I am walking

Agnes bursted from the house with her dog Keaton in a fit of anger. That hateful man she married has finally gone too far, she said to herself as she turned the corner onto 18th Street and headed to Rittenhouse Square. The cavalier way that he admitted his affair! Telling her, "You'll need some time to get adjusted to this," and then going upstairs to his office to do some work. As if he had just told her that someone had spilled ketchup on his white shirt. There was some disconnect in Norman, something missing in his nature, that made it impossible for him to act like a real human being.

Her pace quickened as she headed into the square on this beautiful, warm spring evening. The twilight of the late spring's early evening cast a golden light across the square from the west that bathed the Rittenhouse Claridge in a glow of light. She would sit in the square, she decided, until she had a chance to cool down. Her anger so consumed her that she found it difficult to compose the lines of her face, the furrow in her brow, and the flaming torch in her eyes. She did sit in the square, on the west side looking east, but the beauty of the square's lush oaks and elms at this time of the year failed to assuage her wounded, angry heart.

With ants in her pants she stood. "Come, Keaton, we're going for a walk." She knew exactly where she was headed and she headed west with a purpose and a destination.  She would confront the source of this problem and nip it in the bud for once and for all. "We're going to settle this matter once and for all."

On and on she walked on the eastward path of Locust Street, past the Warwick Hotel where she and Norman had dined that sentinel evening when Norman's mysterious disappearance confounded her; she now knew why he had disappeared, that he had had a row with that woman while she was getting ice cream. She past the Academy of Music on the right, where she and Norman had heard Sean's solo piano concert. Ah, the beauty of those final three Beethoven sonatas! Sean Larney's talent was truly a gift from God. She passed the Bellevue Hotel, where her parents had married. She turned south at Washington Square, where she and Norman had started their relationship more than ten years ago. She headed down 6th Street past her mother's house. Siobhan Limerick. Gone now to Washington, DC with her brother and her Aunt Julia. The house stood empty and vacant to Agnes -- even as she knew it was occupied by another family since Siobhan had sold it.

She continued quickly, without hesitation, until she finally came to Christian Street, turning right and heading straight for the front door she had gone to so many, many times. She knocked. Angelo answered.

"Angelo, good evening," she said without a pause. "I would like to speak with Christina."