Bob Allen

Bob Allen hadn’t noticed that it had been raining all day. Securely shut in a cubicle with beige burlap texture walls in the exact middle of the 14th floor of a thirteen story building, Bob’s only means of determining the weather was through a roving intermittent internet connection. Today the connection originated a thousand miles away in Bullfrog, UT. It was sunny and 105 degrees in Bullfrog; it was cloudy, raining and 60 degrees in Rockford, IL, where Bob worked. Before leaving for the day, he looks into the small mirror on the wall opposite his desk, adjusts his red “power” tie and pulls downward on his black suit coat to remove any obvious wrinkles.  As Bob walked off the elevator towards the glass door at the front of the building, he held the Gazette at eye level. The dark haired exec noticed the Blackhawks traded the Ducks and received a new defenseman for a pick to be named later. He noticed the Cubbies had hired a new manager. He noticed the “Tank McNamara” cartoon was a repeat from yesterday as was the word jumble. Bob Allen didn’t miss much, except the drops falling off the awning, the large puddle with the rainbow slick that was just off the curb, or the blue and gold city bus as it sped closer. His foot breaking the plane where street and pavement meets, Bob didn’t get a chance to read that the Bulls were retiring B.J. Armstrong’s number.



Benny Goldstein worked at the same grayish black building as the victim. More specifically, he worked outside the building in a rectangle shed not much larger than Bob Allen’s cubicle. The shack consisted of knotty pine planks and a tar paper roof. Benny sold the nationally popular daily rags as well as the best of the worst of the Hollywood tabloids. From the time Benny opened his stand at 5 A.M. he noticed the rain. “Cheat” he called it since it wasn’t really a full rain, but it was more than mere sleet. By 10 A.M., the vendor noticed water had saturated the boards under the tar paper and drips of brownish liquid ran down the sides of the “Benni-cube,” staining and warping magazines.  Drops fell on the few gray hairs left on Goldstein’s balding head as he frantically removed the papers from the chrome side racks. One of Benny’s regulars noticed the change in the man’s hair color and promptly accused him of using Grecian Formula. The older man laughed and pointed to a stream trailing from the stand to a large puddle, “What a great trade. You can see my silver color swirling by the curb!” It was a short time later that Benny saw a puff of black smoke coming from the back of the 4:30 bus as it strained to make the light. He quickly grabbed the left shutter and swung it close and was pulling the right one closed when the figure of Bob Allen, a regular morning customer, walking blindly towards the curb caught the corner of his eye. Benny’s warning cry came a moment too late. From behind the closed booth, Benny Goldstein only heard muffled screams, the victim’s and that of a woman.



Betty Warren was nearing the end of her shift as doorperson at the D.W.Woodcock Building, headquarters of the VelvetGlove gentleman’s club and its perpetual party for “opera glove” premium members. The slender blonde woman with the sky blue eyes hailed cabs for the clientele, while they huddled together out of the rain, under the canopy and chatted together about the size of the woman’s breasts and if they were “real” or augmented. The men’s comment’s fell on deaf ears, literally. Betty was a former dancer who lost her hearing after dancing too close too many times to amplifiers. Wet days like today didn’t go unappreciated by the tiny woman. In between holding doors and hailing cabs for “gentlemen”, the usherette would notice the paths the flowing rain would make towards the thoroughfare. She watched it pour out the gutters of the brown building next door and onto the sidewalk. She looked on as the water leaked through the paper stand’s roof, on the middle age newspaper man’s head and into the street. Betty was especially fond of watching the street purge itself of all the automotive fluids which had been spilled on it and seeing it coalesce in the large puddle in front of her. Lost in the myriad of color, Betty didn’t notice the man reading the sports section of the daily paper walk pass. The sudden appearance of the 4:30 bus’s tire disrupting the puddle shocked the woman back to her senses and reality of the event prodded her to release a shrilled scream.



Betty’s eyes filled with water and she looked around for someone to give her strength. Benny Goldstein slowly reopened the shutters of his stand it time to witness the Gazette’s sport’s section, rain saturated and tore, flowing down the street. He quickly put his hands over his gaping mouth. Their eyes met. A moment passed. Benny and Betty burst into laughter.