Downtown

Lillian picks her way carefully around the puddles and the potholes in the tarmac, careful not to dampen or scuff her newest leather ballet pumps. Technically, she should be at home – reading, or practicing violin perhaps, and how would one ruin another decent pair of shoes practicing violin? Questions would be asked. Discretion is imperative – Lillian knows this well.

She glances around her at the downtown city life as she carries on down the street. Women mill around pushing second hand charity-store prams. Young men rev up old motorcycles. The old men stagger around, most probably drunk, Lillian thinks, after one too many at the strip joint that likely hid down the end of one of these dark little alleys. Lillian’s father had warned her about these men.

Then again, Lillian’s father had warned her about this part of town. Full of tramps, he says, full of addicts and drunks and the poor. Lillian doesn’t really think this is fair. There must be hundreds of people who live and work downtown – how could all of them be bums? She supposes her father is just prejudiced. Prejudiced and disapproving of anyone who's earns less that he does. She doesn’t like this quality in her father. In her opinion, it makes him short sighted, rude, aloof, pessimistic.

I don’t want to catch you downtown, he says. You’ll be raped. Mugged. Or worse. But Lillian doesn’t suppose there could be much worse than being a relative prisoner in her own home anyway. And her father wouldn’t catch her - he’d rather be shot than seen downtown.

Lillian catches sight of a tall boy up ahead, leaning his back against a dusty wall, waiting, with one foot out in front of him. His jaw length hair falls over his face as he looks down to pick at his faded jacket sleeve absently, head nodding along to the tune of an anonymous beat . Lillian's face almost cracks in two with a smile before she can even register the reaction.

She forgets the puddles and the potholes.

And she forgets about her shoes.