CHAPTER ONEMonday, October 19, 1987
ONE—Anna (1)
Clawed leaves skittered before Anna Sudek’s sneakered feet as she walked down Ewert Avenue, crossing from the shabby residential section into the business district. The brittle oak, maple, and elm leaves thinned as Anna passed the first of the rough-siding and shake-shingle-roofed businesses on the left hand side of the street. Soon, she found herself walking down a dimly lamp lit, cracked, and pitted cement sidewalk as queasily luminescent and lightly pocked as the thin vestiges of the last quarter moon above her.
Despite their now dead state, Anna missed the rustling of the wind blown leaves. Ewert Avenue at 2:30 in the morning was a hollow, wind-sucking discarded bottle of a place, a length of quiet emptiness enclosed by the overhangs
