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Angles
Susan could feel the filmy presence of another when she stopped at the
corner. Like someone standing too close, a hand hovering above her shoulder, a
wing-tap brushing her hair.
Not an uncommon thought for someone standing
in a crowd at rush hour on Gervais Street, waiting for the light to change.
Smiling, she tossed her concerns aside and crossed the street with the crowd, as
every office building downtown continued to unleash hundreds of workers at the
frizzled end of one more workday.
Yet the feeling of being followed, that
she was not alone, persisted, and Susan began to walk faster, forgetting to
admire the rose bushes at Miss Anne's, forgetting to take her favorite shortcut
down Pinckney Street.
By the time she remembered the shortcut, she had
missed it by a block, and arrived back at Pinckney just in time to see the
blinking lights of an ambulance and wrecker at the end of the street. A delivery
truck had blown a tire, jumped the curb, and crashed into a dumpster she usually
walked past this time of day.
A sudden breeze ruffled the spiked leaves
of a palmetto, and the sensation of someone's breath tripped along her
back.
That's when she started to run.
Past the grocery story and
courthouse. Past the Catholic Church with its Black Madonna glorified as Queen
of Angels in stained glass. Past the bookstore and the bank. Beyond a vacant lot
fringed with wild lilies waving their flushed arms at the setting sun, until she
arrived at her garden's stone patio, the front porch, and the ivory door of her
home.
c2005 Laura Stamps
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