Published by Flash Fiction Magazine, October 28, 2019.
Click on title to read the story or read the story below..
There Are No Whys
In her neighborhood, beauty was hard to find.
Celeste lived in an ugly part of Brooklyn in the 1980s because rent was cheap for large artist lofts with long leases. At night, it was a deserted no-man’s land. No trees or flowers grew along the grimy streets.
DUMBO was all industrial then—mills, workshops, and storage facilities with few full-time residents. The buildings formed brick canyons five or six stories tall, towering over the cobblestone roads. File cabinets were manufactured on the bottom floors of her building. Across the way, they printed wallpaper, and there was a custom framer and a doll factory around the corner.
A.I.R. was hand-painted on doors where a handful of artists lived and worked in lofts on upper floors. Celeste was an artist, too, or trying to be one. They all did something else to make a living because there was no money in art. Everybody knew that.
The reek of solvents, garbage, and paint permeated the air. Every few minutes, subway trains thundered across the Manhattan Bridge. Celeste compared it to the sound of the ocean surf. Constant noise pounded, clanked, or blared throughout the streets, ricocheting with such intensity it was impossible to locate the source of any particular sound.
Occasionally, Celeste heard a musician playing lovely refrains that sliced through the racket and caressed her ears. The tunes were often sad and echoed in the concrete walls of her loft long after the last note was played. Sometimes, they were light, joyful. Then they faded quickly.
She looked forward to the melodies. On days he didn’t play, she missed him. She was sure it was a man, but she couldn’t say why. There was clarity in the tone and an extension of the notes that sounded male. Celeste realized it was a clarinet. When she walked her dog, she varied the hour to better determine where the musician was playing. She became obsessed with finding him.
Suzanne C Martinez 