Hello, everyone. I hope you are staying well.

A few years ago, I wrote a flash fiction piece inspired by the Edward Hopper piece, New York Movie. Hopper’s paintings remind me much of Hemingway’s writing—scant on detail, but one may glean much from the deeper tides turning in the scene. New York Movie depicts a woman usher in a bygone day standing silent in a yellow-lit entry. She’s lost in thought. I wrote about what she might be thinking in those dim lights. The ideas springing from her and this image have grown into a short story I am working on, and it will meld with my next novel I have given thoughts on below. Here is the original flash piece I wrote with a few minor updates.

Whatever else might happen, she isn’t going back. This is it. He’s drunk even now in that seat, watching this hideous movie—again. ‘What’s the big deal about James Cagney anyway?’ She doesn’t get it. She could go now and that sad sack wouldn’t even notice she’d left—until she was on a train west; maybe Detroit, or even Texas. She’s got friends there—an aunt and cousins—and she could get a job there and make a fresh go of things. Her boss wouldn’t miss her either—what, with his grabby hands and sour breath and all his cheap talk. Going back to Texas is better than going to prison, that’s for sure. Or back to that Bronx apartment. Because if he does it again, I’ll tell ya, she’ll kill him. In his drunken foolishness, she will shove that butchering knife he is so fond of waving in her face, right into his yellow liver, and not give it a second thought. Not one. Yeah. Texas. There is nothing in this fat city for her anymore. They have used each other up. Who’s big idea was all of this anyway?