Overall Impression
This is a solid work with many strengths. You have a knack for characterization and detail that breathes life into the scenes. For example, I enjoyed this sentence near the beginning that gave us a real sense of your main character:
"They all had some sort of idiosyncrasy that she could pick out by the time they left the place, and she made it her mission to find out what this quirk was each time someone caught her eye."
And here is a bit of description I particularly liked:
"She remembered standing there, gazing up at the intermittent streams of light that came through the high-reaching trees, and turning slowly in circles for a minute or two, searching for every last one of the rays that seemed to come from some distant land that lay above the treetops.
That said, I also think there is room for improvement in a few areas...
Suggestions:
In your excerpt you make heavy use of adverbs ending in "ly". I counted 12 in the first four paragraphs alone.
Ultimately, adverbs ending in "ly" should generally be avoided, theoretically because they unnecessarily clutter the flow of a normally fine sentence. If you get my drift...
Also, a word of caution regarding your wonderful attention to detail; too much of it can be as bad (or worse) than not enough. I was bogged down by excessive descriptiveness in several sections. Case in point:
"The Twin Creeks apartment complex sat in the north end of Tacoma, and was comprised of several hundred apartments, two tennis courts, a weight room and a pair of pools (one indoor, one outdoor) that seemingly always needed attending to. As she pulled into her parking spot, Karen climbed out of her car and walked down the concrete path in front of her until she came to a stairway and made her way up to her apartment on the second floor. After fiddling with the lock for a moment and giving the door a good shove, she pushed through the doorway and into her apartment.
Turning on the lights, she immediately opened up one of the sliding, wooden hanging doors on her right that opened into a small closet. On the floor lay a bookshelf that had once rested atop an old dresser of hers when she was a child. Taking her keys and purse, she placed them on top of it and peeked around the corner to the left at her answering machine. The small red light blinked twice at her as she walked around this tiny nook and into her kitchen.
She opened up the fridge, exchanged the remainder of her lunch for a bottle of water and looked around as she shut the door and took a sip. The small kitchen quickly gave way to the charcoal gray carpet that covered the rest of her apartment, and directly ahead of her lay a small, circular, wooden dinner table and two chairs, both of which faced out towards the balcony just beyond. Along the railing were four terra cotta pots with various plants spilling over the far edge, perhaps in an attempt to avoid her dirty, eighteen-speed bike that rested against the railing beneath them. The metallic black color had long since begun to fade through years of use, and her excursions into the muddy trails of Point Defiance, as well as to other areas affected by the Northwest’s mixture of dirt and rain, had left mud cakes so thick in some places that she dared not try to remove them. Bikes weren’t made to be kept clean anyway."
I feel your story would benefit from a "word liposuction" here. A brief paragraph describing her apartment would suffice -- let's get on with the plot! The reader wants to get to the action, and will tend to skip over long-winded descriptions.
Specifics
A few comments on specific portions of your story:
- "He never did anything to warrant anyone’s looking over at him for any particular reason, the coffee servers not withstanding"
The "anyone's looking over at him" gives this sentence an awkward feel. I suggest something along the lines of "He never did anything to warrant anyone's attention, the coffe servers not withstanding."
- "Now, however, with Spring in full swing, and the seemingly year-round Washington coastal rain and cloud cover lifting somewhat, he seemed a bit more inclined to allow a few inches of skin to actually meet with some of the sun’s rays from time to time."
There is room for debate, but to me this sentence could use some paring down. For example this part:
"he seemed a bit more inclined to allow a few inches of skin to actually meet with some of the sun's rays from time to time"
could be reduced to something like
"he seemed more inclined to expose a few inches of skin to the light of day"
and still have the intended effect without the wordiness.
- "never verbally asked any of the servers for something to eat or drink."
The word verbally is unnecessary.
- "As she headed for the door, she looked to her right and saw that the man was still there at his computer, seemingly unfazed by his surroundings, by what she guessed would be abject hunger by this point, and without any apparent regard for how long he had been sitting there in that uncushioned metallic chair."
A few notes on this sentence. (1) I suggest cutting the part about her looking to her right. As the reader, I frankly don't care what direction she looked. (2) I don't think "unfazed" quite fits the context of the sentence; a closer fit might be "oblivious". (3) If you're going to go for "abject", I'd recommend "abject starvation" rather than "abject hunger", as it has a stronger connotation.
Final Comments
Again, a well-written story worthy of additional revision. I suggest keeping "ly" adverbs to a minimum, and focusing more on progressing the plot while reducing the number of words you use in each sentence. Overall, bravo!
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