or four people had noticed it, possibly more of the drivers stuck in the lanes of traffic. One was a young woman, dressed as if heading to the office for a hard day’s work. She stared at the book as she walked past, and glanced up, not seeing the young lady’s pink pumps, and figured that she was just seeing things. Two others were smartly dressed men, possibly colleagues in some business further into town. They noticed it hit the ground, but neither of them seemed to think much of it, or care at all.
The fourth person, however, was a young woman of about twenty, who, after seeing that the others weren’t very interested, decided to pick up the book, and examine the cover. The young lady looked down from the windowsill past her pink pumps and into the eyes of the new young woman. She was holding the book, and had seen the pink pumps dangle over the edge of the windowsill. She was holding the book up in the air in the young lady’s direction, as if asking, Is this yours?
Our young lady shook her head.
The young woman at ground level tilted her head as if confused.
Our young lady nodded at last.
“Do you want it back?” the young woman at ground level mouthed wordlessly.
Our young lady shrugged her shoulders.
The young woman below did the same. She left the book on the top of a litter bin and went on her way, looking back up at the young lady with the pink shoes as if she was mad.
The young lady became intrigued by the book now. She didn’t want it back, no, she’d given up on reading the rest of it, but maybe it would provide some entertainment before she could forget about it.
She watched it for many minutes as person after person walked past, either not noticing the book on top of the litter bin or not caring either way. Then, as she’d hoped, someone took notice. It was difficult to make out if it was a man or woman, because of a fairly androgynous appearance and use of a rather out of fashion hat. The young lady watched with curiosity as this hat-wearing person approached the bin and dropped a paper coffee cup into it and picked up the book. After looking over the cover and back of the book, the person simply put the book back and continued down the road.
It was several minutes before another person would make a pass towards picking up the book. It was a man of about fifty years old. He wore a brown leather jacket and had grey hair. He seemed to be the kind of gentleman who’d look around for the owner and if there was no sign, would take the book to the nearest police station and leave it in with the lost-and-found people. After a glance around, the man put the book back down on the bin and crossed the road, vanishing into a small street not far up the road.
It would be the third prospective book-snatcher who would end up the winner of the prize. A young man, around nineteen or twenty, noticed the book from a long way away and our young lady had noticed his speedy approach to the bin. She guessed that he could recognise the book from its cover a long way off, and had probably been interested in reading it. But instead of simply taking the book, he did something that gave the young lady her reward. He acted bizarrely. Or perhaps not so. She couldn’t decide if he did or not, which is what made it bizarre in the first place.
The book-snatching young man held out his hand, which contained an item of rubbish for the bin, and with his other hand, knocked the book to the ground. As he did, he intentionally missed the bin with his piece of rubbish, and picked both it and the book up together, and made off with his prize and the piece of rubbish gladly in the bin.
The young lady gave a little laugh, unheard by anyone below and watched as the young man made a speedy exit across the road and down the same street our law-abiding gentleman had taken not long before.
She imagined them meeting up and shaking hands. The young man would show the older gentleman the book and they’d smile a thief’s smile, agreeing to share it. The gentleman would have phoned the young man with his mobile phone and told him of his plan, and the young man, hungry for knowledge would rush to the site and retrieve the target immediately.
Such an imagination our young lady has.
Once the young man was gone and thoughts of the book away with him, the young lady decided to let her eyes wander away to above her head, where a baby spider was circumnavigating the corner of her window. Rather than jump with fright and fall to her doom, this young lady put her finger out to the tiny spider, no larger than her little finger’s nail.
The little insect obliged and put one of its feet onto the surface of her skin, then another and another. Before long it was walking along her arm, and our young lady decided aloud that this new friend would be named “Bob” for no reason at all. She placed Bob on the windowsill beside her and together they felt a nice cool breeze as a wave of clouds swung over from behind her building and dampened her mood. Watching the clouds slowly invade her sky, the young lady was unaware that Bob had begun to climb down the building, one step at a time, all four storeys, and would eventually make it to ground level where he would find plenty of miniscule nibbles of food and a whole new place to play with plenty more Bobs for company.
The clouds brought with them a light drizzle. It was nothing to rush in out of, but as she watched the weather change, the young lady was saddened. She thought of playing her game of drop-the-book-out-the-window again, but valued all of the remaining books. There wasn’t anything in the apartment she could think of using instead. The game would not be played again today. And with that thought she gave up her glance on the city below and began to carefully climb back indoors, as the drizzle became rain and the rain became heavy.
As she set her feet down on her carpet floor, she noticed that something was different. One foot felt the sole of her pink pump, but the other felt the soft texture of the carpet instead. Her favourite shoe! It had fallen from the window on her way in.
Before she could think, her head was sticking out the window and peering down below to see if her shoe was anywhere to be seen. But she couldn’t see it. She searched frantically around the floor where she’d been standing, but still there was no sign of the shoe.
Without a second thought she was out her front door and into the hall. The lift was on the ground floor, so without hesitation she made for the stairs. Pounding down the stairs, four at a time, she found herself at the main door and stepping into the street. Blinking her eyes for a moment, she caught the image of a red needle, spinning at a great speed. As she opened her eyes again, all she could see was the heavy rain, drenching her clothes and hair. Her one bare foot was slipping as she looked around for her shoe.
A finger tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around to see a grey haired man, about fifty years old, wearing a black leather jacket and holding in his left hand an open umbrella. In his other hand he was holding a pink shoe, identical to hers. It was hers.
“I seen this fall into the bin from above me, and took it out. I suppose it fell out of your window?” the gentleman asked.
“Yes it did, thank you,” the young lady said, taking her shoe and heading for the door.
As she was about to enter she could see a small blue car pulling up to a stop a few paces up the road. Out stepped an elderly woman. She fought with her keys as she tried to lock her car door, all the while complaining, saying, “I hate this rain. In my day, the rain was never this bad. I blame all this pollution…” and on and on she seemed to rant.
The young book-snatcher passed her by, seemingly in a rush somewhere. He went faster and faster, trying to catch the passing bus. The bus made a splash in the rain and covered the young lady in gutter water. She shook with fright and went to step inside the main door, but instinctively turned her head to notice the book-snatcher miss his bus and pound his fist against the bus stop. He seemed to gain composure and disappeared into the newsagent’s a few doors down.
That was when the young lady’s heart skipped a beat and she turned around, looked directly across the road and up the wall of the building opposite, her eyes counting up four storeys, where she would see a young lady, identical to her in every way, her feet dangling over the edge of her windowsill. She had a pair of pink pumps on her feet, and there was no rain falling on her head. The image of the red spine swept over the young lady’s eyes as the other young lady dropped a paperback book from her window.
And that was when our young lady fainted.
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