Florida by Lauren Groff

Author:Lauren Groff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

For three days, Helena dressed with ostentatious primness and made small purchases at the grocer’s, but the shopkeeper never greeted her and she never saw the girl or woman again. Helena’s ardor had cooled by the third day, and she began to wonder if the girl wasn’t simply the man’s wife or girlfriend or stock person, a person to whom it was a wrong but not a crime to speak to in such a way. She began to feel a chill of guilt that she had jumped to such conclusions—what an arrogant, American thing to do!—and to avoid the whole marshy emotional terrain, she began making her purchases at the chain again.

On a trip back from the other store, her milk and eggs swinging in a bag by her hip, she saw the shopkeeper out in front of his store, and he looked first at her bag, and something folded in his face, and he gave her a not-unfriendly wave, and she, confused, pretended to not see him.

Upstairs in her apartment, she fretted. Was she never to walk out of her house without being swamped with bad feelings? Was the shopkeeper going to ruin her entire vacation? She made herself a fruit salad and sat vengefully on her balcony to eat it. A great thick cloud had formed, and the wind had risen, and when she finished, she stood to take a look at the ocean. She watched as a distant sheet of water descended from the black clouds and sped toward her, drawing a swift curtain over the cruise ships outside the harbor, then the fishing boats motoring in, then the harbor itself, then the church steeple. When it hit the red rooftop across the street, she stepped inside and shut her glass door a breath before the storm smacked loudly at her, as if raging that she was still dry and safe when all the rest of the world was vulnerable.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.