C#... C... B ... Bflat...

Key by key, Lydia worked her way down the piano. The notes rang out, warbled and hollow but infinitely sweet in the still air.

Bflat... B... C... C#...

Her fingertips no longer left marks, clear enough for incrimination, but still every press of her fingers raised a tiny cloud of smoke. They dissipated as she waited for the note to wear itself out, quickly hushing to heavy silence.

D ... D#... D...

Her feet were curled up underneath the worn black bench, the strips of wood that held up the ancient cushion now protruding through the thinning cloth. Her legs crossed at the ankles, and her left hand gripped beneath the bench.

D... C#... C... C#... D...

As she played, Lydia looked intently at each key she pressed. Her fingernail were short, her skin plain and pale against the yellowed ebony. She was looking beyond where her skin met the key, though, looking straight through to whereever it was that the sound was coming from. Off-key, each pitch sang hesitantly, unwillingly, and Lydia was focused as though to force the sound to be stronger, to fill the empty space. All her attention had focused in until it was as though the old upright were the center of a golden sphere.

C#... C... B... Bflat... B...

Two weeks ago, she had learned their names. Her lips didn’t move as she prssed them each, working down and up the alphabet, but she had learned their names and she liked to remember things she had learned.

C...

She looked at the grainy wood of the piano, and she touched the smooth keys, and she listened so carefully that the dust-filled air around her curved inward, catching the sound like in a cupped hand.

Closing her eyes with a perplexed, considering, slightly frowning expression, she played four keys and held them down as she went.

C#... C... B... Bflat...

Lydia waited, her expression unchanging. The dissonance filled the room, the notes together sounding with a strength they never had alone. The tones whispered into every corner of the room, beautifully strong – but swiftly, they faded, leaving only a slight vibration in the air.

Lydia’s face melted smooth, and she stood with a sigh. Around her, the air shattered with a quiet shudder. Moving deliberately and slowly, Lydia shut the cover to the keys of the piano, and pulled out the prop that held up the lid over the strings. Delicately, she let down the dep brown wood and smoothed the cover of dust. Her fingernails absentmindedly followed a swirl, before her hands dropped to her sides. Lydia looked out her window.

The sun was setting.



Monday morning, and Lydia slowly pulled herself of sleep. Her alarm clock was ringing tinnily from he floor, and she opened her eyes to find it. Reaching a pale arm out from under the covers, she flicked it off with a fingernail. With a small sigh, she untucked her feet and stood.
Her feet were cold on the plain wooden floor, but she didn’t bother with slippers - never had. Instead, she wandered over to her dresser.
Beside the drawers stood a dollar-store rack, with five neat pink uniforms hanging from it. She selected one, haphazardly but unhurriedly, and, grabbing underthings and socks from the dresser, she walked to her bathroom.
It was small, but as neat as the rest of her home. The floor tiles were blue, and the walls were white. A small, simple toilet sat beside a small, simple sink, and a plain glass shower stall stood in one corner. Shutting the door, Lydia hung the uniform on a nail on the back of the door, placed the other items beside the sink, and took a ten-minute shower.
She dressed in the bathroom, glancing in the cloudy mirror only twice, and quickly. When she finished, she picked up a brush standing in a basket beside the sink and brushed her hair casually. Putting her hair up in a ponytail, businesslike, she glanced in the mirror once to make sure there were no bums and walked, confident in her socks, out of the bathroom.
Her shoes stood besid he door, parallel and toes touching the wall. She put them on, put on her coat that hung on a nail on the back of this door, and turned off the lights as she walked out.
Her keys, money, and ID were already in her pocket.

The stairs to the back yard were plain and dark wood, and one step was missing. Lydia skipped it automatically, one hand on the wall and the other on the railing. The white-washed wood already has a long, dark smear where her hand has ridden down it many times before.
The stairs aren’t long, as the house is only two stories tall anyway, but they aren’t sturdy and so it takes a while to climb all the way down. It feels so much longer than it is, but Lydia doesn’t often point out paradoxes, even to herself. Especially to herself.
The backyard is plain, sparse grass and large patches of dirt. There isn’t technically a path to follow, but the dirt is hard and the grass nonexistent in an arch that stretches from the door Lydia is stepping out of to the stepping stones along the side of the house. It’s not the shortest way from here to there, but it has no sharp curves and is almost graceful, in a way.
The stepping stones are slate, large and flat, and set just too far apart for Lydia’s legs to comfortably stride upon. She lengthens her step, keeping her eyes down so that she doesn’t miss any of the stones. They’re overgrown on the edges, the grass creeping up to devour the corners of the stone, giving the whole path an overgrown, old look that would be perfectly appropriate beside a colonial mansion, but seemed vaguely ludicrous next to the artificiality of the yellowed sideboard.
Lydia kept her eyes on the grey stones.

The sidewalk was cracked, moss growing in between the slabs of concrete and grass poking up from where the path buckled. Lydia kept her eyes down, but didn’t count cracks or slabs or notice the comparison of the colors: white, gray, green, grown, black, yellow.
The sky was the pure blue of autumn crispness, and dry brown leaves cluttered here and there in tyhe breeze. Lydia pulled her coat a little tighter and checked both ways – right, left, right – before crossing the street and turning towards downtown.

She stopped before she reached the point where the buildings became truly tall, stuck somewhere in the in-between, not quite the suburbs and yet nowhere near the metropolis. It wasn’t a big city, and yet there seemed to be so many of these strange patches of place... At first, Lydia had found it quite peculiar. Factories were sprinkled around here, and large patches of concrete and asphalt, a few forgotten buildings and decrepit parks. Some people lived her, and some people worked here, but nobody moved here or bought here or changed her. Downtown was alive, and the suburbs were... Peaceful, quite, safe... but here, it was like everything. Just. Stopped.
The pavement was criss-crossed with cracks, and the sky with telophone pols and power wires. The birds here were all black and ugly, and the stream that uptown became the center of attractive parks here hid underground. A lot of things seemed to be hiding underground, in this part of town, and a lot of things that usually belonged aboveground had risen above. Pipelines were visible, bearing gas, water, and who knows what to and away from what had once been houses, maybe – and sometimes to places that had never been anything but ugly slabs of concrete and artificial materials.
Lydia barely gave the landscape, concrete and asphalt and bricks and the occasional, lonely tree, a glance. Instead, she carefully sidestepped a pothole, calmly checked both ways, and crossed the street towards a little diner.
S and D’s Diner, it was called. 50's-style food in a friendly atmosphere, it said. Open all year round, the sign announced in big letters. Closed on Christmas, Easter, and in instances of death, read the fine print. Come in and join us!, announced the brightly blinking neon sign.
Employee’s Entrance, said the door Lydia entered into.
The inside of the diner was covered in mirrors, chrome, and pink, perfectly matching Lydia’s bubble-gum hued outfit. The back, though, was dirty white and a touch of stainless steel, very utilitarian. Lydia shrugged off her coat, hanging it on a nail beside the door. There was an employee coatroom, but it was always crowded, and this worked just as well. She pulled out her money, keys, and ID, and placed them in the pocket of her skirt. Navigating through the short-line cooks and dishwashers, she worked her way up to the waitressing station.
The three women already standing there looked up, unsurprised. She was right on time. “Hey,” one of them said. Lydia nodded in recognition of the greeting, and poked her head out into the main dining room. It wasn’t particularly busy – it rarely was, this early in the morning, but it was always worth a shot. People would start coming in in about half an hour. Lydia walked over to the station once more, checking out table assingnments.
Becky turned and kept talking to Sally. When Lydia had first started working, they had been a bit disturbed by the extent of her distance – why couldn’t she just ask them if there was much business? – but they were used to it by now.
Lydia checked out the tables that she was in charge of, grabbed a towel, pad, and pen, and walked out into the diner.

Lydia had a break at ten, and another at three. AT least, that’s how it was supposed to work. Practically, though, she didn’t break on weekends until eleven, and then at four, and on weekdays she took off at nine and two. Nobody really minded – she got her work done, and didn’t mind taking over for another person when it was necessary. She cleaned when the place needed cleaning, and fed people when they needed feeding, and never took a break when the diner couldn’t afford to run without her.
When it could, though, she left. The other waitresses would gossip, or flirt, but Lydia would stand up quietly from where she had been sitting – there was a little chair in the back corner of the bar where she liked to stay when there wasn’t anything for her to be doing immediately – and go to the back of the kitchen. She’d take her coat off the nail, transfer her money and ID and keys back into her coat, having already put her pad and pen and maybe tray by her chair, and she’d open the door and leave. She’d always shut the door carefully behind her, so as not to make a loud noise that would startle anybody.

There were a few places to eat or hang out in the limbo-land before you reached downtown, but Lydia never went to any of them – never had, actually, and had no idea what they were like inside. Instead, she strolled towards the downtown area, walking briskly with her eyes straight in front of her.
Pink skirts and collared matching blouses weren’t in fashion, but it was so obviously a uniform that Lydia received no strange glances. She didn’t go all the way into downtown, either – not to where the sidewalks became uncracked, even brick in places, not to where the stores got posh and the skyscrapers became glass and the stores expensive. She had only ever been there once that she remembered.
She stopped once the surroundings were slightly prettier, slightly more welcoming – her destination could be found near where the stream was aboveground, and surrounded by green, but had no pretty benches and carefully tended trees. There was a café here, one she’d found her very first day in town. It was small, and cozy, and had plain glass tables out in front. It looked rather like a Parisian tableau – except that tableaus rarely include the bird dung and water stains and cracks.
Lydia came here every day, for reasons unknown – mostly unknown. She had figured some of them out, weeks ago when she had decided that there were things in life which needed figuring out. She’d done that for two days, straight and solid, before getting some sleep.
She went to work, though. And she came here on her breaks.
No waiter came out when she sat down at a table outside. She knew they wouldn’t, just like they knew she was there. It was a bit too cold to be outside, really, but she took off her coat anyway. She transferred her money and ID and keys to the pocket in her uniform, and slung her brown coat across the back of the opposite seat. She sat outside for a while longer, not shivering, before standing and going inside.
A dinky little bell rang out as the door opened under her touch.