
Gerald Farinas 518 West Cornelia Avenue.jpg on Wikipedia
Haley faced the red brick, 1930’s apartment building she’d found two years before. She lucked into the only apartment in the building that retained the original mahogany woodwork she loved. Philistines painted over the lovely doorframes, mantelpieces and bookshelves in all the others so every time she gazed at the pristine wood she felt grateful. A 1930’s film buff, she liked to imagine the building went up in 1936. That year ushered in Swing Time, My Man Godfrey, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and After the Thin Man and that made it a very fine year to her. A poster of Myrna and William in the original Thin Man spoke of her love of all things Loy and Powell. And in ’36 Little Miss Temple still danced across the screen—she smiled across at Myrna and William from a spot over the couch.
The apartment certainly wasn’t fancy. Except for the new fridge, the kitchen hadn’t been updated since it was first put in. But the historic character suited her. The extra money from the band supplemented her fellowship well enough to cover this one bedroom in a neighborhood nice enough that she could arrive home at three a.m. and get out of her car feeling safe.
This is my entry for this week’s Trifecta. The challenge was to use the word “year” according to the third definition shown in the challenge (as in, the year 1936). Word count to be between 33 and 333. This piece comes in at 206. Since I’m already behind on my NaNoWriMo work and this challenge happened to dovetail nicely with a little descriptive piece I’ve been trying to work up, this is a tiny bit of the novel I’m working on. Which means you’re reading something out of all context – sorry about that but I gotta make one writing session cover two things or I’ll never catch up! My main blog is Notes from the Bluegrass and I also post challenges sometimes at Not Just Sassy on the Inside.