Foot Traffic

I’ve been sitting at my desk at home, working at the computer. The desk faces a big window that looks out onto the neighboring condos’ parking lot. The window is open, but the blinds are drawn. Along with the background noise of car traffic, I hear my neighbors coming and going. For example, a man with a nasal voice came into the parking lot an hour or so ago and he was telling someone, “They said they’d deposited a bonus check, but I’m already overdrawn. I checked my account, and it turned out that the bonus was eleven dollars.”

There have been two women walking back and forth outside for awhile, walking between the condo building and something in the street. I presume that there have been two women — the voices of the people that have been walking past have consistently been women’s and there have consistently been two voices — but I haven’t been paying close attention, and I can’t be sure that the passersby have been the same two people.

But the thing is, the two women walked by just now, heading out of the parking lot, and one of them said, “I want an alligator so bad!”