The big, yellow wrecking machines were at it again, this time on the next street over, but Jenny still jumped when she heard their diesel engines roar to life. It was her street that had been the most recent victim of the city's progress. Her block, which in its heyday had shoulder to shoulder houses, was now toothless and grey. Rocky lots with the tops of filled-in cellars poking through the third-rate fill the demolition crews used to fulfill their city contracts were more common than living houses. Now the block behind Jenny's house was getting the same treatment; onward the machines would churn, block by block, until they hit the expressway that decades ago replaced what had been an award-winning park. On the other side of the cement scar, people still prospered. On Jenny's side, people hung on.
Jenny was lucky that she owned her house without a mortgage and she had enough to pay taxes and bills on time through her unconventional work. She spent most of her personal days on the upper floors as her front rooms were devoted to her business: fortune telling. Jenny shoved her feet into work boots and threw on a sweater before setting the house alarm. Even a lived-in house wasn't safe from copper pipe thieves, even in the daylight. The early morning dew from a devastated former front lawn dampened her boots as she scanned the last and newest empty lot on her street, created only a week ago. While she liked to get to the demolition sites before the crews were completely done, she hadn't been able to get out because of a sudden string of appointments. It seemed like the word-of-mouth was finally gaining momentum.
A sudden sparkle in the mud caught her eye. It was a fragment of mirror. Jenny freed it with her right hand and planted her boots firmly against the rocky clods. Angling it over her left shoulder, she rotated the piece from side to side, up and down, peering beyond the reflection.
No comments:
Post a Comment