Wednesday's Word: Birch. Small Town Shenanigans, Chapter One

   Welcome to Wednesdays where I share a snippet from one of my stories using the previous day's word from the New York Times' game. WORDLE. Yesterday's WORDLE was BIRCH. 

Here's an excerpt from Small Town Shenanigans, the sequel to Small Town Secrets. (Coming soonish.)

Chapter One

*Sydney

The balloon man with his sky-high colorful bouquet skipped across the square. If I tripped him, would he lose his balloons? Would they sail into the sky like a flight of fat, pastel-colored, wingless birds?

I jogged in place, watching the cars and trucks zoom along forty-ninth. I pulled my damp blouse away from my skin with one hand and used the other to push my hair off my forehead. Even though I couldn’t see my cheeks, I knew they were pink—a color I never wear because it clashes with my hair.

It was a sauna-like summer day, and Rockefeller Center was in full swing. On the steps, a guy on the saxophone waved his instrument in the air with the beat while a girl dressed in a tight gold sheath sang, “Jack the Knife,” a song with macabre lyrics that perfectly suited my mood.

 A clown in a red, white, and blue costume and a red rubber nose paraded among the crowd in his twenty-inch shoes. A bikini-clad woman, who looked as if she could be as old as my grandmother, sashayed past on a pair of sparkly red stilettoes.

Finally, the traffic signal changed from red to green, and I was back in motion. The trash in the gutter reeked of urine and cheap beer. The phone attached to my arm buzzed. I felt it more than heard it, for it was a small sound in a sea of New York noise.

If it was my boss, he would want me to cheer up one of my writers, and I couldn’t do it. I had nothing to give. I was so tired of my whiny, spoiled writers, I considered switching careers. Anything would be better.

How much does a balloon man make? Everyone seemed to love him.

And if it was my boyfriend, I didn’t want to talk to him, because he wanted to get married. And I couldn’t talk to my mom, because she wanted me to marry my boyfriend. And I couldn’t talk to my sister, because she was married, and today, I wasn’t in the mood to hear about my perfect brother-in-law or my equally perfect niece—both, by the way, I adored.

I dug out my phone. I had three messages from Bertie, one of my more needy writers. I ignored them. They all said basically the same thing. She was stuck on a scene, and she wanted me to talk her through it. I thought about texting, I’m a therapist, not a developmental editor, but decided she already knew this—since I must have told her so a thousand times before.

 Determined to forget about Bertie and boyfriends, I turned up the music and picked up my pace, weaving through tourists, bicyclists, and mounted police on their scary beasts. Someone bumped me, but I hardly noticed.

Why didn’t I want to marry Reagan?

Did I have to have a reason other than he wasn’t my guy? But who was my guy? Did my guy even exist?

“Hey!”

I turned to see a tall, dark man dressed in jeans and a Columbia Law T-shirt waving something in the air. A gun? He didn’t look familiar, so I ran faster. The city was full of men and Central Park held some of the worst of them. When had the mounted police disappeared? I ran onto the open field, away from the trees and bushes. An Australian Shepherd bounded after me.

“Hey!” The man’s voice called out.

I sprinted up the hill. My earphones slipped out and the sound of children laughing and playing in the distance, the rustling of leaves, and the faint hum of conversations slipped in. The earphones, dangling on their cords, beat against my chest in time with my footfalls.

Birch and aspens stretched to the sky and blooming flowers filled the garden beds. The sun warmed my skin. A man on an accordion stood near the entrance of the zoo. An elephant squealed and monkeys chittered. The carousel played its canned organ music.

When I got to the Great Lawn, someone grabbed my arm. I opened my mouth to scream, but the man spun me around and waved my fanny pack in my face.

“You dropped this.” He was tall, thin, and had a mop of curly dark hair. His cheeks were pink from running, but he didn’t sound winded when he spoke.

“Oh my gosh!” Remorse swept through me. “Thank you! I’m sorry to make you chase after me.”

He grinned. “I get it. You can never be too careful.”

We stood in the center of The Great Lawn where Frisbee players and picnickers surrounded us. Pedestrians and bicyclists rushed past. The mounted policemen reappeared.

My phone buzzed again.

“Do you need to get that?” he asked.

I checked my phone.

The text wasn’t from Bertie, as I had expected, but from Harvey, my boss.

I have an unusual assignment for you, the text read. It’s an extremely delicate situation. Come into the office so we can talk. I think you’ll be excited.

When I looked up, the man in the Columbia Law T-shirt was gone.