The Walk

(experimenting with some second person perspective writing…)

She stepped onto the escalator marked “DOWN” and, due to state of her sopping (and now sagging) pant legs which had worked their way underneath her shoes, nearly missed her footing. She steadied herself by grabbing on to both sides of the moving staircase and thought to herself That was a close one – I have a feeling rolling down these steps would hurt much worse than tumbling down the wooden ones at home. She was having a relatively good day, all things considered, and not much was going to get her down that Friday afternoon. Pittsburgh’s wintry weather streak had finally been broken and that day and the previous one had been a comfortable fifty degrees. For Friday, however, there was some off-and-on rain tacked on to the forecast.

She reached the bottom of the last escalator and exited the Victoria Building. As she did so, she flipped open her phone, scrolled down through her list of previously called numbers, and hit “SEND” when she reached the contact “Dad.” After a short wait, she heard the cheery voice of her father on the other end. “Hello, Sammi!” he greeted. “Hey, Dad, how’s it going?” she asked.They chatted back and forth as she walked, heading down towards Fifth Avenue. About a minute into the conversation, she cut herself off mid-sentence: “Oh crap, wait a minute – it just started raining out of nowhere.” She dug deep into her tote bag, if one could even call it that anymore. It was more like a threadbare, faded, stained sack with an “Alice in Wonderland” theme in silver on its black canvas body; but it was her favorite. Her fingers stumbled across the parachute-like object that she recognized as her umbrella and yanked it out of the depths of her bag. “Man,” she continued, “it’s been really off and on today, the rain. One minute, it’s fine; the next, it’s a torrential downpour.”

She wrapped up her conversation with her father then pocketed her flip-phone so that she could better grip her flimsy, two-dollar miniature umbrella. The wind whipped all around her as she turned left onto McKees Place. Denying it the pleasure of doing it for her, she rested the thin pole of the umbrella against her forehead to keep the wind from sending it back and hitting her in the face. She looked down and examined herself as she trudged through the rain: her brown velour pants were now even more wet than before, soaked all the way up to her knees. Just my luck again, she thought. Every time I wear these, it rains. And every time, the material sops up all the water like a sponge. She also noticed that she not only picked the wrong pants to wear, but also the wrong shoes. Her green plaid Chuck Taylor “lo-tops” – also canvas, like her shabby tote – were absorbing just about as much of the rain as her pant legs, as though they were in some kind of strange competition. She rolled her eyes to herself as she reached the revolving door to her office building. As she made the half-circle to enter, she let out a sigh of relief, knowing that within a few moments she could rid herself of her wet shoes. She boarded the elevator and rode it to her floor.

She proceeded to her office suite, unlocked the door, and headed straight for her office. When she finally stepped through the doorway, she tossed her bag onto the chair nearest her, rolled up her pant legs, pulled off her shoes and socks, and plopped herself into her own seat. Bending down, she turned the knob to activate the little fan she kept underneath her desk for the summertime and aimed it at the wall next to her; then, feeling resourceful, she propped her shoes against the wall, draped her socks over them, and adjusted the fan so that it was angled in her footwear’s general direction. Then, leaning back in her chair, she began to type.