Willow Chapter 5: Sonia Drifts
A serial novel by Claudia Stack
Sonia shrugged and moved down the hall. She let the conversation with Sarah Brown pass from her mind, the little bit of intrigue she felt washed away in a tide of relief that the encounter was over. Surely this was the last she would hear from the old woman.
The elevator took her up. The top floor, where she and her father lived, had a different feeling than the other floors. Sometimes she pictured it as a vaulted cave, a place carved under layer upon layer of tarpaper that made up the roof. She let herself into the apartment. Silence greeted her. The light that streamed in through the fire escape window was heavy with dust motes.
She did not mind the quiet, the solitude. The city pressed in on her and she was glad to escape upward, although the surroundings were humble. The radiator covers were rusty. The dishes in the cabinet were chipped. Most of Sonia’s clothes came from thrift stores, as much out of ecological awareness as budgetary constraints.
Her father did not care about these details, he would have been happy to wear the same clothes for thirty years and eat lentils every night. In another time and place he might have been a Buddhist monk, he trod so lightly upon the earth.
