Writing prompt: Streetsweeper
Photograph by Jane
Underwood.
Janine had been passing him on her
way to the drugstore for weeks now. She never went
into the diner – too much saturated fat, not enough
green stuff, unless the dye they used in their mint
chocolate chip ice cream counted – and, to be honest,
she had other reasons not to go in, too.
Ever since returning home to pack up her mother,
she’d been stepping inadvertently into the past. The
town itself seemed stuck in a time warp, with all
that neon and the thriving Mom and Pop stores (who
would have thought that northern New Jersey was so
retro?). It was the kind of place where people
stayed, aged in place. The pharmacist at the corner
drug store was a high school acquaintance, a former
football cheerleader who was brainier than anyone
knew. The guy who pumped her gas was the brother of
Janine’s best friend from elementary school. The
clerk working at the library circulation desk was the
person who introduced Janine to marijuana, that first
secretive toke during a school trip into New York.
Janine was tired of going through the dance of
friendly interrogation. Over time she developed a
willful blindness and only saw the path ahead of her.
That was difficult enough, considering the state of
her mother's apartment, the tangled and rotting
neurons clogging her mind. This time he saw her.
“Janine! Janine Rickenbacher?”
It was Tommy. In the same job he’d had since high
school, handyman/janitor for Zorba's. Some things
never change, but Tommy had. He’d hardened, his eyes
had darkened a shade, were brassy and brittle. He
took off a glove and reached for her, his hand
calloused, the fingernails bitten to nubs.