I Hadn't Anyone Till You - [Susan Grieve - Daisy Kenyon]

Strange Faces and Unknown Places

The gentle rustling of the leaves beneath my feet provided me with a soothing soundtrack on my journey back home. The chilly autumn wind made me shiver and quicken my step, a large vapor made its way out from my lips showing how cold I was. My shoulders went up and nearly closed in on my neck, an act done as though it would provide me some more warmth and make me smaller amongst the crowd of commuters.

After years in this city I was habituated to not looking at people's faces as I walked down the sidewalk, perhaps my introverted self was to blame for this. I'd look at the puddles on the street after a long bout of rain, the yellow and brown stained trees, the chirping birds or even the familiar street dogs. But there was never any eye contact... Never.

As I grabbed the keys from my coat, getting ready to enter into my apartment,

It was hard for me to not investigate the hustle and bustle I was hearing occur across the street. The huge truck gave away the moving of a new neighbor.

Two men were taking out a sofa from the vehicle, as a woman stood on the sidewalk, giving directions. Her hair was ginger, perhaps of a darker hue. It reached to just the top of her shoulders, and it looked neatly styled. She seemed to be a bit smaller than me, but I couldn't establish such as she was wearing a big coat to fight the low temperatures.

I stopped in my tracks, just in front of the stairs leading to my home, not realizing I was observing without any sort of discretion. In a way, I was behaving like those older ladies back in my hometown who'd gawk at the sight of just about anything slightly interesting happening around the neighborhood. It wasn't until the woman had turned and looked at me that I was aware of my intrusiveness. Yet suddenly, a bright smile materialized on her face, highlighting the structure of her well favored face. Then she raised her hand and waved at me, an indisputably generous act compared to my ill mannered behavior. After a long second, I followed suit and waved back at her, with an all but blank stare.

I felt too awkward to put up any sort of conversation with a complete stranger. Besides, my asinine greeting was already enough to cause me a great deal of discomfort. So with swift feet I immediately turned my back to the street and walked down to the front door of my apartment which, thankfully, was only three steps down from the street.

I lived on the first floor of an old Brownstone house belonging to a woman who had decided to convert it into a bright and amusing series of flats. Once you walked in, it was pretentious enough. The large entrance hall had been marbleized in gray and white and into niches stood chalk-white Victorian garden statues of little girls holding umbrellas. There's no elevator so you have to walk up a curving stair to get to the next floor, where the walls were adorned with a huge baroque print representing the seven deadly sins.

My apartment looked exactly the way I had always dreamed it to look. As Stacy, my friend would say, it looked like a New England Library. The walls were lined with books, both old and new. The furniture was of a spare, lean excellence just like my father's study in Boston. There were eighteenth century library chairs, triangular shaped, covered with ancient amber colored leather, and big chairs covered in faded English chintz. Everything had its own place and the entirety of it all was dusted and cleaned until absolute perfection. I had plenty of ashtrays lying around, shining old silver boxes full of cigarettes, and a big fireplace that filled the quarters with a sense of homeliness.

No less important, placed on the corner of the desk, there's a typewriter laid under a white cover. I usually occupy that space a great deal of the time as it is where I most often create all of my books, apart from some select times where I become antagonized by sitting in the same spot for too many hours and end up using my office downtown.