Throwing herself back down on the bed, she refused to answer her door, though she was now wide awake. She wouldn’t reward the person’s rude behavior by acknowledging his or her presence.
When five minutes passed and the intruder still refused to leave, she finally got up and pulled her pink terry cloth robe around her to stomp across her cold, worn wooden floors. She passed through her sparsely furnished, small living room and stood in front of her door.
“Whoever is out there can get the hell away from here before I cock the shotgun I’m currently holding,” she said, hoping her voice sounded a lot braver than she felt.
Silence greeted her statement.
“I’m not kidding. I grew up on an army base and I know how to use this thing,” she lied as she looked down at her sweaty palms. She didn’t even own a gun, but the person on the other side of the door didn’t know that.
Her neighborhood wasn’t the worst in town, but it most certainly wasn’t the best.
Several seconds passed—they seemed like freaking eons—and Stormy put her ear to the door. Only silence greeted her now. Great! The jerk had woken her up and now was running scared.
Maybe she should make a recording of her small speech and keep it at the ready for anyone stepping in front of her door before the hour of ten a.m.
Her hands still a bit shaky, Stormy made sure her security chain was tightly locked in place. Finally, she cracked her door a couple of inches. She peered down the hallway as far as she could see and found no one out there.
Had she scared the person off? That thought pleased her immensely. She was one tough girl. Yay for her.
Still, she really wanted to know what all the pounding had been about. “Is anyone out there?” she called out. Not a whisper could be heard in return.
A little bucked up, she slowly removed the chain and opened her door wide enough to look out to the other side of the hallway. The sound of the door creaking open gave her goose bumps, but when she looked down both sides of the hall, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
Her eyes narrowed, and she immediately suspected that the creepy college dropout who lived a few units down might have been playing a prank on her. He never had a shortage of cheesy pickup lines or dirty jokes to share with anyone of the female gender. Perhaps he had just hammered on the door before heading out, thinking that he was being amusing.
Just as she began to turn and close the door, a flat white object on her mat caught her eye. Holding her robe closed with one hand, she reached down with the other and picked up the envelope.
Once safely back inside, with her lock securely in place, she noticed that the return address was the rental office of her building. She walked back to her bedroom, which was little more than an alcove with no wall or door.
Wondering what the management could be sending her, she tore open the letter. She sat on the edge of her bed and hesitantly pulled the piece of paper out. Oh, how she hoped it was simply an announcement about sink repairs. No such luck.
Dear Ms. Halifax:
Remodel to begin in four days. This is your final warning.
You must be out in seventy-two hours.
Stormy’s heart sank in her chest as she crumpled the paper in agitation. She had known this was coming, but still, she’d hoped beyond hope she could get an extension. Finding an affordable place in Seattle wasn’t easy.
But the new management was trying to spruce up the image of the building for some big investors who were coming in. Dammit! When it rained, it poured. Since everything was going wrong anyway, she decided she would just let it all go and try to forget about it—for at least a solid ten minutes.
It was time to get ready for work. Suddenly a loud clap of thunder erupted close by. She could hear a slight tapping on her window that was increasing in tempo. Fall was quickly approaching in Seattle, and the rainy weather was steadily increasing.
Stormy was always invigorated by big storms, not fearful like so many other people. They actually helped to cheer her up, most likely because they were her namesake. She’d been born the night of a great thunderstorm and her parents had thought her name was literally coming to them from the skies. She had to admit, though, she’d rather watch a storm from a warm, safe place and not go out into the middle of it.
She reminded herself again that it was a work day. Maybe it was good the management had woken her. With a sigh, she walked across the cold, broken tile of her bathroom. The bathroom was small and quaint, complete—har, har—with a toilet, a single shower stall, and a vanity that barely managed to hold her hairbrush and a few basic beauty products. It was a good thing she wasn’t into a lot of cosmetics and skin lotions.
She turned the faucet on, then pulled the lever, bouncing on her toes as she waited for what seemed like forever for the small tank to send anything above freezing through the rusty pipes. When the water reached lukewarm, she jumped in, and then sighed when it finally matched her body temperature.
It didn’t take long to get ready, and then she was off. The sooner she faced the wet, cold morning, the sooner she’d be out of it. There was a bright side.
She arrived in the lobby just as the rain picked up to a sheeting downpour outside the old building.
“Are you going out in that, darling?” one of her neighbors asked as she waited for the morning paper to arrive. The widow, Penny, whom Stormy had a soft spot for, had the same routine every single day.
“Yes, I have no other choice,” Stormy replied.
“You know, missy, if you don’t learn how to slow down just a little bit, one day you’re going to find that you’ve let life just up and pass you by.”