A new writing project

Katy Park, Robert Dennard and I have started a new writing project called Invisible Lines. Each week one of us will select an Edward Hopper painting and we will then each write a short story in response to what we see.

Our first selection is Night Windows, 1928. Our stories are below.

Hettie before dinner

Thom Kofoed

 She had spent twenty minutes looking for her knickers, the pink satin ones with the lace frill around the top edge. She was wet still from her bath and her towel kept slipping down below her breasts. She pulled it up, tucked the corner back in on itself and carried on looking through her drawers. She hated that chest of drawers, heavy and stern and dark, a gift from her Aunt. It looked like a School Mistress and stared at her from the corner of the room, its arms behind its back.

Where were her knickers? She was running late now, the clock above her bed chiming seven thirty, and she needed those knickers. They made her feel sexy, a secret beneath her skirt. They made her walk differently and her bum wiggled and jiggled and men stared as she past and she liked that though her mother had always scowled when it happened to her. Truthfully she had always thought her mother liked it; her eyes would change when they whistled as if a light came on, as if somebody had woken her up, as if she suddenly remembered she was living.
Her knickers weren’t in the bottom drawer. They weren’t in the middle drawer either. They weren’t next to her bed or in her closet or balled up inside the pencil skirt scrunched into a heap on her vanity table chair. Thinking about it she hadn’t seen them for a week or so, since she went to the movies with Walter last Friday, when he had pawed at her and squeezed the tops of her thighs and grunted so loudly that a fella three rows in front told them to shush. They hadn’t gone all the way but if that picture had run any longer she couldn’t be sure what would’ve happened. Her face flushed at the memory. She picked up her compact and brushed her cheeks with powder, the moon reflecting in her vanity table mirror. The phone began to ring in the hall and the girls scuttled like crabs to answer it. The ringing stopped and after a few seconds she heard doors like dominoes close one after the other.
“Hettie” it sounded like Barbara calling.
“Hettie” she said again.
“Walter is on the line,” she said.
“he sounds hot and bothered.” she said.
She started to laugh and Hettie imagined Walter, his dress shirt undone at the collar, embarrassed at Barbara’s jibe, small in his seat, squirming at her bravado.
Hettie checked her hair in the mirror and pushed her forefinger around her lips. Wind blew in from the open window and her curtain danced like an empty dress on a hanger.

The Perks of a Top Floor Flat

Katy Park

Shelly could not believe her eyes. A cigarette burn on the carpet. She knelt down, bending her mottled lace legs and folding her brow in a grimace. Shelly did not smoke. She did not smoke, and she did not entertain those that did. She ran her hand over the burnt scar, listening for a clue in the silent room. She breathed.

Hours later, and the city darkness had brewed to a deep brown. It was hot, and the flimsy pointless fabric at the window coughed and steamed. Shelly lay thickly on her silk sheets. Her skin was busy sending bubbles to the surface which popped and ran in rivers to meet with the small balls of carpet still clinging to her knees. She looked like an animal. Oozing white into red.

When Shelly woke, she felt happy and alert. She bustled into the bathroom, running taps and squeezing tubes, erasing the stillness with sound. Her body and mind found solace in movement, and by the time she emerged she was entirely human again. As she walked, the soft pink skin of her foot brushed against the brittle burn on the carpet. She glided oblivious to her wardrobe. Today was potato salad and bus route 9. Cardboard folders and 5.15.

Keys, sandals, bag, glasses. She left with a slam, announcing her departure.

The window was left open, and only an occasional hot sigh disturbed the room.

Robert Dennard

Jazz. The ripping and writhing toe-tapping root toot toot of sax wailing jazz billows from a blue curtain of a second floor apartment on the corner of 114^th street and Eight Avenue. Inside Edith bops and jives about her room to the swinging step of her gramophone. She pays no heed to the sounds of the street outside, carried in by the cool night air from the open window. Dancing round her room, Edith felt as though the world was hers and anything and everything was there for the taking, just as long as the jazz kept playing. Just as long as she kept dancing, nothing mattered. While her hips keep up a convoluting shake, and her feet a steady step, she bends down to take a sip of wine whilst reaching for her cigarillo tin. Smoking with her head back, her arms undulate to the quickening beat; she spins and swings, taking her shadow as a partner in the ecstasy of the dance. Her partner takes the form of a strapping young sailor, returned from months at sea. Months spent longing to be back on land with Edith in their arms, spinning and jumping as they are now. The pace quickens of which Edith can only just keep up, but her partner copes, violently kicking out their legs, clicking their fingers and throwing about the arms. They coil together in a frantic embrace. They spin and spin until the wine renders Edith’s head a miss. She can’t cope, it’s too fast. Her faceless partner cares not and continues to spin her in the squeaking ether the sax has formed around them. Round and round they go, Edith’s stomach tightens into tenderness as she trips, her arms flailing to break her fall, she crashes into the gramophone, causing the needle to shriek across the wax as it topples of the table.

Down on all fours with her head hung, Edith pants as she catches her breath. Her partner, now returned to the shaded silhouette of her own form, has left her spent in silence, and alone once more.

She lifts herself and sits back on her feet with her hands on her knees. She pauses for one more moment of recuperation then stands, crosses her pokey apartment room and sits down on the bed. She lights another cigarette. The night air brings in more screeching of tires and sounds of the city outside. Suddenly angered, Edith slams the window closed, trapping her blue drape in the latch. Slumped back on the bed in silence, Edith exhales her cigarette smoke with an exasperated breath, cups her head in her hands and starts to cry.